“What makes you think Hell is a Christian word?” answered Thorvin. “What does heaven mean?” For once he used the English word, heofon.
“Well—it's the sky,” answered Shef, startled.
“Also the Christian place of bliss after death. The word was there before the Christians came. They just borrowed it, gave it a new meaning. Same with Hell. What does hulda mean?” This time he used the Norse word.
“It means to cover, to hide something. Like helian in English.”
“So. Hell is what is covered. What's underground. Simple word, just like heaven. You can put what meaning you like to it after that.
“But your other question: Yes, we do believe there is a place of punishment for your sins after death. Some of us have seen it.”
Thorvin sat silent for a while, as if brooding, unsure how far to speak further. When he broke the silence it was in a half chant, slow and sonorous, like the monks of Ely Minster Shef had heard once, long ago, singing on the vigil of Christmas Eve.
“A hall stands, no sunlight on it,
On Dead Man's Strand: its doors face northward.
From its roof rain poison drops.
Its walls are made of woven serpents.
There men writhe in woe and anguish:
Murder-wolves and men forsworn,
Those who lie to lie with women.“
Thorvin shook his head. “Yes, we believe in punishment for sins. Maybe we have a different idea from the Christians about what is a sin and what is not.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“It is time I told you. It has come to me several times that you were meant to know.” As they sipped their warm, herb-scented ale in the glow of the dying fire, the camp quietening around them, Thorvin, fingering his amulet, spoke. “This is how it was.”
All this began, he said, many generations before, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago. At that time a great jarl of the Frisians—the people on the North Sea coast opposite England—had been a pagan. But because of the tales that had been told him by missionaries from Frankland and from England, and because of the old kinship felt between his people and the now-Christian English, he had decided to take baptism.
As was the custom, baptism was to take place publicly, in the open air, in a great tank that the missionaries had constructed for all to see. After the jarl Radbod had been immersed and baptized, the nobles of his court were to follow and soon after that the whole earldom, all the Frisians. Earldom, not kingdom, for the Frisians were too proud and independent to allow anyone the title of king.
So the jarl had stepped to the side of the tank, clad in his robes of ermine and scarlet over the white baptismal garment, and put one foot down onto the first step of the tank. He actually had his foot in the water, Thorvin asserted. But then he turned and asked the head of the missionaries—a Frank, whom the Franks called Wulfhramn, or Wolfraven—whether it was true that as soon as he, Radbod, accepted baptism, his ancestors, who now lurked in Hell along with the other damned, would be released and allowed to wait for their descendants' coming in the courts of heaven.
No, said the Wolfraven, they were pagans who had never been baptized, and they could not receive salvation. No salvation except in the Church, reinforcing what he said with the Latin words: Nulla salvatio extra ecclesiam. And for that matter no redemption once in hell. De infernis nulla est redemptio.
But my ancestors, said the jarl Radbod, never had anyone speak to them of baptism. They had not even the chance to refuse it. Why should they be tormented forever for something they knew nothing about?
Such is the will of God, said the Frankish missionary, perhaps shrugging his shoulders. At that Radbod took his foot out of the baptismal tank and declared with oaths that he would never become a Christian. If he had to choose, he said, he would rather live in Hell with his blameless ancestors than go to heaven with saints and bishops who had no sense of what was right. And he began a great persecution of Christians throughout all the jarldom of the Frisians, arousing the fury of the Frankish king.
Thorvin drank deep of the ale, then touched the small hammer that hung about his neck.
“Thus it began,” he said. “Radbod Jarl was a man of great vision. He foresaw that as long as the Christians were the only ones with priests and books and writing, then what they said would come in the end to be accepted. And that is the strength and at the same time the sin of the Christians. They will not accept that anyone else has so much as a splinter of the truth. They will not deal. They will not go halfway. So to defeat them, or even to hold them at arm's length, Radbod decided that the lands of the North must have their own priests and their own tales of what is the truth. That was the foundation of the Way.”
“The Way,” prompted Shef, when Thorvin seemed disinclined to continue.
“That is who we are. We are the priests of the Way. And our duties are threefold, and ever have been since first the Way came to the lands of the North. One is to preach the worship of the old gods, the Aesir: Thor and Othin, Frey and Ull, Tyr and Njörth and Heimdall and Balder. Those who put full faith in these gods carry an amulet like mine, made in the sign of whichever god they love the best: a sword for Tyr, a bow for Ull, a horn for Heimdall. Or a hammer for Thor, such as I wear. Many men carry that sign.
“Our second duty is to support ourselves by some trade, as I support myself by smithcraft. For we are not permitted to be like the priests of the Christ-god, who do no work themselves but take tithes and offerings from those who do, and enrich themselves and their minsters till the land groans beneath their exactions.
“But our third duty is hard to explain. We must take thought for what is coming, what will happen in this world—not the next. The Christian priests, you see, believe that this world is only a resting place on the way to eternity, and that the true duty of mankind is to get through it with as little harm to the soul as possible. They do not believe that this world is in any way important. They are not curious about it. They do not want to know any more about it.
