King and Emperor

Chapter Twenty-four

The Emperor of the Romans sagged back on to his camp-stool, his face drawn and weary. “Total failure,” he said. He reached out an arm, picked up the Holy Lance which never left him, cradled it to his cheek. After a few moments he put it reverently, but still wearily, back in its place.

“Even the Lance brings me no comfort,” he went on. “The virtue has gone out of me. I have angered God.”

The two bodyguards standing at the entrance to the tent, stifling at the end of the long Catalan summer's day, looked at each other uneasily, then at the fourth man in the room, the deacon Erkenbert, mixing wine and water with his face turned down.

“Angered God, herra?” asked Jopp uncertainly, the bolder and duller of the two. “You eat fish on Fridays. God knows—I mean we know you don't have no women in here, though if you wanted to there's plenty…”

His comrade trod firmly on his foot with a hobnailed boot, and Jopp's voice trailed into silence.

Bruno's face showed not even amusement, his voice continued wearily. “The Greek fire failed. Forty good brothers dead or missing, and Agilulf pulled out of the sea half-roasted.” A spark of animation showed, he straightened for a moment. “It's my belief those Greek bastards flamed him with the rest, because he was in the way. But still,” he sank back again, “we lost. The admiral won't try again, keeps wailing about his lost projector.

“And ‘War-Wolf’ smashed. The gate not down. I do not blame you, Erkenbert, but you have to admit, there was something devilish about the way they hit with the second shot. You would have thought God would send His servants something. If they were His true servants. I fear I am not. Not any more.”

Erkenbert did not look up, continued to pour one flask into another as if absorbed. “Are there any other signs, O imperator, that God has turned his back on you?”

“Too many. Deserters keep coming in. Men who say they were Christians, converted to the worship of Mohammed by force. We make them eat the bacon, then test what they say. They all say the same. The Arab army barely the other side of the hill, led by the Caliph in person, er-Rahman. Tens of thousands, they say. Hundreds of thousands, they say. All those who resist the will of the Caliph are impaled.

“And the worst of all you know, O deacon. No word of the Holy Grail, the ladder of life to go with the lance of the holy death. How many men have we sent to death in the search for it? Sometimes their screams come to me in my sleep. That boy, the one who had seen it, you tortured him till he died. And the child, the fair child who fell in flame from the skies. They should have lived many years yet, but they died. And for nothing. For nothing…”

The Emperor sagged back further, his long arms trailing on the ground, his eyes closed.

His metal gauntlets lay on the table in front of him. Moving carefully, Erkenbert the deacon stepped across, seized one of them, weighed it in his hand, and then swung it with all his scrawny force across the face of the defenseless Emperor. Blood spurted instantly from the broken nose. As the bodyguards reached reflexively for their hilts, Erkenbert found himself whirled off his feet, back stretched over the table, a forearm like oak and wire cutting off the breath in his throat, and a dagger-tip already poised an inch from his eyeball.

Slowly the pressure relaxed, the Emperor straightened up, hauling his counselor with him.

“Stay back, boys. Now, what the Hell did you do that for?”

No glimpse of fear showed in the pale face glaring up at him. “I struck you because you are a traitor to God. God has sent you to carry out His purposes. Whatever those purposes may be! And you, you fall into the sin of despair! You are no better than a suicide, who kills himself because he fears what God may send. Except in one way. You have time yet to make amends. Down on your knees, Emperor that should be, and beg forgiveness from the All-Highest!”

Slowly the Emperor sank down, dagger falling from his hand, and began to mutter the Lord's Prayer through the flow of blood from his nose. Erkenbert let him finish.

“Enough! For now. Confess this to your confessor. Now hold still.” The deacon stepped forward, took careful hold of the broken septum, aligned it carefully, ran a finger along the top to check. The Emperor remained motionless, as he did under his own many private penances.

“Very well. You will look none the worse in a day or two. Here, drink.” The deacon thrust forward an unspilled tankard.

“Now, listen to what I have to say. Yes, the Greek fire failed. Yes, ‘War-Wolf’ is destroyed. No, the Grail has not been found. But think: these deserters, these secret eaters of pork who have come to you. They are apostates and the children of apostates, traitors many times over. Would they have come to you if they had thought the Caliph of the Christ-rejecters were going to win? No. They fled in fear of his defeat. So, put them in the front rank of your army, remind them of the fate that comes to those who are captured having renounced the false prophet. But smite the Caliph as Samson smote the Philistines, strong in the Lord.”

