Shef dropped the rope through the hole he had made and swung himself after it, torch in hand.
His feet crunched on bones. Human bones. He looked down, and felt a wave of pity. The ribs he had snapped were not those of the master of the hoard. They were a woman’s bones. He could see her cloak-brooch glinting below the skull. But she lay facedown, one of a pair, stretched out lengthwise along the floor of the burial chamber. Both women’s spines, he could see now, were snapped, by the great quernstones that must have been hurled down upon them. Their hands had been tied, they had been lowered into the tomb, their backs had been broken and then they had been left to die in the dark. The quernstones showed what they had been and what they were there for: they were the master’s grinding slaves. Here to grind his meal and prepare his porridge into eternity.
Where the slaves were, there the master would be. He lifted his torch and turned toward the stern of the ship.
There, on his high seat, sat the king. Gazing out over hounds and horse and women. His teeth grinning out through shriveled skin. A gold circlet still lay on the bald skull. Stepping closer, Shef stared into the half-preserved face, as if looking for the secret of majesty. He remembered the urge of Kar the Old, to keep things his, to have them under his hand forever rather than live without them. Beneath this king’s hand there was a regal whetstone, the ensign of the warrior-king who lived by sharpened weapons alone. Shef’s torch suddenly went out.
Shef stood stock-still, skin crawling. In front of him there was a creak, a shifting of weight. The old king lifting himself out of his chair to settle with the invader who had come to take what he had hoarded. Shef braced for the touch of bony fingers, the awful teeth in the dried leather face.
He turned from his place and in the pitch-black walked back four, five, six paces, hopefully to the point where he had first descended. Was the blackness just perceptibly reduced? Why was he shaking like a common slave? He had faced death above—he would face death here in the darkness.
“You have no right to the gold now,” he said into the blackness, groping his way back to the high seat. “Your children’s children’s child gave it to me. For a purpose.”
He groped till his fingers found the torch, then bent over while he worked his flint and steel and tinder out of their pouch, strove to catch a spark.
“Anyway, Old Bones, you should be glad to give your wealth to an Englishman. There are worse than me who would take it from you.”
Torch alight again, he propped it against a rotting timber, stepped up to the seat with its grisly occupant, put his arms round the body and lifted it carefully, hoping the remains of flesh and skin and cloth would hold the crumbling bones together. Turning, he laid it down to face the women’s bodies in the well of the boat.
“Now you three must fight your own battles down here.”
He took the gold circlet from the skull and pressed it down on his own head. Turning back to the empty chair, he picked up the whetstone, the scepter that had lain under the king’s right hand and tapped its solid two-foot weight meditatively into one palm.
“One thing I will give you for your gold,” he added. “And that is vengeance for your descendant. Vengeance on the Boneless One.”
As he spoke, something rustled in the dim darkness behind him. For the first time Shef recoiled with shock. Had the Boneless One heard his name and come? Was he trapped in the tomb with some monstrous serpent?
Mastering himself, Shef stepped towards the noise, torch high. It was the rope by which he had climbed down. The end of it had been cut.
From above, dimly, he heard grunts of effort. Earth began, as it had done in his dream of Kar the Old, to patter down through the hole.
It took all his effort of will to reason this out. It was not a nightmare, not something to destroy one’s wits. Call it a puzzle, something to work out and solve.
There are enemies up there. Padda and his men might have become frightened and run off, but they would not have cut the rope or thrown earth down on me. Nor would Guthmund. So someone has driven them off while I was down here, maybe the English, come to defend their king’s mound. But they do not seem to want to come down after me. Still, I will never get out this way.
But is there another way? King Edmund had spoken of this as Raedwald’s hoard, but this is the mound of Wuffa. Could he and his ancestors have been using this as a hiding place for wealth? If so, there might be a way to add to it—or to withdraw it. But the mound was solid above. Is there another way? If there is, it will be close to the gold. And the gold will be as close as it can be to the guardian.
