One King's Way

Chapter Twenty-three

Bruno, Hauptritter of the Lanzenorden, stood in front of a double rank of his armored knights, pikes sloped, standing immobile at attention as he had made their custom. All were looking at the ceremony taking place a hundred yards in front of them. They could have got a better view by marching closer, but one could not be sure how the natives would take interference in their sacred custom. Bruno had no objection to interfering with the barbaric customs of the natives, but this was not the time.

A roar came from the thousand throats of the men clustered at the center of the doom-ring of the Gautish peoples, a roar and a clashing of weapons on shields.

“What's that mean?” muttered a voice from the rear rank. “They've made a decision?”

“Silence in the ranks,” said Bruno, though without heat. The Lanzenorden believed strongly in the theoretical equality of all its members, without the savage discipline that had to be imposed on armies of peasants. “Yes, look, they have a king. Habeunt regem,” he added, parodying the formula for the election of a Pope.

A figure rose, swaying wildly, from the throng in front of them. A man lifted on a shield by a dozen eager supporters. Once he caught his balance, he looked round, drew his sword, shouted out his name and the traditional formula of proclamation. “I am the king of the Gauts. Who denies it?”

A moment's silence, then the clashing of weapons again. A week before, and a dozen chieftains would have denied it. Fighting it out hand to hand would have deprived the Gautish peoples of most of their ruling class, the rich and the god-born together. So for days the meeting, the Gautalagathing, the Thing of those bound by the Law of the Gauts, had been abuzz with messengers, rumors, offers of support and retractions, deals and promises. Now it was all settled. Till the next shift of power.

The crowd began to disperse towards the smell of roasted oxen and the great vats of beer which the new king would provide as part of the price of his election. The German Ritters watched them with a certain envy, a certain scorn. Bruno decided to hold them in their ranks a little longer, to make certain no-one went down to the party, got into a fight.

Another figure was coming towards them, the scrawny black-clad Englishman, Erkenbert. As he came closer Bruno saw a slight flush of excitement on his pale face, and felt his own heart thud in anticipation. The Englishman was holding one of his everlasting lists.

“Do you think you've found it?” said Bruno as soon as the other was in earshot.

“Yes. Down at the tents I found an old man. Too old to attend the election, but not so old that he had lost his memory. He was at the raid on Hamburg. More than that, he was among the men who sacked the cathedral. He remembers closely who was there—especially closely, for he feels still that he was cheated of some share of the loot. He gave me a complete list of the chieftains present, seven of them who led more than a dozen ships' crews, he says. Now, and this is the important thing. Six of those chieftains we have news of already, and we know they do not fit.”

“So it must be the seventh?”

“So it would seem. His name is Bolli. He is jarl of the Tronds.”

“And who in Hell are the Tronds? I've been in this God-forsaken country half a year, I've heard of more tribelets and kinglets than my father has pigs in sties, and I never heard of the Tronds.”

“They live far in the north,” said Erkenbert. “Far up the North Way, where they seek to control the fur-trade.”

“Far in the north they may be,” muttered Bruno, “but if there were a new king there, an emperor-in-being, we would still have heard about it. I begin to wonder if our method is wrong. Or could even the holy Rimbert have made some mistake? Perhaps there is no Holy Lance.”

“Or perhaps it is lying in a treasury, unnoticed.”

Bruno's face took on an expression quite unfamiliar to Erkenbert, one of depression and defeat. “I can't help thinking,” he said, “you tell me the Lance is in Norway. We hear also that the great struggle for power in the North is going to take place where we left in the spring, at Hedeby in Denmark, everyone is full of it. And here we are, running round provincial gatherings in Sweden.”

“Gautland,” corrected Erkenbert.

“Same place. I have gone in the wrong direction.”

Erkenbert reached up and patted the disconsolate knight on his enormous shoulder. “Whom God loves, he chastises,” he said. “Think of King David in the wilderness. Think of Samson at the mill, and how in the end he brought down the great temple of the Philistines. God can bring forth a miracle at any time. Did He not deliver Joseph from Potiphar, and Daniel from the lions' den? I will tell you the holy text you must remember: Qui perseravabit usque ad finem, ille salvabitur. He who shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. To the end, though. Not to near the end.”

