One King's Way

Shef stepped in front of him, waited for recognition to show in the mad eyes. Reluctant recognition.

“They won't fight,” said Shef slowly. “We'll have to find a better time. And striking a corpse is foul play, Cuthred. Foul play for an ordwiga, a herecempa, a frumgar like yourself, a king's champion. Wait for the Ragnarssons, for the killers of your King Ella.”

Cuthred's face worked at the string of honorifics, all of which he had earned in former life as captain of the King of Northumbria's guard. He looked at his bloody sword, at the corpse he had struck, threw his weapon down and burst into racking sobs. Udd and Osmod closed on either side, took his arm, started to lead him away.

Mopping sweat, Shef turned to meet the disapproving look of the duel-judge, the law-speaker.

“Mutilating a dead body,” the Norseman said, “is punishable by a fine of…”

“We'll pay,” said Shef. “We'll pay. But someone ought to pay for what has been done to that live one.”

The next morning, Shef stood by the narrow gangplank leading to Brand's prized and cherished ship, the Walrus. Guthmund's Seamew, already loaded, rocked easily in the water twenty yards out, a row of faces looking over the low gunwale. Loading the ships had not been an easy business. Each rowed eighteen oars a side and carried a normal crew of forty. To this had had to be added Shef, Hund, Karli and Thorvin, the eight men of the catapult crew, the four women they had rescued from Drottningsholm, Cuthred, and the train of runaways they had attracted in their ride across Upland and Sogn—nearly thirty all told, a large number to add to the cramped quarters of two narrow ships.

But now they were not all there: Lulla, Fritha and Edwi of the catapult crew, all missing. Had they been cut off somehow? Were they being hidden somewhere in the Thing area, destined for slavery or revenge, or even sacrifice? At the thought of his men being strung up on the temple trees of some backwoods town, Shef's patience snapped.

“Get all the men off,” he shouted to Brand. “You too Guthmund. We can muster a hundred men between us. We'll go through this place and turn every tent over till they hand our men over. Anyone doesn't like it, he'll get a bolt in his belly.”

Shef became aware that Cwicca and the others were not reacting with the enthusiasm he would have expected. They had donned their glassy expressions, always a sign they knew something they did not dare to reveal.

“All right,” Shef said. “What's up with those three?”

Osmod, usually the spokesman on difficult occasions, spoke up. “It's like this,” he volunteered. “We've been walking round, some of us, looking at things. And all they're talking about here is catapults and crossbows and that. They've heard a lot about them, don't know how they work. So we said, naturally, that we knew all about catapults, and as for crossbows, well Udd here practically invented them. So they say—by this time they'd stood us all a drink or two—they say, ‘very interesting, do you men know what's happening down south?’ ‘No,’ says we, naturally enough, since we don't. So then they say…”

“Get on with it!” Shef bellowed.

“They're paying big money for experienced catapult men, men who know how to build and shoot them. Big money. We think Lulla and Edwi and Fritha have decided to go in for that.”

Shef stared for a moment, uncertain how to react. He had freed those men. They were landholders back in England already. How could they go off and take service with anyone, leaving their lord? But then they were free men, because he had freed them…

“All right,” he said. “Forget it, Brand. Osmod, the rest of you, thank you anyway for staying. I hope you won't lose by it. Let's get on board and get going. Back in England in two weeks, if Thor sends us a wind.”

He did not, or not immediately. All the way down the long fjord from where the Gula met the Sogn to the open sea, the two boats pulled steadily into the teeth of a fresh breeze, low in the water from their weight of passengers and stores. Brand spelled the rowers, rotating the male passengers with his own men.

“Get round the ness,” he remarked. “Wind'll be on our beam then, we can stop rowing and sail south. What's that ahead?”

Round the point of the promontory that guarded the Gula-fjord, little more than half a mile away, came a ship. A strange ship, not like the traders and fishing-boats they had passed half a dozen times already. Her blue and white striped sail bellied in the breeze behind her, a pennant flew from her mast, blowing towards them so they could see it only fitfully as a gust took it wide. Something wrong with her sail. Something wrong with her size.

“Thor aid us,” said Brand at the steering-oar. “It's one of Halfdan's coastguard ships. But she's got two sails. She's even got two masts. I never saw such a thing in all my born days. What have they done all that for?”

Shef's one sharp eye caught sight of the banner, the Gripping Beast design on it.

“Turn,” he said. “Get us out of here. It's Queen Ragnhild. And she means us no good.”

“It's a big ship, but we're two to one, we can fight her…”

“Turn,” shouted Shef, recognizing something about the motions of the men on deck.

Brand caught on in the same moment and sent the Walrus heeling round in a turn so violent that the rowers were sent skidding along their benches. “Back starboard,” he shouted. “Pull backboard. Now pull together. Pull hard, get the stroke up. And drop the sail and sheet home, you in the waist there, help him, Narr, Ansgeir. Guthmund…” His voice carried over the water to their companion lagging a furlong behind. The Walrus, wind now behind her, began to scud back the way she had come.

Watching the pursuing ship, Shef, as he had expected, saw her yaw to bring her beam round. “On the word, swing her hard to starboard,” he said quietly. “Now.”

The Walrus swung briskly round. At the same moment Brand shouted to his crew to lift their oars, let the boat run freely under sail. The oars heaved smartly together out of the water. A hum in the air, three oarsmen together span out of their seats, landed in the belly of the ship, cursing or moaning. Shattered pieces of oar flew up in the air, splashed slowly into the sea. The mule-stone that had smashed through them just above head-height flew on, hit the water, bounced from wave to wave to wave before sinking.

“They were talking about fitting one of those,” said Brand. “But they said she'd never take the recoil. Must have rerigged her internally along with the two masts.”

“But who's crewing the mule?” asked Shef, still watching the ship behind them trying to make up lost distance, alert for any second swerve that would bring the mule round to bear. It was fortunate this was a stern chase and Ragnhild's men could not shoot over the bow. “Renegades of mine? But where would they have got them from?”

“The Way has been very interested in all that you did,” put in Thorvin, standing close to Brand. “They built copies of all the machines you made. Valgrim could have built the mule and found a crew. Some of his friends are priests of Njorth, would know how to rebuild a ship. What are we going to do? Run back into the Gula-fjord and hope to fight them on land?”

Shef was once more staring intently at the activity in the bow of the pursuing ship. She had lost way by turning beam-on to shoot, and now both were under sail the Walrus and her consort were making ground with every wave. The ships had begun half a mile apart. Now they were certainly more than that. Even at that distance, though, Shef was certain that he could make out a tall figure, a tall female figure, standing in the very prow of the ship, long hair streaming disheveled. Ragnhild coming after him. Chasing him, however fast they sailed, into a long fjord with no other exit. And they were certainly doing something strange in the prow there. Could they have built a mule that did not need to be bedded low down and centrally in a ship?

Light showed behind Ragnhild, fire, a strong fire blazing brightly. At the same moment Shef's brain recognized the motions of the men round it. He had never seen a catapult being wound from in front of it before, but that was what they were doing—had been doing, for they had just jumped back to clear the view for the shooter, just like Cwicca's crew. Not a mule, one of the great dart-shooters he had used himself to release Ella and to break Ivar Ragnarsson's army.

As Shef turned to shout at Brand to swerve again, he saw the light suddenly coming straight at him with inconceivable speed, rising and falling slightly a bare six feet over the waves. Involuntarily, Shef cringed. Bent forward, arms over belly, sure the machine would send the great javelin-size bolt straight through body and spine.

A thump just below his feet, sending him staggering. Instant reek of burning tar, burning wood. Brand yelling