had given him. Somewhere, he heard dimly, there was a scream of mortal agony resounding. But the Ouse drowned it, the muddy stream poured choking in. As Shef's straining lungs also gave way and let in the cold, rushing, heart- stopping water, he thought only the one thing: Crush. Crush. Never let go…
Chapter Nine
Hund was sitting by his bed. Shef stared at him for a moment, then felt the sudden bite of fear deep within him, sat up with a jerk.
“Ivar?”
“Easy, easy,” said Hund, pushing him back on the bed. “Ivar's dead. Dead and burned to ashes.”
Shef's tongue felt too big for him to control. With an effort he managed to gasp, “How?”
“A difficult question,” replied Hund judiciously. “It could be that he drowned. Or he might have bled to death. You cut his face and neck to pieces with the edge of your helmet. But personally, I think he died of pain. You would not loose him, you know. In the end we had to cut him free. If he had not been dead before, he would have died then.
“Funny,” Hund added reflectively. “He was quite normal, you know, in body. Whatever was the matter with him and women—and Ingulf had heard many tales of it—it was in his head, nowhere else.”
Slowly Shef's muddled brain disentangled the questions he needed to ask.
“Who got me out?”
“Ah. That was Cwicca and his mates. The Vikings just stood and watched, both sides. Apparently men trying to drown each other is a sport in their homeland, and no one wanted to interfere till they could see who had won. It would have been very bad manners. Fortunately Cwicca has no manners.”
Shef thought back to the moments before he had faced Ivar on the swaying plank. Remembered the sudden shocking sight of Brand jerking himself backward off Ivar's sword.
“And Brand?”
Hund's face changed to an expression of professional concern. “He may live. He is a man of great strength. But the sword went right into his guts. It was impossible for them not to be pierced. I gave him the garlic porridge to eat myself, and then bent down and sniffed the wound. It stank, right enough. Most times that means death.”
“This time?”
“Ingulf did what he has done before. Cut him open, stitched the gut, put it back. But even with the poppy and henbane drink we gave to Alfgar, it was hard, very hard. He did not lose consciousness. His belly muscles are thick as cables. If the poison starts to work inside him…”
Shef levered his legs over the side of the bed, tried to stand up, felt an instant rush of faintness. With the relics of his strength he fended off Hund's attempts to push him back.
“I have to see Brand. Especially if he is going to die. He has to tell me—tell me things. Things about the Franks.”
Many miles to the south, a weary and dispirited figure crouched over the fire in the hearth of a wretched hut. Few would have recognized it as the one-time atheling of Wessex, the king that was to be. His golden circlet had gone—knocked from his helmet by the stab of a lance. His mail and shield decorated with animal-patterns had gone, too, stripped off and dropped in the intervals of desperate flight. Even his weapons were missing. He had cut his sword-scabbard free to run when, finally, after a long day's slaughter there had been no final alternative but flight or death—or surrender to the Franks. He had carried his sword drawn for miles, fighting again and again with his last few bodyguards to get free of the pursuing Frankish light cavalry. Then, as his horse died under him he had dropped it, rolled over. When the running fight had moved past his body and he had staggered to his feet again, there was nothing there. He had run off into the welcome dusk and the deep, thick forest of the Kentish Weald as empty- handed as a beggar. He had been lucky to see a glimmer of light before the night came. To beg shelter in the poor, starve-acre cottage where he now crouched, watching the oatcakes on the griddle while his reluctant hosts secured their goats outside. Discussed, perhaps, who they should betray him to.
Alfred did not think they would betray him. Even the poorest folk of Kent and Sussex knew now that it was deadly dangerous to so much as approach the Cross-wearers from across the sea. They spoke even less English than Vikings, cared no more for the harm they did than pagans. It was not personal fear that bowed his shoulders, brought the tears prickling unmanfully to his eyes.
It was fear for something strange at work in the world. Twice now he had met the young man Shef with the one eye. The first time he had had him in the hollow of his hand: he, Alfred, atheling and commander of an undefeated army; the other, Shef, at the very last end of his resources, about to be overwhelmed by the army of the Mark. That time the atheling had rescued the carl, raised him to alderman, or
And now how did things stand? The one-eye had sent him south, said each should fight their own battle. Alfred had fought his, fought it with all the men he could gather to his banner from the eastern shires of his kingdom, men who had come willingly to fight an invader. And they had been scattered like leaves in a gale, unable to hold the terrible charge of the mailed horsemen. Alfred was sure in his heart that matters had not gone so in the battle his ally and rival had meant to fight. Shef would have won.
Christianity had not entirely driven from Alfred and his countrymen the belief in something older and deeper than any gods—pagan or Christian ones: luck. The luck of a person. The luck of a family. Something that did not change with the years, something you either had or did not have. The great prestige of Alfred's royal house, the descendants of Cerdic, depended silently on a deep belief in the family's luck, which had kept them in power for four hundred years.
To the fugitive sitting by the hearth it seemed that his luck and that of his family had run out. No. It had been cancelled by the luck of a stronger figure—the one-eyed man who had started as a slave, a thrall in the heathen language, who had fought his way up past the execution-ground to be a carl in the Great Army of the North, and then up yet again to be a jarl. What greater proof of luck could there be? With so much of it in one man, how could there be any left for his allies? His competitors? Alfred felt the heart-chilling despair of someone who has given away the advantage in a contest, lightheartedly and without thought of consequences, only to see the advantage grow and grow, the initiative pass forever into the other's hands. In that bleak moment he felt it was over for him, for his family, for his kingdom. For England. He sniffed back a tear.
Smelled as he did so the reek of charring bread. Guiltily his hand darted to the griddle, to flip the oatcakes over to cook on the other side. Too late. Burned through. Burned inedible. Simultaneously Alfred's belly cramped inside him at the realization that after sixteen hours of desperate exertion there was nothing, nothing at all left to eat. And the door of the hovel opened to let in the churl and his wife, to fill the air with rage and blame. Nothing left to eat for them either. Their last food wasted. Burned by a good-for-nothing. A vagrant, too cowardly to die in battle, too lazy to do the simplest task. Too proud to pay anything for the meal and shelter they had offered him.
As they loaded curses on him, the worst of Alfred's punishment was the feeling that what they said was true. He could not imagine, ever, the slightest recovery. This was the bottom from which no one could climb. Any future there was would not be for him and his like, the Christians of England. It would be decided between the Franks and the Norse, the Cross-wearers and the Way-folk. Alfred walked into the shelterless night, heart breaking with despair.
This time it was Shef who sat by the bed. Brand turned his head very slightly to look at him, face gray under the beard. Shef could see that even the tiny movements needed for that caused agony, as the poison spread inside Brand's belly cavity to fight against the strength still locked in his massive frame.
“I need to know about the Franks,” said Shef. “We have beaten everyone else. You were sure they would beat Alfred.”
Brand's head nodded, very faintly.
