wall a fourth time, red-hot brands urging him on. Shef squeezed the release slowly.
The thump, the line rising and falling—clear through the center of Ella's chest and straining heart, and on into the ground behind him, almost between Muirtach's feet. As the king was hurled backward by the force of the blow, Shef saw his face change. Relax in peace.
Slowly the crowd rippled, every face in it turning to face the tower from which the shot had come. Ivar bent over the corpse, but then straightened, turning too, hands clenched.
Shef took one of the new halberds and went down the wall toward the throng, wanting to be recognized. At the edge of the semicircle he stopped, vaulted onto the battlement.
“I am only a carl,” he called out, “not a jarl. But I have three things to say to the Army:
“First, the sons of Ragnar fulfilled this bit of their Bragi boast because they had no heart to fulfill the rest.
“And second, whatever the Snakeeye says, when he sneaked into York by the back door with the priest holding it open for him, he was not thinking of the Army's good, but of his own and of his brothers'. He had no mind to fight and no mind to share.”
Shouts of anger, the Gaddgedlar whirling, looking for the gate into the city and the steps up to where Shef stood. Others obstructing them, grabbing at their plaids. Shef raised his voice even more above the din.
“And third: to treat a man and a warrior the way they treated King Ella has no
The work of a
Some people were shouting agreement. Shef could see Brand down there, axe raised now and ready to strike, his men clustering behind him, thrusting off Ragnarsson followers with their shields. A stream of men coming from the other side of the circle to join him—Egil the Heimdall-worshipper at their head. Who was that moving out? Sigvarth, face flushed as he shouted reply to some insult. Skuli the Bald wavering by Ella's corpse as Ubbi bellowed something at him.
The whole Army was moving. Dividing. After a hundred heartbeats there was space between the two groups and both were edging further away from each other. The Ragnarssons in front of the furthest group; in front of the nearer one, Brand, Thorvin, a handful of others.
“It is the Way against the rest,” muttered the Frey-worshipper behind Shef. “And some of your friends thrown in. Two to one against us, I reckon.”
“You have split the Army,” said a Hebridean, one of Magnus's crew. “It is a great deed, but a rash one.”
“The machine was wound,” replied Shef. “All I had to do was shoot it.
Chapter Six
As the army marched away from the walls of York, snowflakes started to drift out of the windless sky. Not the Great Army. The Great Army would never exist again. That part of the once-great army which now refused the command of the Ragnarssons and could no longer live in fellowship with them—perhaps twenty long hundreds of men, two thousand four hundred by the Roman count. With them were a host of horses, pack-horses, pack-mules and fifty wooden carts creaking along with their burden of heavy loot: bronze and iron, smith-tools and grindstones—along with the chests of poor coinage and a meager handful of true silver from the division. Their burden, too, of wounded men not fit to march or straddle a pony.
From the city walls, the rest of the army watched them go. Some of the younger and wilder members had whooped and jeered, even launched a few arrows at the ground behind their former messmates. But the silence of the marching column, and of their own leaders on the wall, cast down their spirits. They pulled their cloaks tighter about them, and looked up at the sky, the lowering horizon, the frostbitten grass on the slopes outside the city. Grateful for their own billets, stored firewood, shuttered windows and draftless walls.
“It will snow harder before tomorrow's dawn,” muttered Brand from his position at the rear of the column, the main point of danger till they were well past the Ragnarssons' reach.
“You are Norsemen,” replied Shef. “I thought snow would not bother you.”
“All right while the frost stays hard,” said Brand. “If it snows and then thaws, like it does in this country, we'll be marching through mud. Tires the men out, tires the beasts out, slows the carts even more. And when you're marching in those conditions, you need food. You know how long it takes an ox-team to eat its own weight? But we must put some distance between us and those behind. No telling what they'll do now.”
“Where are we making for?” asked Shef.
“I don't know. Who's leading this army anyway? Everybody else thinks you are.”
Shef fell silent, in consternation.
As the last bundled figures of the rear-guard disappeared from view among the ruined houses of outer York, the Ragnarssons on the wall turned and looked at each other.
“Good riddance,” said Ubbi. “Fewer mouths to feed, fewer hands to share. What are a few hundred Way-folk anyway? Soft hands, weak stomachs.”
“No one ever called Viga-Brand soft-handed,” replied Halvdan. Since the holmgang he had been slow to join in his brothers' attacks on Shef and his faction. “They're not all Way-folk, either.”
“It doesn't matter what they are,” said Sigurth. “They're enemies now. That's all you ever need to know about anyone. But we can't afford to fight them just yet. We have to keep our hold on…”
He jerked his thumb at the little cluster a few yards away from them on the wall: Wulfhere the archbishop with a knot of black monks, among them the scrawny pallor of Erkenbert the deacon, now master of the mint.
Ivar laughed, suddenly. His three brothers looked at him with unease.
“We don't need to fight them,” he said. “Their own bane marches with them. For some it does.”
Wulfhere too scowled at the retreating column. “Some of the blood-wolves gone,” he said. “If they had gone earlier we might never have needed to treat with the rest. But now they are within our gates.” He spoke in Latin, to make sure hostile ears did not overhear.
“We must, in these days of strife, live by the wisdom of the serpent,” replied Erkenbert in the same language, “and by the cunning of the dove. But both our foes without the gates and those within may yet be overcome.”
“Those within I understand. There are fewer of them now, and they may be fought again. Not by us in Northumbria. But by the kinds of the South—Burgred of Mercia, Ethelred of Wessex. That is why we sent south the crippled thane of East Anglia, slung between his ponies. He will show the southern kings the nature of the Vikings and wake their drowsy spirits to war.
“But what, Erkenbert, is your plan for those now marching away? What can we do in dead of winter?”
The little deacon smiled. “Those marching in winter need food, and the ravagers of the North are accustomed to take it. But every mouthful they steal now is one less for a man's children before spring comes. Even churls will fight with that incentive.
“I have seen to it that the word of their coming will run before them.”
The attacks began as the short winter daylight seeped from the sky. At first they were little more than scuffles: a churl appearing from behind a tree, launching a stone or an arrow downwind, and then fleeing hastily, not even waiting to see if he hit the mark. Then a little knot of them coming in closer. The marching Vikings unslung bows if they had them, tried to keep the bowstrings dry, shot back. Otherwise they ducked heads behind shields, let the missiles bounce off, shouted derisively to their foes to stand and fight. Then one, irritated, launched a spear at a darting figure who seemed to come too close, missed and plunged off the track with a curse to recover it. For an instant a snow-flurry hid him. When it cleared he was nowhere to be seen. With difficulty his crewmates halted the column, plodding, head-down, and set off grimly to rescue him, a group thirty strong. As they lurched back with the
