Edmund laughed, in one sharp bark. The light had almost gone by now, the sun well down, though the long English twilight lingered.
“Then listen. I promised you a half of Raedwald’s hoard if you broke the Viking line, and break it you did. So I will give you the whole of it, and you may make your own bargain. The man who gives them this can have his life and more. If I gave it to them, I could be a Viking jarl. But Wigga and all the others died rather than speak. It would not be fitting for a king, one of the line of Wuffa, to give way out of fear.
“But you, boy. Who knows? You may gain something.
“Now listen and do not forget. I will tell you the secret of the hoard of the Wuffingas, and from that I swear by God a wise man can find the hoard.
“Listen and I will tell you.”
The king’s voice dropped to a hoarse murmur and Shef strained to hear.
“In willow-ford, by woody bridge,
The old kings lie, keels beneath them.
On down they sleep, deep home guarding.
Four fingers push in flattest line,
From underground, Grave the northmost.
There lies Wuffa, Wehha’s offspring.
On secret hoard. Seek who dares it.”
The voice tailed away. “My last night, young churl. Maybe yours too. You must think what you will do to save yourself tomorrow. But I do not think the riddle of an Englishman will prove easy to the Vikings.
“And, if churl you are, the riddle of the kings will do you no good either.”
The king spoke no more, though after a while Shef tried faintly and despondently to rouse him. After an age Shef’s battered body too began to drift off into uneasy dozing. In his sleep the king’s words repeated themselves, twining round and round and running into each other like the dragon-shapes carved on a burning stem-post.
Chapter Eleven
This time the Great Army was troubled and unsure. So much King Edmund had foreseen. It had been taken in its own base, by a small state and a petty kinglet of whom no one had ever heard, and while they knew the matter had ended well enough, too many also knew in their hearts that for a time they had been outfought. The dead had been buried, the irreparable ships dragged onshore, the wounded had been treated. Arrangements had been made between this chieftain and that to sell or trade ships, to transfer or exchange men to bring contingents up to the mark. But the warriors, the rank-and-file oar-pullers and axe-wielders, still needed reassurance. Something that would show their leaders still had confidence. Some ritual to demonstrate that they were still the Great Army, the terror of the Christians, the invincibles of the North.
From the early morning, men were crowding down to the marked-out space outside the camp, which would be the site of the wapentake: the meeting where men could show their assent by vapna takr, the clashing of weapons, of blade on shield. Or, on rare occasions, under careless leaders, their dissent. From even earlier in the morning, from well before day, the Viking leaders had been making their plan, and considering the balance of forces, the sentiments that might swing their dangerous and unpredictable followers one way or the other.
When they came for him, Shef was ready, at least physically. His hunger was a hole inside him, thirst once more drying his tongue and his lips, but he was awake, alert and fully conscious. Edmund too was awake, he knew, but made no sign. Shef was ashamed to disturb him.
The Snakeeye’s men arrived with the same brisk certainty as the day before. In a moment one had Shef’s iron collar in his tongs and was forcing the rivet out. It came free, the collar jerked off, and brawny hands were pulling Shef out into the cold murk of an early-autumn morning. Fog still clung to the river, condensed in drops on the bracken roof of the shelter. Shef stared at it for a moment, wondering if he might lick it off.
“You were talking yesterday. What did he tell you?”
Shef shook his head and gestured with bound hands to the leather bottle at a man’s belt. Silently the man passed it over. It was full of beer—muddy, thick with barley husks, drawn all too obviously from the bottom of a cask; Shef drank it down in steady gulps, till he could tilt his head back and drain out the last drops. He finished, wiped his mouth, feeling as if the beer had swollen him out like an empty skin, handed the bottle back. There was a grunt of amusement as the pirates watched his face.
“Good, eh? Beer is good. Life is good. If you want more of both, you’d better tell us. Tell us everything he said.”