Stepping over the bodies he walked to the chair and pulled it to one side to reveal four stout wooden boxes with leather handles. Sound leather handles, he noted, fingering one. Behind them, cut neatly out of the planking where the bow of the boat curved down, a square black hole, hardly bigger than a man’s shoulders.
That is the tunnel! He felt immense relief, an invisible weight lifted from him. It was possible. A man from outside could crawl along that, open a box, close a box, do what he needed. He would not even have to face the old king he knew was there.
The tunnel must be faced. He pushed the circlet down on his head again, gripped the torch, now burned almost to its end. Should he take whetstone or mattock? I could dig myself out with the mattock, he thought. But now I have taken his scepter from the old king, I have no right to put it down.
Torch in one hand, whetstone in the other, he stooped and crawled into the blackness.
As he inched forward the tunnel narrowed. He had to thrust first with one shoulder, then with the other. The torch burned down, scorching his hand. He crushed it out against the earth wall and crawled on, trying to believe that the walls were not closing on him. Sweat sprang out on his head and ran into his eyes; he could not free a hand to wipe them. Nor could he crawl back now; the tunnel was too low for him to raise his hips and edge backward.
His hand before him met not earth floor but vacancy. A push and his head and shoulders were over a gap. Cautiously, he reached forward again. Solid earth, two feet ahead, leading only downward. The builders did not want to make this too easy, he thought.
But I know what must be there. I know this is not a trap, but an entrance. So I must crawl down, round the bend. My face will be in the soil for a foot or two, but I can hold my breath for long enough.
If I am wrong, I will die smothered, face down. The worst thing will be if I struggle. That I will not do. If I cannot get through I will push my face in the earth and die.
Shef crawled over the edge and twisted his body down. For a moment he could not make his muscles force him on, as his legs retained a lingering grip on the level floor he had left. Then he pushed himself down, slid a foot or two, and stuck. He was jammed upside down in the tunnel in the pitch-black.
Not a nightmare, no panic. I must think of this as a puzzle. This cannot be a blind alley, no sense to it. Thorvin always said that no man bears a better burden than sense.
Shef groped round him. A gap. Behind his neck. Like a snake he slid into it. And there was level floor again, with this time a gap leading upward. He heaved himself into it, and for the first time in what seemed an age, stood upright. Beneath his fingers he found a wooden ladder.
He climbed unsteadily upward. His head bumped against a trapdoor. But a door designed to be approached from outside would not open so readily from within. There could be feet of earth heaped on top of it.
Pulling the whetstone from his belt he braced himself against the shaft-wall and stabbed upward with the sharpened end. The wood splintered, creaked. He struck again and again. When he could get a hand through broken wood he wrenched more free. Sandy soil began to patter down into the tunnel, rushing faster and faster as the hole widened and the pale sky of dawn appeared above.
Shef hauled himself exhaustedly from the tunnel, emerging inside a copse of dense hawthorns, no more than a hundred paces from the barrow he had entered so long ago. On the barrow-top stood a kno
t of figures, staring down. He would not hide nor crawl away from them. He straightened up, settled the circlet, hefted the whetstone and walked quietly over toward them.
It was Hjörvarth, his half brother, as he had almost expected. Someone saw him in the growing light, cried out, fell back. The clump of men drew away from him, leaving Hjörvarth in the middle, by the still-unfilled hole. Shef stepped over the body of one of his English diggers, cut from shoulder to chest by a broadsword. He was aware now that Guthmund had a group of men drawn up fifty yards off, weapons drawn but unready to interfere.
Shef looked wearily at the horse-toothed face of his half brother.
“Well, brother,” he said. “It seems you want more than your share. Or are you maybe doing this for someone who is not here?”
The face in front of him tightened. Hjörvarth pulled his broadsword free, thrust his shield forward and paced down the slope of the barrow.
“You are no son to my father,” he snarled, and swung his broadsword.