Bruno's face slowly cleared. He wrung Erkenbert's hand in a careful grip. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. Wise words. We shall find out more about these Tronds. And meanwhile, I shall hope that God has some errand for me in sending me to these parts.”

Hrorik, King in Hedeby, gnawed his beard as he listened to the reports of his scouts. “Definitely the Ragnarssons?” he queried.

“Definitely. We got close enough to see the Raven Banner.”

“Flown only when all the bastards are together. Well, at least there's one bastard fewer of them now. And him the worst bastard of them all. A hundred and twenty ships, you say, and harbored on the mainland opposite Sylt?” Hrorik calculated thoughtfully. “Well, the Ragnarssons are always bad news, but that could be worse. They have to get through the marsh first, and then they have to get over our good wooden walls. I know all about their rams and the tricks they learned from their father. I think we ought to be able to see them off.”

One of the scouts cleared his throat. “More bad news, lord, I'm afraid. Catapults. We saw them unloading them. Big jobs, weighing a ton, I would say. Three or four of them.”

Hrorik's face regained its concerned expression. “Catapults! What sort were they? Were they the stone-throwers we've heard about, or the dart-throwers, or what?”

“We don't know. Never seen one work. We've just heard these stories, same as you. They all come from men who've been defeated by them.”

“Thor help us. This is where we need some men who know about these things.”

Hrorik's port-warden, sitting in on the conference, broke in. “I can help you there, lord. I got a report from a skipper yesterday. He was up at the Gula Thing. He said there had been a lot of excitement up there—I'll tell you another time. But at the end of it he said that one of our ships had recruited two Englishmen and was bringing them south. Englishmen,” he added with emphasis. “Those are the real experts. These are guys who were there when Ivar got his, and the Frankish king too. Ship should be in in a couple of days.”

“So. While Sigurth Snake-arse crawls through the marsh, we can have these men building machines to fight his machines. That's good. But let's do the obvious things too. If the Ragnarssons are there on the west coast, the east coast's clear. So let's get ships out to King Arnodd, and King Gamli, and ask them to send every ship and man they can spare. Clean out the Ragnarssons, and we'll all sleep easier.”

“Clean out the Ragnarssons,” said the port-warden, “and maybe it'll be time to have just one king in Denmark.”

“Just don't say that anywhere else,” agreed Hrorik.

Many days' sail to the north, far from the gathering war-storms that would determine the fate of many kingdoms, Shef and Cuthred crouched immobile in the shadow of a rock. Twice they had got into what they thought was good cover. Both times Echegorgun had moved them out, muttering in his own strange language. “You Thin Ones,” he said finally. “You don't know how to hide. Or how to look. I could walk through one of your towns in broad daylight and you would never see me.” Shef did not believe him, but he had to acknowledge the uncanny skill of the Hidden People in vanishing, in the day, at night, or in the pale twilight that had come again after another long day of sleep and waiting.

In front of them, Echegorgun stood knee deep in the water at the edge of the inlet. He had led them down to it by barely manageable paths, the men slipping and scrambling on the rock, propped up by Echegorgun or Miltastaray, sometimes lowered from one place to the next. Finally, once they were concealed to his satisfaction, Echegorgun had told them to sit motionless, and watch. Watch what a True Person could do. They would see something no Hairless One had seen for many a lifetime. How the True Folk called their kinfolk, the whales.

Now Echegorgun stood facing out to the open sea. High above, Miltastaray kept watch for any boats that might appear, ferrying men or meat between the place of the grind and Brand's threatened home on Hrafnsey.

In one hand Echegorgun held a long paddle, its blade curiously rounded, cut laboriously with stone tools from the trunk of a mountain-aspen. Strange curlicues ran around its inside face. Echegorgun held it up, high above his head, the grotesque length of his arm suddenly clear. Then he brought it down with all his strength on the calm water. The sound of the slap seemed to run from horizon to horizon, as the ripples ran out into the Atlantic swell. Again Echegorgun brought it down. And again. The two men crouched, wondering how far the sound would run above water. And how far below it.

After a dozen blows, Echegorgun turned and put the paddle carefully on a rock on the steep shore. He took another implement, a long tapering tube, made out of layers of coiled and glued birch-bark, and took another cautious step further out, waist-deep now, standing on some unseen projection. He put the thinner end of the tube in his mouth, the trumpet end deep in the water.

