two movements the rope was cut, the sacking whisked away.
Godive emerged blinking into the light, facing a horde of bearded faces, open mouths, clutching hands. She shrank back, tried to turn away, and found herself staring into the eyes of the tallest of the chieftains, a pale man, no expression on his face and eyes like ice, eyes that never blinked. She turned again, looking almost with relief at Sigvarth, the only face she could even recognize.
In this cruel company she was like a flower in a patch of dank undergrowth. Pale hair, fine skin, full lips more attractive now as they parted with fear. Sigvarth nodded again, and one of his men ripped down at the back of her gown. Tearing at it until the fabric tore, then stripping it from her despite screams and struggles until the young girl stood naked but for her shift, her youthful body clear for all to see. In an agony of fear and shame she crossed her hands over her breasts and hung her head, waiting for whatever they would do with her.
“I will not share her,” called out Sigvarth. “She is too precious for sharing. So I will give her away! I give her to the man who chose me for this expedition, in thanks and in hope. May he use her well, and long, and vigorously. I give her to the man who chose me out, wisest of all the Army. It is to you I give her. You, Ivar!”
Sigvarth ended with a shout, and a raise of his horn. Slowly he realized that there was no answering shout, only a confused murmur, and that from the men farthest away from the center, the ones who, like him, knew the Ragnarssons least and were the latest comers to the Army. No horns were raised. Faces seemed suddenly troubled, or blank. Men looked away.
The chill at Sigvarth's heart came back. Maybe he should have asked first, he thought to himself. Maybe something was going on that he didn't know about. But where could the harm be in this? He was giving away a piece of plunder, one that any man would be glad to own, doing it publicly and honorably. Where could be the harm in making a gift of this girl, a maiden—a beautiful maiden—to Ivar? Ivar Ragnarsson. Nicknamed—Oh, Thor aid him, why was he so nicknamed? A terrible thought possessed Sigvarth. Was there meaning in that nickname?
The Boneless.
Chapter Five
Five days later, Shef and his companion lay in the slight shelter of a copse, staring across flat watermeadows to the earthworks of the Viking camp a long mile away. For the moment, at least, their nerve had failed.
They had had no trouble getting away from ruined Emneth, which normally might have been the most difficult task for the runaway slave. But Emneth had had troubles of its own. No one in any case considered himself Shef's master, and Edrich, who might have thought it his duty to keep anyone from going over to the Vikings, seemed to have washed his hands of the whole business. Without opposition, Shef had gathered his few possessions, quietly lifted a small store of food which he kept in an outlying shelter, and had made his preparations to leave.
Still, someone had noticed. As he stood hesitating over whether to bid a farewell to his mother, he had become aware of a slight figure standing silently next to him. It was Hund, boyhood friend, child of slaves on both sides, perhaps the least important and lowest ranking person in the whole of Emneth. Yet Shef had learned to value him. There was no one who knew the marshes better, not even Shef. Hund could slide through the water and take moorhens on their nests. In the foul and crowded hut he shared with his parents and their litter of children there was often an otter cub playing. The very fish seemed to come to his hands to be caught without rod or line or net. As for the herbs of the countryside, Hund knew them all, their names, their uses. Already—though he was two winters younger than Shef—the humble folk were beginning to come to him for simples and for cures. In time to come he might be the cunning man of the district, respected and feared even by the mighty. Or action might be taken against him. Even the kindly Father Andreas, Shef's preserver, had several times been seen to look at him with doubt in his eyes. Mother Church had no love for competitors.
“I want to come,” Hund had said.
“It will be dangerous,” Shef had replied.
Hund had said nothing, as was his custom when he felt nothing more needed to be said. It was dangerous to stay in Emneth too. And Shef and Hund, in their different ways, increased each other's chances.
“If you are coming you will have to get that collar off,” Shef had said, glancing at the iron collar which had been fitted round Hund's neck at puberty. “Now is the time. No one is interested in us. I'll get some tools.”
They had sought shelter in the marsh, not wanting to draw attention. It had been a difficult business getting the collar off even so. Shef had filed through it, first putting rags inside the collar to save Hund's neck from rasps, but once broken through it had been hard to get the tongs inside the circlet to bend it open. In the end Shef had lost patience, wrapped the rags round his hands, and pulled the collar open by main strength.
Hund had rubbed the calluses and weals where the iron had worn his neck and stared at the U-shape of the bent collar. “Not many men could do that,” he had observed.
“Need will make the old wife trot,” Shef had answered dismissively. Yet secretly he was pleased. He was coming into his strength, he had faced a grown warrior in battle, he was free to go where he would. He did not yet know how he could do it, but there must be a way to free Godive, and then leave the disasters of his family behind.
They had set out without further words. But trouble had begun at once. Shef had expected to have to dodge a few inquisitive people, sentries, maybe levies heading for the muster. Yet from the first day of travel he had realized that the whole countryside was beginning to buzz like a wasps' nest stirred with a stick. Men cantered down every road. Outside every village groups waited, armed and hostile, suspicious of every stranger. After one such group had decided to hold them, ignoring their story of being sent to borrow cattle from a relative of Wulfgar's, they had had to break and run for it, dodging spears and outdistancing their pursuers. But clearly orders had gone out and the folk of East Anglia had for once decided to obey wholeheartedly. There was fury in the air.
For the last two days Shef and Hund had crept through the fields and hedges, going painfully slowly, often on their bellies in the mud. Even so, they had seen patrols out, some of them horsemen commanded by a thane or a king's companion, but others—and these the more dangerous ones—moved quietly on foot like themselves, armor and weapons padded to prevent jingle or clink; marshmen in the lead, carrying bows and hunters' slings for ambush or stalk. They meant, Shef realized, to keep the Vikings in, or at least to prevent them coming out in small parties for private plunder. But at the same time they would be only too happy to catch and hold, or kill, anyone they thought might have any intention of giving the Vikings aid, information, or reinforcement.
Only in the last couple of miles had the danger receded; and that, the pair soon understood, was only because they were now within the range of the Vikings' own patrols—these easier to avoid, but at the same time more menacing. They had spotted one group of men waiting silently within the borders of a small wood, maybe fifty of them, all mounted, all armored, great axes resting on shoulders, the man-killing battle-spears bristling above them like a gray-tipped thorn thicket. Easy to see, quite easy to avoid. But it would take a full-scale incursion by the English to drive them off or defeat them. The village patrols would stand no chance.
These were the men to whose mercy they now had to trust themselves. It did not seem as easy now as it had at Emneth. To begin with, Shef had had a vague idea of reaching the camp and declaring his relationship to Sigvarth. But there would be far too much chance of being recognized, even from the few seconds of contact they had had. It was terrible luck that had brought him into hand-to-hand combat with the one person in the camp who might—or might not—have accepted him. But now Sigvarth was one person they had to avoid at all costs.
Would the Vikings accept recruits? Shef had an uneasy feeling that much more would be needed than willingness and a hand-forged sword. But they could always use slaves. Again, Shef had an uneasy feeling that he himself might do for a laborer or galley-slave in some far-off country. But Hund had nothing visibly valuable about him. Might the Vikings just let him go, like a fish that was too small for the pan? Or would they take the easy way out of dealing with an encumbrance? The evening before, when they had first caught sight of the camp, the two youths' keen eyes saw a party come out of one of the gates and start digging a hole. A little later there had been no doubt about the contents of the cart that creaked out and emptied a dozen bodies unceremoniously down the pit. Pirates' camps had a high wastage rate.
Shef sighed. “It doesn't look any better than it did last night,” he said. “But we'll have to move sometime.”
