One King's Way

had spoken this morning, a kind of German. Something with bits of all of them, and yet perhaps most similar to the Frisian Shef had got used to hearing from the men of the islands off the Dutch coast. Once upon a time this borderland had been a melting-pot of tribes. Now lines were being drawn more carefully: Christians this side, heathens that, German spoken here, Norse there. Yet the process was a long way from finished. The guard called his language Danish, donsk tunga, others called the same language Norse, norsk mal. The same people called themselves Danes one day and Jutes the next. Shef was king of the East Angles and Alfred of the West Saxons, but both sides would agree that they were at bottom Englishmen. The German tribes were ruled by the same Pope and the same royal family as the Frankish tribes, but did not think of themselves as connected. Swedes and Gauts, Norwegians and Gaddgedlar. One day all of this would have to be sorted out and made clear. There was an urge to do it already. But who would succeed in drawing the lines, in imposing law on some level higher than Hrorik's “good for business” ethic?

Without much surprise Shef observed the blond German walking towards them out of the town, the man who had killed the Swede and rescued the priest-slave that same morning. Hrorik's guards saw him too, reacted without even a pretense of warriorly calm. Two instantly barred his path with swords drawn and shields raised, the other four poising javelins at ten feet range. The blond man smiled, unbuckled his sword belt with exaggerated care, let it drop to the ground. As the guard commander snapped orders at him, he stripped off also his leather jacket, set it down, peeled a heavy throwing-knife from under his sleeve, a short needlepoint from inside his boot. One man closed, searched him roughly and thoroughly. Finally, grudgingly, they stood back and let him pass, the javelins still poised. As he stepped the last few feet towards Shef Karli, too, drew his sword and stood in a posture of suspicious truculence.

The blond man looked at the way Karli held the sword, sighed, and sat down cross-legged facing Shef. His smile this time indicated a secret complicity.

“My name is Bruno,” he remarked. “I am here with the mission of the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen to the Danes. Ransoming some of our people back, you know. And they tell me you are the famous Shef Sigvarthsson, the bane of the even more famous Ivar.” He spoke Norse with a marked accent that made the name “Sigvarth” almost into “Siegfried.”

“Who told you that?”

The smile of complicity and understanding again. “Well. As you guessed, it was your little countryman, the deacon Erkenbert. He is a passionate little fellow, and will hear no good of you at all. Yet he cannot deny that you beat the Ragnarsson sword to sword.”

“Sword to halberd,” corrected Shef. He added no further details.

“So. That is not often a winning game. But you use odd weapons. May I glance at your spear?” Bruno rose and studied the spear planted in the grass at Shef's side, carefully not touching it, hands behind his back.

“An excellent weapon. Newly-forged, I see. I take an interest in spears. And in other things too. May I see what you have round your neck?”

Ignoring the growl of doubt from Karli, Shef pulled out his silver pendant with the Rig-sign on it, and let Bruno, seated once more, stare intently at it.

“And what would you call that, now?”

“It is a kraki,” said Shef. “A pole-ladder. A center pole, with rungs either side. It is the emblem of my god.”

“Yet I believe you were baptized a Christian? Such a shame, that one who belonged to the true God should go over to a pagan idol. Do you feel no urge to change back? Might you not, if certain—difficulties—were cleared from your path?”

Shef smiled for the first time in their exchange, remembering the horrors inflicted on him and on others by the black monks, by Wulfgar and Bishop Daniel. He shook his head.

“I would not expect you to change your mind the first time anyone suggested it. But let me give you two things to think about,” the blond man went on.

“One is this. I have no doubt all this fighting and struggling looks as if it is about land and money. And it is! Hrorik would not let me have you because he thought he had a better deal elsewhere, and he does not want to strengthen us in any way. I know you won over the English kingdoms to your heresy of freedom for all gods by abolishing the tithes men have to pay to the Church. But beneath that struggle, I am sure you know well that there is something deeper. A struggle not just of men, but of other powers.”

Remembering the strange sights he had seen, the compelling voices of his protectors and the other gods in the strange Asgarth-world of his dreams, Shef slowly nodded.

“There are powers which it does no man good to be associated with. Our Church calls them devils and demons, and you may think that is just the Church's prejudice, protecting its—what is the word?—its single-trade in salvation for the soul. Well, I know priests too, and I too despise their concern for money, for buying and selling the things of God.

“But I tell you, Shef Siegfriedsson, as one warrior to another: a great change is coming, and there is One coming who shall bring it. On that day the kingdoms will be overthrown and cast into a new mold, and the priests —yes, and the archbishops and the Popes who think to control it, they will be controlled. On that day you do not want to be on the wrong side.”

“And how will anyone know which is the right side?” said Shef, observing the gleam of passion on the hard, stony face. Hearing the ring in Bruno's voice the guards edged closer, as if expecting some outbreak of sudden violence.

Bruno's face split in another of his unexpected and strangely winning smiles. “Oh, there will be a sign. Something pretty unmistakable, I expect. A miracle, a relic, something sent from God to work in the world, a chosen leader to use it.” He rose to his feet, prepared to go.

“You said you had two things to tell me,” prompted Shef. “Be on the right side when the kingdoms are shaken, that was one. The other?”

“Oh yes. Of course. I have to tell you you are in part mistaken about your own sign. I hope you recognize others better. What you have round your neck, you may call it a kraki in Norse, or a ‘ladder’ in your language and mine. In Latin, though—you have heard Latin from the priests? Well, they would call it a graduale. From gradus, a step, you know.”

Shef waited, not sure of the point.

“There are those who believe in the Holy Graduale. The Franks call it the Holy Graal. Dreadful the way the Franks talk Latin—can you imagine a language in which aqua turns into eau? Yes, the Holy Graduale, or Grail, that is what you have round your neck. It's supposed to go with the Holy Lance, some say.”

Bruno stepped over to his pile of clothes and weapons, and slowly resumed them, covered all the time by javelins. Finally he looked at Shef, nodded a farewell, and strolled peacefully back towards the town and the markets.

“What was all that about?” Karli asked suspiciously. Shef did not answer. The feeling of being underwater was growing on him, as if he were now fathoms deep, but in clear water which hid nothing from his view. Still looking out over the peaceful fields of the Angle, he felt the pinch on his neck that told him his sight was being directed. On top of the green fields and the furrows and the curling smoke-plumes of cottages, other pictures began to impose themselves.

He was still looking at exactly the same place, but the buildings of Hedeby were no longer there, there were more trees, less plowland. This is the Angle as it was when the English left it, something told him. Ten long warboats were cruising into the Schlei, much the same as those of Sigurth Ragnarsson, but different, more primitive in design: no mast or sail, only oars, and a stiffer, crankier air, without the living suppleness of the full- fledged Viking ship. War canoes with rowlocks. Shef's sight followed them as they pulled up river, found an inlet, paddled along it into a small, shallow lake. The crews streamed out, never more than thigh-deep in the water, dispersed into the countryside, began to come back late in the day, laden with metal, with sacks and barrels, cattle and women. They settled down by their ships, lit fires as night came on, began to slaughter the beeves and rape the women. Shef watched unmoved: he had seen worse in reality, without the distancing of his vision.

The men of the land had not gone, had fled only to find their weapons and gather their strength.