King and Emperor

Chapter Ten

The enemy fleet was hull-up before Shef's lookout saw or recognized it. The Greek admiral had chosen his time perfectly: a little after noon, with the combined fleet of Arabs and Northerners split into its three habitual divisions. The advance guard and main body keeping pace with the cloud of dust which meant horse and foot advancing along the coastline, but already with oars shipped and prepared for siesta. The Northerners two long miles behind, awake but hopelessly becalmed, the sails acting only as awnings against the fierce heat. Another mile behind them, the admiral with his escort ships, dropped back to take their siesta, confident of their ability to catch up on the lumbering sailing ships later in the day.

In any case all attention was fixed on the land. Just dimly, from where they lay on the blue water, Shef could hear a faint sound of screaming trumpets, high and shrill in the Arab mode. Was that an answering bellow? The hoarse war-horns of Germans, or of Franks? Everyone on the ships was crowded on to the landward rails, listening intently, trying to make out what might or might not be happening there on the shore. A dust cloud? Pinpricks of light? Weapons catching the sun, that was for sure.

Turning from the rail, Shef blinked his one eye, weary from straining across the dazzling water. Looked out to sea, into the noon haze. Fishing boats, creeping towards them, their three-cornered sails picking up what breaths of air there might be. A lot of them, Shef reflected. Had they found a school of tunny? They were using their oars as well, moving fast for fishermen in the heat. Too fast.

“Lookout!” he bellowed. “Out to sea. What can you see?”

“Fishing boats, lord,” came the cry, a little puzzled. “A lot of them.”

“How many?”

“I can see—twenty, thirty. No, there's more coming out of the haze, pulling hard.”

“Do they have the grind here?” asked Thorvin, veteran of the journey to the far North. He meant the Halogaland custom of driving schools of whales ashore with a fleet of boats, to slaughter them in the shallows.

“That's no grind,” snapped Shef. “Nor no fishermen either. That's the enemy fleet, and us all looking the wrong way. How long have those bastards been watching us, and us saying, ‘Oh, they're only fishing boats’.”

His voice rose to a shout, as he tried to pierce the sunny lethargy, move the gaping faces turned towards him. “Cwicca, Osmod, man the mules! Everyone to the crossbows. Hagbarth, can you get any way on at all? Thorvin, blow the signal horn, alert the rest of the fleet. For Thor's sake, move, all of you. They're ready and we aren't!”

An incoherent yell from the lookout, and a pointing finger. No need for either. Out of the heat-haze, hull-up already, moving at terrifying speed, Shef saw the red-painted galleys of the Greeks sweeping down in a broad wedge. Their banks of white-painted oars flashed and swept in the sun, each ship had a bone in her teeth, a white bow-wave cresting over the menace of the ram. Shef could see the black-lashed female eyes painted incongruously on the high fore-quarters, could see the armor of their marines flashing as they waved their weapons in defiance.

“How far off are they?” It was Hund asking, his eyes were weak.

“A mile maybe. But they're not making for us. They're making for the Arabs. Going to take them from flank and rear.”

The Andalusian advance-guard hardly stood a chance at any time. Deep in siesta, awnings rigged, it took precious moments to strike them and man the oars once more. The faster and more alert ships turned devotedly to try to ward off the attack sweeping towards them at twenty miles an hour. As they tried to engage Shef saw spears and arrows flashing across the water from both sides. As if in reply, a thin trail of smoke on the air, a far-off unearthly whistling.

And then the flame. The watchers on the Fafnisbane cried out as one man as the orange flame licked across, seemed suddenly to explode. Not like a fire catching in the hearth, not like a tree blazing in a forest fire: instead a sudden ball of flame that seemed to spread out, hang in the air, hold in its heart a ship already disintegrating. Shef thought he could see tiny black shapes struggling in it, plunging already alight into the sea. But then the rest were in action.

The red galleys slowed as they reached the main body of enemy ships, picking their targets, flame snorting first from one then from another. First to die were the bold ones who steered to engage, the feeble missiles that flew from them ignored like midges harassing so many great red bulls. Then the unprepared ships who remained still. Then, as the red galleys accelerated once more to ramming stroke, the cowards who had turned to flee. In one pass the Greek flotilla left behind them more than a hundred blazing shapes. In their wake the fishing boats from the Christian villages, packed with men with injuries to avenge, and stiffened by Agilulf's detachments, closed in on those who had dodged the flame, eager to board, slaughter and take plunder.

