competing with the snow behind. Shef ran a hand ineffectually through his hair, dislodging a louse, and turned for advice to Hagbarth. Then turned back again, with sudden incredulous joy.
One figure over there by the shore stood out even among the tall shapes around him. Surely—yes, that must be Brand. Scanning quickly along the jetty, Shef realized that there were other men there in a little knot, smaller than the rest as Brand was bigger. And one of them showed up in a bright flash of scarlet—it was the silk tunic the ex-slave Cwicca wore for great occasions. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Shef could pick them out readily. Brand there well to the fore, Guthmund the Greedy standing beside him, and in a self-effacing clump to the rear Cwicca and Osmod and a gang of their mates. Shef looked again at the white tunics and cloaks of the priests of the Way, standing at the very edge of the jetty. Yes, Thorvin was there among them, and Skaldfinn too, and Hund: outnumbered, though, by a cluster of other priests, one formidable figure near the front almost rivaling Brand even in size. And there was another group there as well, standing separate both from the priests and from Brand and his friends. A puff of wind from the mountains caught the pennants held by standard-bearers, and for a moment Shef saw the Hammer of the Way, white on black, and from the group he could not identify a blue streamer with a strange design he did not recognize. He looked a mute question at Hagbarth.
“It is the Gripping Beast,” said Hagbarth, dropping his voice, the jetty now only fifty yards away.
“Of King Halvdan? Or King Olaf?”
“Neither,” said Hagbarth with a touch of grimness. “Of Queen Ragnhild.”
The crewmen tossed oars, dropped them clattering into the bottom of the boat. Ropes flew out from prow and stern, were caught and snubbed to tree-trunk bollards. The
Shef hesitated, conscious of his own appearance. Facing him, the big unknown priest looked down, what seemed to be scorn and mistrust on his face. Shef remembered the last time he had stood face to face with an enemy on a gangplank: when he had killed Ivar, Champion of the North. No-one else could ever say that. Shedding his blanket, and snatching the ‘Gungnir’ spear from Karli's ready hand, he stepped on to the gangplank, strode across it, meaning to force the priest to stand back.
As he reached the other end an arm like the base of a mast quietly thrust the priest aside, and Brand shoved forward, holding out an immense fur cape, made from the skin of a white bear, its brooch and chain of gold. In an instant he had wrapped it round Shef's shoulders, fastened the links. Then he fell to one knee, his face still only just below Shef's own level.
“Hail, King of the East and Middle Angles,” he called. On the signal, Cwicca and his mates, and the crews of the
Brand, who had never knelt in his life before, winked one staring eye, and jerked his head infinitesimally at the others on the jetty. Shef caught the hint, turned to Hagbarth, who had followed him up the gangplank.
“You may present your colleagues,” he said imperiously.
“Why, this is—ah—King Shef, may I present to you Valgrim the Wise, Head of the College of the Way and priest of Othin? Valgrim, this is…”
Valgrim was paying no attention. With a scowl for Brand, he reached out one hand, seized the spear in Shef's grip, and turned it so that he could read the runes on it. After a moment he released the spear, turned and walked wordlessly off.
“He didn't like that,” muttered Brand. “What do the runes say?”
“Gungnir. It's not my spear anyway, I took it from Sigurth Ragnarsson.”
Most of the other priests of the Way had moved off after their leader, leaving Thorvin and Hund behind. As they departed, Shef saw the other group coming towards them under the blue and silver banner. He gaped up at it: a strange design, of a beast with snarling face, seemingly throttling itself with one paw while clutching its own ankle with another. He dropped his eyes, found himself face to face with the most striking woman he had ever seen.
He would not have thought her beautiful if some one had described her. Since his childhood Shef had framed his ideas of beauty on Godive: tall but slight of figure, with brown hair, gray eyes, and the perfect complexion she had inherited from her Irish slave-concubine mother. This woman was tiger to Godive's sleek leopard: as tall as Shef, with broad cheekbones and great green eyes set wide apart. Her breasts swelled out the dark green gown she was wearing, and heavy hip-bones showed through as she walked. Two long plaits hung round her face and over her shoulders, held in place by a heavy gold band low over her forehead. She was not a young woman either, Shef realized belatedly, but double his age or Godive's. At her side walked a young boy, maybe ten years old.
Confused, and unwilling to face the woman's stare, Shef dropped on one knee to the boy's level.
“And who are you?”
“I am Harald, son to King Halvdan and Queen Ragnhild. What happened to your eye?”
“Someone put it out with a hot needle.”
“Did it hurt?”
“I fainted before it was finished.”
The boy looked scornful. “That was not
“I killed the man who caused it. The one who did it is standing over there, and the one who held me. They are friends.”
The boy looked nonplused. “How can they be friends if they blinded you?”
“Sometimes you will take from your friends what you will not from your enemies.”
Belatedly Shef realized the boy's mother's thigh was only inches from his blind side. He rose to his feet, conscious as he did so of the strong female warmth. There, on the jetty, with dozens of men all around, he could feel his manhood stirring as it had not for all the Ditmarsh girl's efforts. In another moment he would feel the urge to throw her down on the wooden deck—if he were strong enough, which he doubted.
The queen looked scrutinizingly at him, seemingly aware of what he felt. “You will come when I call you, then,” she said, and turned away.
“Most men do,” muttered Brand again in Shef's ear.
Over his voice, as he watched the green gown retreating magnificently towards the snow, Shef heard a sound he would once have picked out through any distractions: the clink-clink, beat-beat of light and heavy hammers working at a forge. And other sounds too which he could not place.
“We've a lot to show you,” said Thorvin, finally making his way up to his former apprentice.
“Right,” said Brand. “But first, the bath-house. I can see the lice in his hair, and it puts me off even if Queen Ragnhild likes it.”
“He came stalking ashore with one eye and a spear in his hand with the ‘Gungnir’ runes on it,” growled Valgrim. “What else has he to do to declare himself Othin? Ride an eight-legged horse? He is a blasphemer!”
“Many men have one eye,” replied Thorvin. “And as for the ‘Gungnir’ runes, he did not have them cut. The only reason he has the spear is that Sigurth Snake-eye threw it at him. If there is a blasphemer, it is Sigurth.”
“You have told us that when he first appeared to you out of nowhere two winters ago he said he came from the North.”
“Yes, but all that he meant was that he came from the north of his kingdom.”
“And yet you have presented this to us as if this accident were proof that he is the One we await. That he is the One who will come from the North to overthrow the Christians and put the world on its better path. If this aping of Othin is an accident, then what he said to you was an accident. But if what he said to you was a sign from the gods, then this too is a sign. He is setting himself up as Othin. And I, the priest of Othin in this college, I say that such as he cannot have Othin's favor. Did he not refuse the Othin-sacrifice when he had the Christian army at his mercy?”
Thorvin fell silent, unable to see a way round Valgrim's logic.
“I can tell you that he is one who sees visions,” put in Hagbarth. “And not only in his sleep.”
The listening priests, a score of them together, looked at him with interest. They had not formed their holy circle nor set up the holy cordon of rowan-berries round the spear and the bale-fire: what they said was still unprivileged, not done under the guidance of the gods. Still, they were not forbidden to speak of holy things.
