Shef stared at the departing backs and turned again to his friend.
“What is that you have there?”
“A potion from Ingulf. For you.”
“I need no potion. What is it for?”
Hund hesitated. “He says it is to ease your mind. And—and to bring back your memory.”
“What is wrong with my memory?”
“Shef, Ingulf and Thorvin say—they say you have forgotten even that we blinded your eye. That Thorvin held you and Ingulf heated the needle, and I, I held it in position. We only did it so it would not be done by some butcher of Ivar's. But they say that it is not natural for you never to speak of it. They believe you have forgotten your blinding. And forgotten Godive, for whom you went into the camp.”
Shef stared down at the little leech with his silver apple pendant.
“You can tell them, I have never forgotten either for a moment.
“But still.” He stretched out his hand. “I will take your potion.”
“He took the potion,” Ingulf said.
“Shef is like the bird in the old story,” Thorvin said. “The one the Christians tell of how the English in the North became Christian. They say that when the king Edwin called a council to debate whether he and his kingdom should leave the faith of their fathers and take a new one, a priest of the Aesir had said they might as well, for following the old gods had brought him no profit. But then another councillor said, and this is a truer tale, that to him the world seemed like a king's hall on a winter evening—warm and brightly lit inside, but outside dark and cold, and a world no one could see. ‘And into that hall,’ said the councillor, ‘flies a bird, and for a moment it is in the light and the warm, and then flies out into the dark and cold again. If the Christ-god can tell us more surely about what happens before man's life and after man's life,’ said the councillor, ‘we should seek to learn more of his teaching.’ ”
“A good story, with some truth,” Ingulf said. “I see why you think Shef could be like that bird.”
“He could—or he could be something else. When Farman saw him in his vision, in Asgarth, he says he had taken the place of the smith of the gods, Völund. You do not know that story, Hund. Völund was caught and enslaved by the wicked king Nithhad, and hamstrung so that he could work, but not run away. But Völund enticed the king's sons to his forge, killed them, made brooches of their eyeballs and necklaces of their teeth, gave them to their father, his master. Enticed the king's daughter to his forge, stupefied her with beer, raped her.”
“Why would he do that if he was still a prisoner?” asked Hund. “If he was too lame to run away?”
“He was the master-smith,” said Thorvin. “When the king's daughter awoke, and ran to her father and told him the tale, and he came to kill the slave-smith with torments—then Völund put on the wings he had made secretly in his forge. And flew away, laughing at those who thought him crippled.”
“So why is Shef like Völund?”
“He can see up and down. In a direction other men cannot see. It is a great gift, but I fear it is the gift of Othin. Othin Allfather. Othin Bölverk, Othin Bale-worker. Your potion will make him dream, Ingulf. But what will be in those dreams?”
Shef's sinking mind was brooding on taste. The potion Ingulf had sent him had tasted of honey, which was a change from the foul brews he and Hund usually concocted. Yet beneath the sweetness there had been another taste: of mold? of fungus? He did not know, but something dry and rotten beneath the mask. He had known as soon as he drank it that there would be something to be endured.
And yet his dream started sweetly, like one he had had many times before any of his troubles began, before even he had known that they meant him for a thrall.
He was swimming, in the fen. But as he swam on and on the power of his strokes doubled and redoubled, so that the bank seemed to fall away behind him and he was swimming faster than a horse could run. Now his strokes took him clear from the water and he was lifting in the air, no longer striking with his arms, but first climbing, and then, as fear left him, sweeping forward again, rising higher and higher in the air, like a bird. The country beneath him was green and sunny, with the new leaves of spring breaking out everywhere, and meadow rolling higher and higher to sunlit uplands. Suddenly dark. In front of him now there was an immense column of darkness. He had, he knew, been there before. But then he had been in the column, or on the column, looking out: he did not want to see again what he had seen then. The king, the king Edmund, with his sad and tortured face and his backbone in his hand. If he flew in carefully, and did not look out or back, he might not see him this time.
Slowly, cautiously, the wandering soul closed on the enormous darkened tree-trunk. To it was nailed, as he had known there would be, a figure with a spike projecting from its eye. He looked at the face with care—was it his own?
It was not. Its one whole eye was closed. It appeared to take no interest in him.
By the figure's head there hovered two black birds, with black beaks: ravens. They turned bright eyes on him, cocking their heads curiously. The flight pinions of their wings ruffled and shifted slightly as they maintained their positions without strain or effort. The figure was Othin, or Woden, and the ravens were his constant companions.
What were their names? That was the important thing. He had heard them somewhere. In Norse they were—That was right, Hugin and Munin. In English that would be Hyge and Myne. Hugin/Hyge. That meant “mind.” That was not the one he wanted. As if dismissed, the one raven spiraled down, perched on its master's shoulder.
