One King's Way

It was malice they opened when they peeped in.

“He killed them, he buried their bodies under the forge, of their teeth he made necklaces, goblets of their skulls, brooches of their shining eyeballs. Gave them all to Nithhad. And when Nithhad's daughter came to him to mend a ring, what did he do? Stupefied her with beer, raped her, thrust her out.

“She told her father, weeping. He came to Volund to take his head. And Volund, his hamstrings severed—he put on the wings he had made in the smithy, and flew away. What was the cunning thing he had made for Nithhad? It was his revenge. For that is his name, Volund. From the cunning thing, vel.”

The conclave sat silent, pondering the story they all knew. “Now I ask you,” said Valgrim, “who is the hero of this story? Volund for his cunning, as we are told? Or Nithhad for his attempt to restrain it? I tell you, Vigleik, where this Englishman is concerned, he is Volund, right enough. And we are Nithhad! He will kill our sons and rape our daughters. That is to say, he will deny us our own issue and turn us into creatures to breed his getting for him. Nithhad made only one mistake, which was to try to use Volund's skill and think he was safe when he was only lamed. He should have killed him and made sure work! For men like Volund or the Englishman are not safe when they are crippled. For they are like Volund's wife, the swan-maiden: they are not men of one skin. But it is not a swan that the Englishman turns into, on the other side. Rather, a dragon, or a mound-dweller, a mold-man. Hagbarth, I ask you: did you not report that he said he had been in a mound before!”

The hall stirred with excitement and appreciation at Valgrim's unexpected explanation. They saw Hagbarth nod slowly, reluctantly confirming what Valgrim had said.

Thorvin broke out in reply, as Valgrim had known he would. “This is all well enough, Valgrim, but you are only twisting words. Of course the lad had been in a mound before—he took the old king's treasure from it. He dug his way in with a mattock and fought his way out, like a hero. He did not live in one. If Viga- Brand were here he would mock you for saying he should have left the money in the ground. I ask all here, look beyond words. Look at actions. Shef Sigvarthsson, give him his proper name, he turned a whole country to the Way. He drove out the Christ-church. If he let Christ-priests stay, it was only as if they were any of us, made to pay their own way and work for their own believers. He killed Ivar Ragnarsson. And is there any doubt that he is a seeker for knowledge, who will give up anything for that knowledge?”

Thorvin raised his hand for silence. “If you do not believe me, listen.”

Outside, not far away, the priests could hear a familiar sound, but not one they had expected to hear with all of them in conclave. Across the precincts of the college, across the old, much-trodden snow, there came the clink- clink of the heavy hammer, dimly over it the roaring of forced draught from a bellows. Men working at the forge.

At the forge, Shef had just completed the careful reforging and re-tempering of the sword he had given Karli. Now it was set aside to cool, before reassembly of blade, guard, hilt and pommel. Now Udd had taken over. The little man was conducting a demonstration. He stood to one side of the fire, directing, while Shef, stripped to his breeches and a protective leather overall, handled the pieces of iron and steel with tongs. Cwicca crouched on one knee, pumping the leather bellows that fed the draught to the charcoal-glowing forge. The rest of the English catapulteers, seven of them, Hama, Osmod and the others, with Karli making an eighth, squatted on their heels along the wall, enjoying the warmth and adding their comments.

“Right,” said Udd. “They're all red-hot. Take the first spike and lay it down to one side.”

Shef took a red-hot iron spike, the raw material for a dagger or spear-head, and laid it carefully across the mouth of a pottery bowl, not letting it touch the still-frozen earth of the floor.

“Take the next one and put it straight away into the snow-water.”

Shef lifted it with the tongs and plunged the red-hot metal into a leather bucket full of barely-melted snow, gathered a few minutes before from outside. A cloud of steam rose with violent hissings.

“When the metal's cold, take it out and bend it between your hands.”

Shef waited a minute or two, plucked the spike out, felt it gingerly to make sure there was no residual heat. Bent it between his hands. He had a good idea of what would happen, but was content to let Udd make his demonstration his own way. As the muscles stood out on Shef's forearm, the metal spike suddenly snapped in two.

“Now try the other one.”

Shef handled this one, still warm even in the chilly air, with rags. This time he needed no force. The metal bent in his hands like wire, remained bent without any sign of springing even after he let it go.

“Same metal,” lectured Udd. “If you quench it, it gets hard and brittle—takes a good edge, but no strength. But if you just cool it, it bends. Neither hard nor strong.”

“As much use as an old man's dick,” said a catapulteer companionably.

“More use than yours,” retorted Karli.

“Shut up,” said Udd, bold only in the making of steel. “Now, Shef, my lord that is to say. Take the bent one. Bend it straight again. Put it back in the fire and heat it red-hot once more.

“Now, quench it.” Again the hissing and the cloud of steam. “Return it to the fire. But this time, don't let it get red-hot. Heat it gently—slow down on the bellows there, Cwicca. Let it get to the color of straw.”

Udd peered over with near-sighted anxiety. “Now, that's enough. Take that out and let it cool slowly.”

Shef followed instructions, this time more unsure of what would happen. As a working smith, he knew well the virtues of quenching and the dangers of annealing. His way of combining the qualities of strength, hardness and suppleness, however, had always been to work different grades of metal together in strips. The thought of going back to a strip once annealed had never occurred to him. Nor did he see the significance of the third gentle heating. As the metal cooled he looked with satisfaction at the returning blisters on his hands. They had got too soft while he had played at being a king.

“All right,” said Udd. “Now try it.”

Shef picked up the iron spike and bent it in his hands. It flexed powerfully, giving but then striving to regain its shape.

“This is how you made the crossbow strips,” he remarked.

“In a way, lord, yes. But this is different.” Udd's voice dropped with a kind of reverence. “This iron is the best I have ever seen. The ore it comes from takes half—a quarter—of the working we are used to. How long does it take a forge to make ten pounds of iron in England?”

“Two days,” suggested Shef.

“Here you would get forty in the same time for the same labor. That is one reason the Vikings are so well- armed, I think. Their iron is better. It costs far less time and charcoal to make. So every man can have iron tools and weapons, not just the rich. The iron comes from Jarnberaland, far to the east across the mountains. The Way- folk say they have a mine there and men to run it.

“But there is still more we have discovered, lord.”

In the heart of the forge there lay a pile of what appeared to be ash. Using long tongs, Udd hauled it out, dragged it onto the earthen floor, briskly swept away the covering cinders to reveal a metal plate.

“This has been in the fire for hours, since last night. I have kept the fire going all that time, while the rest of you were snoring.”

“Karli wasn't snoring, he was out after women.”

“Shut up, Fritha. It is a plate made like the spike, by cooling, and then quenching, and reheating, so it was strong and springy. Then I heated it again and kept it in the fire. And all the time it was in the fire, I kept piling the charcoal round it. Now lord, when it has cooled, I want you to thrust it with your spear, with the great spear you took from the Snake-eye.”

Shef raised an eyebrow. The ‘Gungnir’ spear's massive head was made of the best steel he had ever seen. The plate Udd had been working on was perhaps an eighth of an inch thick, the thickness of the metal guard that protected a warrior's hand in the center of a shield. Much thicker and the shield would be too heavy to move easily. But Shef had no doubt the steel spear-head would punch straight through.

As the plate cooled, Udd set it up directly against the wooden logs of the forge wall. “Strike now, master.”