Ivar reached again, pulled out a third and last object. This time he stared at it with genuine puzzlement. It was an eel. The snake-like fish of the marshes.
“What is this?” Silence.
“Can anyone tell me?” Still only headshakes from the warriors crowding round. A slight stir from one of the slaves of the monks of York, crouching by his machine. Ivar's eyes missed nothing.
“I grant a boon to whoever can tell me the meaning of this.”
The slave straightened up doubtfully, realizing all eyes were now on him.
“One boon, lord, given freely?”
Ivar nodded.
“It is what we call in English an
“Because I must be the capon?” inquired Ivar. The slave gulped. “You granted a boon, lord, to whoever would speak. I choose mine. I choose freedom.”
“You are free to go,” said Ivar, stepping back from the ship's thwart. The slave gulped again, looking round at the bearded, impassive faces. He stepped forward slowly, gained confidence as no one moved to hinder him, leapt to the side of the ship, and then, in two moves, to a trailing oar and to the side of the river. He was off like a flash, heading for the nearest cover, running in awkward bounds like a frog.
“Eight, nine, ten,” said Ivar to himself. The silver-mounted spear was in his hand; he poised, took two paces sideways. The leaf-blade took the running slave neatly between shoulders and neck, hurling him forward.
“Would anyone else care to call me a capon?” inquired Ivar generally.
Someone already has, thought Dolgfinn.
Later that night, after the ships had moored a cautious two miles north of the challenge-ground, some of Ivar's most senior skippers were talking quietly, very quietly, round their campfire well away from Ivar's tent.
“They call him the Boneless,” said one, “because he cannot take a woman.”
“He can,” said another. “He has sons and daughters.”
“Only if he does strange things first. Not many women survive them. They say—”
“No,” cut in a third man, “do not speak. I will tell you why he is the Boneless. It is because he is like the wind, which comes from anywhere. He could be behind us now.”
“You are all wrong,” said Dolgfinn. “I am not a Wayman, but I have friends who are. I had friends who were. They say this, and I believe them. He is the
“But he has legs,” queried one of his listeners.
“On this side, he does. Those who have seen him in the Otherworld, the Waymen, say that there he crawls on his belly in the shape of a great worm, a dragon. He is not a man of one skin. And that is why it will take more than steel to kill him.”
Experimentally, Shef flexed the two-foot-long, two-inch-wide strip of metal that Udd, the little freedman, had brought him. The muscles on his arms stood out as he did so: muscles strong enough to bend a soft iron slave- collar by main force alone. The mild steel gave an inch, two inches. Sprang back.
“It works on the shooters all right,” offered Oswi, watching with interest a ring of catapulteers.
“I'm wondering if it would work for anything else,” said Shef. “A bow?” He flexed the strip again, this time putting it over one knee and trying to get the weight of his body behind it. The metal resisted him, giving only a couple of inches. Too strong for a bow. Or too strong for a man's arms? Yet there were many things that were too strong for a man's arms alone. Catapults. Heavy weights. The yard of a longship. Shef hefted the metal once more. Somewhere in here there was a solution to his puzzle: a mixture of the new knowledge the Way sought and the old knowledge he kept on finding. Now was not the time for him to work the puzzle out.
“How many of these have you made, Udd?”
“Maybe a score. After we refitted the shooters, that is.”
“Stay in the forge tomorrow. Make more. Take as many men and as much iron as you need. I want fivescore—tenscore—as many as you can make.”
“Does that mean we'll miss the battle?” cried Oswi. “Never get a chance to shoot old ‘Dead Level’ once?”
“All right. Udd chooses just one man from each crew to help him. The rest of you get your chance at the battle.”
If there is a battle, Shef added silently to himself. But that is not my plan. Not a battle for us, at any rate. If England is the gods' chessboard, and we are all pieces in their game, then to win the game I must clear some of the pieces off the board. No matter how it looks to the others.
In the early morning mist King Burgred's army, the army of the Mark—three thousand swordsmen and as many slaves, drivers, muleteers and whores—prepared to continue its march in the true English fashion: slowly, grumpily and inefficiently, but for all that, with mounting expectation. Thanes wandered toward the latrines, or eased themselves onto any unoccupied spot. Slaves who had not done so the night before began to grind meal for the everlasting porridge. Fires began to burn, pots began to bubble, the voices of Burgred's guardsmen grew hoarse as they attempted to impose the king's will on his loyal but disorganized subjects: get the bastards fed, get their bowels emptied, and get them moving, as Cwichelm the marshal endlessly repeated. Because today we move into enemy territory. Cross the Ouse, advance on Ely. We can expect a battle any time.
Driven on by the fury of their king at the violation of his own pavilion, by the exhortations of their priests and the near-incoherent rage of Wulfgar the dreaded heimnar, the army of the Mark struck its tents and donned its armor.
In the dragon-boats, matters went differently. A shake from the ship-watch, a word from each skipper. The men were over the side in minutes, and every one dressed, booted, armed and ready to fight. Two riders trotted down from the advanced pickets half a mile away, reporting noise to the west and scouts sent out. Another word, this time from Ivar, and half the men in each crew stood down immediately, to prepare food for themselves and the others still formed up. Detachments swarmed round each of the ton-weight machines in the six lead ships, attaching ropes and rigging pulleys. When the word came they would sway them up from the strengthened yards, drop each one onto its waiting carriage. But not yet. “Wait till the last moment and then move fast” was the pirates' watchword. The Wayman camp, four miles off in dense beechwood, made no sound and showed no lights. Shef, Brand, Thorvin and all their lieutenants had been round again and again the day before, impressing it on the most important Viking and dullest ex-slave. No noise. No straggling. Stay in your blankets till you're called. Get some rest. Breakfast by units. Then form up. Don't go outside the wood.
Obeying his own orders, Shef lay alert in his tent, listening to the muted bustle of the army waking. Today was a day of crisis, he thought. But not the last crisis. Maybe the last one he could plan. It was critically important, then, that this day should go well, to provide him with the start, the reserve of force that he would need before all was over.
On the pallet beside him lay Godive. They had been together four days now, and yet he had still not taken her, not so much as stripped off her shift. It would be easy to do. His flesh was hard, remembering the one time he had done it. She would not resist. Not only did she expect it, he knew she wondered why he had not. Was he another like the Boneless? Or was he less of a man than Alfgar? Shef imagined the cry she would make as he penetrated her.
Who could blame her for crying? She still winced every time she moved. Like his, her back must be scarred forever.
Yet she still had both eyes. She had never faced the mercy of Ivar, the
Something else entered him instead, something cold and fierce and longsighted. It was not today that
