“Sir. Lend me your amulet. I will return it—if I can.”
Impassively the champion pulled it over his head and handed it over. “Kick your shoes off, lad. Ground’s slippery.”
Shef took the advice. He was beginning, consciously, to breathe hard. He had been in many wrestling matches and had learned that it would prevent that momentary stillness, the unreadiness to fight that looked like fear. He peeled his shirt off too, donned the hammer amulet, drew his sword and threw the sheath and belt aside. It was a big ring, he thought. Speed would have to do it.
His enemy was coming out of his corner, plaid also thrown aside, stripped like Shef to his breeches. In one hand he held the longsword of the Gaddgedlar, thinner than the usual broadsword but a foot longer. In the other hand he had the same spiked targe as his fellows. A helmet was pulled down over his braided hair. He did not look much older than Shef, and in a wrestle Shef would not have feared him. But he had the longsword, the shield, a weapon in each hand. He was a warrior who had seen battle, fought in a dozen skirmishes.
From somewhere outside him, an image formed in Shef’s mind. He heard again the solemn voice of Thorvin chanting. He stooped, picked a twig from the ground, threw it over his adversary’s head like a javelin. “I give you to Hell,” he called. “I give you to Dead Man’s Strand.”
A buzz of interest rose from the crowd, cries of encouragement: “Go on, Flann boy!” “Get him with your buckler!”
No voice encouraged Shef.
The Irish Norseman padded forward—then attacked swiftly. He feinted a thrust at Shef’s face, turned it into a sideways backhand slash, aimed at the neck. Shef ducked under it, stepped away to his right, dodged the thrust with the spiked buckler. The Viking paced forward, swung again, backhand up, forehand down. Again Shef stepped back, feinted to step right, stepped left again. For an instant he was to his adversary’s side, with a thrust possible at the bare right shoulder. He leapt back instead and moved rapidly to the center of the ring. He had already decided what to do, and he felt his body answering perfectly, light as a feather, buoyed up by a force that swelled his lungs and raced the blood through his veins. He remembered for an instant the way that Sigvarth’s sword had broken and the fierce joy that had filled him.
Flann the Irishman came in again, swinging the sword faster and faster, trying to box Shef in against the bodies of the ring. He was quick. But he was used to men standing up to him to trade blows and catching them on blade or buckler. He did not know how to deal with an opponent who simply tried to avoid him. Shef jumped a wide sweep at knee level and saw that the Irishman was beginning to pant already. The Viking Army was made of sailors and horsemen, strong in the arm and shoulder, but men who walked little, and ran even less.
The shouting in the background was getting angry as the watchers grasped Shef’s tactic. They might start to close in and narrow the ring. As Flann tried his favorite backhand sweep downward—a little slower now, a little too predictable—Shef stepped forward for the first time and parried fiercely, aiming the base of his thick blade at the tip of the longsword. No snap. But as the Irishman hesitated, Shef slashed out of the parry at the back of the other man’s arm—a quick spurt of blood.
Shef was out of reach again, refusing to follow up his advantage, circling to his right, changing step as the other man advanced and then moving to his left again. He had seen the momentary shock in the warrior’s eyes. Now there was blood running down over Flann’s sword-hand, quite a lot of it, enough to weaken him in a few minutes if he did not finish things quickly.
For a hundred heartbeats they stood close to the center of the ring, Flann trying now to thrust as well as cut, stabbing out with his buckler; Shef parrying as well as dodging, trying to knock the sword from his enemy’s blood-smeared hand.
Then Shef felt, suddenly, the confidence draining from his enemy’s blows. Shef began to move again, springing on tireless feet, circling his opponent, moving always to the left, trying to get behind the other’s sword-arm, careless of the energy he expended.
Flann’s breath came almost as a sob. He hurled the buckler at Shef’s face and followed it with a ripping upward stab. But Shef was in a crouch, knuckles of his sword-hand on the ground. His parry deflected the thrust far over his left shoulder. In an instant Shef straightened and drove his own sword deep beneath the naked, sweating ribs. As the stricken man shuddered and staggered away, Shef seized him in a wrestler’s grip round the neck and poised his sword again.