From where they crouched, and even in the dim light, Shef could see the prodigious back widening as Echegorgun took a deep breath, a deep breath like the indraft of a bellows. Then he blew.

No sound reached the men on the shore, but after a few moments the air seemed to buzz, to vibrate noiselessly. Was the surface of the sea shivering in sympathy? Shef could not tell, though he strained his one eye to see. He had no doubt that beneath the water some immense disturbance was taking place.

The blowing went on and on, Echegorgun breathing in continually and somehow blasting out at the same time. Shef was not sure, but he felt dimly that the “notes” Echegorgun was playing altered now and then, according to some unknown code. He remained motionless, feeling the chill of the high latitudes creeping up on him, feeling his muscles stiffen, the cold stone strike through his breeches. He did not dare to move. Echegorgun had said that at any disturbance he would break off. “Just one pebble rolling,” he had warned. “If the whale-folk were to think I was playing with them, even foreign whale-folk… I could never swim safely again.”

Beside him Cuthred too sat like a rock image. But then, barely perceptibly even from two feet, his eyes moved, his chin rose a trifle, pointing. Between the shore and the skerries, a fin rose. The straight-up, right-angle fin of the killer-whale, the orca. It was coming towards them, not quickly, deliberately. From time to time the head too rose, and a spout went up, white against the gray islands. The orca was taking a good look. Behind it, well behind it, the rest of the school followed.

Slowly the fin came closer. As it closed, Echegorgun's breathing seemed to slacken, as if he were cutting down the underwater noise. He seemed to be blowing with a shorter, more varied rhythm. Finally the fin closed right up, the orca swimming along parallel with the shore, turning, cruising slowly back. Every time it turned it kept its eye on the strange gray creature standing waist-deep in the water. Shef felt his skin contracting at the thought of what might happen. A lunge of the jaws, a sweep of the tail, and Echegorgun would be off his feet and off the rock. Even his mighty frame would be no more than a bull-seal to the killer. Nothing was safe with them in the water, not the tusked walrus, nor the polar bear, not even the great whales which they tore to pieces while they were still alive.

Echegorgun put his tube carefully down on the rock behind him. Then, slowly, he sank down, submerging shoulders and head in the water, and began to swim out. The killer watched, giving him room. The men on shore could see little, only what showed above water. Yet it began to seem, after a while, as if Echegorgun was acting out some kind of pantomime. Sometimes he seemed to mimic a whale's motion, sometimes a man swimming. Once it seemed to Shef as if he kicked his heels above the water, and rolled over violently: a boat turned upside down? The killer's movements began to synchronize with his own, they swam up and down together, both moving at a fantastic speed for a human, a bare stroll for a whale.

And then the fin swung away, a great tail slapped the water twice, as if in farewell. The other fins cruising up and down offshore swung too, in unison. All together the school began to race down the sound at top speed, the whales arcing in and out of the water in a complex ballet, as if in exultation. They raced away to the south, towards Hrafnsey.

Echegorgun remained in the water till they were out of sight, cruising up and down with an easy overarm stroke, only skull and arms showing, with a faint flurry where his heels touched the surface. At a distance, just another seal. Finally he turned, swam into shore, heaved himself out, shook himself easily like a dog.

“Well,” he said in Norse. “Come out now, Thin Ones. I told them the one who wounded their leader was dead. They asked, and the one they followed? Dead too, I said. They were disappointed. It was easy to tell them there were more whale-foes in the ship. The great ship going into Hrafnsey now. They said they would find sport with it.”

“Going into Hrafnsey now?” said Shef. “How are we to get there?”

“There is a way,” said Echegorgun. “No Thin One would find it, but I can show you. One thing I had better tell you, though. The whale-folk are not good at telling Thin Ones apart. Nor do they care much. Anyone on the water is at risk tonight.”

“Show us how to get across,” said Shef. “I swear to repay you for all this. Even if I have to become king of this land to do it.”