The Emperor rubbed a blood-stained chin. “It sounds as if we are well outnumbered…”

“Smite them in the mountain passes, then. Take revenge for the dead Roland. What is it the minstrels sing in his song, in the Rolandslied?”

Surprisingly, the stolid Jopp replied. “They say, the Franks, Chrestiens unt dreit et paiens unt tort. ‘Christians are right and pagans are wrong.’ I heard it sung back in Leuven market. That's what made me join up.”

“ ‘Christians are right and pagans are wrong.’ That is all you need to know. But I will tell you another tale, to strengthen your faith. When the blessed Gregory, the Pope, sent his emissaries to England to bring my countrymen the holy gospel, they would not listen, just as they have turned heretic today. And Paulinus the Archbishop of that time, his heart failed him and he made ready to flee, to return to Rome in faintness of heart. But in his sleep the Apostle Peter, the first Pope, from whom all Popes take their power, he came to Paulinus in a dream and scourged him savagely with knotted cords, and told him to return to his post. And when the Archbishop woke the marks of the cords were still to be seen on his body where the holy Peter had flogged him. So Paulinus turned again, and conquered. Do you now likewise, Emperor! And as penance for your weakness, though I am not your confessor, I appoint you this: stand in the forefront, fight for the Holy Church.”

The Emperor rose to his feet, stood looking down. “And what of your penance, little man? For you have struck the Lord's anointed.”

The deacon stared up at him. “I will find you the Grail, or die.”

A hand gripped his shoulder. “Find me the Grail, and I swear it. If I overthrow the infidels I will make you, not Archbishop, not Cardinal, but Pope. We have had too many Italian weaklings, who never pass the walls of Rome. We need a Gregory. A true descendant of Peter.”

“The Papacy is not vacant,” whispered Erkenbert, struck almost dumb by the immensity of the prospect suddenly revealed to him.

“That can be arranged,” said Bruno. “As it has been before.”

In the camp of the Caliph, the Successor of the Prophet, no such drama. As was the custom, the leaders of the divisions of the army came to make their reports at the hour of sunset, one by one entering the great pavilion, pitched hours before—its extent and the time needed for pitching it and striking it were a main reason for the army's slow progress across the northern peninsula. They came to stand before the divan of the Caliph, between it and them the notorious leather carpet, the executioners standing to either side of it, scimitars drawn, the strangling bowstrings twisted round their waists. At the side of the Caliph, as always now, his favorite counselor, the young savant Mu'atiyah. The generals let their eyes pass over him without sign. His advice was wild, his opinions foolish. One day the Caliph would tire of him. They looked also without expression at the curtains behind the Caliph's divan: by law and tradition the Caliph's women might not appear in formal audience, yet they had long been allowed to watch and listen unseen. Some said that they too had found favor with the Caliph, were leading him further down his present path of folly. No-one was going to report it.

“Tell me of the deserters,” said the Caliph abruptly. “How many more secret eaters of pork have you allowed to escape us? How many have been in the army unseen for so many years, bringing us defeat and disgrace?”

The general of the cavalry replied. “Some have tried to escape, Caliph. My horsemen ride them down. They wait only for your sentence. None have escaped.”

Only some fractions of this were true. The general had no idea how many fewer men the army had today than yesterday. He knew it was a good many, and many of that many from his own elite cavalry units. He would not confess it as he might have done once. In the first place he was the third commander of cavalry the army had had since it marched from Cordova, and the others had not died easily. In the second place, where once he might have been betrayed by an ambitious subordinate or rival, like the general of the infantry, they now made common cause: rivals could betray each other too easily, subordinates had no wish to come to prominence.

The Caliph turned to the general of the advance guard. “Is this true?”

Only a bow in assent. The Caliph pondered. Something was wrong, he knew. Someone was betraying him. But who? Mu'atiyah bent and whispered in his ear. The Caliph nodded.

