King and Emperor

surely the speed of descent would counterbalance the tug of the wind. As long as he did not dive directly into the wind…

Gently, alert all the time for the first twinge of an unbalanced response, Tolman worked his foot controls, felt his craft heel away to the right, found himself automatically working the arm controls to lift the left side and lower the right.

A mile astern, Shef and Steffi and the rest of the watchers saw the seemingly runaway kite turn into a slow and gentle bank. Oars threshed as the recovery ships prepared to race after it, now that it was turning back towards the sea. Hagbarth prepared to shout orders, make sail, head in the same direction.

“Wait,” said Shef, head fixed upwards. “I think he knows what he's doing. I think he's going to try to turn and come back to us.”

“Well, one thing's sure,” said Steffi with a defiant glare round for contradiction, made more defiant by his squint. “There ain't no doubt we can fly. And not with no feathers neither.”

In the last moments of his flight, Tolman, like Steffi before him, seemed to lose control of his craft and come down hard and fast. He hit the water with a splash and a cracking of canes barely a hundred feet from the Fafnisbane itself, the recovery ships well astern of him. Shef, who had shed his gold circlet and bracelets minutes before, dived and swam over, knife trailing from his wrist, ready to cut the lad free if need be. In the warm water he and half-a-dozen other swimmers surged round the still-floating kite. But Tolman had wriggled loose already, was treading water like a frog, holding his craft protectively. “Did you see?” he shouted. “Did you see?”

“I saw,” Shef replied, kicking gleefully in the bright sunlight. The anxiety and depression that had grown on him with the years had vanished. Nothing so pleasurable as splashing in the warm Inner Sea, far from the freezing waters of England. And the problem of flight was solved, or at least well begun. And he was the lover of Svandis.

“I owe you a reward,” he said. “The promised reward for new knowledge. But you will have to share it with Cwicca and Steffi and the gang. Maybe the other boys too.”

“I should get most,” shrilled Tolman. “I took it up and flew it!”

On the shore, by one of the gates out of the fortress-city of the Jews, Anselm the perfectus eyed the little convoy of mules and donkeys.

“You have her?” he asked.

“Wrapped up in a carpet, slung over the black mule. You can't see her because we've packed other bales round her. The gate-guards won't notice.” Thierry the shepherd hesitated. “One bad thing, mi dons.”

“What's that?”

“We lost Guillem. She killed him.”

“One woman against six of you?”

“We thought we had her. One each side of her, coming up from behind, grab the bottom of her dress, lift it right over her head like a bag. You'd expect a woman to start shrieking ‘rape’ and be too frightened to fight, arms trapped and her legs bare.”

“So?”

“She had some kind of gutting knife in her belt. Slashed her own dress right open, stabbed Guillem right through the heart while he was trying to grab her arm. Then I hit her one and she went down. Kept on fighting, though, while we gagged her. We did it in an alley behind the well, only women around and I don't think anyone saw. I hope she has no brothers. I wouldn't want to have to fight one of them, if that's what the women are like.”

“Guillem has earned his release,” said the perfectus. “May we all leave the world as well, and earn the right to pass out of it. Go on, Thierry. I will leave the message and then follow.”

The mule-train passed through the guarded gate, headed across the plain and up into the nearby mountains, Svandis slung bound, gagged, near-naked but conscious over the lead-beast.

Chapter Fourteen

As the dinghy approached the quayside, Shef realized that there was a considerable reception committee waiting for him. He could not see the prince himself, Benjamin ha-Nasi. But Solomon was there, and men he recognized as members of the prince's entourage, the captain of his guards. Their faces were grave. Trouble of some sort. Could it be that the flight that they must have seen went against one of their religious rules? Were they about to tell him to take the fleet and go? They seemed to have no aggressive intention. Shef composed his face into a mask of rigid severity. As the boat was pulled up to the steps he leapt nimbly out, straightened, marched up, Skaldfinn the interpreter at his heels.

Solomon did not waste words. “We have found a man dead in the city,” he said.

“My men cannot have done it. They were at sea, or on their ships in harbor.”

“Your woman might have done it. But she is gone.”

Shef's face paled, for all his forced composure. “Gone?” he said. It came out as a croak. “Gone?” he repeated, more firmly. “If she has gone, it was not of her own free will.”

Solomon nodded. “That may be. This letter was left with a boy from the Christian quarter. He was paid to deliver it to the captain of the city guard, and to say it was for the one-eyed foreign king.”

Presentiment hanging over him, Shef took the paper—paper indeed, he noted—unfolded it. He could read Latin letters, with some difficulty, as a result of his childhood education, ineffective though that had been. Yet he could make little of what he read.

“Nullum malum contra te nec contra mulierem tuam intendimus,” he spelled out carefully. “Skaldfinn, what does this say?”

Skaldfinn also took the letter, read through it, brow furrowed. “It says, ‘We mean no harm against you or your woman. But if you wish to have her back, come at the second hour of the day following this to the tenth milestone on the road to Razes. There we will tell you what we would have of you. Come alone.’ It adds, in different writing —poor writing, it seems to me, and worse Latin—'She killed a man when we took her. Her blood is forfeit.' ”

Shef looked round at what seemed suddenly to be an immense crowd, all silent, all watching him. The hubbub of the market had ceased. His own men had come up from the dinghy and were close behind him. He knew, somehow, that the men on his ships lying at anchor had realized something was wrong and were lining the sides as well and watching him. Years ago he had decided on impulse to rescue one woman, Godive, from the slavers. But then no one had seen him do it, except Hund, and the thane Edrich, dead long since. He had no doubt in his mind that he had to rescue Svandis now. But this time he had to persuade people that what he was doing was right. He was less free as a king than he had been as a thrall.

Two things he was sure of. First, Brand and Thorvin and the others would not let him go alone. They had seen him vanish too often before. If he did not go alone, would the kidnappers kill their hostage? The other thing he was sure of was that there, in the crowd, there would be agents of the men who had taken her. What he said now would be reported. He had to make it look reasonable to them. Acceptable to Brand and Thorvin.

He turned, looked behind him. As he suspected, other boats had followed him over. Brand was climbing the steps, looking baleful and angry and bigger even than ever. Hund looking puny and anxious. Cwicca and Osmod too. They had cocked their crossbows, had the air of men picking their targets. Some he could rely on. Some to be swayed.

Shef aimed his voice at Brand, but pitched his voice high, to carry if it could even across the water to the watching ship-crews.

“You heard the letter Skaldfinn read, Brand?”

Brand twitched his silver-mounted axe “Battle-troll” in reply.

“Years ago, Brand, you taught me the way of the drengr, when we marched to York and took it. Does the drengr abandon his comrades?”

Brand saw in an instant which way the questions were going, and who they were aimed at. He himself, Shef