Shef heard through the yelling the voice of Killer-Brand. “You gave him to Naströnd,” it shouted. “You must finish him.”
Shef looked down at the pallid, terror-stricken, still-living face in the crook of his arm, and felt a surge of fury. He drove the sword deeply home through the chest and felt the pain of death leap through Flann’s body. Slowly, he dropped the corpse, retrieved his sword. Saw Muirtach’s face, pale with rage. He stepped over to Ivar, where he stood with Godive now at his side.
“Most instructive,” said Ivar. “I like to see someone who can fight with his head as well as his sword-arm. You have saved me a silver ring too. But you have cost me a man. How are you going to pay me back?”
“I am a man as well, lord.”
“Join my ships, then. You will do as a rower. But not with Muirtach. Come to my tent this evening and my marshal will find you a place.”
Ivar looked down for a moment, considering. “There is a notch on your blade. I did not see Flann put it there. Whose blade was it?”
Shef hesitated an instant. But with these men the bold course was always wisest. He spoke loudly, challengingly. “It was the sword of Sigvarth Jarl!”
Ivar’s face tightened. “Well,” he said, “this is no way to wash women or sheets. Let us be on our way.” He turned, pulling Godive with him, though for an instant her face remained fixed, looking agonizedly at Shef.
Shef found himself staring up at the bulk of Viga-Brand. He slowly pulled off the amulet.
Brand weighed it in his hand. “Normally I would say keep it, boy, you earned it. If you live you will be a champion one day; I say it, Brand, champion of the men of Halogaland.
“But something tells me the hammer of Thor is not the right sign for you, smith though you are. I think you are a man of Othin, who is called also Bileyg, and Baleyg, and Bölverk.”
“Bölverk?” said Shef. “And am I a doer of evil, a bale-worker?”
“Not yet. But you may be the instrument of one who is. Bale follows you.” The big man shook his head. “But you did well today, for a beginner. Your first kill, I believe, and I am talking like a spaewife. Look, they have taken his body, but they have left the sword and shield and helmet. They are yours. It is the custom.”
He spoke like one setting a test.
Slowly Shef shook his head. “I cannot profit from one I gave to Naströnd, to Dead Man’s Strand.” He picked up the helmet, threw it into the muddy water of the stream, hurled the buckler up into a bush, put his foot on the long thin sword, bent it once, twice, into unusability, left it lying.
“You see,” said Brand. “Thorvin never taught you to do that. That is the sign of Othin.”
Chapter Seven
Thorvin showed no surprise when Shef returned to the smithy and told him what had happened. He grunted a little wearily when Shef finally told him that he would be joining the contingent of Ivar, but said only, “Well, you’d better not go looking like that. The others would laugh at you—then you’ll lose your temper and worse will happen.”
From the pile at the back of the smithy he dug out a spear, recently reshafted, and a leather-bound shield. “With these you’ll look respectable.”
“Are they yours?”
“Sometimes people leave things in for repair, don’t come back for them.”
Shef took the gifts and then stood awkwardly, his rolled blanket and few possessions on his shoulder.
“I must thank you for what you did for me.”
“I did it because it was m
y duty to the Way. Or so I thought. Maybe I was wrong. But I’m not a fool, boy. I am sure that you’re after something I don’t know about. I just hope it doesn’t get you into trouble. Maybe our paths will run together again another day.”
They parted with no more words, Shef stepping for only the second time over the rowan-berry cords of the precinct and for the first time walking down the lane between the tents without fear, face forward, not looking furtively around him. He headed not for the encampment of Ivar and the other Ragnarssons, but for the tent of Ingulf the leech.
As usual there was a small crowd standing round it, watching something. It dispersed as Shef strolled up, the last few men to leave carrying a stretcher with a bandaged shape on it. Hund came to meet his friend, wiping his hands on a rag.
“What were you doing?” Shef asked.
“Helping Ingulf. It’s amazing what he can do. That man there was wrestling, fell awkwardly—leg broken, just like that. What would you do with that if you were back at home?”
Shef shrugged. “Bandage it up. Nothing else you can do. In the end it would heal.”