“Very well done,” remarked Georgios to the captain of his own flagship.

“That's them off the board. Now, let's see about the stone-throwers. Half-speed now, and watered wine to the rowers.”

As the red galleys pulled round in a wide circle, Shef abandoned the attempt to make way under sail. Five minutes to furl the sails, prevent them from obstructing his catapult-crews. Then the giant sweeps over the side, only a dozen for each ship, each one pulled by four men, all that could be spared from the catapults. The men began to heave, drag their heavy, round-bellied ships through the water.

“If they don't want to fight they don't have to,” said Hagbarth tensely. “They have five times our speed. Maybe ten.”

Shef made no reply. He was watching for the range. Maybe the other side did not know what mule-stones could do. If they came on a little more—vital not to let them get close enough to use their fire-weapon. Its range a hundred yards at most. A mule-stone would fly true for half a mile. He might reach them now. Let them come on a little more—a little more yet. Better to get off a concerted volley. If all the ships shot at once they could sink half the fire-galleys in one shoot.

“Mule won't bear,” shouted Cwicca from the forward catapult. An instant later Osmod echoed him from the rear. “Mule won't bear.”

Shocked, Shef suddenly saw the trap. His ships were spread out in a long line ahead. None of them could shoot over the bow or the stern. A galley coming straight towards him could cover the distance from extreme mule-stone range to effective distance for their fire-weapon in—he did not know, maybe fifty strokes. And they were coming now. Or one of them was, picking up speed and leaving the others behind, oars threshing in perfect unison.

“Sweeps,” he shouted, “starboard sweeps, start pulling, port sweeps back water.”

Seconds of delay while the men at the sweeps worked out what was demanded, moved their cumbrous log-like oars into position. Then, slowly, the head of the Fafnisbane began to heave round, Cwicca, mule-captain on the bow catapult glaring tensely over its metal-plated shield, braced to lift his hand to show his sights were on.

As the bow of the Fafnisbane came round, so the galley heading towards them heeled over in the same direction. If that went on she would present her long fragile side to the waiting mule, no more than a quarter-mile off now, a certain hit and a certain sinking. But with beautiful speed and maneuverability she was keeping constantly in the Fafnisbane's blind spot. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Maybe one of the other ships could get in a shot? Shef looked behind him, realized that the furious roaring he had tuned out in his tension was coming from the captain of the Sigemund close behind. The Fafnisbane had steered right across him, was blocking his complete broadside. And the Greek galley had completed her turn, was sweeping back to safety, her first plunge beaten off.

But even while he was watching the whole situation had changed yet again. The other Greek galleys had not lain on their oars while their consort darted in. They had split, swung in two wide arcs just neatly out of mule-stone distance—someone had been observing them very closely as they took their practice shots—and were forming a ring round the Northern ships. Already one was swinging round to try to get behind the stern of the Hagena, last ship in the line, and the captain of the Hagena did not seem to have noticed. It would only take one fire-galley to get within range, and she could then cruise up the long straggling line of the English two-masters, setting each one alight and using it as cover from the stones of the one next in line.

They had to cover each other. Each ship had to have bow and stern approaches covered by the mules of another ship. What was the formation they needed for that? And while he thought, he had to signal the Hagena, still floating motionless, sweeps not even out, lookout and skipper still staring fixedly in the wrong directions. Shef began to shout to the skipper of the Sigemund, to see the danger and pass on the message.

Brand had caught on quicker. As the shouted messages passed down the line, Shef saw the Narwhal suddenly streak past his line of vision, oars beating faster even than those of the Greeks. Another of the Viking longships followed him. Shef realized that all five had closed in, clustered to seaward of the seven bigger sailing-ships for protection against the Greek fire. But Brand had realized that there was a weak spot for all of them. He was moving to buy time.

Heart in mouth, Shef ran to the stern, climbed nimbly up, stood on the barely-moving dragon-tail that rose six feet above the deck. Suddenly remembering, he pulled the far-seer from his belt—if they had had a dozen like it lookouts might have given better warning! No time for regrets. He pulled it open, tried to adjust the length of the sliding tube so he could see clearly.

