different. At the thought of what might have happened—might still happen—he felt his belly give an unaccustomed twinge, as if his manhood was trying to crawl back within him. He turned his face out to the far shore, to ensure no expression betrayed him. He had been taught since he could crawl,
He knew also that in the gamble he was about to take, nothing could be less safe than a show of insecurity. He meant to bait his deadly hosts, draw them into his story: appear as a challenger, not a suppliant.
He meant to offer them a dare so shocking and so public that they would have no choice but to take it. It was not a plan that allowed half measures.
As the boat nosed into the jetty ropes were thrown, caught, snubbed round bollards, still with the same elaborate air of carelessness. A man was looking down into the boat. If this had been a trading port he might have asked the sailors what cargo, what name, where from? Here the man raised one eyebrow.
“Brand. From England.”
“There are many men called Brand.”
At a sign two of the ship's crewmen swung a gangplank from ship to jetty. Brand strolled across it, thumbs in belt, and stood facing the dockmaster. On the level boards he was looking down. Far down. He noted with inner pleasure the slight shift of the eyes as the dockmaster, no stripling himself, weighed up Brand's bulk, realized that man-to-man, at least, he was outmatched.
“Some men call me Viga-Brand. I come from Halogaland, in Norway, where men grow bigger than Danes.”
“Killer-Brand. I have heard of you. But there are many killers here. It needs more than a name to be welcome.”
“I have news. News for the kinsmen.”
“It had better be news worth hearing if you disturb the kinsmen, coming here without leave or passport.”
“News worth hearing it is.” Brand looked directly into the dockmaster's eyes. “Come to hear it yourself. Tell your men to come and hear it. Anyone who cannot be bothered to hear what I have to say will curse his laziness till the last day he lives. But of course if you all have an urgent appointment in the privy let me not ask you to keep your breeches up.”
Brand brushed past the other and strode wordlessly toward the plume of smoke rising from the great longhouse, the hall of the noble kinsmen, the place no enemy had seen and left alive and free to tell the tale—the Braethraborg itself. His men trooped off the ship and silently began to follow him.
The dockmaster's lips twitched, finally, with amusement. He made a sign and his men, picking their spears and bows from concealment, began to straggle inland. A flag dipped in acknowledgement from the still-vigilant outposts on the headland two miles off.
Light shone into the hall from many open shutters, but Brand halted when he got inside to let his eyes adjust, to look around, to get the feel of his audience. In later years, he knew, this scene would be famous in song and saga—if he played it right. In the next few minutes he would gain either imperishable glory or unthinkable death.
Inside the hall many men were sitting, standing, loitering, playing at one game or another. None looked at him as he came in, or at the other men silently filtering in behind him, but he knew they had registered his presence. As his eyes cleared he saw slowly that though there was no apparent order in the hall, indeed a careful avoidance of it—a pretense that all warriors, all true
He walked toward them, the padding of his soft seaman's shoes audible in what had indiscernibly become silence.
He reached the four men. “Greetings!” he said, pitching his voice loud for the audience clustered around and behind him. “I have news. News for the sons of Ragnar.”
One of the four glanced over his shoulder at him, went back to paring his fingernails with a knife. “Great news it must be, for a man to come to the Braethraborg without invitation or passport.”
“Great news it is.” Brand filled his lungs and controlled his breathing. “For it is news of the death of Ragnar.”
Utter silence now. The man who had spoken continued his paring, intent on his left index finger, the knife slicing, slicing. Blood sprang out, the knife cut on down, down to the quick and the bone. The man made no sound and no movement.
A second one of the four spoke, picking up a stone piece from the checkerboard to make his move, a powerful, thick-shouldered man with grizzled hair. “Tell us,” he remarked, his voice carefully unperturbed, deliberately refusing to show unmanly emotion. “How did our old father Ragnar die? For it is not to be surprised at, since he was getting on in years.”
“It all began on the coast of England, where he was wrecked. According to the story I heard, he was caught by the men of King Ella.” Brand changed his voice slightly, as if to match, or to mock, the second Ragnarsson's studied pretense of imperturbability. “I do not suppose they had much trouble, for, as you say, he was getting on in years. Maybe he offered no resistance.”
The grizzled man still held his draughtsman, his fingers closing on it tighter, tighter. Blood spurted out from under his fingernails, splashed on the board. The man put the piece down, moved it once, twice, lifted the captured draughtsman to the side. “I take, Ivar,” he remarked.
The man he was playing with spoke. He was a man with hair so fair it was almost white, swept back off his pale face and held with a linen headband. He looked at Brand with eyes as colorless as frozen water, under lashes that never blinked.
“What did they do once they had caught him?”
Brand looked carefully into the pale man's unblinking stare. He shrugged, still elaborately unconcerned.
“They took him to King Ella's court at Eoforwich. It was no great matter, for they thought him only a common pirate, of no importance. I believe they asked him some questions, had some little sport with him. But then, tiring of him, they decided they might as well put him to death.”
In the dead silence Brand studied his fingernails, conscious that his baiting of the Ragnarssons had almost reached its climax of danger. He shrugged again.
“Well. They gave him to the Christ-priests in the end. I expect he did not seem worthy of death from the warriors.”
A flush shot into the pale man's cheeks. He seemed to be holding his breath, almost choking. The flush deepened, deepened till his face was scarlet. He began to sway to and fro in his chair, a kind of coughing coming from deep in his throat. His eyes bulged, the scarlet deepened to purple—in the dim light of the hall, almost to black. Slowly the swaying stopped, the man seemed to win some deep internal battle within himself, the coughing died, the face ebbed back to a startling pallor.
The fourth man who stood by his three brothers, watching the draughts game, was leaning on a spear. He had not moved or spoken, had kept his eyes down. Slowly now he raised them to look at Brand. For the first time the tall messenger flinched. There was something in the eyes he had heard of but had never believed: the pupils astonishingly black, the iris around them as white as new-fallen snow—startlingly clear—and surrounding the black totally, like the paint around an iron shield-boss. The eyes glinted like moonlight on metal.
“How did King Ella and the Christ-priests decide to kill the old man, in the end?” asked the fourth of the Ragnarssons, his voice low, almost gentle. “I suppose you will be telling us it did not take much doing.”
Brand answered bluntly and truthfully, taking no more risks. “They put him in the serpent-pit, the worm-yard, the orm-garth. I understand there was some little trouble, as to begin with the snakes would not bite and then— from what I heard—Ragnar bit them first. But in the end they bit him and he died. It was a slow death, and no weapon-mark on him. Not one to be proud of in Valhalla.”
The man with the strange eyes did not move a muscle. There was a pause, a long pause, as the intently watching audience waited for him to make some sign that he had heard, for him to show some failure in self-control like his brothers. It did not come. The man straightened finally, tossed the spear he had been leaning on to a bystander, hooked his thumbs in his belt, prepared to speak.
A grunt front the bystander, a grunt of surprise, drawing all eyes to him. Silently he held up the tough
