One King's Way

“Can you train it round?” asked Brand. “The mule, I mean. Can you point it different directions? You could with your dart-throwers.”

“We're working on it,” said Shef. “We tried putting the whole thing on a cartwheel, putting the cartwheel on an axle, and bedding the other end of the axle in a hole bored in the keel. But it was all too heavy to turn, and the kick kept breaking the axle. Udd has some idea of putting the whole thing on an iron ball, but… No. It will only shoot directly on the beam. But what we have done is fit two bars, two ropes, two sets of handles and so on, one either side. Only one crosspiece, naturally. But that means we can shoot to either beam.”

Brand shook his head again. As they stood he had been feeling the ship heave gently beneath him, even in the Thames backwater, trying to estimate how she would feel in the open sea. A ton and a quarter of weight, much of it high up so that the machine stood higher than the gunwales. Sail pressure way off center-line. A wide yard so they could spread plenty of sail, he noticed. But tricky to handle. He had no doubt the fisherman knew his business. And there was no question what a hit from one of those rocks would do. Remembering the fragile frame of every boat he had ever sailed, their planks not even nailed to the ribs, but lashed with sinew, Brand could see the whole construction springing apart in a moment, leaving an entire crew struggling in the sea. And not even Sigurth Snake-eye's own fifty champions could fight against that.

“What are you going to call her,” he asked suddenly. “For luck.” His hand shot automatically to the hammer pendant on his chest. Ordlaf copied his gesture, fishing from under his tunic the silver boat of Njorth.

“We've got ten of the battleships,” said Shef. “I wanted to call them after the gods of the Way, Thor, Frey, Rig, and so on, but Thorvin would not allow it. He said it would be bad luck if we had to say ‘Heimdall is aground,’ or ‘Thor is stuck on the sandbank.’ So we changed our minds. We decided to call each ship after one of the counties in my realm, and as far as we can we will crew her from that county. So this is the Norfolk, over there the Suffolk, the Lincoln, the Isle of Ely, the Buckingham, and all the others. What do you think?”

Brand hesitated. Like all sailors, he had deep respect for luck, and no wish to say the ill word that might bring down bad luck on the enterprise of his friend. “I think that once again you have brought a new thing to the world. It may be that your ‘Counties’ will sweep the seas. Certainly I would not care to encounter one, and men do not call me the timidest of the Norsemen. It may be that the kings of England will be the sea-kings in the future, and not the kings of the North.

“Tell me,” he went on, “where do you mean to make your first cruise?”

“Across to the Dutch shore,” said Shef. “Then up along the coast past the Frisian islands and into Danish waters. That is the main route the pirates come. We will sink every pirate ship we see. From then on any who wish to invade us must take the long sea-crossing from Denmark. But in the end we will destroy their bases, seek them out in their own home-ports.”

“The Frisian islands,” muttered Brand. “The mouths of the Rhine, the Ems, the Elbe, the Eider. Well, I will tell you one thing, young man. All that is pilot water. You understand what I mean? You will need a pilot who knows the channels and the landmarks, so he can find his way by smell and hearing if he needs to.”

Ordlaf looked stubborn. “I've found my way all my life with no more than lead, lookout and log-line. Nor do I feel my luck has got any the worse since I left the monks who were my masters and found the gods of the Way.”

Brand grunted. “I say nothing against the gods of the Way.” Again, both he and Ordlaf touched their protecting pendants, and this time Shef, with a self-conscious gesture, reached also to pull out his strange ladder- like charm, the token of his patron Rig. “No, the gods may be well enough. But as for lead, lookout and log-line— you'll need more than that off Bremen! I say it, I, Brand, Champion of the men of Halogaland.”

The listening workmen shifted and muttered. Some of those new to the yards nudged each other, pointing at the unfamiliar pendant of Rig.

Sun slanted through the high windows of the great library in the cathedral of Cologne, to fall on the open pages of several books spread across the massive lectern. Erkenbert the deacon, his short frame barely able to see its upper edges, stood lost in thought. He was alone. The librarius, knowing he had the archbishop's favor, and approving the intentness of his research, had left him to himself, even with the great and precious Bible, written on the skins of eighty calves.