“Those units which have sheltered the pork-eaters, the defiers of shahada. Let them be placed foremost in the battle.” His tone sharpened. “Do not think I do not know which they are! My faithful associates have kept record. If my orders are not obeyed—I will know who still shelters traitors. The impaling poles are not yet tired. Go now, fill them again. Further off this time! The traitors' shrieks disturb my household.”

Dismissed, the generals withdrew. They did not look at each other as they dispersed. All knew the orders were foolish. Putting the unreliable units, the northerners, the converts and the mustaribs in the front was merely to blunt the attack. But even to hint as much was treason. All one could do now was trust in Allah, for some, prepare one's own way out, for others. The commander of the cavalry reflected on the speed of his favorite mare, wondered if he could transfer some part of his regimental pay-chest to his saddle-bags without remark. Decided, regretfully, that life was the only burden he might manage to carry.

Behind, in the harem behind the curtains, the three conspirators spoke quietly in their impenetrable woman's talk.

“We have two chances still. To reach the Franks, for Berthe, to reach the pagan sailors, for Alfled.”

“A third,” corrected the Circassian.

The others looked at her with surprise. No Circassian army existed in the West of the world.

“There must be a successor to the Successor.”

“All successors are the same.”

“Not if there is a change of faith.”

“Cordova will eat pork and believe in Yeshua the son of the Bibi Miriam? Or learn Hebrew and reject the Prophet?”

“There is another way,” corrected the Circassian quietly. “If the Successor of the Prophet himself is defeated in battle by the infidel, faith will be shaken. Those who say that reason is a surer guide will grow stronger. Ishaq, Keeper of the Scrolls, is one of them. So is bin-Firnas, in secret. His cousin, bin-Maymun, now commands the cavalry. They say that even al-Khwarizmi, the glory of Cordova, was of the Mu'tazilah: those who stand apart. Such men would listen even to the copper-haired princess of the North, if there was reason in her words. I would rather live with such men to rule in Cordova than go to live in furs and fleas in the north.”

“If we could find such men,” agreed Berthe.

“Any man would be a change from a tenth part of one,” said Alfled. She stretched her long body discontentedly.

In a secluded court in the city of Septimania, faith and reason were also under discussion. For the first time in months, Thorvin had insisted that the priests of the Way should form their holy circle. There were only four of them, Thorvin for Thor, Skaldfinn for Tyr, Hagbarth for Njörth, and Hund the leech for Ithun. Nevertheless, with their holy oval drawn and marked out, the bale-fire burning at one end and the spear of Othin All-Father planted upright at the other, they could hope for divine guidance in their talk. For human guidance, as was their occasional custom, they had allowed both Brand the champion and Solomon the Jew to sit outside the oval as observers, to listen but only to speak if called on.

“He says his visions have gone,” began Thorvin without preamble. “He says he can no longer feel his father within him. Isn't sure he ever had a father, or a god-father. He's talking about throwing his pendant away.”

Skaldfinn the interpreter replied, speaking in tones of gentle reason. “There's a simple explanation, isn't there, Thorvin? It's the woman. Svandis. She's been telling him for weeks that there are no gods, that they're just some disorder of the brain. She explains his dreams to him and shows him how they're just warped memories of things that have happened, buried fears. Now he believes her. So the visions have gone.”

“If you say that,” cut in Hagbarth, “you're accepting that what she says is true. The visions come from inside. He's convinced inside that he shouldn't have any, so he doesn't. But we've always thought that the visions come from outside. And I've seen it proved. I've seen Vigleik the priest come out of a vision and tell us things he could not know. They've been proved later on. It's the same with Farman the Frey-priest, and many others. The woman's wrong! If she's wrong, then your simple explanation won't work.”

“And there's another simple explanation,” Thorvin went on. “That what he says and has been saying is all true. That Loki is loose and Ragnarök is upon us. His father, Rig, cannot speak to him because he has been—imprisoned? silenced? whatever happens to gods who are defeated. There is war in the sky. And our side has lost already.”