The men of the two-masted ship moving under light sail towards Hrafnsey harbor had had a long voyage up the Norwegian coast in which to get used to their unfamiliar weapons and sail-rig. For the most part they were men of Agdir, Queen Ragnhild's homeland. In the turmoil following the sudden death of Halvdan and the seizure of power by Olaf, one of the skippers of King Halvdan's fleet had decided his best interests lay with Ragnhild, and had placed his ship at her service. Most of his crew had not stayed with him, but had deserted, their places taken by Ragnhild's own men. With them had come Valgrim the Wise, defeated in his plan to control the College of the Way, and eager to take revenge on the one who had thwarted him. Not only him—but also to set the Way and his misguided colleagues back on the true path of Othin, the path that would lead to victory, not defeat, at Ragnarök. He and his backers had built the catapults and trained their users. They were eager, too, to redeem their failure in the Gula Fjord.

Yet the driving force behind them all, skipper, crew and Valgrim as well, was the hatred of Queen Ragnhild for the man who had killed her son, or caused him to be killed. The man who had stolen the luck to which she had pledged her life. Ragnhild had seen her mother-in-law Queen Asa go to the gallows without blinking, had poisoned her husband King Halvdan without a tremor. One day, maybe, she would breed a new race of kings from her own loins. But before that the beggar-Englishman she had seduced, hidden, and thought to use to clear the path for her son: he must go to Hel to serve her son and her for all eternity.

As the great warship closed on Hrafnsey, its goal, its crew had ceased to follow the coastline and had moved offshore, into the Atlantic rollers but out of sight of land, coming in again only a few miles from where they reckoned their quarry to be. There they had lain upon a deserted inlet, one of the thousands on that jagged coast, seen by no-one. Or at least, no human.

Yet they had not lacked for close information. After the butchery was over at the grind, the real work had started for the men of Halogaland. Vital to cut the carcasses up and salt as much meat as possible. Even more vital to rig the cauldrons on the beach itself, strip off the blubber, start the long job of rendering down the whale-oil, immensely valuable for lamps, for fuel and even for food through the long winter nights. Firing the cauldrons was not a problem. Once the oil had been cooked out of the blubber, the strips that were left became fuel for the next rendering. But every barrel the Halogaland coast possessed would hardly be enough for the sudden windfall of wealth that the grind brought. Boats were passing up and down in all directions, loading up barrels, towing strings of them, sending messages for urgent assistance. One whale-boat with two men in it passed by the fjord where Ragnhild's warship lay, to be snapped up immediately by its pinnace.

The Norsemen, mostly and with exceptions like Ivar the Boneless and his father Ragnar, were not torturers of each other, whatever they might do to slaves. Ragnhild had taken them on board and told them plainly that they had two choices: to be beheaded at once over the side of the ship, or to tell her the situation at Hrafnsey. The fishermen had decided to talk. Ragnhild knew the outline of the harbor, including its catapult defenses and its two longships. She knew, too, that half the men of the area were still boiling blubber at the grind-beach, and the rest were exhausted from hours of loading and unloading, making trip after trip between beach and harbor. What she did not know was that Shef and Cuthred were missing. Her prisoners had simply not noticed, preoccupied with other things.

What they had noticed and told her was that Brand, desperate for men, had taken the English catapulteers from their posts, and Guthmund's Swedes as well, and set them to work on the jetty, since they were all manifestly useless at anything to do with whales. Listening with half an ear to Cwicca and Osmod's protests, and their demands that something should be done to search for their master Shef, Brand had sent a sentry up to the harbor-point, with instructions to sound a horn for help if he saw any strange craft approaching. The sentry had sat down on the soft turf with his back against a stone and immediately fallen asleep.

Ragnhild's ship, the Crane, moved into Hrafnsey harbor a few moments before sunrise lit the pallid sky, meeting no challenge, its oversized crew of a hundred and twenty men ready for action. They nudged each other as they saw the bulks of the catapults against the sky, unmanned and untended. Brand, down at the jetty supervising the unloading of another cargo of barrels from his own Walrus, saw nothing till the first catapult-stone whirred across the water.

It was aimed with deadly skill. The men of the Crane had had time to practice, and no shortage of good round rocks to practice with. Coming from a bare two hundred yards, the distance between jetty and harbor-point, it struck the Walrus full on the prow. The prow kicked back, the planks that fitted into it all sprang loose. If the ship had been running under sail she would have gone to the bottom like a stone. As it was, she merely sprang apart and settled gently on to the rock ten feet beneath her keel, mast still jutting upwards.