Through the smoky and discoloring lens he saw the three ships, one Greek and two Viking, closing on each other at prodigious speed, far faster than any horse could run. The Greek was twice the size of either of the other craft, could ram and run them down without troubling to use her fire. But she had to be delayed. Shef saw what Brand and his consort were trying to do. They were aiming to steer their bows along the whole line of the Greek's oars, snapping them and killing the rowers with the backlash. Then, maybe, board and see how the Greek marines would face Viking axes.

But the fire, the fire. For the first time Shef could see something of the strange device that burnt ships like tinder. A copper dome midships, men clustered round it, two sweating at handles which they worked up and down like a suction-pump in the East Anglian fields…

Suddenly the pumping men were whisked away as if by a broom, and those clustered round to shield them. Shef turned the far-seer frantically, trying to make out what was going on. There was Brand's ship, and he could see Brand in the prow, waving an axe. And a dozen crossbows lining the side, all simultaneously dropping in the quarrels and heaving on their goat's-foot cocking handles. The Greeks had not expected the heavy armor-piercing missiles at close range.

But their captain knew all about oar-snapping. As Brand's Narwhal cruised past the far side of the galley Shef saw a wood of oars leap into sight. The rowers had heaved them up in well-rehearsed display. As they did so Shef, in the round field of the far-seer, saw men scrambling again to the handles of the Greek fire weapon. Caught a glimpse of a gleaming nozzle as it trained round to bear on the second Viking ship, fifty yards behind Brand's and on the near side. A man standing by it pushing forward what looked like a lit cord…

Shef thrust the far-seer from him just too late to avoid seeing the flame leap out, the ball of fire at its tip. And, centered in the midst of it, the skipper of the Marsvin, Sumarrfugl, who had stormed the walls of York with Shef and Brand years before, hurling a spear and yelling defiance at the doom about to take him.

A great groan rose from the decks of the Fafnisbane as they saw the Marsvin go, fire rising higher than her mast, shapes again hurled into the water, some of them still thrashing on a burning sea. All men they had known and drunk with.

Shef looked round again, constricted with terror at the thought that everyone was looking in the same direction again, not watching for the death that might be coming up on them at racing speed from any direction. He realized that twice already he had heard the twang and crash of the mules, twang as the rope was released, crash as the throwing arm hit its padded bar, making the whole firm-braced ship shake. There in the sea, not so far off, wrecked timbers and men swimming. Not the great galleys though. Just fishing boats. The Greek commander was sending them in to draw attention and increase the number of targets. Like playing fox-and-hens with too many foxes for the hens to keep track of.

They're not frightened of us, Shef thought. That's why this is going badly. We are terrified of the flame, have seen our mates go up in it, there are some of them still there dying in the burning water—how can water burn? But they're just fencing with us. Those men out there on the wrecked ships. It's just a swim for them, a little wait till they're rescued. Got to make them worry. Make them afraid.

But first, make us safe. We must form a square. No, seven ships, four sides, there would always be a weak side, they might decide to come in on that, lose a ship or two to take all of us. Get into as near a circle as we can, that way any approach will face at least two broadsides. If there was just a breath of air, we could get some steerage way.

He seized Hagbarth by the shoulder, told him what he wanted, left him to shout over the side to the skipper of the Sigemund and the Grendelsbane beyond. Turned back to see what new disaster had come upon the scene.

This whole battle seemed to progress in a series of flashes, unlike any other he had been in. He had always known what was supposed to happen before. He had no idea, even, how long the shouted conversation with Hagbarth had lasted. Somehow, in the meantime, the Hagena had managed to get into action. Delayed for vital seconds by the Narwhal and the Marsvin, the Greek galley had been too slow in dipping oars again and keeping in the blind spot. The Hagena had veered round, come broadside on, and shot simultaneously with both catapults, each one sending a thirty-pound rock skimming over the water at a bare quarter-mile range. Viking longships, clinker-built and locked to the prow and the tail, simply fell to bits when struck square on. The galley, for all Hagbarth's contempt for the strength of her construction, lasted a little better. Keel broken in two places, she was going down, but leaving a mass of wreckage like a raft, with rowers and marines clinging to it. Fishing boats were already closing in, maneuvering to keep in shelter of the wreck, to pick up survivors.