A long silence, while the priests and their observers considered the options. Thorvin pulled his hammer from his belt, began to thump it gently and rhythmically into the palm of his left hand while he considered. At the center of his feeling was a deep belief that his considered opinion was right. The One King, Shef, whom he had first met as a runaway English thrall-boy, was the destined one: the One who would come from the North, in the deep belief of the Way. The peace-king who would replace the war-kings of old, who would set the world on its true path and away from the horrors of the Skuld-world of the Christians. Thorvin had not wanted to believe it in the beginning, had shared the prejudice of his people and his religion against the English, against all those who did not speak Norse. Slowly he had been brought round. The visions. The evidence of Farman. The old tale of King Sheaf. The overthrow of kings. He remembered the testimony of Olaf the Norwegian king, himself a seer and a prophet, who had accepted the death and displacement of his own bloodline as the will of the gods. He remembered the death of Valgrim the Wise, who had not been wise enough to cease his resistance to the truth, even when tests had proved it.

The thing that made Thorvin believe most strongly, in the end, was the unpredictable nature of it. The boy Shef, even when grown to a man, had not behaved like one sent by the gods. He had almost no interest in the will of the gods at all, had taken a pendant only with reluctance, and seemed most of the time on bad terms even with his own father and patron. He had no love for Othin, and little patience with sacred story. His interests were fixed on machines and devices. It was not what any wise priest of the Way would have expected. And yet again and again, it seemed to Thorvin, what the gods sent was what no man expected, and no woman either, for all that Svandis might say. What they sent, what they did, had about it a peculiar feeling—a taste, almost. It could not be missed once you were familiar with it. Thorvin had heard Solomon the Jew discourse on the peculiar quality of the Christians' gospels, how even in disagreement they seemed to bear witness to some real event. That was how he felt about Shef and his visions. They were awkward, often unhelpful, even unwanted. That was what proved them true.

Finally Thorvin summed up. “It is like this. If the visions are not true, then we have no witness for the existence of our gods. We might as well get rid of our clothes, our pendants, our holy emblems, and go back to working at our trades—as we do anyway. Either the visions are from inside, mere dreams, disorders of the brain and the belly. Or they are from outside, from a world where our gods exist, independent of us. But I see no way to test this.”

A fourth voice came from inside the circle, a thin and tired one: the voice of Hund the leech. For weeks now, ever since the first joining of his friend Shef and his supposed-pupil Svandis, the little man had been withdrawn, sullen, even angry. Jealous, they all supposed, of the taking of the woman he loved by the one man who seemed least likely to. Now he spoke decisively.

“I can test it for you.”

“How?” asked Hagbarth.

“I have known for a long time—since Shef and I drank the potion of the Finns—that I can create visions, with a potion. I think it likely that all his visions spring from the same root. Not a root, a fungus. You all know that if the rye gets wet when it is harvested, a kind of black spur grows on it. You Norsemen call it the rugulfr, the wolf in the rye. We all know to scrape it off, dry it out, not eat it. But it is hard to get rid of completely. It brings visions, brings madness in large doses. I think our friend is especially subject to it, as some are. His visions come on after eating rye-bread or rye-porridge. What have we been eating since we have been here, since we finished our own stores? Wheat-bread, from well-dried grain. But I have decoction of the ergot-fungus in my stores. I can bring on his visions at any time.”

“But if you say that,” said Hagbarth, “you are agreeing with Skaldfinn, and Svandis. The visions are just a disorder of the belly. Not a message from the gods. So there are no gods.”

Hund looked round bleakly, without excitement or urge to make a point. “No. I have considered all this. You are all victims of a kind of thinking I know. Either this or that. Either inside or outside. Either truth or falsehood. It works with simple things. Not with the gods.

“I am a leech. I have learned to look at the whole of my patients before I decide what may be wrong with them. Sometimes it is not just one thing. So I look at the whole of our beliefs about the gods. If we—we priests of the Way—were to put our beliefs into words, we would say that the gods are somewhere outside us, somewhere in the sky, it may be, and that they were there before us. They made us. As for the gods of other people, like the Christians who brought me up, or the Jews we have met here, they are just mistakes, they do not exist at all. But they say the same of ours! Why should we be right and they wrong? Or they right and we wrong? Maybe we are all right.

“And all wrong. Right to think the gods exist. Wrong to think they made us. Maybe we made them. What I think is that our minds are strange, beyond our understanding. They work in ways we do not know and cannot reach. Maybe they work in places we cannot reach, places that are beyond our space and our time—for the visions of Vigleik, and Shef too, they reach where their bodies could not go. In those strange places I think the gods are made. From mind-stuff. From belief. They grow strong on belief. Wither on disbelief, or oblivion. So you see, Thorvin, Skaldfinn, Shef's visions could be a true guide to the gods. But sprung from rye-wolf, or from my potions, just the same. They need not be either/or.”

