better not go looking like that. The others would laugh at you—then you'll lose your temper and worse will happen.”
From the pile at the back of the smithy he dug out a spear, recently reshafted, and a leather-bound shield. “With these you'll look respectable.”
“Are they yours?”
“Sometimes people leave things in for repair, don't come back for them.”
Shef took the gifts and then stood awkwardly, his rolled blanket and few possessions on his shoulder.
“I must thank you for what you did for me.”
“I did it because it was my duty to the Way. Or so I thought. Maybe I was wrong. But I'm not a fool, boy. I am sure that you're after something I don't know about. I just hope it doesn't get you into trouble. Maybe our paths will run together again another day.”
They parted with no more words, Shef stepping for only the second time over the rowan-berry cords of the precinct and for the first time walking down the lane between the tents without fear, face forward, not looking furtively around him. He headed not for the encampment of Ivar and the other Ragnarssons, but for the tent of Ingulf the leech.
As usual there was a small crowd standing round it, watching something. It dispersed as Shef strolled up, the last few men to leave carrying a stretcher with a bandaged shape on it. Hund came to meet his friend, wiping his hands on a rag.
“What were you doing?” Shef asked.
“Helping Ingulf. It's amazing what he can do. That man there was wrestling, fell awkwardly—leg broken, just like that. What would you do with that if you were back at home?”
Shef shrugged. “Bandage it up. Nothing else you can do. In the end it would heal.”
“But the man would never walk straight again. The bones would just join each other wherever they happened to be. The leg would be all lumps and twists—like Crubba, who was rolled on by his horse. Well, what Ingulf does is pull the leg out straight before he starts bandaging, squeezes hard to feel if the broken ends of the bone are together. Then he bandages the leg between two stakes, so that the whole thing stays straight while it is healing. But what is even more marvelous is what he does in cases like this one, when it's broken so badly that the bones are sticking up through the skin. If he has to he even cuts back the bone, and opens the leg so that he can push the bone back straight! I didn't think that anyone would live through being opened and cut like that. But he is so quick—and he knows exactly what to do.”
“Could you learn to do it?” Shef asked, watching the glow of enthusiasm on his friend's normally sallow face.
“With enough practice. Enough instruction. And something else. Ingulf studies the bodies of the dead, you know, to see how bones fit together. What would Father Andreas say to that?”
“So you mean to stay with Ingulf?”
The runaway slave nodded slowly. He pulled from under his tunic a chain. On it was a small silver pendant, an apple.
“Ingulf gave it me. The apple of Ithun the Healer. I am a believer now. I believe in Ingulf and the Way. Maybe not in Ithun.” Hund looked at his friend's neck. “Thorvin has not converted you. You are not wearing a hammer.”
“I wore one for a bit.” Shef spoke briefly about what had happened. “I may have a chance now of rescuing Godive and getting away. Maybe if I watch for long enough God will be good to me.”
“God?”
“Or Thor. Or Othin. I'm beginning to think that it makes no difference to me. Maybe one of them is watching.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” Shef gripped his friend's arm. “We may not see each other again. But if you leave the Vikings I hope one day I will have a place for you. Even if it's just a hut in the fen.”
He turned and headed for the place he had not dared even to look at when they first entered the Viking camp days before: the Vikings' command tents.
The domain of the four Ragnarsson brothers ran from east wall to west wall, a full furlong along the riverfront. At its heart, in the center, were the great meeting tent—with room in it for tables for a hundred men— and the decorated tents of the brothers themselves. Round each of these four clustered the tents of women, dependents, the most trusted immediate bodyguards. Further away ran the lines of bivouac tents of the soldiers, usually three or four tents for every ship's crew, sometimes with smaller ones scattered through for the captains, helmsmen, and champions. The retinues of the brothers for the most part kept separate, if close together.
The Snakeeye's men were mostly Danes: It was common knowledge throughout the army that in time Sigurth would return to Denmark to challenge for the kingdom in Sjaelland and Skaane which his father had owned, and would go on one day to challenge for the rule of Denmark from the Baltic to the North Sea—a kingdom no man had possessed since the days of that King Guthfrith who fought Charlemagne. Ubbi and Halvdan, men with no stake and no claim to any throne other than that which their strength might bring them, recruited from anywhere: Swedes, Gauts, Norwegians, men from Gotland and Bornholm and all the islands.
Ivar's men were mostly exiles of one sort or another. Many no doubt were mere murderers escaping vengeance or the rule of one law or another. But the bulk of his following came from the floating population of Norsemen who for generations had been moving into the Outer Isles of the Celtic regions: the Orkneys and Shetlands, then the Hebrides, the Scottish mainland. For years these men had been tempered in the constant skirmishes of Ireland and Man, Strathclyde and Galloway and Cumbria. Among themselves they boasted—but the claim was fiercely rejected by many, especially the Norwegians, who viewed Ireland as their own property to keep or dispose of—that one day Ivar Ragnarsson would rule the whole of Ireland from his castle by the black pool, the Dubh Linn itself, and would then lead his victorious navies in triumph against the feeble kingdoms of the Christian West. The Ui Niall might still have a say in that, muttered the Gaddgedlar among themselves, speaking Irish as none of the Hebridean or Scottish Norsemen would deign to. But they said it quietly. For all their race pride they knew that they themselves were the most hated of all by their countrymen, apostates from Christ, accomplices of those who had brought fire and slaughter to every part of Ireland. Who had done it for pay and for power, not merely for joy and for glory, as had been the Irish custom since the days of Finn and Cuchulainn and the champions of Ulster.
Into this touchy and tinder-dry encampment, graded with differences and with excuses for quarrel, Shef walked as the cooking fires were lighting for the night meal.
He was met by a marshal who heard his name, listened to his story, ran a disapproving eye over his shabby equipment, and grunted. He called a young man from the throng to show Shef his tent, sleeping place and oar, and to introduce him to his duties. The man—Shef never caught his name, nor did he want to—told him that there were four jobs at which he would have to take his turn: ship-guard, gate-guard, pen-guard, and if necessary, guard on the tent of Ivar. Mostly they were assigned by crew.
“I thought the Gaddgedlar guarded Ivar,” Shef said.
The young man spat. “When he's here. When he's not they go with him. But the treasure and the womenfolk stay behind. Someone has to look after them. Anyway, if the Gaddgedlar got too far from Ivar someone would take a dislike to them—Ketil Flatnose and his men have a spite against them, and Thorvald the Deaf too. And a dozen more.”
“Would we be trusted to guard the tent of Ivar?”
The young man looked at him aslant. “Shouldn't we be? I tell you,
As they walked round, he told him in detail what Ivar had done to kings and lesser men who had displeased him. Shef took little notice, looking with great interest at the camp. The tales were clearly meant to frighten him.
The ships, he thought, were the weak point of the camp. Space had to be left clear for them to be drawn up on the muddy banks, so there could be no fortifications there. The ships themselves represented a sort of obstacle, but they were also the Vikings' most precious possession. If anyone got past the riverbank-guards, they could be in among the ships with torch and axe, and they would be difficult to dislodge.
