An hour later, Shef lay on the soft grass, in the sunshine where the rays of the now-hot sun came through the upper branches of the oak trees. He was torpid, completely relaxed. He was not asleep. Or he was, but at some dim level he remained awake, conscious that Godive had slipped away. He had been thinking of the future, of where they could go: into the marshes, he thought, remembering his night spent with the king's thane Edrich. He was still conscious of the sun on his skin, of the soft turf beneath his body, but they seemed further away. This had happened before—in the Viking camp. His mind was rising from the forest clearing, traveling out beyond the body, beyond the heart's confines….
A voice spoke to him—rough, gravelly, laden with authority. “Of mighty men,” it said, “the maid you have taken.” Shef knew he was somewhere else. He was at a forge. Everything was familiar: the hiss as he wound the wet rags round the scorching handles of the tongs, the heft in his back and shoulder muscles as he lifted the red-hot metal out of the heart of the fire, the scrape and scratch of the top of his leather apron across his chest, the automatic duck and shake of the head as the sparks flew up toward his hair. But it was not his forge, back in Emneth, nor Thorvin's forge within the enclosure of the rowan berries. He sensed round him an enormous space, a gigantic open hall so high he could not see the top, just mighty pillars and columns leading away to the top where the smoke clung.
He took the heavy hammer and began to beat out a shape from the formless mass glowing on his anvil. What that shape should be he did not know. Yet his hands knew, for they moved expertly and without hesitation, shifting the tongs, turning the bloom, striking from one direction and then another. It was no spear-blade or axe-head, no ploughshare or coulter. It seemed to be a wheel, but a wheel with many teeth, sharp-pointed ones, like a dog's. Shef watched with fascination as the thing came to life beneath his blows. He knew, in his heart, that what he was doing was impossible. No one could make a shape like that straight from a forge. And yet—he could see how it might be done, if you made the teeth separately and then fitted them all together on the wheel you had originally made. But what would the point of it all be? Maybe, if you had one wheel like that, turning one way, up and down like a wall, and another wheel, turning the other way, flat and level with the ground, then, if the teeth on the one wheel matched with the teeth on the other, the first could drive the second round.
But what would be the point of that? There was a point. It had something to do with the object, the giant construction, twice man-height over by one wall, just beyond his vision in the dimness.
Shef realized as his senses cleared that there were other figures looking at him, figures on the same enormous scale as the hall. He could not see them clearly, and he did not dare look up for more than moments from his work, but he caught their presence unmistakably. They were standing together and watching him, even discussing him, he thought. They were Thorvin's gods, the gods of the Way.
Nearest to him was a broad and powerful shape, an immensely scaled-up Viga-Brand, giant biceps muscles rolling beneath a short-sleeved tunic. That must be Thor, thought Shef. His expression was scornful, hostile, faintly anxious. Behind the shape was another god—keen-eyed, sharp-faced, thumbs stuck into a silver belt, eyeing Shef with a kind of concealed approval, as if he were a horse to be bought, a thoroughbred going at a bargain price from a foolish owner.
That one is on my side, thought Shef. Or maybe he thinks I am on his.
Others clustered behind the two: tallest of them, and furthest away, a god leaning on a mighty spear with a triangular head.
Shef became aware of two other things. He was hamstrung. As he moved around the forge, his legs trailed behind him uselessly, making him take the weight on his arms and pull himself from one place to another. High stools, stocks of wood and benches were littered around in seemingly random fashion, but actually, he realized, to support him as he went from one workplace to another. He could prop himself on his legs, stand, like a man balancing on two stout props, but there was no spring, no movement at all from the thigh muscles to the calf. A dull ache spread upward from his knees.
And there was someone else watching him, not one of the mighty figures, but a tiny one, down in the shadows of the smoke-filled hall, like an ant, or a mouse peering out from the wainscoting. It was Thorvin! No, it was not Thorvin, but a smaller and a slighter man with a long face and sharp expression, both accentuated by the thinning hair falling back from the high forehead. But it was someone dressed like Thorvin, all in white, with the rowan berries round his neck. He had something of the same expression too, thoughtful, intensely interested, but here also, cautious and fearful. The small figure was trying to speak to him.
“Who are you, boy? Are you a wanderer from the realms of men, set for a while in Volund's place? How have you come here, and by what fortune did you find the Way?”
Shef shook his head, pretending it was just a toss to keep the sparks out of his eyes. He tossed the wheel aside into a bucket of water and began to set to another piece of work. The three quick raps, the turn, the three raps again, and a glowing something flying through the air into the cold water, to be instantly replaced on the anvil by another. What he was doing Shef did not know, but it filled him with wild excitement and a furious impatient glee, like a man who would one day be free and did not want his jailer to know the joy inside him.
Shef realized that one of the giant figures was coming toward him—the tallest of them, the one with the spear. The mouse-man saw too and ducked back into the shadows, now visible only as the palest of blurs in the gloom.
A finger like the trunk of an ash turned Shef's chin upward. One eye looked down at him, from a face like the blade of an axe: straight nose, jutting chin, sharp gray beard, wide, wide cheekbones. It was a face that would have made Ivar's seem a relief, as something at least comprehensible, ravaged only by human passions like envy, hate and cruelty. This was far different: One touch of the thoughts behind that mask, Shef knew, and any human mind would go insane.
Yet it did not seem entirely hostile, more thoughtful, considering.
“You have far to go, mannikin,” it said. “Yet you have begun well. Pray that I do not call you to me too soon.”
“Why would you call me, High One?” said Shef, amazing himself with his own temerity.
The face smiled like a glacier calving. “Do not ask,” it said. “The wise man does not pry or peek like a maiden searching for a lover. He looks even now, the gray fierce wolf, into Asgarth's doors.”
The finger dropped, the great hand came sweeping across, over forge and anvil and tools, over benches and buckets and the smith all together, brushing them all away like a man sweeping nutshells from a blanket. Shef felt himself hurled into the air, spinning end over end, apron flying away from him, his last memory the little face-shaped blur in the shadows, watching and marking him.
In a heartbeat he was back on the grass, back beneath the open sky of England in the forest clearing. But the sun had moved off him, leaving him in shadow, cold and suddenly afraid.
Where was Godive? She had crept from his side for a moment, but then—Shef was on his feet, wide awake, staring round for an enemy. Tumult in the bushes, thrashing and fighting and the sound of a woman trying to scream with a hand over her mouth and an arm round her throat.
As Shef sprang toward the struggle, men rose from their cover behind the tree-trunks, and closed on him like the fingers of doom. Leading them came Muirtach the Gaddgedil, a newly livid weal across his face and an expression of bitter, contained, contented fury twisting it.
“Nearly you got away, boy,” he said. “You should have kept running, not stopped to try out Ivar's woman. But a hot prick knows no sense. It will be cold soon enough.”
Hard hands closed on Shef's shoulders as he lunged towards the bushes, desperate to reach Godive. Had they seized her already? How had they found them? Had they left some trail?
A jeering laugh rose above the babble of Gaddgedlar voices. Shef recognized it, even as he writhed and fought, drawing all the Vikings to him. It was the laugh of an Englishman. Of his half brother. Alfgar.
