The Hammer and The Cross

paralysis. Four toes, sticking out from each other like the arms of a starfish, but each one the size of a man's thigh, warty and gnarled like a toad's back, dripping slime. The very touch of one of those would kill from horror. The hero had just enough self-command not to shrink back with fear. The slightest movement now would be deadly dangerous. His only hope was to be a stone.

Would it see him? It must. It was coming toward him, directly toward him, padding forward with great, slow steps. One forefoot was only ten yards from him, then the other was planted on the stone almost on the lip of his crack. He must let it walk right over him, the hero thought with his last vestige of sense, let it walk right down to the river where it drank. And when he heard the first noise of drinking, of the water gushing up as it must into the belly above him, then he must strike.

As he told himself this, the head reared up only a few feet above him, and the hero caught sight of a thing of which no man had spoken. The dragon's eyes. They were white, as white as those of an old woman with the film-disease, but light shone through them, a pale light from within.

The hero realized what it was that he feared the most. Not that the legless one, the boneless longserpent, would kill him. That would almost be a relief in this terrible place. But that it would see him. And stop. And speak, before it began its long sport with him.

The dragon halted, one foot in mid-stride. And looked down.

Shef came from his sleep with a shriek and a bound, landing in one movement, just feet from the bed where they had stretched him. Three pairs of eyes stared at him, alarmed, relieved, surprised. One pair, Ingulf's, looked suddenly knowing.

“You saw something?” he said.

Shef passed a hand over his sweat-soaked hair. “Ivar. The Boneless One. As he is on the other side.”

The warriors around Ivar watched him out of the corners of their eyes, too proud to show alarm or even anxiety, yet conscious that at any time now he might break out, turn on anyone at all, even his most trusted followers or the emissaries of his brothers. He sat in a carved chair looted from one of King Burgred's baggage- carts, a horn of ale in his right hand, dipped from the great keg in front of him. In his left hand he swung the gold coronet they had taken from Burgred's head. The head itself was on a spike in the stark ring surrounding the Vikings' camp. That was why Ivar's mood was grim. He had been balked yet again.

“Sorry,” Hamal had reported. “We tried to take him alive, as you ordered, to pin him between our shields. He fought like a black bear, from his horse and then on foot. Even then we might have taken him, but he tripped, fell forward on a sword.”

“Whose sword?” Ivar had demanded, his voice quiet.

“Mine,” Hamal had said, lying. If he had indicated the young man who had really killed Burgred, Ivar would have taken out his spite and frustration on him. Hamal had a chance of surviving. Not an especially strong one, for all his past services. But Ivar had only studied his face for a moment, remarked dispassionately that he was a liar, and not a pretty one, and had left the matter there.

It would break out some other way, they were sure. As Dolgfinn went on with the tale of victory—prisoners taken, loot from the field, loot from the camp, gold and silver, women and provisions—he wished deeply that some of his own men would turn up. “Go round everywhere,” he had told them, “look at everything. Never mind the women for the moment; there'll be plenty left for you before the night's over. But in the name of old Hairy Breeks himself, find something to keep the Ragnarsson amused. Or it could be us he pegs out for the birds tomorrow.”

Ivar's eyes had shifted past Dolgfinn's shoulder. He dared to follow them. So—Greppi and the boys had found something after all. But what in the name of Hel, goddess of the dead, could it be?

It was a box, a wheeled box that could be tipped forward and trundled along like an upright coffin. Too short for a coffin. And yet there was a body inside. A dozen grinning Vikings pushed the box forward and tipped it to stand in front of Ivar. The body inside looked out at them, and licked its lips.

Ivar rose, putting down the golden coronet for the first time that evening, and stood in front of Wulfgar.

“Well,” he remarked at last. “Not such a bad job. But not one of mine, I think. Or at least I don't remember the face. Who did this to you, heimnar?”

The pale face with its bright red, incongruous lips, stared back at him, made no reply. A Viking stepped forward, knife whipping clear, ready to slice or gouge on command, but Ivar's hand stopped him.

“Think a little, Kleggi,” he urged. “It's not easy to frighten a man who's already lost so much. What's an eye or an ear now?

“So tell me, heimnar. You are a dead man already; you have been since they did this. Who did it to you? Maybe he was no friend of mine either.”

Ivar spoke in Norse, but slowly, clearly, so an Englishman could pick out some of the words.

“It was Sigvarth Jarl,” said Wulfgar. “Jarl of the Small Isles, they tell me. But I want you to know, what he did to me, I did to him. Only more. I caught him in the marsh by Ely—if you are the Ragnarsson, then you were not far away. I trimmed him finger by finger and toe by toe. He did not die till there was nothing left a knife could reach. Nothing you can do to me will equal what I did to him.”

He spat suddenly, the spittle landing on Ivar's shoe. “And so may perish all you Godless heathen! And it is my comfort. As you die in torment, for you it is only the gateway to the eternal torment. I will look down from Neorxnawang, from the plain of the blessed dead, and see you blister in the heat. Then you will beg for the smallest drop from my ale-cup to cool your agony. But God and I will refuse.”

The blue eyes stared up, jaw set in determination. Ivar laughed suddenly, throwing his head back, raised the horn in his right hand and drained it to the last drop.

“Well,” he said. “Since you mean to be so niggard with me, I will do what your Christian books say and return you good for evil. ”Throw him in the keg!“

As the men gaped, Ivar stepped forward, slashing at the straps which held Wulfgar's trunk and stumps in place. Seizing him by belt and tunic he lifted him bodily out of the container, took three heavy paces to the side, and thrust the heimnar deep into the four-foot-high, hundred-gallon butt of ale. Wulfgar bobbed, thrashing with the stumps of his arms, truncated legs not quite reaching the bottom.

Ivar put one hand on Wulfgar's head, looked round like a teacher demonstrating.

“See, Kleggi,” he pointed out. “What is a man maimed like this afraid of?”

“Of being helpless.”

He pushed the head firmly down. “Now he can take a good drink,” he remarked. “If what he says is true, he won't need it on the other side, but it's as well to be sure.”

Many of the watching Vikings laughed, calling to their mates to come and see. Dolgfinn allowed himself a smile. There was no credit in this, no glory or drengskapr. But maybe it would keep Ivar happy.

“Let him up,” he shouted. “Maybe he will offer us a drink from heaven after all.”

Ivar seized the hair, heaved Wulfgar's head up out of the frothing brew. The mouth gaped wide, sucking in air by frantic reflex, the eyes bulged with terror and humiliation. Wulfgar threw the stump of one arm over the edge of the barrel, tried to lever himself up.

Carefully Ivar knocked it free, stared into the eyes of the drowning man as if searching for something. He nodded, thrust the head back down again.

“Now he is afraid,” he said to Kleggi, standing by. “He would bargain for his life if he could. I do not like them to die defying me. They must give in.”

“They all give in in the end,” said Kleggi, laughing. “Like women.”

Ivar thrust the head spasmodically deeper.

Shef hefted the object Udd had brought him. They stood in the center of an interested circle—all Englishmen, all freedmen, catapulteers and halberdiers together—near the front the gang Udd had collected to help him forge the strips of mild steel.

“See,” Udd said, “we done what you told us. We made the strips, two-foot long. You said try and make bows out of them, so we filed notches in the ends and fitted strings. Had to use twisted gut. Nothing else strong enough.”