Munin/Myne. That meant “memory.” That was what he wanted. But he would have to pay for it. He had a friend, a protector among the gods, so much he realized already. But it was not Othin, whatever Brand might think. So a price must be paid. He knew what the price must be. Again unbidden, another scrap of verse came to him, again in English. It described the hanged man, on the gallows, who swayed there creaking for the birds, unable to raise a hand to protect himself, while the black ravens came…
Came for his eyes. For his eye. The bird was there suddenly, so close that it blocked out all other sight, its black beak like an arrow only an inch from his eye. Not his good eye, though. His bad eye. The one he had already lost. But this was memory, back in a time when he still had it. His hands were down, he could not move them. That was because Thorvin was holding them. No, he could move them this time, but he must not. He would not.
The bird realized he would not move. It came forward with a shriek of triumph, driving its nail of a beak deep through his eye and into his brain. As the white-hot pain stabbed through him, the words shot into his head: the words of the doomed king.
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.
He had done his duty. The bird released him. He fell instantly from the tree-trunk, tumbling without control, hands still locked, toward the ground miles below. Plenty of time to think what to do. No need for hands. He could just turn his body whichever way was needed, turn and roll till he was heading out into the sun once more, turn and dip till he was spiraling down gently to the place where he should be, where his body lay on straw.
Strange to see the land from here, and the people and the armies and the merchants coming and going, many of them spurring furiously, but not moving at all beneath his enormous twenty-mile circuits. He could see the fen, he could see the sea, he could see the great tumuli, the barrows swelling up beneath green turf. He would remember that, think of it another time. Now he had only one duty, and he would carry it out as soon as his spirit was back in its right place, in the body he could now see on its mattress, in the body he was entering….
Shef jerked from sleep in one motion.
“I must remember, but I cannot write,” he called in dismay.
“I can,” said Thorvin, on his stool six feet away, dimly visible by the banked fire.
“Can you? Write like a Christian?”
“I can write like a Christian. But I can write like a Norseman too, or a priest of the Way. I can write in runes. What do you want me to write?”
“Write it quickly,” said Shef. “I bought this from Munin with pain.”
Thorvin kept his eyes down as he took a beech board and a knife and prepared to cut.
“ ‘In willow ford, by woody bridge
The old kings lie, keels beneath them…’ “
“It is hard to write English in runes,” Thorvin muttered. But he muttered it beneath his breath.
The Army mustered—in distrust and ill humor, three weeks before the day the Christians celebrated the birth of their God—on the open space outside the city's east wall. Seven thousand men take up a good deal of space, especially when all are both fully armed and heavily wrapped against the wind and intermittent sleet. But since Shef had fired the remaining houses on that side there was room enough to spread everyone in a rough half-circle from wall to wall.
In the midst of the semicircle stood the Ragnarssons and their supporters, the Raven Banner behind them. A few paces away, gripped and encircled by a flutter of saffron plaids, waited the black-haired figure of the king—of the ex-king Ella. His face was as white, Shef reflected from his place in the semicircle thirty yards away, as white as the white of a cooked egg.
For Ella was doomed. The Army had not pronounced yet, but it was certain as fate. Soon Ella would hear the clash of weapons by which the Army signaled assent. And then they would start on him, as they had on Shef, as they had on King Edmund, on King Maelguala and all the other Irish kinglets on whom Ivar had sharpened his teeth and his techniques. There was no hope for Ella. He had put Ragnar in the orm-garth. Even Brand, even Thorvin accepted that a man's sons had a right to take revenge in kind. More than a right, a duty. The Army watched judiciously, to see that the job was done well and warriorlike.
But it sat, or rather stood, also in judgement on its own leaders. It was not only Ella who was at risk here. Not even Ivar Ragnarsson, not even Sigurth the Snakeeye himself, could this time be absolutely sure of walking from the meeting with a whole skin, or with an undamaged reputation. There was tension in the air.
As the sun reached what passed for midday in the English winter, Sigurth called the Army to business.
“We are the Great Army,” he called out. “We are met to talk over what has been done and what should be done next. I have things to say. But first I heard that there are men in the Army who are not content with how this city was taken. Will one of them speak openly before us all?”
A man stepped forward from the ring, walked into the open space in the middle, and turned so that both his own supporters and the Ragnarssons could hear him. It was Skuli the Bald, who had led the second tower up to the wall, but had wrecked it without getting over.
“Put-up job,” muttered Brand. “Been paid to speak, but not too hard.”
“I am not content,” called out Skuli. “I led my crews to attack the wall of this city. I lost a dozen men, including my brother-in-law, a good man. We got over the wall just the same and fought our way up to the minster. But then we were prevented from sacking the minster, as was our right. And we found that we did not need to lose the men, because the city was already taken. We got neither plunder nor compensation. Why did you let us attack the wall like fools, Sigurth, when you knew we had no need to?”
A rumble of agreement, some catcalls from Ragnarsson crews. Sigurth stepped forward in his turn, silencing the noise with a wave.
“I thank Skuli for saying this, and I admit that he has right on his side. But I want to say two things. First, I did not know he had no need to. We could not be sure that we would get in. The priests could have been lying to us. Or if the king had found it, he might have put his own men on the gate that was opened. If we had told the whole Army about it, some slave might have heard and passed the news. So we kept it to ourselves.
