King and Emperor

“I do not think there is much hope in them,” said Shef to his counselors that evening, watching the sun go down behind the sharp and jagged mountains. Much the same, had he known it, was being said about him among the scholars and learned men who dominated the Jewish court. “They know a lot. But the knowledge is all about rules, either about their God or about themselves. Yet they collect what they need from far afield. They know some things that we do not, like this paper stuff. But when it comes to Greek fire…” He shook his head. “Solomon said we could enquire among the Arab and Christian merchants of the aliens' quarter. Tell me more about the flying. You should have waited for me.”

“The men said they might be at sea again in a day's time, and the wind was just high enough without being a danger. So they put Tolman in the harness and let the wind lift him. But they did two things that bin-Firnas did not do…” Earnestly Thorvin went through the details of the day's launch, when the young boy, still moored but trying to maneuver his great box-kite, had flown out to the end of the longest rope they had been able to splice together, five hundred feet of it. At the far end of the ship Tolman was boasting of his prowess to the other boys and the crewmen, his treble pipe lifting from time to time over Thorvin's rumble. As the night came down the voices died, men turned to their hammocks or stretched out on the warm sun-retaining decks.

Usually, in his dreams, Shef knew that he was dreaming, could feel the presence of his instructor. This time he did not. Did not know, even, who he was.

He was lying on stone, he could feel the cold of it running into his back. There was pain all around him too, back and sides and feet, and something deep and tearing in his chest. He ignored it as if it were happening to someone else.

What frightened him, brought out the chill sweat racing down his face, was that he could not move. Not an arm, not a finger. He was wrapped round and round in folds of some stuff or other, binding arms to sides and legs together. Was it a shroud? Was he buried, still alive? If it were, he could struggle upward, would strike his head against the coffin. For long moments he lay afraid to make the trial. For if he were buried, he could not move, could not cry out. Surely he would go mad.

Convulsively he lunged upward, felt the tearing pain again near his heart. But there was nothing there. Why then could he not see? There was a band under his chin, binding his jaw up. He was buried. Or at least he had been taken for dead.

But he could see! Or at least there was a light, no, a patch of darkness less dark than the rest. Shef stared at it, willing it to increase. And there were movements coming towards him. In the terror of live burial, fear of other men had dissolved. Shef thought of nothing but attracting their attention, whoever they were, begging to be cut free. He opened his mouth, let out a faint croak.

But whoever it was had no fear of the dead, or the dead coming to life. There was a sharp point on his throat-ball, a face looking down at him. The face said, slowly and distinctly,

“How shall a man be born when he is old? Or enter again into the womb of his mother?”

Shef gaped up, terrified. He did not know the answer.

He realized he was gaping up into a face, a face lit by starlight. In the same instant he knew once again who he was, and where he was: in his hammock, slung at the very bow of the Fafnisbane for the cool rising off the water. And the face above him was that of Svandis.

“Were you dreaming?” she asked quietly. “I heard you croaking as if your throat had dried up.”

Shef nodded, relief flooding through him. He sat up carefully, feeling the cold sweat soaking his tunic. There was no one else nearby. The crew granted him the small privacy of the space beyond the catapult platform.

“What was it about?” she whispered. He could smell her hair very close to his face. “Tell me your dream.”

Shef rolled soundlessly from his hammock, crouched face to face with the girl, the daughter of Ivar whom he had killed. He felt the awareness of her as a woman growing stronger every second, as if the years of sorrow and impotence had never visited him.

“I will tell you,” he whispered with sudden confidence, “and you shall interpret it for me. But I will do it with my arms round you.”

He embraced her gently, felt an instant resistance, continued to hold her as she felt the sweat of fear on him. Her rigid stance seemed to thaw, she let him draw her down on to the deck.

“I was lying on my back,” he whispered, “wrapped in a shroud. And I thought that I had been buried somewhere and left. I was terrified…” As he spoke, Shef slowly drew up the hem of her dress, pulled her warm thigh close to his own cold body. She seemed to feel his need for comfort, began to co-operate, to press closer to him. He pulled the dress higher, the white dress of a priestess corded round with red berries, pulled it higher yet, still whispering.

Chapter Thirteen

From all directions the levies converged on the rock of Puigpunyent, where a tense and raging Emperor directed them as they came in, either to strengthening the ring upon ring of sentry-posts set in the ravines and thorny scrub all around, or to the ever-growing gangs of pickax-men who, stone by stone, were dismantling the towers and walls of the heretics' fortress.

A hundred miles to the south, admiral Georgios and general Agilulf stared puzzledly at each other as they digested the order to halt, return, cease the pressure on the Arab forces, abandon the search for the vanished Northern fleet: return at once with every man and every ship.

Little further to the south, the Caliph himself, taking the field in the service of the Prophet for the first time for many years, pressed forward at the head of the greatest army Cordova had sent out since the days when the forces of Islam had tried to conquer France and the lands beyond it, to be turned back by Charles whom the Franks called “the Hammer,” Martel.

And crossing the Bay of Biscay came a force small in comparison with the others in numbers of ships and men, but their superior in the new qualities of range and weight of missile: the fleet of the One King, of England and the North, drawn from all its blockade stations against the Empire and sent south on the word of Farman the seer. Twenty mule-armed two-masters, thirty longships pacing them, packed with the unemployed and impatient warriors of the North, all laden as deep as they could be pressed with beef and beer and biscuit for the appetites of more than two thousand men. Alfred had accepted Farman's vision-warning, but refused the expedition command, saying England must not be left kingless: the fleet sailed under the orders of Gold-Guthmund, sub-king of the Swedes, once known (and still well-remembered) as Guthmund the Greedy.

Even in Rome, even in Byzantium, attention was falling on the remote borderlands where the Emperor of the Romans searched for the Grail-relic that would complete his empire, and where the Shatt al-Islam had suffered its first turning-back in more than a hundred years.

But the One King himself sat in the sunlight and linked fingers with his mistress, smiling foolishly.

“Completely slit-struck,” snarled Brand to the rest of the king's council, watching the pair at their table by the harbor from a decent distance. “Always happens to him. Treats women as if they all had snakes up their skirts for years on end, then one of them does something or other to him, can't think how, and bang! You can't even get his attention. Behaves like a fourteen-year-old who's just been taken behind the barn by a milkmaid.”

“There may be no harm in it,” offered Thorvin. “After all, better that he has a woman than that he doesn't. Who knows, he may get her with child…”

“The way they're going on they should have triplets already, whole ship shakes half the night…”

“…and if that were to happen, it might make the King—take his responsibilities more seriously. And she is who she is. Daughter of Ivar, granddaughter of Ragnar. She can trace her line back to Volsi himself, and through him to Othin.” Thorvin pointed to the ship moored a furlong off on the still water. “Fafnisbane, Sigurth the dragon- slayer, his blood runs in her veins. No-one was more pleased than I when her father and uncles were killed. But