“But we of the Way, we believe that in the end a battle will be joined, so great that no man can conceive of it. Yet it will be fought in this world, and it is the duty of us all to make our side, the side of gods and men, stronger when that day comes.
“So the duty laid on us all, besides practicing our skill or art, is to make that skill or art the better for what we learn. Always we must try to think what we can do that is different, that is new. And the most honored among us are those who can think of a skill or art that is entirely new in itself, that no man has ever heard of or thought of before. I am far from the heights of such men as those. Yet many new things have been learned in the North since the time of Radbod the Jarl.
“Even in the South they have heard of us. In the cities of the Moors, in Cordoba and Cairo and the lands of the blue men, there is talk of the Way and what is happening in the North among the majus, the ‘fire-worshippers’ as they call us. They have sent emissaries to watch and learn.
“But the Christians do not send to us. They are still confident in their single truth. They alone know what is salvation and what is sin.”
“Is it not a sin to make a man a heimnar?” asked Shef.
Thorvin looked up sharply. “That is not a word I have taught you. But I forgot—you know more of many things than I have thought fit to ask you.
“Yes, it is a sin to make a man a heimnar, whatever he has done. It is a work of Loki—the god in whose memory we burn the fire in our enclosures next to the spear of his father Othin. But few of us wear the sign of Othin, and none wear that of Loki.
“To make a man a heimnar. No. That has the mark of the Boneless One about it, whether he did it himself or not. There are more ways than one of defeating the Christians, and Ivar Ragnarsson's way is foolish. It would come to nothing in the end. But there—you have seen already for yourself that I have no love for the creatures and the hirelings of Ivar.
“Now. Go to sleep.” And with that Thorvin swilled down his
mug, retired to the sleeping tent, and left Shef to follow him thoughtfully.
Working for Thorvin had given Shef no chance at all to pursue his quest. Hund had been taken off almost immediately to the booth of Ingulf the Leech, also a priest of the Way, but one dedicated to Ithun the Healer, some distance away. After that the two had not seen each other. Shef was left to the routine duties of a smith's assistant, made more trying by being confined to the enclosure of Thor: the forge itself, near it a small sleeping tent and an outhouse with a deep-dug latrine, the whole surrounded by the cords and the quickbeam berries, which Thorvin called rowan. “Don't step outside the cords,” Thorvin had told him. “Inside you are under the peace and protection of Thor, and killing you would bring down vengeance on the killers. Outside”—he shrugged—“Muirtach would think himself happy to find you wandering around on your own.” Inside the precinct Shef had stayed.
It was the following morning when Hund came.
“I have seen her. I saw her this morning,” he whispered as he slipped into place beside the squatting Shef. For once Shef was alone. Thorvin had gone off to see about their turn for baking bread in the communal ovens. He had left Shef grinding wheat kernels into flour in the hand quern.
Shef jumped to his feet, spilling flour and unground kernels all over the beaten earth. “Who? You mean—Godive! Where? How? Is she—”
“Sit down, I beg,” Hund started to scrape hurriedly at the spilt mess. “We must look normal. There are always people watching in this place. Please listen. The bad news is this: She is the woman of Ivar Ragnarsson, the one they call the Boneless. But she has not been harmed. She is alive and well. I know because as a leech, Ingulf gets everywhere. Now he has seen what I can do, he often takes me with him. A few days ago he was called to see the Boneless One. They would not let me enter—there is a strong guard round all their tents—but while I was waiting outside for him I saw her pass. There could be no mistake. She was not five yards off, though she did not see me.”
“How did she look?” asked Shef, painful memory of his mother and Truda forcing itself forward.
“She was laughing. She looked—happy.” Both youths fell silent. From all that both had heard there was something ominous in anyone feeling or seeming happy anywhere within the range of Ivar Ragnarsson's power.
“But listen, Shef. She is in terrible danger. She does not understand. She thinks that because Ivar is courteous and speaks well and does not use her immediately as a whore, then she is safe. But there is something wrong with Ivar, maybe in his body, maybe in his head. He has ways of easing it. Maybe, one day, Godive will be one of them.
“You have to get her out, Shef, and soon. And the first thing is to let her see you. What we do after that I cannot guess, but if she knows you are near at least she will maybe be thinking of a chance of passing a message. Now I have heard another thing. AH the women, of all the Ragnarssons and their highest chiefs, will be going out from the tents today. I have heard them complaining. They say they have not had a chance to wash anywhere except in the filthy river for weeks. They mean to go out this afternoon and wash their clothes and themselves. They are going out to a backwater maybe a mile off.”
“Could we get her away?”
“Don't even think about it. There are thousands of men in the army, all of them desperate for women. There will be so many trusted guards on that trip you won't be able to see between them. The best thing you can do is make sure she sees you. Now this is where they are going to go.” Hund began to explain the lay of the land hastily, pointing to add emphasis to his words.