Brand stared, gaping, unable to realize what had happened. The second stone shattered the jetty a few feet from him, sending half a dozen men into the water. At the same moment, light flared on the dark decks of the Crane. The dart-shooter's crew, anxious to try their fire-arrows once more. As they sighted, Ragnhild stepped behind them.

“There,” she snapped. “There. Aim for that big barrel. Surely you can hit that this time.”

The crew trained their weapon round a trifle, sighted again, released the retaining toggle. The fire-dart shot across the water, its flight indicated by a line of fire. Slammed into the barrel of whale-oil just unloaded from the ruined Walrus. Instantly a tongue of flame shot into the sky, burning with a pure and brilliant light. The men on the shore stood out immediately as dark shadows, shrieking and running in confusion, some to put the fire out, some to fetch their weapons, the English catapulteers beginning the long run round the harbor and the point behind it to reach their abandoned weapons.

Ragnhild's skipper, observing, grinned with satisfaction. His name was Kormak, son of an Irishwoman, with long experience in the never-ending Irish wars. He knew when his enemy had lost the initiative.

“Close up to the jetty,” he ordered. “You with the stone-thrower, sink that other big ship there, the Swedish one. Dart-thrower, set light to the barrels and then the houses. Boatswain, pick twenty men, furl sail, and take the ship back out a hundred yards under oars once the rest of us are ashore. I don't want anyone trying to take the Crane while we're busy. The rest of you, we'll land on the jetty and go straight through the village.”

“And remember,” shouted Ragnhild over him, “the one-eyed man. Six gold arm-rings for the one-eyed man.”

Beside her, Valgrim hefted the ‘Gungnir’ spear he had taken from Stein, and Stein from the shore where Shef had thrown it. A good weapon, he thought. To drink the blood of a heretic.

Not far away, but too far, Shef saw the flame suddenly light up the sky. He stood on the shore of the mainland a bare quarter of a mile from the edge of Hrafnsey island. But he had no boat. He would not have believed that they could even get so close so quickly. But Echegorgun, Miltastaray and Ekwetargun with him, had led them inland over paths not even a goat could find, and then over a surprisingly easy ridge-route to the coast close by where they stood. Though they had rowed for hours two days before, they must have walked only five miles, cutting across the base of a peninsula.

“How do we get across?” he asked.

“Swim?” suggested Echegorgun.

Shef hesitated. A quarter of a mile was not so far. But this water, he knew, was always bitter cold. And besides—he could not forget the threat of the whales.

Cuthred nudged him and pointed. Lit up now by the red glow in the sky, they could see the black dot of a whale-boat, with more behind it, pulling frantically down from the grind-beach. Men carrying a load down, or coming back for water.

“More Thin Ones,” said Echegorgun. “We go now. Do not speak of us except to my cousin Brand. If you go on the water in a boat, you will speak to no-one again.”

“Wait!” said Shef sharply. “Can you tell where the whales are?”

Echegorgun nodded. “Hear them in the water. I know already. They are outside the harbor, watch the strange ship. Unhappy. They want small boats to tip over, not big ship to ram. Don't go in boats.”

“Can you tell us if they go into the harbor? If it's safe for a few minutes just to row across?”

Echegorgun sniffed doubtfully. “You hear a noise like a walrus sounding, you row across. Make it quick.” An instant later he had vanished, his great bulk disappearing seemingly into a rock.

“Noise like a walrus sounding?” muttered Cuthred. “Might as well be an angel belching for all the good…”

Shef ignored him. He had stepped on to the highest point he could reach, waving the lance he had recovered in wide sweeps over his head. Moments later the leading whale-boat saw him, hesitated, pulled over.

“Stop the other boats,” said Shef. “No, do as I say. I know the place is under attack. We have to go in together, not a few at a time.”

Slowly the dories gathered, nine or ten of them, maybe forty or fifty men, fierce and skilled seamen, but unarmored and unarmed except for the long whale-lances some of them carried, their flensing-axes and grind-knives.

“You're going to have to listen very carefully to what I say,” said Shef. “First, there is a school of killer whales out by the harbor, and we don't want to row into them. Second, we will know when they have gone into the harbor…”

As a buzz of incredulity greeted his words, he thumped his lance-butt on the rock and raised his voice commandingly over it.