Shef lifted the wrist-thick whetstone into its path. “Stone blunts scissors,” he said as the sword snapped. “And stone crushes skull.” He whipped the stone round backhand and felt the crunch as one of the carved, savage faces at one end sank into Hjörvarth’s temple.
The Viking staggered, fell on one knee, propping himself for a moment with his broken sword. Shef stepped sideways, measured the blow and swung with all his strength. Another crunch of bone, and his brother toppled forward, blood streaming from mouth and ears. Slowly, Shef wiped the gray matter from the stone and looked round at the gaping men from Hjörvarth’s crew.
“Family business,” he said. “None of you need be concerned.”
Chapter Ten
His appeal to the Viking council was not going Sigvarth’s way. His face, white and strained, stared across the table.
“He killed my son—and for that I demand compensation.”
Brand lifted a great hand to silence him. “We will hear Guthmund out. Continue.”
“My men were spread out in the darkness around the mound. Hjörvarth’s men came on us suddenly. We heard their voices, knew they weren’t Englishmen, but were not sure what to do. They pushed aside those who challenged them. No lives lost. Then Hjörvarth tried to kill his brother Skjef, first by burying him alive in the barrow, then by attacking him with a sword. We all saw it. Skjef was armed only with a stone rod.”
“He killed Padda and five of my diggers,” said Shef. The council ignored him.
Brand’s voice rumbled gently but decisively. “As I see it there can be no claim for compensation, Sigvarth. Not even for a son. He tried to kill a fellow member of the Army, protected under our Wayman-law. If he had succeeded I would have hanged him. He tried, too, to bury his brother in the barrow. And if he had succeeded in that, think what we would have lost!” He shook his head with disbelieving wonder.
At least two hundred pounds’ weight of gold. Much of it of workmanship far exceeding the value of the raw metal. Carved bowls from the Rome-folk. Great torques of pale gold from the land of the Irish. Coins with the heads of unknown Rome-folk rulers. Work of Córdoba and Miklagarth, of Rome and Germany. And added to it, sackloads of silver wedged into the tunnel mouth where the kings’ depositors had put them over the generations. Enough there, all told, for every man of the whole Wayman army to be rich for life. If they lived to spend it. Secrecy had vanished with the dawn.
Sigvarth shook his head, his expression unchanging. “They were brothers,” he muttered. “One man’s sons.”
“So there must be no question of vengeance,” Brand said. “You cannot avenge one son on another, Sigvarth. You must swear to that.” He paused. “It was the doom of the Norns. An ill doom, maybe. But not to be averted by mortals.”
Sigvarth nodded this time. “Aye. The Norns. I will swear, Brand. Hjörvarth will lie unavenged. For me.”
“Good. Because I tell you all,” Brand looked round the table, “with all this wealth in hand I have grown nervous as a virgin at an orgy. The countryside must be buzzing with tales of what we have found. Shef’s freedmen talk to the churls and the thralls. News goes both ways. They have heard that a new army has marched into this kingdom. An English army, from the Mark, come to reestablish the kingdom. You can be sure they have already heard of us. If they have any sense they will be marching already to cut us off from our ships, or to pursue us there if they are too late.
“I want camp struck and the men marching before the sun sets. March through the night and the next day. No halt before sunset tomorrow. Tell the skippers, get the beasts fed and the men in ranks.”
As the group broke up and Shef moved to see to his carts, Brand caught him by the shoulder.
“Not you,” he said. “If I had polished steel I would make you look in it. Do you know you have white hairs on your temples? Guthmund will take care of the carts. You travel in the back of a cart, with my cloak over you as well as your own.” He passed over a flask.
“Drink this. I saved it. Call it a gift from Othin, for the man who found the greatest hoard since Gunnar hid the gold of the Niflungs.” Shef caught the odor of fermented honey: Othin’s mead.
Brand looked down at the ghastly, ruined face—one eye sunk and shriveled, cheekbones standing out over tight-drawn muscles. I wonder, he thought. What price did the draugr in the mound take for his treasure? He clapped Shef again on the shoulder and hurried away, shouting for Steinulf and his skippers.