Dolgfinn the Viking watched Shef’s face with his usual, unblinking intensity. He saw on it doubt, but no fear. Also, stubbornness, knowledge. The lad would do a deal, he reflected. It would have to be the right one. He turned away and beckoned, a preconcerted signal. From a group a little way off, a large man came walking, gold round his neck, left hand resting on the silver pommel of a sword. Shef recognized him instantly. It was the big man he had fought in the skirmish on the causeway. Sigvarth, jarl of the Small Isles. His father.
As he strolled forward, the others drew back a few paces, leaving the two face-to-face. They studied one another for a few seconds, each staring the other up and down, the older man looking at the younger’s physique, the younger staring intently into his father’s face. He’s looking at me the same way I’m looking at him, thought Shef. He’s looking to see if he can recognize himself in me, just as I am at him. He knows.
“We’ve met before,” remarked Sigvarth. “On the causeway in the marsh. Muirtach told me there was a young Englishman walking round claiming he’d fought me. Now they tell me you’re my son. The leech’s assistant, the boy who came with you. He says so. Is that true?”
Shef nodded.
“Good. You’re a burly lad, and you fought well that day. See here, son”—Sigvarth stepped forward and put a broad hand round Shef’s biceps, squeezing gently—“You’re on the wrong side. I know your mother’s English. That’s true of half the men in the Army. English, or Irish, or Frankish, or Finnish or Lapp for that matter. But blood goes with the father. And I know you were brought up by the English—by that fool you were trying to rescue. But what have they ever done for you? If they knew you were my son I dare say you had a hard life of it. Eh?”
He looked into Shef’s eyes, conscious that he had scored a point.
“Now, you may be thinking that I just ditched you, and that’s true, I did. But then I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know how you’d grown up. But now you’re here, and I see how you’ve turned out, well, I reckon you’ll be a credit to me. And to all our kin.
“So, say the word. I’m offering to recognize you as my true son. You’ll have the same rights you’d have had if you’d been born on Falster. Leave the English. Leave the Christians. Forget your mother.
“And, as my son, I’ll speak for you to Ivar. And what I say, the Snakeeye will back up. You’re in trouble here. Let’s get you out of it.”
Shef looked over his father’s shoulder, considering. He remembered the horse-trough and the beatings. He remembered the curse his stepfather had laid on him, and the accusation of cowardice. He remembered the incompetence, the dillydallying, the exasperation of Edrich at the way the English thanes preened and hesitated. How could anyone be victorious with people like that on one’s side? Over his father’s shoulder he could see, in the front of the group that Sigvarth had left, a young man gazing at them—a young man with decorated armor, a pale face, strong, projecting front teeth like a horse. He too is a son of Sigvarth, Shef thought. Another half brother for me. And he does not like what is going on.
Shef remembered the laugh of Alfgar from the thickets. “What do I have to do?” he asked.
“Say what the king Jatmund told you. Or find out from him what we need to know.”
Deliberately, Shef took aim, blessing the draft of beer that had moistened his mouth, and spat on his father’s leather shoe.
“You cut Wulfgar’s arms and legs off while men held him. You let the men rape my mother, after she had borne you a son. You are no drengr. You are nothing.
I curse the blood I had from you.”
In an instant the Snakeeye’s men were between them, hustling Sigvarth away, holding his arms down as he struggled to draw his sword. He did not struggle very hard, Shef thought. As they forced him back he was still staring at his son with a kind of baffled longing. He still thinks there is more to be said, thought Shef. The fool.
“You’ve done it now,” remarked Dolgfinn, the Snake-eye’s emissary, jerking his captive along by the rawhide round his wrists. “All right. Take him along to the wapentake. And get the kinglet out of there and let’s see if he’s decided to be reasonable before the assembly sees him.”
“No chance,” remarked one of his henchmen. “These English can’t fight, but they haven’t the sense to give in. He’s for Ivar now, and Othin before nightfall.”
The Viking army was drawn up outside the east stockade, not far from the place where Shef had vaulted over to intercept Godive and kill Flann the Gaddgedil barely three days before. It filled three sides of a hollow square; the fourth, nearest the stockade, occupied only by the jarls, the chieftains, the Ragnarssons and their immediate followers. Elsewhere, the men crowded together behind their skippers and helmsmen, talking to each other, calling out to men from other crews, offering advice and opinion without reproof and without control. The army was a democracy, in its way: Status and hierarchy were important, especially when it came to taking shares. But no man could be entirely silenced, if he cared to take the risk of giving offense.
