A moment later and he was through the door. And Godive was in his arms, naked beneath her shift.
“I couldn’t get my clothes,” she whispered. “He locks them away every night. And Alfgar—Alfgar took the drink. But Wulfgar sleeps also within our booth, and he would drink no ale because it is a fast-day. He saw me leave. He may cry out if I do not return.”
Good, thought Shef, his brain cold as ice in spite of the warmth in his arms. Now what I meant to do all along will seem natural to her. So much less to explain. Maybe she will never know that I did not come for her.
Behind him, Cwicca’s men were pressing in, still giving the impression of men trying to work quietly but openly.
“I am going into the sleeping-chamber,” Shef whispered to them. “The lady will show me. If you hear an alarm, flee at once.”
As they stepped into the unlit passage between the little individual sleeping-places of Burgred’s most trusted courtiers—Godive moving with the sureness of one who had walked it a hundred times—Shef heard Cwicca’s voice behind him. “Well, since we’re here we might as well do the job. What’s a few buckets of shit in a day’s work?”
Godive paused as they reached the lowered canvas flap, pointed, spoke almost soundlessly. “Wulfgar. To the left. He sleeps in our room many nights, so I can turn him. He is in his box.”
I have no gag, thought Shef. I expected him to be asleep. Silently he caught the hem of Godive’s shift, began to lift it up over her body. For a moment she caught at the material with automatic modesty, then gave way, let him strip her naked. The first time I have done that, thought Shef. I never imagined it would be no pleasure. But if she enters naked, Wulfgar, will be confused. It may give me an extra moment.
He pushed her bare back forward, felt the wince and the familiar feel of dried blood. Rage filled him, rage at Alfgar, rage too at himself. Why had he not thought, not once these long months, what they must be doing to her?
Moonlight through the canvas showed Godive walking naked across the room to the bed where her husband lay in drugged sleep. A grunt of surprise, anger from the short, padded box to the left. In an instant Shef was standing over it, looking down into his stepfather’s face. He saw the recognition, saw the mouth open in horror. Stuffed the bloody shift firmly between Wulfgar’s teeth.
Instant resistance, a furious twisting like a giant trapped snake. Though Wulfgar had neither arms nor legs, he still struggled desperately with all the force of his back and belly muscles to get a stump over the edge of the box, maybe roll to the floor. Too much noise, Shef knew, and the privileged couples sleeping in the little canvas boxes around him would wake as well, perhaps decide to intervene.
Perhaps not. Even noble couples learned to turn a deaf ear to the sounds of love. The sounds of punishment too. Shef thought of Godive’s scarred back, thought of his own, conquered the momentary repugnance. A knee in the belly. Hands forcing the shift deep down into the throat. Twisting the ends behind the head and knotting them, knotting them again. And then Godive was with him, still naked, thrusting forward the rawhide ropes Alfgar’s men used to fasten their trunks of belongings onto the pack-mules. Quickly they ran the ropes round the sleeping-box, not tying Wulfgar down, but making sure he could not climb out, crawl across the floor. As they finished, Shef waved Godive to the other end of the box. Carefully they lifted it from its stand, placed it on the floor. Now he could not even tip the box over, make a noise.
The short struggle over, Shef took two paces across to the big bed, looked down at Alfgar, asleep in drugged slumber in the moonlight. His mouth hung open, a steady snore coming from his throat. Still a handsome man, Shef recognized. He had had Godive these twelve months and more. He felt no urge to cut his throat. He needed Alfgar still. For the plan. And yet a gesture. A gesture would make the plan work better.
Godive was coming forward, in gown and mantle now, recovered from the box where Alfgar had locked them. In her hand she held her little seamstress’s scissors, a look of set determination on her face. Quietly Shef blocked her, forced the hand down. He touched her back, looked inquiringly.
She pointed to a corner. There it was, the bundle of birch-twigs, fresh ones, without blood. He must have been planning to use them later. Shef straightened Alfgar on his bed, folded his hands on his chest, placed the birch-bundle between them.
