“They will hate you forever for that,” Shef had said to him.
“That is another thing we must share,” Alfred had replied.
And so they had done their deal.
Both men single, without heirs. They would be co-kings, Alfred south of the Thames, Shef north of it, at least as far as the Humber, beyond which there still lurked the Snakeeye and his ambitions. Each named the other as his heir. Each agreed that within his dominion, belief in the gods should be free, for Christians, for Way-folk, and for any other that should appear. But no priest of any religion should be allowed to take payment, in goods or in land, except for a service agreed upon beforehand. And Church-land should revert to the crown. It would make them the richest kings in Europe, before long.
“We must use the money well,” Shef had added.
“In charity?”
“In other ways too. It is often said that no new thing can come before its time, and I believe it. But I believe also that there can be a time for a new thing, and then men can stifle it. Or churches can stifle it. Look at our machines and our crossbows. Who could say they could not have been made a hundred years ago, or five hundred, in the time of the Rome-folk? Yet no one made them. I want us to get back all the old knowledge, even the numbercrafts of the arithmetici. And use it to make new knowledge. New things.” His hand had clenched as if on the haft of a hammer.
Now, still watching the files of captives embarking, Alfred turned to his co-king and said, “I am surprised you still refuse to wear the hammer of our banner. After all, I still wear the cross.”
“The Hammer is for the Way, united. And Thorvin says he has a new sign for me. I will have to see if I approve of it, for the choice is a difficult one. He is here.”
Thorvin approached them, flanked by all the priests of the Way, behind them, Guthmund and a cluster of senior skippers.
“We have your sign,” said Thorvin. He held out a pendant on a silver chain. Shef looked at it curiously: a shaft, with five rungs sticking out from it on alternate sides.
“What is it?”
“It is a kraki,” replied Thorvin. “A pole-ladder. It is the sign of Rig.”
“I have never heard the name of that god. What can you tell me about him that should make me wear his sign?”
“He is the god of climbers. Of wanderers. He is mighty not through himself but through his children. He is the father of Thrall, of Carl, of Jarl. And of others.”
Shef looked round at the many watching faces: Alfred. Thorvin. Ingulf. Hund. There were some not there. Brand, of whose recovery he still had no news. His mother Thryth. He did not know if she would ever wish to see him again.
Most of all, Godive. After the battle a group of his catapulteers had brought him the body of his half brother—his mother’s son, Godive’s husband. Both he and she had looked for a long time at the purple face, the twisted neck, trying to find in it some memory of childhood, some clue to the hatred in the brain. Shef had thought of lines from one of Thorvin’s old poems, said by a hero over the brother he had killed:
“/ have been your bane, brother. Bad luck lay on us.
Ill is the Norns’ doom, I will never forget.”
But he had not said the words. He meant to forget. He hoped one day Godive would forget too. Forget that he had first saved her, then deserted her, then used her. Now that the constant stress of planning and action was over, he felt inside himself as though he loved her as much as he ever had before he rescued her from Ivar’s camp. But what kind of love was it that had to wait for the right moment to be admitted?
So Godive had thought. She had taken her husband and half brother’s body for burial, left Shef unsure when or whether she might return. This time he would have to decide for himself.
He looked past his friends at the prisoners still filing by—the sullen, hating faces—thought of the humiliated Charles, the enraged Pope Nicholas, the Snakeeye in the North with a brother now to avenge. He looked again at the silver sign in his hand.
“A pole-ladder,” he said. “Difficult to balance on.”
“You have to do it one rung at a time,” replied Thorvin.
“Hard to climb, difficult to balance, to reach the top. But at the top there are two rungs to grasp on to. One opposite the other. It could almost be a cross.”
Thorvin frowned. “Rig and his sign were known in the ages before there ever was a cross. It is not a sign of death. No. It is one of reaching higher, of living better.”
Shef smiled, the first time he had done that for many days. “I like your sign, Thorvin,” he said. “I will wear it.” He slipped the Wayman’s pendant round his neck, turned and looked at the misted sea.
Some knot, some pain within him was released, fled.
For the first time in his entire life he felt at peace.
Qui credit in Filium, habet vitam aeternam; qui autem incredulus est Filio, non videbit vitam, sed ira Dei manet super eum.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
—John 3 : 36
Angusta est domus : utrosque tenere non poterit. Non vult rex celestis cum paganis et perditis nominetenus regibus communionem habere; quia rex ille aeternus regnat in caelis, ille paganus perditus plangit in inferno.
The house is narrow : it cannot hold both. The king of heaven has no wish to have fellowship with damned and heathen so-called kings; for the one eternal king reigns in Heaven, the other damned heathen groans in Hell.
—Alcuin, deacon of York, A.D. 797
The greatest disaster ever to befall the West was Christianity.
Gravissima calamitas umquam supra Occidentem accidens erat religio Christiana.
—Gore Vidal, A.D. 1987
Also by Harry Harrison
Published by Tor
50 in 50
Bill, the Galactic Hero
Galactic Dreams
The Hammer & the Cross
Homeworld
In Our Hands the Stars
The Jupiter Plague
King and Emperor
Make Room! Make Room!
Montezuma’s Revenge
One King’s Man
One Step from Earth
Planet of No Return
Planet of the Damned
QE2 Is Missing
Queen Victoria’s Revenge
A Rebel in Time
Return to Eden
Skyfall
Stainless Steel Rat
Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell
Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus
Stainless Steel Rat Returns
Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge
Stainless Steel Trio
Starworld
Stonehedge
Technicolor Time Machine
A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!
Turing Option
West of Eden
Wheelworld
Winter in Eden
PRAISE FOR
THE HAMMER AND THE CROSS
“In this rich and exciting alternate history, Harrison evokes the spirit and atmosphere of the so-called Dark Ages with wit, sensitivity and impeccable research … Readers need not be experts in medieval history to appreciate the story of Shef’s rise from slave to king of a kingdom that never was but should have been.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating, sinewy, brutal, and fine … few historicals are as powerfully evocative of time and place as Harrison’s tremendous saga.”
—Kirkus
“Great science fiction doesn’t have to be about the future. Some of the best of it, like THE HAMMER AND THE CROSS, can be about the past and the ways in which our world might have been—but sadly wasn’t—shaped into a brighter and more humane form.”—FREDERIK POHL
“An enjoyable history lesson … the colorfully real characters and the morally conscious storyline should make this book so much more than just a quick sci-fi/fantasy fix.”
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—The West Coast Review of Books
“Excellent … an utterly believable, often brutal, tale of England during the Viking raids … [an] exciting, often grim and tragic, look at the way things might have been.”
—Starlog
“Harrison has supplied the book with plenty of action and also done his homework with admirable thoroughness.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“The historical aspects of this tale are developed carefully and well.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The book doesn’t shrink from the brutality of the Dark Ages, but reminds the reader that courage and sensitivity can flourish in the worst of times.”
—Sunday News-Globe (Amarillo, TX)
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
THE HAMMER AND THE CROSS
Copyright © 1993 by Harry Harrison and John Holm
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Cover art by Kevin Johnson
Interior illustrations by Bill Sanderson
eISBN 9781466823303
First eBook Edition : June 2012
First edition: September 1993
First mass market edition: November 1994
The Hammer & the Cross Page 49