As they shoved their way into the square with Shef, a great yell went up, and a simultaneous clash of metal. Vikings were hustling a tall man away toward a block in the corner of the square, the man’s face standing out even from thirty yards away in a crowd. All the rest had the usual windburned faces of men who spend their time out-of-doors, even in an English summer. The tall one was deathly pale. Without ceremony they thrust him over the block, one Viking seizing his hair and pulling it forward over the nape of his neck. A flash, a thud, and the head rolling free. Shef stared at it for an instant. He had seen several corpses in Emneth, and many in the last few days. But hardly one in broad daylight, and with a moment to look. There will be no time once they give their decision, he thought. I must be ready as soon as they clash their weapons.
“What was that?” he asked, nodding towards the head being thrown into a pile.
“One of the English warriors. Someone said he had fought well and truly for his lord and we should take ransom. But the Ragnarssons say now is not the time for ransoms, it is time to give a lesson. Now you.”
The warriors pushed him forward and left him standing ten feet in front of the chieftains.
“Who wishes to press this case?” called one of the chieftains, in a voice that could compete with a North Sea gale. Slowly, the hubbub faded to a buzz. Ivar Ragnarsson stepped forward from the ranks of the leaders. His right arm was bound in front of him in a sling. Broken collarbone, thought Shef, noting the angle at which the arm was slung. That’s why he could not wield a weapon against Edmund’s warriors.
“I present the case,” said Ivar. “This is not an enemy, but a traitor, a truth-breaker. He was not one of Jatmund’s men, he was one of my men. I took him into my band, I fed and lodged him. When the English came, he did not fight for me. He did not fight at all. He ran in while the warriors fought and took a girl from my quarters. He stole her away, and she had never been returned. She is lost to me, though she was lawfully mine, given to me by Sigvarth Jarl in the sight of all men.
“I claim ransom for the girl, and he cannot pay it. Even if he could pay it, I would still kill him for the insult done me. But even more than that, the whole Army has a claim against him for treachery. Who supports me?”
“I support you,” called another voice: a burly, grizzled man standing close to Ivar. Ubbi, perhaps, or Halvdan? One of the Ragnarssons, at any rate, but not the leader, not Sigurth, who still stood aloof in the middle of the line of men. “I support you. He has had a chance to show his true loyalty, he has refused it. He came to our camp as a spy and a thief and a stealer of women.”
“What penalty do you assess?” called the herald’s voice again.
“Death is too easy,” cried Ivar. “I claim his eyes for the insult put on me. I claim his balls as compensation for the woman. I claim his hands for. the treachery against the Army. After that he may keep his life.”
Shef felt the shudder running through him. His spine seemed to have turned to ice. In an instant, he thought, the cry would go up, and the clash of arms, and then in ten heartbeats he would be facing the block and the knife.
A figure strolled slowly forward from the ranks—a massive, bearded, leather-jacketed figure. His hand was in a great white bandage, with spots of dark blood showing through it.
“I am Brand. Many men know me.” A yell of approval and agreement came from the men behind him.
“I have two things to say. First, Ivar, where did you get the girl? Or where did Sigvarth get her? If Sigvarth stole her, and the lad here stole her back, where is the wrong in that? You should have killed him when he tried it. But since you did not, it is too late to start calling for vengeance now.
“And there is a second thing, Ivar. I was coming to help you when the warriors of Jatmund advanced on you—I, Brand, champion of the men of Halogaland. I have stood in the front for twenty years. Who can say that I ever held back when the spearmen were fighting? I got this wound there, right by you, when you yourself were hurt. And I challenge you to tell me I lie; when the fight was nearly over, and the English king was breaking out, he came straight toward you with his men. You were hurt and could not raise a sword. Your men were dead, and I had only my left hand, and no other man stood by you. Who stood in front of you with his sword but this youth here? He held them off—till I and Arnketil came down with his band and trapped the king. Tell me, Arnketil, do I lie?”