Erkenbert was comparing texts. Could the fantastic tale that the archbishop Rimbert had told them days before possibly be true? It had convinced everyone else at the meeting, archbishops and counselors alike. But then it had flattered their pride, appealed to their sense of themselves as a nation, and as a nation continually rejected and undervalued by the power of Rome. Erkenbert did not share that feeling—or at least not yet. The English nation, remembering its conversion by the blessed Pope Gregory, had long boasted its loyalty to the Popes and to Rome. But what had Rome sent in return? If what Rimbert said was true, then maybe it was time to be loyal… elsewhere.

The texts, now. First among them was one that Erkenbert knew well, could have recited in his sleep. Nevertheless, important to look again. The four gospellers' accounts of the crucifixion of Christ all told slightly different tales—proof of their truth, of course, for who does not know that four men seeing the same thing will pick different parts of it to repeat? But John—John said more than the others. Turning the great, stiff pages, Erkenbert found the passage he wanted and read it, whispering the Latin words softly to himself and mentally translating them into his native English.

“…sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance.” With a lance, thought Erkenbert. With a Roman soldier's lance.

Erkenbert knew better than most men what Roman soldiers' weapons looked like. At what had once been his home at the great Minster of York, there had still remained standing much of what was formerly the headquarters building of the Sixth Legion of Eboracum. The legion had left York and Britain four hundred years before, called away to fight a civil war on mainland Europe, but much of its arsenal had remained behind, and much of what had not been stolen or used still lay in the vaults. The imperishable bronze fittings for the catapults Erkenbert had made for the heathen Ivar had been genuine old work, as good as the day they were made. Iron rusted, but for all that Erkenbert had seen on its stand, kept cleaned and polished as a trophy, the full panoply of a Roman legionary, helmet, cuirass, short-sword, greaves, shield and of course the iron-shafted Roman javelin, the pilum. Also called a lancea.

Yes, thought Erkenbert, that could have happened. And no question but that the lance, the Holy Lance, the lance that had pierced the side of the Son of God himself, could have survived physically. He had himself seen and handled weapons that might be as old.

But who might have thought to preserve such a thing? It would have had to be someone who recognized its importance at the very moment of its use. Otherwise the weapon would have gone back to the barracks, been mixed with a thousand others. Who could have set aside such a weapon? Not, thought Erkenbert, for all the archbishop had said, the pious Jew Joseph of Arimathea, whom John the gospeller mentioned four verses later. Such a man, if a disciple of Jesus, might well have been able to beg the body from Pilate, and to preserve the holy chalice in which Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper—though John said nothing of that. He would not have been able to gain possession of an infantry issue weapon from the Romans.

But the centurion, now. Erkenbert turned the pages of the Bible thoughtfully, moving from one Gospel account to the next. The centurion was mentioned in three out of four, and in all three he said almost the same words: Luke, “truly this was a righteous man,” Mark, “truly this man was the Son of God,” Matthew, “truly this was the Son of God.” And in the fourth, in John, might the writer not have meant the centurion by “one of the soldiers”? If the centurion pierced the side of Jesus, as was his duty, and had seen or felt the miracle—what easier than for him to keep and treasure his own lance?

Now where did the centurion go after the Crucifixion? Erkenbert turned to another book, small, shabby, untitled, a book it seemed of letters, one after another, prattling of land and loans and debts, written by many authors, the kind of thing many efficient librarii would have sent to be scraped and re- used. Erkenbert fixed on the one of which Rimbert had told him. It seemed plain enough. A letter from Roman times, written in Latin—not good Latin, Erkenbert noted with interest, the Latin of a man who knew only the words of command, and to whom grammar was a mystery—and said at the top to be from one Gaius Cassius Longinus, centurion of Legio XXX Victrix. Describing in admiring terms the crucifixion at Jerusalem of a troublemaker, and now