Hagbarth licked his lips, spoke hesitantly, in face of the little man's certainty and composure. “Hund, I do not see how that can be true. If it were true that the gods spring from belief, think: how many Way-folk are there, how many Christians are there? If the Christ-god draws on the belief of thousands of thousands, our gods only on the belief of a tenth that number—surely our gods would be crushed like a nut under a war-hammer.”

Hund laughed, mirthlessly. “I was a Christian once. How much do you think I believed? I believed that if I did not pay tithes to the Church my father's hut would be burned down. There are Christians in the world, I know. King Alfred is one of them. Shef told me once of the old woman he and Alfred met, grieving for her man. She was another. But Church-folk are not Christians. Nor do all those who say the shahada believe in Allah. They believe in nothing, or they believe in the shari'a, as your people, Solomon, believe in their books. I do not think that kind of belief will do. For if the gods are our creation, then they cannot be deceived, as we deceive ourselves.”

“And if the One King has ceased to believe in his gods?” asked Thorvin, “That need not mean they have ceased to believe in him. For they come from other minds besides his. Let me try my potion. But one thing first. The woman—keep her out of the way. It comes to me that she too has power on the other side, like her father, the boneless one, the were-dragon.”

The priests looked at each other, looked at the dying fire, nodded in wordless agreement.

Shef took the cup that Hund handed to him, looked not at its contents but into the eyes of his friend—his childhood friend, now perhaps his rival or his enemy.

“This will make me dream of my father?”

“It will make you dream the way you used to.”

“What if my father has no message for me?”

“Then you will know that, at least!”

Shef hesitated, drained the cup. It tasted musty, old. “Now I am not sure I want to sleep.”

“Stay awake then. The visions will come either way.” Hund took the cup, walked away without another word. Shef felt deserted, alone. Svandis had vanished, no-one knew where. Brand and the others were avoiding him. He sat in a small room by the dockside, hearing dim whoops and cheering as the catapult crews celebrated their victory over the Greeks and over the “War-Wolf.” He wished he could join them.

After a while the room faded from his eyes, began to be overlaid with strange sweeps and spirals of color. He found himself examining them with manic attention: as if, by doing so, he could prevent himself from being pulled on to what he knew was waiting.

As if his eyes had cleared, Shef found himself staring into an enormous face. The nose alone was bigger than he was, the eyes were like black pools, the lips curled back to reveal monstrous teeth. The face was laughing at him. With a crash sound came to his ears, and he staggered beneath the gale of laughter that blew towards him. He was like a mouse, Shef felt. Like a mouse caught on a table-top when the owner of the kitchen returned. He span round, crouched, looked for a point of hiding, began to move.

A slam, and something was over him. A hand. Light gleamed at the bottom of it, and as he moved towards the opening, two fingers came through, a thumb and finger, and picked him off the table-top as if he had been a cherry. The thumb and finger closed round him, not forcefully, not yet. They only had to squeeze, he knew, and his guts would force their way out of his mouth and anus like a man crushed between a launched longship and its rollers.

The face was looking at him, still with manic glee. Shef could see, even from this terrible vantage, that the face was mad. Not mad, but crazy. It was the face of the man he had seen staked out for the serpent to spit its venom on. The man his father had loosed, and whom he had avoided on the giant stairway by the gods' orm-garth. It was the face of Loki. Loki unbound. Loki as the gods had made him.

“My brother's little favorite,” teased the voice in a bass rumble so low he could barely hear it. “He loosed me, but I do not think he meant me to catch you. Shall I squeeze you now and end his plans? You do not believe in me, I know, but you will die in your sleep just the same. And some part of you will stay here with me, for ever.”

Shef could make no reply, kept looking round. His father Rig? The other gods? Surely Loki had many enemies.

“Or I could throw you to my pets,” the voice went on. The hand tipped Shef so he could see down, to what lay beneath the table. A crawling mass of serpents, that twined round the mad god's legs. From time to time they struck at him, he could see the fangs bared, smell the poison. “I have swallowed so much venom I feel it no more,” laughed the voice. “And there are my other pets, you have seen some of them before.”

