King and Emperor

since their history began, from what I have been told of it. Have you heard the toad shriek out as the harrow rakes it? It cries out, ‘I will be revenged!’ The Jews have made a god of total power, and total memory, who never forgets any injury to his people, and who will revenge it—sometime. When the Holy One comes. He has been a long time coming, and they say you crucified him when he did. But if you believe what you do, it does not matter that the Holy One never comes, because he is always coming. That is how the Jews live on.”

Shef could see Suleiman's face in the firelight, watched it carefully for any grimace, any twist of anger. Nothing that he could see.

“An interesting view, young princess,” said Suleiman carefully. “I see you have an answer for everything.”

“Not for me,” said Shef, draining his mug. “I have seen them, in dreams. And others have seen me in the same dreams, so it is not just my fantasy. They have shown me sights far off as well, and they have come true. As they have for Vigleik of the visions, for Farman priest of Frey, for others of the Way.

“And I tell you, those gods are not made in my image! What was it that bit me, Svandis, you saw the marks in my flesh? A pet of Loki's, a pet of Othin's? No pet of mine. I do not even like my father Rig, if he is my father. The world would be better with no gods, I say. If we all believed what we wanted, I would be a believer in Svandis. But I know better. It is the gods who are evil. Men are evil too, because they have to be. If it were a better world that the gods made, men would be better too.”

“It will be a better world,” rumbled Thorvin in his deep bass, “if we can escape the chains of Skuld.”

“Keep thinking about it, Svandis,” said Shef, standing up. He stopped as he walked towards his blanket on the sand. “I mean what I say, and not as a joke, nor an insult. You are wrong about the gods of the Way, or at least you have not explained to me what I know. Just the same, there may be new knowledge in there somewhere, knowledge of people if not of gods. That is what the Way is about. Knowledge, not preparing for Ragnarok.”

Svandis dropped her eyes, for once silent, defenseless against praise.

Chapter Eleven

The small Northern fleet, only eleven ships now, mustered next morning the moment the highest lookout saw the first streak of light in the sky. Many men had dreamt of fire in the night, none wished to be trapped against a hostile shore by the red galleys of the Greeks. Shef left the details of the withdrawal to be organized by Brand, who had rowed away from many a beachhead. The clumsier two-masters moved first, using their sweeps while they waited for the first puffs of the land breeze that blew from the cooled land towards the warmer sea every morning. The four remaining Viking longships lay on their oars close in, sterns just touching the beach. The party of sentries blocking the landward path ran down all together, their commander in the rear, shoved the boats out and scrambled aboard in the same moment, Brand counting carefully as they boarded. Ten strokes and the longships were out in the main channel, pulling easily past the Fafnisbane.

Two last groups to recover. On each of the headlands either side of the cove Shef had posted a dozen men, with their bundles of dried grass and pitch to illuminate any enemy trying to force the cove entrance. The Vikings had a routine for recovering such men too. On the hail, ropes appeared, men began to drop down like spiders on the end of their threads. The Vikings were lowering their more inexperienced English colleagues bodily, Shef realized. They touched ground, waded out into the water, seized outstretched oars, were hauled aboard.

Now the experts were doing it, at three times the speed, moving as if an enemy army were rushing up the other side of the hill. Ropes slung round firm-driven stakes, passed doubled round the waists, and the Vikings were walking swiftly backwards down the cliffs, bracing themselves against the pull. Into the water, the ropes jerked free.

And they'd left someone behind! As the last men scrambled for the waiting ships, Shef saw a head and a waving arm. He could even recognize the face, the squint. It was the innovator of the evening before, who had wanted to set kite-cloth to the flares. Shef knew his name now: Steffi, known familiarly as Cross-eye, said to be the worst shot with a crossbow in the whole fleet. He seemed unworried, was indeed grinning broadly. Shef caught the words floating down.

“I got a new way to come down! Watch this!”

Steffi moved to the highest point of the cliff, looked down into deep water, the boats moving gently across it a hundred feet below. He had something tied to him and trailing behind. Shef shut his eyes. Another one who thought he could fly. At least it was over water. If he didn't hit a rock. If he could stay afloat long enough to be rescued.

Steffi took a few steps backward, ran awkwardly forward again, and then leapt straight out. As he leapt, something billowed out behind him. Kitecloth. A square of it, eight feet across, fixed by cords to some kind of belt. As the small figure shot downwards it seemed to catch the air, form a kind of bell above him. For a few instants the figure slowed, hung marvelously in the air, Steffi's grin once again perfectly visible.

Then something seemed to go wrong, Steffi began to lurch from side to side in the air, his grin vanished, he hauled vainly on his cords, legs thrashing. A splash, barely twenty feet from the side. Two of Brand's men were in the water, swimming like seals. They resurfaced with Steffi between them, blood streaming from his nose, towed him to the Fafnisbane, heaved him up to waiting hands before stroking back to their own Narwhal.

“It was going fine,” muttered Steffi. “Then the air started to spill, like. Like a mug that's too full. I've still got the cloth,” he added, hauling on the lines attached to the belt now in his hands. “I didn't lose nothing.”

Shef patted him on the back. “Tell us before you do it next time. Birdman.”

He turned, waved to Hagbarth. Slowly the fleet rowed and swept its way out to sea, every lookout scanning the horizon with far-seers for any trace of the galleys, any threatening scout of a lateen sail.

No sign. Hagbarth coughed, asked the vital question. “Lord? Which direction now? South and back to base?”

Shef shook his head. “Take us straight out to sea, as far from land as we can get before noon. When the wind dies and we are helpless again I want us to be so far away that the furthest Christian scout cannot pick us up. They will be sweeping the shore in line abreast before long. We must be over the horizon by then.

“Conference at noon,” he added. “Tell Brand to come aboard then.” He turned to sling his hammock. A night on the sand with the sand-mites had left most men weary. Those not detailed to handle the sails or keep lookout followed his example.

Hours later, an awning shading them from the noonday sun, Shef and his council met on the high deck of the Fafnisbane's forward catapult mounting. Shef himself sat on the frame of the mule. Round him, sitting or squatting on the deck, were the four Way-priests, Thorvin, Hagbarth, Skaldfinn and Hund, with Brand resting his great back against the dragon-prow. After thought, Shef had once more called Suleiman the Jew over to listen to them. A few feet away, permitted to listen but not intervene unless asked, squatted Cwicca and Osmod to relay word to the crewmen once a decision was reached. Between them, a sullen expression on his face, was the young Arab Mu'atiyah. He would understand little or nothing of what was discussed in the Anglo-Norse patois of the Way, none of which he had troubled to learn in his weeks with the fleet. Yet he might be needed to answer questions.

“All right,” said Shef without formality, “only one question, where do we go?”

“Back to Cordova,” said Hagbarth promptly. “Or back to the mouth of the Guadalquivir anyway. Tell the Caliph what happened. He'll know before we get there, some stragglers must have got away, but at least we can tell him we didn't run.”

“We'll have to tell him we failed, though,” Shef replied. “These Mohammedans are not patient with failures. Especially as we'd told him we would succeed.”

“Nowhere else to go,” rumbled Brand. “Go north, they'll find out about us, send word to the galleys. Go out to sea like we're doing, well, they say there's islands out here but all in Christian hands. They'd catch up with us. But I agree, no point in going back to the Caliph. Why don't we just go home? Maybe pick up a little something on the way. Go back through the straits into the open ocean, sail home, see if we can't find a few bits and pieces to make a profit on the trip. From the Christians on the Frankish coast,” he added, his eye on the listening figure of