Kormak was doing to the men of Hrafnsey much as they had done to the whales. Deliberately, he kept up the pressure to make them panic, though he knew their form of panic would be a headlong assault. As the Crane moved up to the jetty, stones whirred from her mule, each one smashing a house. Fire-arrows thumped into wood and oil, turning the whole settlement into a conflagration. Few were killed, few were hurt, the fighting strength of the defenders was hardly diminished. But they had no time to think. Besides, as Brand saw his beloved Walrus a wreck, saw his winter store and his warehouses going up in flames, his heart swelled till it seemed to burst his jerkin. No time to fetch his mail, no time to array the men. Between the flames he stood, his face working, clutching his axe ‘Battle-troll’ and waiting for the despoilers to set foot on land.

As the side of the Crane touched the jetty, the men Kormak had detailed off sprang ashore, forming an immediate armored front six wide. At the same time Kormak bent, said a quiet word to his boatswain. Two men slipped ashore, walking along the jetty's side struts, one each side. At the right place they heaved a rope across, made fast.

Kormak pushed forward to the center of the front rank, stepped on two more paces, arranged the men in the Viking wedge. Then they began to move forward, shouting in unison. Kormak waited for the furious charge he expected.

It came. Seeing the confident figure striding towards him, Brand, the doubts and fears that had afflicted him since the duel with Ivar entirely wiped out by fury and loss, ran forward, axe raised. Behind him, in a ragged wave, came the men of Hrafnsey with what weapons they could snatch up.

“A big fellow,” remarked Kormak to his nearest shield-companions. He raised his shield to guard and shouted a taunt, unheard in the roar of flame.

As Brand charged forward, the boatswain, crouched in shadow, raised the rope. Brand's feet went from under him and he hurtled sprawling forward, full-length, his weight shaking the jetty. ‘Battle-troll’ skidded out of his hand. With a roar, Brand started to scramble to his feet, but at the same moment Kormak slammed him mercilessly, with every ounce of force he could summon, on the side of the head. Brand shook his head, continued to struggle upwards. Disbelievingly, Kormak swung his lead-shot loaded sandbag again. This time the giant went down on all fours.

The charging men behind him hesitated, some also brought down by the rope. Two ran on, were met by a concentrated volley of javelins, fell bristling. The rest wavered, then ran in ones and twos back into the blazing village.

“Tie him up,” said Kormak briefly. He waved his troop forward, aiming to drive out the stragglers, establish a perimeter, and take control of boats, food and weapons. Hunting down the fugitives would be the job after that. He wished the one-eyed man had charged with Brand. It would have kept Ragnhild off his back.

The English catapulteers being employed as unskilled labor down at the jetty had run at the first stone. They had no weapons, and no impulse to fight in defense of the settlement. In the dark beyond the firelight, they rallied, gasping, round Cwicca.

“Shouldn't never have taken us away from the mule,” said a voice in the darkness. “We knew they were coming, we told him, but no, he would have…”

“Shut up,” said Cwicca. “Thing is, if we get up there now we can train round and shoot up that ship of theirs, no bother. That'll get them back aboard her in a hurry.”

“No good,” said Osmod. “Look.”

He pointed to the Crane's pinnace, loaded with armed men, now pulling across the harbor in the direction of the two untended catapults. Kormak had thought of that too.

Kormak had not thought of the whales. The orcas had been shadowing the Crane all the way in, eager to attack. Yet the bull leader had held off. He had an accurate sense of the Crane's bulk, knew she was the biggest man-thing he had ever come across. Maybe if he rammed her head on, she would fill and sink. Maybe not. The scratch he had received from Cuthred irritated him, but at the same time gave him caution. The sport he wanted was to tip a boat like an ice-floe, to snap up the men inside like unwary seals. So he hesitated, and his school with him, cruising up and down at the harbor-mouth, half an eye on the Crane and the commotion, half an eye on the interesting but shore-sheltered whale-boats he had sensed lying under cover of the mainland a quarter of a mile away.

Then he heard the regular thumping oars of the pinnace, and hesitated no longer. Filled with the cruel urge, more than hunger, of the fox in the hen-roost, he swept down the harbor channel, with his school behind him.

“No good,” said Osmod again. “Great holy suffering Christ.” Driven back to childhood, he made instinctively the sign of the Cross to ward him from evil, over the hammer still slung round his neck. No-one corrected him. Staring at the pinnace, they saw all together the great fin that rose man-height behind the boat, the black-and-white body that reared beneath it.