“But how am I to get away from here? Thorvin—”
“I thought of that. As soon as the women start to leave I will come here and say to Thorvin that my master needs him to come and put a final edge on the tools he uses for opening men's bellies and heads. Ingulf can do marvelous things,” Hund added, shaking his head in admiration. “More than any church-leech I have ever heard of.
“When Thorvin hears that, he will come with me. Then you must leave here, slip over the wall, and get well ahead of the women and the guards so you can meet them accidentally on the path.”
Hund was right about Thorvin's reactions. As soon as Hund sidled up to him with the request, and explanation of why he was needed, Thorvin had agreed. “I will come,” he said, putting down his hammer and searching for whetstone, oilstone, sleekstone. He went off without further ado.
And then things went wrong. Two customers in line, and neither of them ready to be put off, both of them knowing full well that Shef never left the precinct. Those got rid of, a third wandered up full of inquiries and surprise and desire to talk. When he finally stepped over the rowan-festooned cords for the first time, Shef realized that he was now bound to do the most dangerous thing he could in this crowded campment full of eyes and bored intelligences: hurry.
Yet hurry he did, loping through the crowded lanes with never a look at the interested faces, cutting suddenly through the ropes of a few deserted tents, up to the wall with its stockade of logs, two hands on the sharp, man-high poles, and over them in one powerful vault. A shout from somewhere told him that he had been seen, but there was no hue and cry. He was going out, not in, and no one had reason to call “Thief.”
Now, he was out on the plain, still dotted with horses and exercising men, with the tree-line of the backwater a mile away. The women would make their way along the river, but it would be suicide to run up after them. He had to get there first and had to be walking innocently back, or better still, to be standing where they would pass. Nor could he go near the gateway where the guards stood noting all that went on. Heedless of the danger, Shef stretched his legs and began to run across the meadow.
Within ten minutes he had reached the backwater and was strolling along the muddy lane which led beside it. No one there yet. Now all he had to do was look like a member of the Army taking his ease. Difficult: There was one thing that set him off from the others. He was on his own. Outside the camp and even inside it, the Vikings went round in ship's crews, or at least with an oarmate to bear company.
He had no choice. Just walk by them. Hope that Godive had the eyes to see him and the wit to say nothing.
He could hear voices, ahead, women calling out and laughing, men's voices among them. Shef stepped round a bank of hawthorn and saw Godive in front of him. Their eyes met.
At the same moment he saw a blaze of saffron plaids all round her. He looked convulsively to either side, and there was Muirtach, not five yards away, striding towards him, a cry of triumph on his lips. Before he could move, hard hands had him by each arm. The rest were crowding up behind their leader, their female charges for the moment forgotten.
“The little cock-sparrow,” gloated Muirtach, thumbs in belt. “The one who showed his hilt to me. Come out for a look at the womenfolk, is it? And an expensive look it's bound to be. Here, boys, take him aside a few paces.” He unsheathed his longsword with a chilling wheep. “We don't want the ladies to be dashed by the sight of blood.”
“I'll fight you,” said Shef.
“That you won't. Am I a chieftain of the Gaddgedlar and to be matched with a runaway with the collar hardly off his neck?”
“There's never been collar on my neck,” snarled Shef. He could feel a heat rising within him from somewhere, driving out the chill of fear and panic. There was only one small chance here. If he could draw them into treating him as an equal he might live. Otherwise he would be a headless corpse in a bush within a minute. “My birth is as good as yours. And I speak the Danish tongue a deal better!”
“That is true,” said a chilly voice from somewhere behind the plaids. “Muirtach, your men are all watching you. They should be watching the womenfolk. Or does it need all of you to deal with this lad?”
The crowd in front of Shef melted away, and he found himself staring into the eyes of the speaker. Almost white eyes. They were as pale, Shef thought, as pale as ice in a dish—a dish of the thinnest maplewood, carved so th
in it was almost transparent. They did not blink, and they waited for Shef's eyes to drop. Shef tore his own eyes away with an effort. Felt fear that instant, knew death was very close.
“You have a grudge, Muirtach?”
“Yes, lord.” The Irishman's eyes too were dropped.
“Then fight him.”
“Och, now, I said before—”
“Then if you won't—let one of your men fight him. Pick the youngest. Let a boy fight a boy. If your man wins I'll give him this.” Ivar plucked a silver ring from his arm, threw it in the air, replaced it. “Step back and give them room. Let the women watch as well. No rules, no surrender,” he added, teeth flashing in a chill and humorless smile. “To the death.”
Seconds later Shef found himself staring once more into Godive's eyes, round now with terror. She stood at the front of a ring, two-deep, women's clothes intermixed with bright saffron plaids, and scattered through them also the scarlet cloaks and gold armrings of jarls and champions, the aristocracy of the Viking army. In the midst of them Shef caught sight of a familiar figure, the giant frame of Killer-Brand. On impulse Shef stepped over to him as the others prepared his opponent for battle on the far side of the ring.
“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.
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