“But the man would never walk straight again. The bones would just join each other wherever they happened to be. The leg would be all lumps and twists—like Crubba, who was rolled on by his horse. Well, what Ingulf does is pull the leg out straight before he starts bandaging, squeezes hard to feel if the broken ends of the bone are together. Then he bandages the leg between two stakes, so that the whole thing stays straight while it is healing. But what is even more marvelous is what he does in cases like this one, when it’s broken so badly that the bones are sticking up through the skin. If he has to he even cuts back the bone, and opens the leg so that he can push the bone back straight! I didn’t think that anyone would live through being opened and cut like that. But he is so quick—and he knows exactly what to do.”
“Could you learn to do it?” Shef asked, watching the glow of enthusiasm on his friend’s normally sallow face.
“With enough practice. Enough instruction. And something else. Ingulf studies the bodies of the dead, you know, to see how bones fit together. What would Father Andreas say to that?”
“So you mean to stay with Ingulf?”
The runaway slave nodded slowly. He pulled from under his tunic a chain. On it was a small silver pendant, an apple.
“Ingulf gave it me. The apple of Ithun the Healer. I am a believer now. I believe in Ingulf and the Way. Maybe not in Ithun.” Hund looked at his friend’s neck. “Thorvin has not converted you. You are not wearing a hammer.”
“I wore one for a bit.” Shef spoke briefly about what had happened. “I may have a chance now of rescuing Godive and getting away. Maybe if I watch for long enough God will be good to me.”
“God?”
“Or Thor. Or Othin. I’m beginning to think that it makes no difference to me. Maybe one of them is watching.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” Shef gripped his friend’s arm. “We may not see each other again. But if you leave the Vikings I hope one day I will have a place for you. Even if it’s just a hut in the fen.”
He turned and headed for the place he had not dared even to look at when they first entered the Viking camp days before: the Vikings’ command tents.
The domain of the four Ragnarsson brothers ran from east wall to west wall, a full furlong along the riverfront. At its heart, in the center, were the great meeting tent—with room in it for tables for a hundred men—and the decorated tents of the brothers themselves. Round each of these four clustered the tents of women, dependents, the most trusted immediate bodyguards. Further away ran the lines of bivouac tents of the soldiers, usually three or four tents for every ship’s crew, sometimes with smaller ones scattered through for the captains, helmsmen, and champions. The retinues of the brothers for the most part kept separate, if close together.
The Snakeeye’s men were mostly Danes: It was common knowledge throughout the army that in time Sigurth would return to Denmark to challenge for the kingdom in Sjaelland and Skaane which his father had owned, and would go on one day to challenge for the rule of Denmark from the Baltic to the North Sea—a kingdom no man had possessed since the days of that King Guthfrith who fought Charlemagne. Ubbi and Halvdan, men with no stake and no claim to any throne other than that which their strength might bring them, recruited from anywhere: Swedes, Gauts, Norwegians, men from Gotland and Bornholm and all the islands.
Ivar’s men were mostly exiles of one sort or another. Many no doubt were mere murderers escaping vengeance or the rule of one law or another. But the bulk of his following came from the floating population of Norsemen who for generations had been moving into the Outer Isles of the Celtic regions: the Orkneys and Shetlands, then the Hebrides, the Scottish mainland. For years these men had been tempered in the constant skirmishes of Ireland and Man, Strathclyde and Galloway and Cumbria. Among themselves they boasted—but the claim was fiercely rejected by many, especially the Norwegians, who viewed Ireland as their own property to keep or dispose of—that one day Ivar Ragnarsson would rule the whole of Ireland from his castle by the black pool, the Dubh Linn itself, and would then lead his victorious navies in triumph against the feeble kingdoms of the Christian West. The Ui Niall might still have a say in that, muttered the Gaddgedlar among themselves, speaking Irish as none of the Hebridean or Scottish Norsemen would deign to. But they said it quietly. For all their race pride they knew that they themselves were the most hated of all by their countrymen, apostates from Christ, accomplices of those who had brought fire and slaughter to every part of Ireland. Who had done it for pay and for power, not merely for joy and for glory, as had been the Irish custom since the days of Finn and Cuchulainn and the champions of Ulster.