A tilt, and Shef could see out into the open sea, where backs rose and fell. Some of them were the orcas, the killer whales who had nearly taken Cuthred and himself, had destroyed Valgrim the Wise and all his men at Hrafnsey. But they were warm-blooded beasts, almost human in their cunning and their converse. Shef could see others, mere cold eyes above monstrous teeth, and worse things below. The fear of being dragged down, of ending his life in the jaws of a thing that did not even know what it was doing came over him. He could feel the cold sweat break out on his body.

“Good, very good. Now you are afraid. But you need be less so than some. Because I can use you, mannikin. You have brought me much service already. The Greeks burn men alive, the Arabs thrust poles up them till they die. But you have brought them fear from a distance. You have brought them fear from the sky.

“And you can bring them more yet. You with your strange salts and your strange machines. There is more there than you will ever learn. But you could set men on the right path. My path. And if you do, you can have my favor. I could not help my favorite whom you killed in the water, Ivar Bane-of-Women, for I was bound. But now I am free. Is there no revenge you wish for, like Ivar, like me?

“No,” said Shef, his voice like a thin bird's piping, a mouse's squeak in the cat's paw. He was not conscious of any courage. Loki had asked him a question. He knew the answer. It would do no good to lie.

The crazy face stared down at him. Shef found himself trying to imagine what it would have been like without the scars and pits of poison, the bitter marks of resentment. Like looking at a scarred and defeated old warrior, and wondering what he might have been like if his life had gone aright. The finger and thumb were pressing tight around him, but they had not squeezed yet.

“See there.” Shef found himself staring up an immense bridge, a bridge that was at the same time a rainbow, and at the end of it a cold glitter of blades. “The gods, my father and my brothers, they have gone back over Bifrost bridge, and Othin has called out his Einheriar to man it. They expect me to storm it, with my allies the giants and my children the monster-brood. Why should I not?”

“It was your home once, lord. Before you slew Balder.”

This time the thumb and finger were tightening, he could feel his ribs groan, ready to snap and send splinters through his heart.

“I did not mean to slay Balder. I meant them to see themselves for what they were.”

“I know that, lord. So does my father Rig. It was why he loosed you.”

The face had gone quiet, and a kind of reason was coming back into it.

“Are you trying to bargain with me, mannikin?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Then what is your offer?”

“I do not know yet, lord. To give you a footing again in Asgarth?”

“You cannot give me that,” said the voice of Loki. “But maybe you can give me something. Listen then to my offer. Do my wishes. Make more fire, make more machines, be my follower and not Rig's, turn your back on the Way and bring terror to the world. And in exchange I will give you more than my father Othin ever offered. He gives his favorites success till he chooses different, like Sigurth Snake-eye, whom you gave to death when his shoelace tripped him. I would give you success till you died, old and terrible. Think of the men at your command. Think of the women you can take. All that can be yours.

“Now here is my token. Above all else you want the fire. I will send it to you, and with it a hope beyond your hope. When it comes to you, say to the Greek: ‘It is best on a winter morning.’ See him grovel.

“Go now. But do not think you can escape me now I am loose. Or that your father can protect you, locked at the end of Bifrost bridge.”

Shef found himself suddenly tossed in the air, going up and further up like a stone from a catapult. He turned in the air, trying to get his feet under him, possessed with fear of where he might land, in the sea with the cold eyes and the teeth, on the land where the serpents crawled and struck.

There was a bed beneath his back, he was straggling to his feet, trying to draw his legs up from the fangs. Arms were pressing him down, he felt a soft breast on his naked skin. Svandis. For long moments he clung to her, shaking.

“Do you know what you were saying?” she said to him at last.

“No.”

“You called it out again and again, in Norse. Skal ek that eigi, skal ek that eigi, that skal ek eigi gera.”

Shef translated automatically, “I shall not that, I shall not that, that shall I not do.”

“What is ‘that’?” asked Svandis.

Shef realized he was clutching his pendant protectively. “Give up this,” he said, looking down at it. “Give up this and worship Loki in exchange for his favor. What is that noise outside?”