King and Emperor

off down the line of the channel, hidden from view by the four-foot walls. A few yards down she caught up and whispered to him, “There are guards at the other end!”

Hund showed her the line. “We will go over the side before it reaches the ground. In the shadow of a buttress. They may not see us. The Emperor's best men are with him now inside the wall.”

The dropping sun was affecting both combatants now, but the Emperor more. Brand had the sun behind him in the west, only just above the city wall. His head and shoulders were in the light, his body already shadowed. He was striking sometimes out of the shadow, sometimes out of the sun, and the Emperor's shield was a fragment, one strap cut through, the Holy Lance itself hanging loose. But Brand was tiring visibly, while the Emperor seemed as quick and deft as ever. The watchers had been silent at first, anxious and unsure on both sides, but now they were beginning to call out in their excitement, in a medley of tongues.

“Use your own shield, Brand!”

“Use the point, herra!”

“Keep moving!”

“Stab him with the Lance!”

Erkenbert too thought that the moment of decision had come. In his own mind it was he who had determined the outcome on the day of the destruction of the Kingdom Oak at Uppsala, by his timely attack with the axe. When the time came for his hagiography to be written there must be something to mark his presence on this second day of the heathen's destruction. Seizing the Grail banner from its holder, he stepped a pace forward from the crowd, lifted it high and shouted with all the force of his lungs, “In hoc signo vinces!”

Brand saw the Emperor respond to the cry, and for the first time caught his halberd-shaft in two hands. He blocked the blow at his head with a furious upward drive, took two paces forward at his retreating enemy, now backed once more almost to the enclosing ring, and unleashed a full-armed swing backhand at the body. Too high to jump, too low to duck, no room to dodge.

The Emperor stepped inside the blow and swung his razor-edged sword of finest Spanish steel not at the halberd, but at the wrist. For an instant the blow seemed to continue, the halberd-head met the Emperor's shattered shield, knocked it and the Lance with it from his grasp. Then it was spinning on the ground, still clutched in a severed hand. Blood spouted instantly from Brand's wrist, a deep groan rose from his supporters.

The Emperor dropped his sword-point, realized the shield was gone from his grip, turned anxiously to where the Holy Lance lay next to the severed hand. As he did so Brand stepped forward again, right arm trailing helplessly. On his left he still had the small shield strapped, the shield he had never yet used. Fist clenched, he swept the left arm down in a chopping blow. The thick edge of the shield met the Emperor's neck as he stooped to pick up his talisman. The snap of breaking bone echoed clearly between the walls. Then, in dead silence, the Emperor fell forward on his face, his head at an impossible angle.

Brand stooped instantly, twitched the Holy Lance away from the dead left hand. A dozen Lanzenritter moved forward automatically, hands groping for their holy relic. Brand stepped away as his own men crowded forward, turned towards them and with his left hand threw the Lance up and over the wall, the dropping sun catching its gold-inlaid crosses with a last flash of light.

“Your God has failed you!” he shouted as hands gripped his arm, began to twist a cord round the wrist.

Some of the Ritters understood the words, some did not. All felt the same superstitious horror. They would not fight now. They needed to understand first. Knights and brothers alike, they fell back into the alleyways up which they had come, meaning only to retrieve their horses and flee the ill-omened city.

Two of them, Tasso the Bavarian and Jopp the Burgundian, delayed long enough to seize their Emperor's body from the ground. Tasso slung it over his shoulder, Jopp drew his sword and backed away as a rearguard against any rush from the enemy. As he backed away he saw the Grail banner still stuck in the ground. Where is the little deacon, the one our master made Pope? he thought in rage and despair. He has deserted him, he and his false sign! He hacked at the banner's shaft, sent it tumbling with the last light to earth.

Shef knew he was dying now, the dark was all around him. He did not know if it was night or his one eye failing him. He could hear still. There was a voice calling out of the darkness, a voice he had heard first many years before, in York, the day of Ragnar's death when his own true life had started. It was Erkenbert's voice, and it was calling out, “The Emperor is dead!” Now how could that have happened?

A confusion of voices below him. His mind was perfectly clear now at the last, and he could understand what they said, but he paid little attention. The Grail-knights were arguing, unable to believe that their holy cause and leader had failed. Then there were accusations of treachery and betrayal, a scuffle over the golden case in which the Grail had been kept, blows struck. He did not know who won.

Some time later he realized that the clearing, now perfectly dark, was empty. His guards had gone. They should have stabbed him before they left, shouldn't they? Not quite empty. He opened his eye, saw a figure standing at the foot of his tree-trunk. Somehow he had got his foot back on the little ledge that had kept him alive so long, he could see and think. It was Erkenbert the deacon, he recognized the tonsure and the black robe. The little man had found a spear from somewhere, was poising it inexpertly, about to stab him under the ribs as the German centurion had done to Christ, long ago in his vision by the Norwegian fjord.

“False prophet!” hissed the voice from below. “False Messiah!”

There were other shapes behind Erkenbert in the gloom. Hund and Svandis, well ahead of the rest of the Waymen now grouping and marching out of the city under Cwicca's urgings to rescue their leader, had heard the commotion round the Grail and crept up through the groves and gardens to see what it was. Hund carried no weapon, Svandis only the long pin that fastened up her hair. It was enough for a descendant of Ragnar and of Ivar. As the sometime-deacon braced for a two-handed thrust, the thin point drove between his vertebrae. He fell forward at the foot of the tree.

“How do we get him down?” asked Hund.

She pointed silently at the old wooden graduale, used long before for a similar purpose, now thrown aside as a betrayal by the furious knights who had looted its casings.

Hund propped it against the tree, climbed up, struggled with the long nail through both wrists, well above Shef's head and his own.

“I need tools,” he said. “Thorvin will have some.”

“I have what you need,” said another voice. Svandis sprang round, pin out. Two more figures had drifted out of the gloom. To her surprise she recognized Farman the visionary-priest, whom she had thought still at the ships, and Solomon the Jew, who had vanished in the fighting the previous night.

“I met Solomon on the road,” said Farman. “He saw much of what happened today from hiding. But I already knew your man was here, and what they had done to him. Not all vision comes from the mind, Svandis. Here, I have pliers ready.”

After a few minutes of grunting struggle Shef was stretched on the ground, Hund listening to his heartbeat, pouring water onto the cracked lips. Sniffing at the blackened wounds in the crushed and swollen feet.

“I will go for Thorvin and the others,” said Svandis. “He needs shelter and protection.”

Farman blocked her with a raised hand. “He does. But not from Thorvin. Not from the Way. If he were nursed back to power and kingship now, think what they would say. The one-eyed king, crucified outside the city wall, the lame smith, brought back from the dead. They would make him a god.

“No. Let him go into the dark now, and let the world have rest. He has set the world on its new path, and that is enough.”

“You mean to leave him to die?”

“Let me have him,” said Hund from the ground. “We were friends long ago. He often spoke of having a hut somewhere in the fen, where he could trap eels and grow barley and live in peace. If he lives, I will take him back to the fen. I do not think he will live through what I shall have to do, but he may.”

“Norfolk fens are a thousand miles away!” cried Svandis.

“Septimania is not so far,” said Solomon. “I can hide him there, for a while. My people have no wish for any more Messiahs to trouble the world.”

“The three of you, take him,” said Farman. “He has the gold on his arms still, and here is more from the ships.” He dropped a bag on the ground. “Hide here till the Emperor's men are all gone, and ours, and the natives of the place return. If he lives, take him home, but do not let him be seen again. The Way needs him no more.”