“The other thing I have to say is this: I did not think Skuli and his men would get over the wall. I did not think they would even get to the wall. These machines, these towers, they are something we have never seen before. I thought they were a toy, and that everything would be finished with just some arrowshot and wasted sweat. If I had known different I would have told Skuli not to risk his life and waste his men. I was wrong, and I am sorry.”
Skuli nodded in a dignified way and walked back to his place.
“Not enough!” yelled a voice from the crowd. “What about compensation? Wergild for our losses!”
“How much did you get from the priests?” yelled another. “And why don't we all share?”
Sigurth raised a hand again. “That's more like it. I ask the Army: what are we here for?”
Brand stepped out, waving his axe, back of his neck purpling instantly with the effort in his shout. “Money!”
But even his voice was drowned in the chorus: “Money! Wealth! Gold and silver! Tribute!”
As the tumult died down, Sigurth shouted back. He had the meeting well in hand, Shef realized. All this was going according to a plan, and even Brand was going along with it.
“And what do you want the money for?” called Sigurth. Confusion, doubt, shouts of different answers—some ribald.
The Snakeeye drove on over them. “I'll tell you. You want to buy a place back home, with people to till it for you, and to never touch a plough again. Now I'm telling you this: there's not enough money here to get you what you want. Not good money.” He threw a handful of coins derisively on the ground. The men recognized the useless low-alloy coinage they had found so often already.
“But that isn't to say we can't get it. Just that it's going to take time.”
“Time for what, Sigurth? Time for you to hide your take?”
The Snakeeye stepped a little forward, his strange white-rimmed eyes searching the crowd for the man who had accused him. His hand reached for his sword-pommel.
“I know this is open meeting,” he called, “where all may speak freely. But if anyone accuses me or my brothers of not acting like warriors, then we will call him to account for it outside the meeting!
“Now I tell you. We took a ransom from the minster, right enough. Those of you who stormed the wall took loot as well, from the dead and from the houses inside the wall. All of us profited from what was taken outside the minster.”
“But all the gold was inside the minster!” That was Brand shouting, still incensed, and well forward so that he could not be mistaken.
A cold look from Sigurth, but no check. “I tell you. We will all pool all that we took—ransom, loot, whatever—and divide it up crew by crew as has always been the custom of the Army.
“And then we will lay a further tribute on this shire and this kingdom, to be delivered before the end of the winter. They will pay in bad metal, sure enough. But we will take that metal and melt the silver out of it and coin it again ourselves. And that we will divide up so that everyone gets his share.
“Only one thing. To do that we need the mint.” A buzz as the unfamiliar word was repeated. “We need the men to make the coins and the tools to make them with. And they are in the minster. They are the Christian priests. I have never said this before, but I say it now.
“We have to make the priests work with us.”
This time the dissension in the Army went on a long time, with many men stepping forward and speaking confusedly. Shef realized slowly that Sigurth's point was being carried, had a certain appeal to men tired of profitless harrying, yet there was determined resistance—from adherents of the Way, from men who simply disliked and distrusted Christians, from those whose still resented losing the sack of the minster.
And the resistance was not dying down. Violence at a meeting was almost unheard-of, for the penalties were so severe.
Yet the crowd was fully armed, even to mail, shields and helmets, and every man in it used to striking out. There was always the chance of an outburst. The Snakeeye was going to have to do something, Shef thought, to get the crowd back under control. Just at the moment one man—it was Egil from Skaane, who had taken a tower to the wall—had got the attention of the Army with a furious diatribe about the treachery of the Christians.
“And one more thing,” he shouted. “We know the Christians never keep their word to us, because they think that only the followers of their god will live after death. But I tell you what is more dangerous. They make other men start to forget their word as well. Start to think a man may say one thing one day and another another, and tell the priest and ask for forgiveness, and wipe away the past like a housewife wiping shit off a baby's bottom. And I say this for you! For you, the sons of Ragnar!”
He turned to face the cluster of brothers, stepping closer to them in defiance—a brave man, thought Shef, and an angry one. He threw back his cloak deliberately to reveal the silver horn of Heimdall gleaming on his tunic.
“How have you remembered your father, who went to his death in the orm-garth here, inside this city? How have you remembered the boasts you made in the hall at Roskilde, when you stood on the stock and made your vows to Bragi?
“What happens to the oath-breakers in the world we believe in? Have you forgotten?
A voice supported him from the throng: a deep voice, a solemn one. Thorvin's, Shef realized, quoting the holy poems.
“There men writhe in woe and anguish,
Murder-wolves and men forsworn.
Nithhögg sucks blood from naked bodies,
The wolf tears them. Do you wish more?“
“Men forsworn!” shouted Egil. He turned and walked to his place, showing the Ragnarssons his back. Yet they seemed pleased, almost relieved. They had known someone would say it.
“We have been challenged,” called Halvdan Ragnarsson, speaking for the first time. “Let us reply. We know well what we said in the hall at Roskilde, and this was it: I swore that I would invade England in vengeance for my father…” All four brothers, bunching together, began to call out the words in unison.
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