He moved over to where Wulfgar lay in the rays of the moon, eyes bulging, staring up with an unreadable expression: terror? disbelief? could it be remorse? A memory came to Shef from somewhere: the three of them, Shef and Godive and Alfgar, small children, playing excitedly at something—bulliers maybe, the game with the plantain-shoots, where each child took it in turn to cut at the other’s shoot with their own, till the head of one or the other came off. And Wulfgar watching, laughing, taking a turn himself. It was not his fault he was a heimnar. He had kept Shef’s mother, not repudiated her as he might.
He had watched his son flog his daughter half to death. Slowly, making certain Wulfgar saw every movement, Shef took the borrowed silver pendant from his pouch, breathed on it, polished it. Laid it on Wulfgar’s chest.
The hammer of Thor.
Silently the two slipped from the room, headed through the darkness for the door to the privy, guided by the muffled sounds of scraping and clanking. A problem occurred to Shef suddenly. He had not thought of this in advance. A noble lady, gently bred and brought up. There was only one way out for her. Cwicca and his gang could walk out, protected by the obviously shameful nature of their task and their own size and gait, the unmistakable marks of the slave-born. He could seize the spear and shield again and walk with them, complaining loudly if need be about the shame of a noble thane escorting a shit-cart to see the slaves did not steal or loiter. But Godive. She must needs go in the cart. In her gown. With a dead body and twenty buckets of human dung.
As he got ready to explain to her, to speak of necessity, apologize, to promise a bright future, she stepped ahead of him.
“Get the lid off,” she snapped to Cwicca. She put her hand on the fouled edge of the cart, vaulted into the dark, stomach-gagging reek inside. “Now move,” came her voice from the depths. “This is fresh air compared with King Burgred’s court.”
Slowly the cart squeaked its way across the courtyard, Shef striding ahead, spear-shaft sloped.
Chapter Six
Shef looked along the row of faces confronting him: all hostile, all disapproving.
“You took your time,” said Alfred.
“I hope she was worth it,” said Brand, looking with incredulity at the drawn and shabby figure of Godive in her borrowed churl-wife’s gown, straddling the pony behind Shef’s.
“This is not the behavior of a lord of warriors,” said Thorvin. “To leave the Army threatened on two sides, and ride off on some private errand. I know you came to us first to save the girl, but to go now … Could she not have waited?”
“She had waited too long already,” said Shef briefly. He swung from his horse, grimacing slightly from the pain in his thighs. It had been another long night and day of a ride, though the consolation was that even coming on hell-bent, with the fury of Wulfgar and the bishops to spur him, Burgred must still be two days behind.
Shef turned to Cwicca and his comrades. “Go back to your places in the camp,” he said. “And remember. This was a great deed that we did. You will see in time that it meant even more than it seems. I will not forget to reward you all for it.”
As the men trotted off, Hund among them, he turned back to his councillors. “Now,” he said. “We know where Burgred is. Two days behind and coming toward us as fast as he can bring himself to march. We can expect him to reach our boundary the second night from this.
“But where is Ivar?”
“Bad news there,” said Brand briefly. “He came down on the mouth of the Ouse two days ago with forty ships. The Norfolk Ouse, of course, not the Yorkshire Ouse. Attacked Lynn at the river mouth straight away. The town tried to resist him. He battere
d the stockade down in a few minutes and stamped the place flat. No survivors to say how he did it, but there’s no doubt it happened.”
“The mouth of the Ouse,” muttered Shef. “Twenty miles off. And Burgred about the same.”
Without orders Father Boniface had produced the great map of Norfolk and its borders which Shef had had made for the wall of his main chamber. Shef stood over it, estimating, looking from place to place.
“What we have to do …” he began.
“Before we do anything,” Brand interrupted, “we have to discuss the matter of whether you are still fit to be trusted as our jarl.”
For a long moment Shef stared at him, one eye against two. In the end it was Brand’s eyes that dropped.
“All right, all right,” he muttered. “You’re up to something, no doubt, and one day you may consent to tell us what.”