Boat and men went over with hardly a cry. For an instant, bobbing heads. Then fin after fin cutting through the water as the killers went into their established ritual for striking at a great whale, a blue or a sperm or a finner, swinging in in turn, snapping with the great jaws and swinging out of the way of the next. But where a bite from a full-grown orca would merely wound a sixty-foot blue, it snapped a man in half. The flurry was over in seconds, the whales sounding again to hide their presence.

“I met one of those things out on the water,” muttered Karli, his face white. “I told you it could have turned me over as easy as winking. The fin's as tall as I am. What are its teeth like?”

Cwicca roused the others from their paralysis. “Well, Thor help them, but look. The road's clear to the mules. Let's get up there.”

Still gaping at the threatening fire-lit water, the catapulteers started to run round the harbor to their machines.

On board the Crane, all attention was concentrated on the charge and fall of Brand. No-one saw the pinnace go under except the two fishermen, still prisoner and lashed to the outer gunwale. They looked down at the water under them, trying to estimate its depth. Slowly, looking over their shoulders, they started with new determination to work their hands free.

On the mainland coast, Shef saw the flames leaping again. The men in the boats were grumbling, reluctant to believe in a threat from orcas, desperate to see what was happening at their homes. Behind him came a strange sound, a kind of long violent blowing snuffle, followed by a slap like a tail striking water.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Sounded like a walrus going down,” said one of the men in the boats. “But it can't be, not…”

“All right,” snapped Shef. He raised his lance high and called out to all the boats. “It's safe now, maybe just for a few moments. Row right across as fast as you can go, beach on the shore right opposite and get out. Don't go into the harbor. Do you hear, don't go into the harbor. Now row.”

He sat down in the prow of the lead boat, Cuthred in the stern. The whale-men bent to their oars, sent the boat skimming over the calm sea. Shef twisted from side to side, fearing at any moment to see the fins racing again towards him. The boats reached the mid-point of their passage, raced on. As they closed on the island shore, outside the harbor entrance, maybe half a mile still from the main settlement and hidden from it by a hill, Shef felt the speed slacken.

“Why don't we just push on in?” called one of the oarsmen.

“Believe me,” said Shef. “You wouldn't like it.”

His boat grounded her prow on shingle, followed by most of the others. The men scrambled out, heaving their boats higher, snatching out their makeshift weapons. One boat ignored Shef's shouts, skimmed on towards the harbor entrance, disappeared from sight round the point. Shef shook his head in disgust.

“I still don't see why…” began another dissident. Cuthred, patience exhausted, clubbed him on the side of the head with a sword-pommel, seized him by the throat, dragged him again on to his feet.

“Do what he says and obey your orders,” he snarled. “Got it?”

Shef waved the fifty men he had into a double extended line and led them off in a broad arrow formation. He kept them at a swift walk, curbing any impulse to run. They would need their breath if they had to fight armored men. His plan was to swing wide round the hill at the harbor mouth, and come out of its cover down the stream on which the main settlement stood, to drive the invaders back into the water. Maybe by then they would have dispersed to rape and loot. He hoped so. Surprise was his only chance now.

The catapulteers reached the first mule and paused for a moment. Man one, or man them both? Even with Karli added, they had less than two full teams.

“Just the first one for now,” Cwicca decided briefly. “Get winding.”

They had slacked the twisted ropes off before leaving. It was never good to keep them under torsion for too long. The winding levers were still stacked in their place, though, and the men sprang to it. At the same time Cwicca called Karli to assist him. One improvement they had made in the weeks of waiting. They had never before been able to train their machine round more than a few inches. On a ship, one had to aim the ship rather than the mule. However, by trial and error Udd had solved the problem. They had put the heavy machine on small iron-rimmed wheels of its own, not so that it could be drawn overland like the lighter dart-throwers, but so that those small wheels could rest on a larger one, placed flat on the ground and flanged to keep the smaller ones in place. Two strong men could tip the whole ton-and-a-quarter forward on its unmoving axle and train it round by a balancing trail.

Straining, Karli and Cwicca lifted the trail, walked the machine round from its first position covering the harbor entrance to bear on the Crane now slowly sweeping away from the jetty.