Shef's eye was caught beyond the scene being played out a few hundred yards off by the now-familiar gouts of flame a mile beyond. With the fatalistic courage of his creed—and spurred on by thoughts of the impaling-post that waited for cowards—the Arab admiral had decided to venture forward to engage the Greeks. Half a score of galleys had turned to meet him, leaving the rest of their number to watch and circle the Northern ships like wolves round a bogged elk. Again and again the flames licked out like dragon-breath, a ship exploding at the end of each tongue. Yet the crowd of Arab ships seemed to be making some impact, steering through the embers of their comrades. Shef could just see—he pulled out the far-seer again to make sure—grappling irons flying as the rear ranks of the admiral's squadron managed to close with some of their enemies. Too close now for the fire. Now it would be saber and scimitar against pike and shield.

Shef felt his heart slow its frantic pounding for the first time since they had seen the fishing boats and realized they were hostile. He lowered the far-seer. Became conscious of a deep hum of satisfaction rising from the decks of the Fafnisbane, a hum that broke into growls and fierce shouting.

Brand's Narwhal was cruising gently past the wreck of the Greek galley, her crossbowmen pouring volley after volley into the defenseless men clinging to her planks. Some were crossing themselves, others holding out their hands in a plea for mercy. A few had even swum towards the Narwhal, were trying to catch hold of the sweeping oars. Shef saw Brand himself, easily recognizable even at a furlong's distance, leaning over the side, slashing downwards with his axe “Battle-troll.” Where the water was not black with ash and embers it was turning red with blood. The Hagena was joining in too, its crew making uninterrupted target-practice with their heavy gunwale-mounted steel crossbows.

Shef became aware of hands clinging to his arm, looked down. It was Hund. “Stop them!” shouted the little leech. “Those men aren't dangerous any more. They can't fight. This is butchery!”

“Better be butchered than roasted,” snarled a voice behind him. It was one of the ship's boys, Tolman, a small incongruous figure clutching an axe bigger than himself.

Shef looked over the side. The Fafnisbane had swung in a half-circle as Hagbarth formed the protective ring Shef had demanded. That, and some barely detectable set of the current along the coast, had swung the Fafnisbane into the patch of water where the Marsvin had been torched. Still floating in the water there were what looked like broiled sides of meat at an ox-roasting. Shef pointed. “Some of them may be still alive, Hund. Get the boat. Do what you can for them.”

He turned away, heading for the foremast where he could scan the horizon and for the first time since the action began collect his thoughts. There was someone in his path, someone shrieking and clutching at him. Svandis. Everyone seemed to be shouting and shrieking today. He pushed her firmly aside and walked to the mast. A rule, he thought. There must be a rule. Don't speak to the man in charge until he speaks to you. Hagbarth, Skaldfinn and Thorvin were evidently of his mind. They had intercepted the still-shrieking woman, were hustling her away, waving others aside. To let him think.

Holding the mast as it swayed gently to the roll of the wavelets, he looked deliberately all round the further horizon. To the south: the Arab admiral's ships, burning, sinking, boarded, in flight. None still fighting. To seaward: four Greek galleys rowing in a gentle arc well outside his range. To the north: two more, and a great cluster of smaller boats, some of the latter sneaking casually closer, tacking to and fro with their strange, handy three-cornered sails.

To landward: three more galleys completing the circle. But beyond them? Shef aimed the far-seer, scanned carefully along. A dust-cloud. Men moving. Moving south, and in a hurry. Impossible to say what kind of men were making the dust. But… a scan further, and there, cresting a small hill, caught by some trick in clear outline in the far-seer's blurry lens, he could see them. Stiff ranks of men in metal. Helmets, chain-armor, metal flashing in the sun as their feet moved. Feet moved together. A slow, steady, disciplined line of armored men moving forward. The Lanzenorden had won its land battle without hindrance from the sea. That was the situation. It was clear what should be done.

Shef raised his voice in what had now become silence. “Hagbarth. How long till the wind gets up again? Half an hour? When we have enough wind to make steering speed, we will head south down the coast. We'll go in a wedge, fifty yards apart. If the galleys try to take the last ships from behind, we all turn and sink them—it'll be easy once we're under sail again. We'll make as much distance as we can before it's dark and then anchor for the night in some cove we can block off—I don't want fireships coming up on us in the dark.

“Cwicca. See those boats trying to sneak up on us? When there are four within range, see if you and Osmod can sink them all. They're getting too cheerful out there.