“Meanwhile,” Alfred put in, “since you went to such trouble to fetch the lady, it might only be polite to have some thought for what she is to do now. Not just leave her standing outside our tents.”
Shef looked again from face to hostile face, focusing finally on Godive’s eyes—once more brimming with tears.
There is no time for all this! Something inside him shrieked. Persuading people. Lulling people. Pretending they are important. They are all wheels in the machine, and so am I! But if they thought that they might refuse to turn.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Godive, forgive me. I was so sure we were safe that my mind turned to other things. Let me present to you my friends …”
The dragon-boats cruised down the shallow, muddy stream of the Great Ouse river, the western frontier of the Wayland jarldom they had come to destroy, forty in line ahead. Some of the crews were keeping up a song as they wound through the green, summer countryside, the masts and furled sails marking their passage over the flat levels. Ivar’s men did not bother. They knew the time without a song or a shanty-man to mark it. Besides, wherever Ivar Ragnarsson stood there was now a cloud of strain and tension, even for veteran pirates who would boast and believe that they feared no man.
Not far ahead the helmsmen—the rower-reliefs and the cowed slaves who manned Ivar’s machines, one to each of the front six vessels—could see a wooden bridge across the river: not much of a bridge, not part of a town, just the place where the road happened to cross the stream. Chance of ambush from it, none. Just the same, veteran pirates grew to be veterans by taking no unnecessary risks at all. Even Ivar, totally careless of his own safety as he was, did things the way his men expected. A furlong short of the bridge, the figure in the prow, resplendent in scarlet cloak and grass-green trousers, turned and gave one harsh call.
The rowers finished their stroke, recovered oars, and then dropped them in the water, blades reversed. Slowly the ship drifted to a stop, the rest of the fleet easing into close line behind. Ivar waved to the two clumps of riders on both banks, here easily visible in the flat meadowland round the city. They moved forward at a trot, to check the bridge. Behind them the crews began with the ease of long practice to unstep their masts.
No resistance. Not a man in view. Yet as the horsemen slid from their ponies and moved to meet each other on the wooden cart-bridge, they saw that men had been there. A box. Left clear in the middle of the track, where no one could fail to spot it.
Dolgfinn, captain of the mounted scouting party, eyed it without enthusiasm. He did not like the look of it. It had been left there for a purpose. It had been left there by someone who had a very good idea of how a Viking fleet approached. Such things invariably contained a message or a sign of defiance. Probably it was a head. And there was no doubt that it was meant to be delivered to Ivar. Just to confirm his opinion, there was a crude painting on the top, of a tall man in scarlet cloak, green breeches and silver helmet. Dolgfinn had no great fear for himself—he was Sigurth Ragnarsson’s own foster father, sent by the Snakeeye himself to keep an eye on his insane relative, and if Ivar had any lingering concern for what any man thought, it was for his elder brother. Just the same, Dolgfinn had no particular relish for the scene that was likely to erupt. Someone would suffer for it, that was sure. Dolgfinn remembered the scene many months before, when Viga-Brand had dared and taunted the Ragnarssons together with the news of their father’s death. Good material for a tale, he reflected. Yet things had not turned out so well afterward. Had Brand perhaps, plain man though he seemed to be, foreseen what would follow? And if so, what of this?
Dolgfinn put the thoughts from his mind. Trap it might be. If so, he had no choice but to test it. He picked up the box—not a head at least, too tight—walked down to the edge of the water where the dragon-boat was edging in, leapt from shore to oar to thwart, and strolled toward Ivar standing on the half-decked prow, near the giant ton-and-a-half weight of his machine. Silently he put the box down, indicated the painting, whipped a knife from his belt and offered it to Ivar hilt-first, to pry up the nailed lid.
A king of the English would have waved forward a servant to do such a menial task. Chiefs of the pirates had no such dignity to stand on. In four brisk heaves Ivar had the nails out. His pale eyes looked up at Dolgfinn, while his face broke into an unexpected smile of pure pleasure and anticipation. Ivar knew insult or provocation was coming. He liked the thought of something to repay.
