stockade edge, where surely guards might still be posted. Then the deep dive and the long swim underwater, till it was time to come up and repeat the otter stroke, on, on, for another quarter mile before he decided it might be safe to creep ashore.
He had felt no chill while they were escaping, only a momentary prickle on his burned hands and body as he dashed into the water the first time. But now he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably, the great shudders wracking his body. Shef knew that he was close to collapse. He would have to let go soon, lie down, let his muscles relax. And let his mind come to terms with the events of the last twenty-four hours. He had killed a man; no, two men. He had seen the king, something he might have expected to do once or twice in a lifetime. But this time the king had seen him, had even spoken to him! And he had stood toe to toe with Ivar the Boneless, champion of the North. Shef knew he would have killed him if it had not been for Godive. He could have been the hero of all England, of all Christianity.
But she had stopped him. And then he had betrayed his king, delayed him, all but handed him over to the power of the pagans. If anyone were ever to know about that… But his mind shied away from the thought. They had escaped. He would ask Godive about her and Ivar when he could.
As the light strengthened, Shef's eye caught the faint trace of a trail. It was overgrown, had not been used for weeks. That was good. Used last to flee from the Viking landing. But at the end of the trail there might be something: a hut, a shed. Anything left behind would now be worth its weight in silver.
Now, the trees were thinning, there was something in front of him: not a hut, he realized, but a shelter, a lean-to made of branches. The coppicers must have made it to store their gear in as they worked through the forest cutting the poles that all farmers relied on for hurdles and fencing, for handles, and for the centerpieces for their flimsy wattle-and-daub walls.
There was no one there. Shef led Godive over. Turning her toward him, he held her hands in his own and looked down into her eyes.
“What we have here,” he said, “is nothing. One day, I hope we will have a real house of our own, somewhere we can live together untroubled. That is why I came to take you back from the Vikings. It will not be safe to travel in the day. Let us rest as well as we can till evening.”
The coppicers had rigged up a bark gutter beneath the roof of rough shingles. It led to a large broken crock, full to overflowing with clear rainwater: one more proof that no one had been there for weeks. The boughs inside were covered with old, torn strips of blanket. Stiffly the pair wrapped themselves, lay down huddled together, fell immediately into an exhausted slumber.
Shef woke as the sun began to pierce through the branches. He rose, careful not to disturb the still-sleeping girl, and crawled out of the shelter. Concealed beneath the boughs he found flint and steel. Should he risk a fire? he wondered. Better not. They had water and warmth, but there was no food to cook. He would take what he had found with them when they left. Slowly, Shef was beginning to think of the future. He owned nothing now, save his breeches, so every single possession he accumulated would be precious.
He did not think they would be disturbed, not this day. They were still well within range of the Viking fighting patrols he had seen on his way into the camp, but the Vikings would have other things to think about for a while. Everyone would be at the camp, counting casualties, deciding what to do—probably fighting among themselves for control of the Army. Had Sigurth the Snakeeye survived? Shef wondered. If he had, even he might have trouble in reimposing his authority on a shaken army.
As for the English, Shef knew that as he and Godive had left the river and started to make their way into the woods there had been other folk about. The refugees from King Edmund's army, the ones who had fled, or at any rate decided to retreat before the crisis of the battle. They were all making their way to their respective homes as fast as ever they could. Shef doubted if there would be an Englishman within five miles of the Viking encampment by now. They had guessed that their lord's attack had failed, and that he was dead.
Shef hoped so, remembering what his pirate guide had told him about Ivar's ways with defeated kings.
He lay in the sun on the blanket, feeling his body relax. A muscle jumped irregularly in his thigh. He waited for it to stop, looking at the puffed blisters on both hands.
“Will it be better if I prick them?” Godive was at his side, kneeling in her shift, holding up a long thorn. He nodded.
As she began to work on his left hand and he felt the slow tears rolling down his arm, he held her warm shoulder with his right.
“Tell me,” he said. “Why did you stand between me and Ivar? How was it with you and him?”
Her eyes lowered, Godive seemed unsure what to say. “You know I was given to him? By—by Sigvarth.”
“By my father. Yes. I know. What happened then?”
She kept her eyes down, studying his blisters attentively. “They gave me to him at a banquet, with everyone watching. I—I only had this to wear. Some of them do terrible things to their women, you know, like Ubbi. They say he takes them in front of his men, and if things do not go to his liking he hands them over to the men then and there, to be used by all. You know I was a virgin—I am a virgin. I was very frightened.”
“You are virgin still?”
She nodded. “Ivar said nothing to me then, but he had me brought to him in his tent that night, and he talked to me. He told me—he told me that he was not like other men.
“He is not a gelding, you know. He has sired children, or so he says. But he told me where other men can feel desire just at the sight of flesh, he needs—something else.”
“Do you know what that something is?” asked Shef sharply, remembering the hints Hund had given.
Godive shook her head. “I do not know. I do not understand. But he says that if men were to know how it is with him, they would mock him. In his youth the other young men called him the Boneless One because he could not do as they do. But, he says, he killed many men for mocking him and discovered it was a pleasure to him. Now all those who laughed are dead, and only the closest suspect how it is with him. If everyone had known, Sigvarth would not have dared to hand me over to him openly and publicly, as he did. Now, he says, men call him the Boneless because they fear him. They say that at night he turns—not into a wolf or a bear, like other skin- changers—but into a dragon, a great long-worm, that creeps out in the night for its prey. Anyway, that is what they think now.”
“And what do you think?” asked Shef. “Do you remember what they did to your father? He is your father, not mine, but even I felt sorrow for him. And though Ivar did not do that, he gave the orders. That is the kind of thing he does. He may have spared you rape, but who knows what else he had in mind for you. You say he has children. Has anyone seen the mothers?”
Godive turned over Shef's palm and began to lance the blisters that covered it.
“I don't know. He is hateful and cruel to men, but that is because he fears them. He fears they are more manly than he is. But how do they show it, this manliness? By violating those who are too weak, by taking their pleasure from pain. Maybe Ivar has been sent by God—as a punishment for men's sins.”
“Do you wish I had left you with him?” Hardness edged Shef's voice.
Slowly Godive bent over him, abandoning her thorn. He felt her cheek against his naked chest, her hands sliding along his sides. As he pulled her up next to him, her loose shift slid from one bare shoulder. Shef found himself staring at a naked breast, its nipple girlish pink. The only woman he had seen before like this was the slut Truda—heavy, sallow, coarse-fleshed. His roughened hands began to stroke Godive's skin with disbelieving tenderness. If he had thought of this happening—and he had, often, lying by himself in fisherman's hut or deserted forge—it was years in the future, after they had found a place, after he had deserved her and made a home where they could be safe. Now, in the wood, in the clearing, in the sunlight, without blessing of priest or consent from parents…
“You are a better man than Ivar or Sigvarth or any other man I have ever met,” sobbed Godive, her face still buried in his shoulder. “I knew you would come for me. I only feared they would kill you for it.”
He pulled at her shift, her legs squirming beneath him as she turned onto her back.
“We should both be dead by now. It is so good to be alive, with you—”
“There is no blood between us, we have different fathers, different mothers—”
In the sunlight he entered her. Eyes watched from a bush; breath drew in, in envy.