“Thorvin. Call over Brand. When Cwicca and Osmod have sunk the fishing boats, he's to take two of his ships over there and kill all the crews. No swimmers, no survivors. Make certain the Christians see him do it.”

Thorvin opened his mouth to protest, hesitated, held his tongue. Shef stared him full in the face. “They're not frightened, Thorvin. That gives them the advantage. We have to take it away, see?”

He turned and walked over to the seaward rail. Hund and a few helpers were struggling to lift a man over the side. As his face came level with the gunwale, eyeless, hairless, burned down to the gleaming skull and cheekbones, Shef recognized him. Sumarrfugl, old comrade. He was whispering something, or husking it with what remained of his lungs.

“No hope for me, mates. It's in my lungs. If there's a mate there, give me the death. The warrior's death. If this goes on much longer, I shall scream. Let me go quiet, like a drengr. A mate there? Is there a mate there? I can't see.”

Slowly Shef stepped over. He had seen Brand do this. He put an arm round Sumarrfugl's head, said firmly, “Shef here, fraendi. I'm your mate. Speak well of me in Valhalla.” He drew his short knife, set the point behind what had been Sumarrfugl's ear, drove hard into the brain.

As the corpse fell to the floor he heard the woman behind him again. She must have got out from below-deck.

“Men! You men! The evil of the world is from men alone. Not gods. Men!”

Shef looked down at the charred skinless body at his feet, its genitals burned away. Over the side he could hear shouts and screaming as Brand's crew hunted another survivor from bits of wreckage, harpooned him in the water as they would have a seal.

“Men?” he replied, staring at her and through her with his one eye, as if to pierce down through the earth to the underworld. “Men, you think? Can you not feel Loki stirring?”

As the afternoon breeze off the sea strengthened, the Northern fleet picked up speed, the four remaining Viking ships swarming over the waves with their usual supple motion, the two-masters plowing through them, spray leaping up over the tall prows. The Greek galleys had feinted to bar their passage, then fallen back before the threat of the mules. Very soon they had given up their ominous shark-like pursuit and turned away into the haze. Fortunate for them, Shef remarked to Thorvin and Hagbarth. If they had held on longer he would have turned and tried to catch them, sink the entire fleet. Galleys held the advantage in a calm, sailing ships in the wind. Catapults trumped Greek fire in the light, and at distance. The other way round close up, and in the dark.

Well before the sun set Shef had marked a cove with high cliffs to either side and a narrow inlet, taken the whole fleet well inside. By the time the dark came he had taken every precaution he could think of. Brand's Vikings, experienced in the holding of beachheads, had set off immediately inland, reconnoitered the approaches, established a firm block on the one single footpath leading down. Four catapult ships were firmly moored broadside on to the cove entrance, so that any ship entering would face eight mules at a range well outside that of the fire projectors. Shef had sent two parties up to each of the cliffs on either side, with tar-soaked bundles of straw, and orders to light them and hurl them down at the first sign of any ship trying to enter. At the last moment one of the English crewmen detailed for the job had come over, asked uncertainly for some of the kite cloth. What for, Shef had demanded. Slowly the man, a stunted creature with a villainous squint, had fumbled out his idea. Attach some cloth, like a small sail, to each of the bundles. When they threw them over he thought the cloth would hold the air, like, like it did with the kites. Take longer for the bundles to fall. Shef stared, wondering if he had found another Udd. Clapped the man on the back, asked his name, told him to take the cloth and consider himself a kite-handler for the future.

It had all been done efficiently, under the driving force of the king's tongue and every single man's knowledge of what the Greek fire could do. Yet they had been slow, sluggish. Shef himself felt completely drained, exhausted, though he had not struck a blow or swung an oar. It was fear. The sense that he was for once facing a cleverer mind than his own, one that had made a plan and made him dance to it. Without Brand and Sumarrfugl's intervention every single ship and man in the fleet might have been at the sea-bottom, or floating like a charred log on the water for the gulls to peck.

