An hour later, his new team dismissed to store what they now called their machine, Shef walked thoughtfully towards the booth of Hund and Ingulf, where the sick and injured lay. Hund met him coming out of the booth, wiping bloody hands. “How are they?” Shef asked. He meant the casualties from his other machine, the torsion- catapult or “twist-shooter” as the Vikings called it, the dart-machine which had released King Ella into death.
“They'll live. One lost three fingers. Could as easily have been his hand, or arm for that matter. The other has most of his rib cage stove in. Ingulf had to cut him to get a piece out of his lung. But it's healing well. I've just smelt his stitches. No sign of the flesh-rot. That's two men badly hurt by that machine in four days. What's the matter with it?”
“Nothing wrong with the machine. It's these Norsemen. Strong men, proud of their strength. They twist the cogwheels tight—then one of them will throw his weight on the lever just to wring an extra turn out of it. The bow-arm snaps—and someone gets hurt.”
“Then it's not the machine at fault, but the men who use it?”
“Exactly. What I need are men who will take so many counted turns and no more, who will do what they're told.”
“Not many of those in this camp.”
Shef stared at his friend. “Not speaking Norse, certainly.” The seed of an idea had been planted.
The winter dark upon them now, he would take a candle and continue to work on the new
“Nothing left to eat, I suppose, but the rye porridge?”
Silently Hund passed him his bowl.
Sigvarth looked round with a trace of uncertainty. The priests of the Way had formed the holy circle, within the rowan-hung cords, spear planted and fire burning. Once again the laymen of the Way were excluded: no one was present in the dim, sail-roofed shed except the six white-clad priests and Sigvarth Jarl of the Small Isles.
“It is time we came to a clear understanding, Sigvarth,” said Farman the priest, “and that is, how sure are you that you are the father of the boy Shef?”
“He says so,” replied Sigvarth. “Everyone thinks he is. And his mother claims him—and she should know. Of course she might have done anything once she escaped from me—a girl on the loose for the first time. She might have enjoyed herself.” Yellow teeth flashed. “But I don't think so. She was a lady.”
“I think I know the main story,” said Farman. “You took her from her husband. But a thing I cannot understand is this: She escaped from you, or so we hear. Are you usually as careless as that with your captives? How did she escape? And how could she have got back to her husband?”
Sigvarth rubbed his jaw reflectively. “This is twenty years back now. Still, it was funny. I remember pretty well.
“What happened was this: We were coming back from a trip down South. Hadn't gone very well. As we came back I decided, just for luck, to look into the Wash and see what we could find. Usual stuff. Pushed ashore. English all over the place, as always. Came down on this little village, Emneth, grabbed everyone we could. One of them was the thane's lady—I forget her name now.
“But I don't forget her. She was good. I took her for myself. I was thirty then, she was maybe twenty. That's often a good combination. She'd had a child, she was broken in all right. But I got the impression she had not had much joy from her husband. She fought me fiercely to start with, but I'm used to that—they have to do it to show they aren't whores. Once she knew there was no choice, though, she buckled down to it. Had a trick, a way to her —she used to lift herself right off the ground, me too, when she reached her moment.”
Thorvin grunted disapprovingly. Farman, one hand clutching the dried stallion-penis that was his badge of office, as the hammer was Thorvin's, hushed him with a gesture.
“But it's not so much fun in a rolling longship. After we pushed up the coast a bit, I looked out for a good place. Bit of
“So, I picked a spot. Stretch of beach backed by good, high cliffs. One stream leading down to it through a gully.
I put half a dozen men there just to make sure none of the girls we'd caught escaped. I put one man on each of the cliffs to either side, with a horn to blow if he saw any sign of a rescue party turning up. And because of the cliffs, I gave each of them a rope tied to a stake. If we were surprised, they blew the horns, the party in the gully ran back, and the ones on the cliffs slid down the ropes. We had the boats, three of them, tethered bow and stem —bow to the beach, stern to an anchor well out to sea. In a hurry all we had to do was pile in, loose the bow-ropes, haul ourselves off on the stern-rope and set sail. But the main thing is, I had the beach sealed off tight as a nun.“
“You would know,” said Thorvin.
Sigvarth's teeth flashed again. “None better, unless he's a bishop.”
“But she got away,” Farman prompted.
“Right. We had our fun. I did it with her, on the sand, twice. It got dark. Now, I wasn't passing her round, but the men had a dozen girls they were sharing, and I felt like joining in—hah, I was thirty then! So I hauled in my boat, I left my clothes on the sand and got in it with her. I pulled out on the stern-rope, maybe thirty yards out, and made fast. I left her there, dived in the sea and swam back. Fine, big blonde girl there I fancied. She'd been making a lot of noise.
“But after a while—I'd got a roast rib in one hand and a mug of ale in the other—the men started shouting. Just outside the light of our fires there was a shape on the sand, a big shape. Beached whale, we thought, but when we ran over, it wheezed and came at the first man there. He backed off, we looked for our weapons. I thought it might be a hrosswhale.
“And right that moment there was a lot of shouting from the top of one cliff. The lad up there, Stig was his name, shouting for help. Not blowing his horn, mind, but wanting help. Sounded as if he was fighting something. So I climbed up the rope to see what it was.”
“And what was it?”
“Nothing, when I got there. But he said, near in tears, he'd been attacked by a skoffin.”
“A skoffin?” said Vigleik. “What's that?”
Skaldfinn laughed. “You must talk more to old wives, Vigleik. A skoffin is the opposite of a skuggabaldur. The one is the get of a male fox and a she-cat, the other of a tom and a vixen.”
“Well,” Sigvarth concluded, “by this time everyone was getting unsettled. So I left Stig up there, told him not to be a fool, slid back down the rope and told everyone to get back on board.
“But when we hauled the boat in, the woman was gone. We searched the beach. I checked the party in the gully—they hadn't moved an inch while we were getting ready, swore no one had passed. I went up both ropes to both cliffs. No one had seen anything. In the end I was so angry, what with one thing and another, that I threw Stig down the cliff for sniveling. He broke his neck and died. I had to pay wergild for him when I got home. But I never saw the woman again till last year. And then I was too busy to ask for her story.”
“Aye. We know what you were busy with,” said Thorvin. “The business of the Boneless One.”
“Are you a Christian to whine about it?”
“What it comes to,” said Farman, “is that she could have swum away in the confusion. You swam to shore.”
“She would have had to do it fully dressed, for her clothes were gone too. And not just to shore. A long way, in the dark sea, to get round the cliffs. For she was not on the beach, I am sure of that.”
“A whaleross. A skoffin. A woman who vanishes and reappears carrying a child,” mused Farman. “All this could be explained. Yet there are more ways than one of explaining it.”
“You think he is not my son,” challenged Sigvarth. “You think he is the son of one of your gods. Well, I tell you: I honor no god save Ran the goddess who lives in the deep, whom drowned sailors go to. And the other world you talk of, the visions you boast of—I have heard them speak of it in camp about this Way of yours—I think them all born of drink and sour food, and one man's blather infecting another, till everyone must tell his tale of visions to keep in with the rest. There is no more sense in it than there is in skoffins. The boy is my son. He looks like me. He acts like me—like I did when I was young.”
