The Hammer and The Cross

ashwood spear he had been thrown. On it men could see indentations, marks where fingers had gripped. A slight hum of satisfaction ran round the hall.

Before the man with the strange eyes could speak, Brand interrupted, seizing the moment. Pulling his mustache thoughtfully, he remarked, “There was one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“After the snakes had bitten him, as he lay dying, Ragnar spoke. They did not understand him, of course, for he spoke in our tongue, in the norroent mal, but someone heard, someone passed it on; in the end I was fortunate enough to come by it. I have no invitation and no passport, as you said just now, but it occurred to me you might be interested enough to want to know.”

“What did he say, then, the old man dying?”

Brand lifted his voice loudly so that it filled the whole hall, like a herald issuing a challenge. “He said, ‘Gynthja mundu grisir ef galtar hag vissi.’ ”

This time there was no need to translate. The whole hall knew what Ragnar had said: “If they knew how the old boar died, how the little pigs would grunt.”

“So that is why I came uninvited,” called Brand, his voice still high and challenging. “Though some told me it might be dangerous. I am a man who likes to hear grunting. And so I came to tell the little pigs. And you must be the little pigs, from what men tell me. You, Halvdan Ragnarsson”—he nodded to the man with the knife. “You, Ubbi Ragnarsson”—the first draughts-player. “You, Ivar Ragnarsson, famous for your white hair. And you, Sigurth Ragnarsson. I see now why men call you Orm-i-auga, the Snake-eye.

“It is not likely that my news has pleased you. But I hope you will agree that it was news you should be told.”

The four men were on their feet now, all facing him, the pretense of indifference gone. As they took in his words, they nodded. Slowly, they were beginning to grin, their expressions all the same, looking for the first time as if they were all a family, all brothers, all sons of the same man. Their teeth showed.

It was the prayer of the monks and minister-men in those days: Domine, libera nos a furore normannorum—“Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Northmen.” If they had seen those faces, any sensible monk would have added immediately: Sed praesepe, Domine, a humore eorum —“But especially, Lord, from their mirth.”

“It was news we should be told,” said the Snake-eye, “and we thank you for bringing it. At the start we thought you might not be telling all the truth about this matter, and that was why we may have seemed displeased. But what you said at the end—ah, that was our father's voice. He knew someone would hear it. He knew someone would tell us. And he knew what we would do. Didn't he, boys?”

A gesture, and someone rolled forward a great round chopping block, an oak trunk sawn off. A heave from the four brothers together, and it crashed down firm on the floor. The sons of Ragnar clustered round it, facing their men, each raising one foot and placing it on the block. They spoke together, following the ritual:

“Now we stand on this block, and we make this boast, that we will—”

“…invade England in vengeance for our father”—so Halvdan said.

“…capture King Ella and kill him with torments for Ragnar's death”—so Ubbi.

“…defeat all the kings of the English and bring the land into subjection to us”—so Sigurth the Snake- eye.

“…wreak vengeance on the black crows, the Christ-priests who counseled the orm-garth”—so Ivar spoke. They ended again together:

“…and if we go back on our words let the gods of Asgarth despise us and reject us, and may we never join our father and our ancestors in their dwellings.”

As they ended, the smoke-blackened beams of the long-house were filled with a roar of approval from four hundred throats, the jarls, the nobles, the skippers, and the helmsmen of the whole pirate fleet in unison. Outside, the rank and file gathering from their booths and bunkhouses nudged each other with excitement and anticipation, knowing that a decision had been made.

“And now,” the Snake-eye yelled over the din, “pull out the tables, spread the boards. No man may inherit from his father till he has drunk the funeral ale. And so we shall drink the arval for Ragnar, drink like heroes. And in the morning we shall gather every man and every ship and take our way to England, so that they shall never forget us nor be quit of us!

“But now, drink. And, stranger, sit at our board and tell us more of our father. There will be a place for you in England once it is ours.”

Far away, Shef, the dark boy, the stepson of Wulfgar, lay on a straw pallet. The mist was still rising from the dank ground of Emneth, and only a thin old blanket covered him from it. Inside the stout-timbered wooden hall, his stepfather Wulfgar lay in comfort, if not in love, with the boy's mother, the lady Thryth. Alfgar lay in a warm bed in a room by his parents, and so too did Godive, the concubine's child, Wulfgar's daughter. At Wulfgar's homecoming they had all eaten lavishly of the roasted and the boiled, the baked and the brewed—duck and goose from the fens, pike and lamprey from the rivers.

Shef had eaten rye porridge and gone out to his solitary hut by the smithy where he worked, to have his only friend dress his new-got scars. Now he was tossing in the grip of a dream. If dream it was.

He saw a dark field somewhere on the edge of the world, lit only by a purple sky. On the field lay shapeless huddles of rags and bone and skin, white skulls and rib cages showing through the remains of gorgeous garments. Round the huddles, everywhere on the field, hopped and swarmed a great army of birds—huge black birds with black beaks, stabbing savagely into eye sockets and pecking bone-joints for a morsel of flesh or marrow. But the bodies had been picked over many times, the bones were dry; the birds began to croak loudly and peck at each other instead.

They ceased, they grew quiet, they clustered together to where four black birds were standing. They listened as the four croaked and croaked in ever louder and more menacing tones. Then the whole flock rose as one into the purple sky, circled and closed formation, then banked slowly like a single organism and flew directly toward him, toward Shef, to where he was standing. The leader flew straight at him, he could see the remorseless unblinking golden eye, the black beak pointed at his face. It did not pull back, he could not move; something was holding his head firm and rigid; he felt the black beak driving deep into the soft jelly of his eye.

Shef woke with a shout and a start, leaping straight off the pallet, clutching his thin blanket round him as he stared out of the hole in his hut's wall into a marshy dawn. His friend Hund called from the other pallet.

“What is it, Shef? What frightened you?”

For a moment he could not reply. Then it came out as a croak—he did not know what he was saying. “The ravens! The ravens are on the wing!”

Chapter Three

“Are you certain it is the Great Army itself which has landed?” Wulfgar's voice was angry but unsure. It was news he did not want to believe. But he did not dare to challenge the messenger openly.

“There is no doubt,” said Edrich, the king's thane, trusted servant of Edmund, king of the East Angles.

“And this army is led by the sons of Ragnar?”

Even more fearful news for Wulfgar, thought Shef as he listened to the debate from the back of the room. Every freeman in Emneth had crowded into their lord's hall, summoned by runners. For though a freeman in England could lose everything—land-right, folk-right, even kin-right—for failing to answer a lawful summons to arms, for that very reason it was also their right to hear all issues debated publicly before they answered any call.

Whether Shef had any right to join them was another matter. But he had not been collared as a slave yet, and the freeman standing by the door to verify presence and absence still owed Shef for his mended ploughshare. He had grunted doubtfully, looked at the sword and shabby scabbard at Shef's side, and decided not to press the point. Now Shef stood at the very back of the room among the poorest cottagers of Emneth, trying to hear without