One King's Way

Shef rapped the table. “Enough. Thank you, Brand, for your report. Count Bruno, if you wish to go home we will continue without you.” Shef held Bruno's gaze for a moment, forcing him to drop his eyes. “The Count intended a mere pleasantry. He is as determined as the rest of us to put an end to these mad dogs and restore law to the Northlands.”

“Yes,” said Herjolf, “but how are we to do it?”

Shef held a hand out, palm flat. “That is paper.” He made it into a fist. “That is stone.” He extended two fingers only. “Those are scissors. Now, who will play this game with me? Count Bruno, you.”

Shef's voice was strong and certain, coming strangely from the pallid face. He was sure that he could carry them with him, sure even that he could read his man's mind well enough to win the game. What would Bruno do? He would not choose paper, that was sure. Stone or scissors? His own nature would be for the sharp cut. So he would choose stone, thinking others like himself.

“One, two, three,” Shef counted. Both men thrust their hands out together, Bruno's a fist, Shef's a flat palm. “Paper wraps stone, I win.”

Again, and this time Bruno would reject the scissors, which would have won last time, reject the stone which he had tried last. “One, two, three.” Bruno's flat palm met Shef's two fingers. “Scissors cut paper, I win again. But enough—” Bruno's face was beginning to darken at the guffaws from Brand. “You see my point. They have big ships, and catapults, and ordinary ships. And big ships beat ordinary ships, as Brand has told us. Now what beats big ships? Catapults. And what beats catapults? Our plan must be always to oppose our strength to their weakness. Listen while I explain…”

As the council broke up, Shef sat back, hoarse from talking and tired still from loss of blood. Bruno, rising, performed a courteous bow in the direction of the scowling Brand, and then made his way to the head of the table.

“You have come a long way since they tried to sell you as a slave in Hedeby,” he remarked. He nodded to Karli behind Shef's chair. “I see you still have your young Ditmarsher with you. But the weapon you have, that is not the one you were carrying then. May I examine it?”

Oddly reluctant, Shef reached behind him, took the lance from its place against the gunwale, passed it over. Bruno turned it over in his hands, examining its head.

“May I ask where you found this strange piece.”

Shef laughed. “It would take too long to tell the full story. In a smokehouse. I am told it belonged once to a jarl of the Tronds, one Bolli. But I never met him. Or not to speak to,” he added, remembering the long row of swinging carcasses. “You can see that at one time it was in the hands of Christians. Look, there are crosses on the cheek-pieces, inlaid once with gold. But that had been scraped out long before I came by it.”

Bruno turned the weapon in his hands, staring at the cross-marks on the blade. He handled it gently, reverently. After a moment he said, his voice quiet, “May I ask how the weapon came to you, if you never met its owner? This jarl Bolli of the Tronds. You found it somewhere? You took it from someone?”

Shef remembered the scene in Echegorgun's smokehouse: how he had laid the weapon down, how Cuthred had picked it up and pressed it on him. There was something odd in the way Bruno was pursuing this. He was reluctant to tell him the full story.

“Let's say it passed into my hands. It belonged to no-one at the time.”

“Some man had kept it, though? Some man gave it to you?”

Echegorgun kept it, thought Shef. A marbendill, not a man. And it was Cuthred who handed it to me. “Not exactly a man,” he replied.

Archbishop Rimbert's words had been reported to Bruno: how he had said that the Holy Lance of Longinus and of Charlemagne would not come to light through the hand of man. His doubts vanished. He held the holy relic of Empire, at long last, in his hands. God had favored him for all his trials. Yet he was on the deck of a heathen warship, surrounded by potential foes. What was it the little deacon had said to him? “He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved.” To the end. Not just to near the end.

His voice as casual as he could make it, Bruno grounded the lance-butt gently on the deck. “It is clearly a Christian weapon,” he said. “No offense, but I would rather not leave it in the hands of one who is no longer a Christian. Perhaps I can ransom it from you, as we ransom Christian slaves.”

Brand tried to persuade me to get rid of it too, thought Shef. Strange. “No,” he said, repeating what he had said to Brand. “I call it a good weapon that conquers, and it has brought me good luck. I have taken a fancy to it. I will keep it.”

Bruno handed it back, straightened and bowed in the stiff German fashion. “Uf widersehn, herra, bis uf die schlacht. Farewell, lord. Till we meet in the battle.”

“Awkward bastard,” muttered Cuthred to Cwicca in English, watching him go.

Chapter Thirty-two

Shef lay in sleep, conscious at some level of his mind that tomorrow would be the day of battle. The fleet lay beached some dozen miles from the entry to the bay of the Braethraborg, strongly guarded against any surprise sortie.

In his sleep he was in the bay of the Braethraborg itself, down at the far end, looking out in the direction that he knew he, Shef, must come in the morning. And indeed it was morning, and the man looking out of a just-unshuttered window could see ships creeping down the fjord towards him. Those ships, he knew, would bring his death.

The man watching swung the shutters fully open, stood facing the oncoming navy, and began to sing. The song he sang was one Shef had heard often before, a famous song among the Vikings, a favorite of Brand's. It was called “The Song of Bjarki,” or “The Old Song of Bjarki.” But this man was not repeating it. He was making it up for the first time. He sang:

“The day is come up, the cocks whir their wings.
Time for the wretches, to rise to their work.
Wake now, awake, you warriors, my friends,
All the best of you, beaters of Athils,
Har with the hard grip, Hrolf the archer,
Men of good stock, who scorn to flee.
I do not wake you to wine nor whispers of women,
I wake you for the sharp showers of battle.”

The voice of Shef's frequent mentor cut in above the voice of the singing man, amused and ironic as usual.

“Now you will not fight like that,” it said. “You want to win, not to gain glory. Remember though: I have done my best for you, but you must take every advantage you can. There is no room for weakness…”

The voices faded, both the impassioned singer and the cold voice of the god. As he woke—or perhaps they were what woke him—Shef heard the horns of the sentries blowing to signal dawn and battle-morning. Shef lay where he was, aware that now he was a king he could at least wait for someone else to light the fires and make the breakfast. No question of fighting on an empty stomach, not in the heavy manual labor of hand-to-hand battle. He was reflecting on the vision, and on the song. “Men of good stock,” the singer had said, “who scorn to flee.” Was he a man of good stock? He supposed so. Whether his father was a god or a jarl, or even if he had been Wulfgar the thane, there was no churl-blood there. Did that mean that he, Shef, would scorn to flee? That those who fled were