them.”
Shef thought of Godive again, and his knuckles whitened as he gripped the inside of his shield-boss. It was not only the menfolk who paid for lost battles.
They followed Truda in silence as she limped before them to a makeshift shelter, a collection of planks propped on half-burnt timbers and leaning against a fragment of stockade saved from the flames. She reached the shelter, looked inside, muttered a few words, and waved them in.
The lady Thryth lay inside, on a heap of old sacking. From the grim look of pain on her face and the awkward way she sprawled, it was obvious that she too had been through Truda's experience. Shef knelt beside her and felt for her hand.
Her voice was just a whisper, weakened by terrible memory. “We had no warning, no time to prepare. No one seemed to know what to do. The men rode straight here after the battle. They couldn't make up their minds. Those pigs caught us while they were still arguing. They were all round us before anyone knew that they had come.”
She grew silent, writhed a bit in pain, looked up at her son with empty eyes.
“They are beasts. They killed everyone who showed fight. Then they gathered the rest of us together outside the church. It was beginning to rain by then. First they picked out the young girls and the pretty girls, and some of the boys. For the slave markets. And then… then they brought out their prisoners from the battle and then…”
Her voice began to quake and she pulled her stained apron up to her eyes.
“And then they made us watch…”
Her voice was drowned in tears. After a few moments she seemed to remember something and moved suddenly. She gripped Shef's hand and for the first time looked directly at him.
“But Shef. It was him. It was the same one as last time.”
“Sigvarth Jarl?” asked Shef, his mouth thick.
“Yes. Your… your…”
“What did he look like? Was he a big man, dark hair, white teeth?”
“Yes. With gold bracelets all up his arm.” Shef thought back to the moments of conflict, felt again the snap of the sword breaking and the moment of delight with which he had stepped forward to stab. Could it be that God had saved him from a terrible sin? But if that were the case—what had God been doing afterward?
“Couldn't he protect you, mother?”
“No. He didn't even try.” Thryth's voice had gone hard and controlled again. “When they broke ranks after… after the show, he told them to loot and enjoy themselves till the warhorns blew. They kept their slaves, tied them together; but the rest of us, Truda and the ones they weren't keeping… We were just handed over.
“He recognized me, Shef! And he remembered me. But when I begged him just to keep me for himself he laughed. He said… he said I was a hen now, not a chicken, and hens must look after themselves. Especially hens who flew away. So they used me like Truda. They used me more because I was the lady, and some of them thought that this was something very funny.” Her face twisted with anger and hatred, her pain forgotten for the moment.
“But I told him, Shef! I told him that he had a son. And that his son would one day seek him out and kill him!”
“I did my best, mother.” Shef hesitated, another question forming on his lips. But Edrich, behind him, spoke first.
“What did they make you watch, lady?”
Again Thryth's eyes filled with tears. Unable to speak, she waved vaguely at the outside of the shelter.
“Come,” said Truda. “I will show you the Vikings' mercy.”
The two men followed her out, across the ashy remains of the village green, to where another makeshift shelter had been set up near the ruin of the thane's house. A small huddle of people stood outside it. Occasionally one would break away and walk inside, look, and come out again. Their expressions were unreadable. Grief? Anger? Mostly, thought Shef, it was just plain fear.
Inside the shelter stood a horse-trough, half filled with straw. Shef recognized at once Wulfgar's blond hair and beard, but the face between them was that of a corpse: white, waxy, the nose pinched and the bones sticking through the flesh. Yet the man was not dead.
For a moment Shef could make no sense of what he saw. How could Wulfgar lie in a horse-trough? He was too big. He was six feet tall, and the horse-trough—Shef knew it well from the beatings of his youth—was barely five feet long…. There was something missing.
Wulfgar had something wrong with his legs. His knees reached the bottom of the trough, but then there were only clumsy bandages, wrapped round and round the stumps, with dark blood and foul matter clotted in them. A smell of corruption, and of burning, drifted up to Shef.
With growing horror he saw that Wulfgar appeared to have ho arms either. The bits that were left were crossed on his breast, the limbs ending in stumps and bandages just below the elbows.
A voice murmured behind them. “They brought him out in front of us all. Then they held him over a log and chopped off his arms and legs with an axe. Legs first. After each one they seared the stump with a red-hot iron, so that he would not die from loss of blood. First he cursed them and fought, but then he began to beg them to leave him just one hand, so that he could feed himself. They laughed. The big one, the jarl, said they would leave him everything else. Leave him his eyes so he could see fair women, and his balls, so he could desire them. But he would never be able to take down his own breeches, never again.”
Never do anything for himself again, Shef realized. He would depend on others for every action of life, from eating to pissing.
“They've made him a
Incredibly, the wasted eyes in front of them opened. They shone with pure malevolence on Shef and Edrich. The lips parted and a dry snakelike whisper came forth.
“The runaways. You ran and left me, boy. I will remember. And you, king's thane. You came, exhorted us, would have us fight. But where were you when the fighting ended? Have no fear, I will live yet, to be avenged on you both. And on your father, boy. I should never have reared his get. Or taken back his whore either.”
The eyes closed, the voice was still. Shef and Edrich walked out into the thin drizzle that was beginning once again.
“I don't understand,” said Shef. “What did they do it for?”
“That I do not know. But I can tell you one thing. When King Edmund hears of this he will be in a fury. Raid and murder under truce, that's normal enough, but this, done to one of his men, a former companion… He will be of two minds, perhaps feeling that he must spare his people more of the same. But then again he may decide he is honor-bound to seek vengeance. It will be a difficult decision for him.” He turned to look at Shef.
“Will you come with me, lad, when I take him the news? You are not a freeman here, but it is plain to see that you are a fighter. There is nothing for you now in this place. Come with me and you will be my servant till we can get you proper equipment and armor. If you can fight well enough to stand up to a jarl of the heathens the king will make you his companion, no matter what you were here in Emneth.”
The lady Thryth was walking toward them, leaning heavily on a stick. Shef asked her the question that had been burning in his mind since first he saw the smoke from ravaged Emneth.
“Godive. What has happened to Godive?”
“Sigvarth took her. She has gone to the Vikings' camp.”
Shef turned to Edrich. He spoke firmly, without apology.
“They say I am a runaway and a slave. Now I will be both.” He unbuckled his shield and dropped it on the ground. “I shall make for the Viking camp down by the Stour. One more slave—they may take me in. I must do something to rescue Godive.”
“You won't last a week,” said Edrich, voice cold with anger. “And you will die a traitor. A traitor to your people and to King Edmund.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
“And to the blessed Christ Himself,” added Father Andreas, appearing from the shelter. “You have seen the pagans' deeds. Better to be a slave in Christendom than a king among such as they.”
Shef realized that he had made the decision quickly—perhaps too quickly, without thinking. But having done