A voice from the other side of the square. “As you say, Brand. I saw Ivar, I saw the Englishmen, I saw the boy. I thought they had killed him in the stir, and was sorry. He stood bravely.”
“So, Ivar, the claim for the woman falls. The claim for treachery cannot be true. You owe him your life. I do not know what he has to do with Jatmund, but I say this: If he is good at stealing women, I have a place for him in my crew. We need some new ones. And if you cannot look after your women, Ivar—well, what is that to do with the Army?”
Shef saw Ivar stepping forward towards Brand, his eyes fixed on him, a pale tongue flickering on his lips like a snake. A hum of interest came from the crowd, not a hostile sound. The warriors of the Army liked entertainment, and here some was promised.
Brand did not move, but thrust his left hand into his broad sword-belt. As Ivar got to three paces of him, he held up his bandaged hand for the crowd to see.
“When your hand is mended, I will remember what you say, Brand,” remarked Ivar.
“When your shoulder is whole, I will remind you of it.”
A voice called out behind them, cold as stone—the voice of Sigurth Ragnarsson, the Snakeeye.
“The Army has more important things to do than talk of boys. I say this: My brother Ivar must pursue his own claim for the stolen woman. In payment for his life, Ivar must give the boy his own life, and not cripple him so that he cannot live it. But the boy came into this camp as one of us. He did not behave as a true comrade when we were attacked, but thought first of his own advantage. If he is to join the crew of Killer-Brand we must teach him a lesson. Not a hand, or he cannot fight. Not a testicle, for no woman-theft is involved. But the Army will take an eye.”
With great effort Shef stood firm as he heard the beginnings of the cry of assent.
“Not both eyes. One. What does the Army say?”
A roar of approval. A clash of weapons. Hands dragging him, not to the block, but to the opposite corner of the square. Men parting, pushing each other aside to reveal a brazier, coals glowing red, Thorvin pumping at a bellows. From a bench rose Hund, face pale with emot
ion.
“Hold still,” he muttered in English, as the men kicked Shef’s legs from beneath him and thrust his head back. Dimly, Shef realized that the brawny arms holding his head in a grip like a clamp were Thorvin’s. He tried to struggle, to call out, to accuse them of treachery. A cloth thrust into his mouth, pushing the tongue back from his teeth. The white-hot needle coming closer, closer, a thumb pushing his eyelid back while he tried to scream, to twist his head, to clench his eyes tight shut.
Inexorable pressure. Only the searing point coming closer and closer to his right eye. Pain, agony, the white fire running from the eyeball into every corner of his brain, tears and blood streaming down his face. Through it all, dimly, the sound of sizzling, of steel being tempered in the tub.
He was hanging in the air. There was a spike through his eye, a continuous burning pain that made him twist his face and clench the muscles in his neck to try to reduce it. But the pain never went away or grew less; it was there all the time. Yet it did not seem to matter. His mind was unaffected, continuing to think and to ponder without distraction from the screaming pain.
Nor was his other eye affected. It remained open all the time, never even blinking. Through it, and from wherever in all the worlds he was, he could see out across a vast panorama. He was high up, very high up. Below him he could see mountains, plains, rivers, and here and there on the seas little collections of colored sails that were Viking fleets. On the plains scattered dust clouds that were giant armies marching, the Christian kings of Europe and the pagan nomads of the steppe permanently mustering for war. He felt that if he narrowed his eyes—his eye—a certain way, just so, he could focus in on anything he wanted to: read the lips of the commanders and the cavalrymen, see the words of the emperor of the Greeks or the khakhan of the Tartars even as they formed them.
Between himself and the. world below, he realized, birds were floating—giant ones keeping station with never a flap or a flutter, just the little tremor along the trailing feathers of the wings. Close to him two passed by, staring at him with brilliant and intelligent yellow dots of eyes. Their feathers were glossy black, their beaks threatening, stained: ravens. The ravens that came to peck out the eyes of hanged men. He stared at them as unblinkingly as they at him; they slanted their wings hastily and swooped away.
The Hammer & the Cross Page 15