Shef had ordered one of the fleet's last barrels of ale broached, a quart served out to every man. What's that for, someone had asked. “It is to drink the minni-öl, the remembrance ale for the men of the Marsvin,” he replied. “Drink it and think where you would be without them.” Now, guarded, warmed by a fire, his belly full of pork and biscuit, cooked careless of the defeated stragglers who might be wandering the shore, Shef sat brooding over his last pint. After a while he saw the pale eyes of Svandis fixed on him from across the fire. She seemed, for once and unusually—not contrite, but as if she might listen to another voice for a change. Shef crooked a finger, beckoned her over, ignoring the routine flash of anger in her eyes.

“Time you told us,” he said, pointing out a stone for her to sit on. “Why do you think there are no gods, only wicked men? If that's what you think, why this mummery with white robes and rowan-berries like a Way-priest? Don't waste my time being angry. Tell me the answers.”

Weariness and strain gave Shef's voice a chill that brooked no defiance. In the firelight behind Svandis Shef saw Thorvin squatting on the sand, hammer in belt, and the other Way-priests with him, Suleiman the Jew next to his colleague Skaldfinn. “Well. Do you need me to tell you why I think there are wicked men?”

“Don't be silly. I knew your father. I killed him, remember? The kindest thing you could say about him was that he was not of one skin, eigi einhamr, like a werewolf. Only he was a were-worm, I saw him on the other side. If you had to think of him as a man—well, what could you say? He cut women's living bowels out for pleasure, the only way he knew to put bone in his prick. Wicked?” Shef shook his head, without words. “No, tell us why you think there are no wicked gods. You're talking to a man who's seen them.”

“In dreams! Only in dreams!”

Shef shrugged. “My mother saw one on a beach, like this, and felt him too, Thorvin says. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.”

Svandis hesitated. She had explained her views often enough. Never in the face of such solid cast-iron certainty on the other side. Yet the fierce blood of Ragnar ran in her veins, only surging more strongly to opposition.

“Consider the gods that people believe in,” she began. “The gods my father and his brothers sacrificed to, Othin god of the hanged, betrayer of warriors, prepared always for Ragnarök and the battle with Fenris-wolf. What are the words that Othin tells us in the holy Havamal, ‘The Sayings of the High One.’ ” Her voice broke suddenly into the chant of the Way-priest:

“Early shall he rise, who will reft another's

Life or lands or woman.“

“I know the sayings,” said Shef. “What's the point?”

“The point is that the god is like the men who believed in him. He told them only what they wanted to know already. Othin—the High One as you call him—he is just a mouthpiece for the wisdom of a pirate, a murderer like my father.

“Think of another god. Think of the Christ-god—flogged, spat on, nailed to a cross and killed without a weapon in his hand. Who believes in him?”

“Those wicked bastards of monks,” said an anonymous voice in the darkness. “Used to be my masters. They laid on the lash all right, but no one never flogged none of them.”

“But where did the Christians start?” cried Svandis. “Among the slaves of the Rome-folk! They made a god in their own image, one who would rise again and bring them victory in another world, because they had no chance in this one.”

“What about the monks?” said the skeptical voice again.

“Who did they preach their religion to? Their slaves! Did they believe it themselves, maybe, maybe not, but it was useful to them. What good would it have done them if their slaves had believed in Othin?

“And what of the followers of the Prophet here?” she went on, pressing an advantage. “They believe in the one clear way. Anyone can join it by saying a few words. No-one can leave it without facing death. Those who join pay no taxes, but their men-folk must forever fight the unbelievers. Two hundred years ago the Arabs were sand-rats, nobodies, feared by none! What is their religion but a way of gaining strength? They have made themselves a god who gives them power. As my uncles made a god who gave them courage and fearlessness, or the Christians one who gave obedience.”

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,” said the skeptical voice again, followed by a comprehensive hawk and spit into the fire. “True enough. I heard them say it.”

Shef placed the voice finally. Not Cwicca, but Trimma, one of his mates. Strange that he should speak so freely. It must be the ale.

Another voice breaking in, the quiet one of Suleiman the Jew, by now speaking the fleet's common Anglo-Norse mixed speech with barely a trace of accent.

“An interesting view, young lady. I wonder what you will have to say of the Lord whose name is not spoken.” He added, as ignorance remained complete, “The god of my people. The god of the Jews.”

“The Jews live in a corridor,” said Svandis flatly. “At the far end of this inner sea. All the armies of the world have marched up and down it, Arabs, Greeks, Rome-folk, all of them. The Jews have been toads under the harrow 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 Ragnarök.”

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