Into this touchy and tinder-dry encampment, graded with differences and with excuses for quarrel, Shef walked as the cooking fires were lighting for the night meal.
He was met by a marshal who heard his name, listened to his story, ran a disapproving eye over his shabby equipment, and grunted. He called a young man from the throng to show Shef his tent, sleeping place and oar, and to introduce him to his duties. The man—Shef never caught his name, nor did he want to—told him that there were four jobs at which he would have to take his turn: ship-guard, gate-guard, pen-guard, and if necessary, guard on the tent of Ivar. Mostly they were assigned by crew.
“I thought the Gaddgedlar guarded Ivar,” Shef said.
The young man spat. “When he’s here. When he’s not they go with him. But the treasure and the womenfolk stay behind. Someone has to look after them. Anyway, if the Gaddgedlar got too far from Ivar someone would take a dislike to them—Ketil Flatnose and his men have a spite against them, and Thorvald the Deaf too. And a dozen more.”
“Would we be trusted to guard the tent of Ivar?”
The young man looked at him aslant. “Shouldn’t we be? I tell you, Enzkr, if you are thinking of Ivar’s treasure you had better cut your thoughts right out of your head. It will be less painful that way. Did you even hear what Ivar did to the Irish king at Knowth?”
As they walked round, he told him in detail what Ivar had done to kings and lesser men who had displeased him. Shef took little notice, looking with great interest at the camp. The tales were clearly meant to frighten him.
The ships, he thought, were the weak point of the camp. Space had to be left clear for them to be drawn up on the muddy banks, so there could be no fortifications there. The ships themselves represented a sort of obstacle, but they were also the Vikings’ most precious possession. If anyone got past the riverbank-guards, they could be in among the ships with torch and axe, and they would be difficult to dislodge.
The gate-guards were a different matter. Surprising them would be hard. Any fight would be on level ground and on even terms, where the Vikings’ great axes and iron-shafted javelins would have easy play. Anyone who did manage to get through them would in any case only find himself fighting his way through ra
nk after rank of warriors, in a tangle of tents and ropes.
The pens, now … They occupied an area of their own near the east wall: a sorry strip of posts hammered into the ground, leather ropes binding them together. Inside, men huddled under makeshift coverings of canvas against the rain. Iron fetters on their feet, iron manacles on their hands. Held together, though, Shef noted, only by leather. Chain was too dear. But by the time a man had chewed through the leather bonds, even the least alert guard should have noticed—and penalty for any disobedience in the slave-pens was fierce. As Shef’s guide pointed out, if you marked up a slave too much you couldn’t sell him anyway, so you might as well go ahead and finish the job to frighten the others.
As he peered over the logs into the pen, Shef noticed a familiar-looking head lying on the ground, its owner sunk in a depth of despair: a blond head, curls matted with grime. His half brother, son of the same mother. Alfgar. Part of the prey of Emneth. The head stirred as if sensing the eyes upon it, and Shef dropped his gaze instantly, as he would have done had he been stalking a doe or a wild pig of the marshes.
“You haven’t sold any slaves since you arrived?”
“Nay. Too much trouble getting them out to sea, with the English ambushing all the time. Sigvarth owns that lot.” The young man spat again, eloquently. “He’s waiting for someone else to clear the road for him. Will, too.”
“Clear the road?”
“Ivar’s taking half the army out in two days, to make the kinglet Jatmund—Edmund, you English call him—fight, or destroy his country for him. We’d rather have done it the easy way, but we wasted too much time already. Be bad news for Jatmund when Ivar catches up with him, I tell you … .”
“Are we going out or staying here?”
“Our crew stays.” Again, the young man looked half curiously, half angrily at Shef. “Why you think I’m telling you all this? We’ll be providing guards all the time. I wish I was going. I’d like to see what they’ll do to that king when he’s caught. I told you about Knowth. Well, I was there at the Boyne when Ivar robbed the tombs of the dead kings and this Christ-priest tried to stop us. What Ivar did, he …”
The Hammer & the Cross Page 10