They marched with Shef in the back of a cart, flask drained now, lulled to half-sleep by the rocking motion. Wedged in between two treasure-chests and a catapult-beam. Close beside each treasure-cart marched a dozen men of Brand’s own crews, now detailed as close escort. Round them clustered the freedmen catapulteers, spurred on by the rumor that they too might earn a small share, hold money for the first time in their lives. To front and rear and on the flanks rode strong squads of Vikings, alert for ambush or pursuit. Brand rode the length of the column, changing horses as often as one flagged beneath his weight, continually cursing all to greater effort.
Someone else’s job now, thought Shef. He slid again into a deeper slumber.
He was riding across a plain. More than riding—spurring frantically. His horse groaned under him as he raked the rowels again across its bleeding ribs, fought against the bit, was mastered and driven on. Shef rose in his saddle and looked behind. Over the brow of a low hill, a horde of riders pouring after him, one well out in front on a mighty gray. Athils, king of Sweden.
And who was he, the rider? The Shef-mind could not tell what body it occupied. But it was a man strikingly tall, so tall that even from the great horse he rode his long legs brushed the ground. The tall man had companions, the Shef-mind noted. Strange ones too. Nearest him was a man so broad in the shoulder that it seemed he had a milkmaid’s yoke under his leather jacket. His face was broad also, his nose snub, his expression one of animal resource. His horse, too, was laboring, unable to bear the weight at the speed they were traveling. By him was a man unusually handsome—tall, fair, eyelashes like a girl’s. Nine or ten other riders pounded along at the same killing pace in front of the tall man and his two nearest companions.
“They will catch us!” called the broad man. He detached a short axe from his saddle-bow and shook it cheerfully.
“Not yet, Böthvar,” said the tall one. He halted his horse, pulled a sack from his own saddlebag, reached inside, pulled out handfuls of gold. He scattered them on the ground, wheeled the horse again, rode on. Minutes later, turning on the brow of a hill again, he saw the pursuing horde check, fragment, break into a cluster of men pushing and thrusting their horses against each other while they groped on the ground. The gray horse detached itself, came on, other riders spurring to catch up in its wake.
Twice more the tall man did the same thing as the pursuit continued, each time losing more of the pursuers. But the spurs were having no effect now, the ridden horses moving at hardly a walk. Yet there was not far to go, to reach safety—
what the safety was the Shef-mind did not know. A ship? A boundary? It did not matter. All that had to be done was reach it.
Böthvar’s horse collapsed suddenly, rolling over in a flurry of foam and blood from its nostrils. The broad man leapt nimbly free, clutched his axe, turned eagerly to face the riders now a bare hundred yards off. Still too many riders, and the king in front—Athils of Sweden on the gray horse Hrafn.
“Drag him, Hjalti,” said the tall man. He reached in the sack once again. Nothing there for his fingers to draw out. Except one thing. The ring Sviagris. Even as death rode toward him, with safety a final spurt away, the tall man hesitated. Then, with an effort, he raised it and flung it far back down the muddy trail toward Athils, slipping instantly from his horse and running with all his might towards the safe haven across the ridge.
At the ridge, he turned. Athils had reached the ring. He slowed his horse, reached down with a spear, trying to pick the ring off the ground with its point and ride on without check. Failure. He wheeled his horse, confusing the men behind him, tried again. Again a miss.
In hatred and indecision Athils looked at his enemy there on the brink of escape, looked down again at the ring sinking in the muck. Suddenly he lunged from his horse, bent down, groped for his treasure. Lost his chance.
The tall man cawed with laughter, ran on after his fellows. As the broad one, Bothvar, turned questioningly towards him, he cried out in triumph: “Now I have made he who is greatest among the Swedes root like a swine!”
Shef sat up violently in the cart, mouthing the word svinbeygt. He found himself staring into Thorvin’s face.
The Hammer & the Cross Page 29