“Let’s see what the Waymen have sent us,” he said.
Hurling the box-lid aside, he reached in.
“First insult. A capon.” He lifted the dead bird out, stroked its feathers. “A neutered cockerel. Now, I wonder who that might signify.”
Ivar held the silence till it was quite clear that neither Dolgfinn nor anyone else had anything to say, then reached down again.
“Second insult. Tied to the capon, some straw. Some stalks.”
“Not stalks,” said Dolgfinn. “That is a sheaf. Do I need to tell you who that is for? His name was often in your mouth a few weeks ago.”
Ivar nodded. “Thank you for the reminder. Have you heard it said, Dolgfinn, the old saying: ‘A slave takes vengeance at once, a coward never’?”
I did not think you were a coward, thought Dolgfinn, but he did not say it. It would have sounded too much like an apology. If Ivar meant to take offense, he would.
“Have you heard another old saying, Ivar Ragnarsson?” he countered. “‘Often from a bloody bag come bad tidings.’ Let us riddle this bag to the bottom.”
Ivar reached again, pulled out a third and last object. This time he stared at it with genuine puzzlement. It was an eel. The snake-like fish of the marshes.
“What is this?” Silence.
“Can anyone tell me?” Still only headshakes from the warriors crowding round. A slight stir from one of the slaves of the monks of York, crouching by his machine. Ivar’s eyes missed nothing.
“I grant a boon to whoever can tell me the meaning of this.”
The slave straightened up doubtfully, realizing all eyes were now on him.
“One boon, lord, given freely?”
Ivar nodded.
“It is what we call in English an eel, lord. I think it may mean a place. Ely, down the Ouse, Eel-island, only a few miles from here. Perhaps what it means is that he, the Sheaf, that is, will meet you there.”
“Because I must be the capon?” inquired Ivar.
The slave gulped. “You granted a boon, lord, to whoever would speak. I choose mine. I choose freedom.”
“You are free to go,” said Ivar, stepping back from the ship’s thwart. The slave gulped again, looking round at the bearded, impassive faces. He stepped forward slowly, gained confidence as no one moved to hinder him, leapt to the side of the ship, and then, in two moves, to a trailing oar and to the side of the river. He was off like a flash, heading for the nearest cover, running in awkward bounds like a frog.
“Eight, nine, ten,” said Ivar to himself. The silver-mounted spear was in his hand; he poised, took two paces sideways. The leaf-blade took the running slave neatly between shoulders and neck, hur
ling him forward.
“Would anyone else care to call me a capon?” inquired Ivar generally.
Someone already has, thought Dolgfinn.
Later that night, after the ships had moored a cautious two miles north of the challenge-ground, some of Ivar’s most senior skippers were talking quietly, very quietly, round their campfire well away from Ivar’s tent.
“They call him the Boneless,” said one, “because he cannot take a woman.”
“He can,” said another. “He has sons and daughters.”
“Only if he does strange things first. Not many women survive them. They say—”
“No,” cut in a third man, “do not speak. I will tell you why he is the Boneless. It is because he is like the wind, which comes from anywhere. He could be behind us now.”
“You are all wrong,” said Dolgfinn. “I am not a Wayman, but I have friends who are. I had friends who were. They say this, and I believe them. He is the Beinnlauss, right enough. But that does not mean ‘boneless.’” Dolgfinn held up a beef-rib to point out which of the two meanings of the Norse word he meant. “It means ‘legless.’” He patted his own thigh.
“But he has legs,” queried one of his listeners.
“On this side, he does. Those who have seen him in the Otherworld, the Waymen, say that there he crawls on his belly in the shape of a great worm, a dragon. He is not a man of one skin. And that is why it will take more than steel to kill him.”
Experimentally, Shef flexed the two-foot-long, two-inch-wide strip of metal that Udd, the little freedman, had brought him. The muscles on his arms stood out as he did so: muscles strong enough to bend a soft iron slave-collar by main force alone. The mild steel gave an inch, two inches. Sprang back.
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