“Round half a pace more,” grunted Cwicca. “Back a hand's breadth. Right. Tip her forward, hammer in two wedges, no, three.”

They tipped the machine forward so it pointed, now, down at the water. The ropes were wound, the throwing bar straining at its retaining bolt. Cwicca fitted a thirty-pound rock into the sling, drooping from the bar, checked the very precise angle of the hook from which the sling's catch had, at the right moment, to fly free.

“Ready. Stand clear. Shoot.”

The bolt was pulled back, the bar shot up with inconceivable force, the sling whirred round, adding its own vector to the force of the twisted ropes. The boulder shot across the water in a flat hard line.

And missed. The crew had wedged the machine down as far as it would go. But it was a hard business altering for range downwards. The rock skimmed narrowly over the decks of the Crane and splashed into the water in the center of the widening gap between ship and jetty. The plume it threw up hurled spray into Kormak's face, as he turned back from the won skirmish on the jetty.

“Thor aid me,” he said. “What happened to the pinnace? They were supposed to secure that machine.” Then he began to bark orders. A threat to his ship was the most serious thing, everything else trivial, winning the battle, securing prisoners, even appeasing Ragnhild.

As the queen realized Kormak meant to turn back from sacking the settlement, the settlement she was sure contained her son's bane, skulking somewhere away from the fighting, she flew at him with teeth and nails. He shook her off as she clung to his arm, shrieking her demands.

The important thing to do, he saw straight away, was to get the Crane over on the other side of the harbor, where the catapults could not train down far enough to shoot. The ship needed more men, and in a hurry. There were still a dozen skiffs and dories lying round the jetty and the shingle by it. Quickly Kormak detached fifty men to hold the foot of the jetty, ordered the rest into the boats, jamming in as many as they could carry. At the last moment he stopped, ordered two men out of the nearest, replaced them with the still groggy Brand, hands lashed firmly behind his back.

“Let's get him safely stowed,” he remarked, stepping into the same boat. He thrust a furious Ragnhild away from him again. “Lady, we'll come back for you. If the man you want is anywhere, he's on the shore. I suggest you go look for him yourself. Give way,” he added to the oarsmen.

As a second stone thumped into the sea, aimed this time at the first boats creeping out, and missing once more, fifty men set out to cross the intervening hundred yards of water.

Shef brought his group hurdling over the stream and into the blazing village by the landward end of its one muddy street. As they moved down it, jogging now, men moved out of the flames and shadows to join him, adding themselves to the line, eager to support the first sign of concerted resistance. Shef felt the wolfish force of their anger sweeping him along. There was no way to halt them now. They were going to hurl themselves on the invaders whatever he said or did.

Yet the Halogalanders had no armor, and the only shield in the party was Cuthred's. The enemy were fully equipped, Shef could see them standing in a solid rank across the base of the jetty, unshaken and unafraid. In seconds he would have to lead the charge. What chance had he of surviving it? Standing in the center of the front rank, a target for every spear? This was the way of the world. Shef poised his lance. There was no way he could see of altering it. He tried to call up within himself the fighting urge he had felt when he killed Hrani the Viking on the sandbank. There was no response. The lance in his hand seemed to drink it, to send out an urge instead to delay. To pity, not to strike. The men on his right and left were looking sideways at him, expecting the word to charge. Something made Shef sweep the lance out sideways, holding them back.

Behind the shield-wall on the jetty, the rising sun cleared the surrounding hills and shone for the first time that day full on the water. It caught the fins and bodies of the killers as they swept in for the second time from the deep water, confident of what they had to do, emboldened by their first success. A great cry went up from the water as the men in the dories realized what was coming towards them.

Brave men, some of them struck out with spears and swords as the black-and-white bodies rushed in. Valgrim the Wise, standing disbelieving in the prow of his boat, swung back the ‘Gungnir’ lance to use as a harpoon. Too weak, too slow. The boats were taken from underneath. A blow from a snout, propelled at thirty miles an hour by a body tons in weight, and each boat disintegrated. The heavily-armed men splashed or sank in the water, and as they did so the jaws tore at them, into them, the killers sweeping backwards and forwards in the pattern they used for hunting seals or porpoise. In seconds the bay ran as red as the cove of the grind. But this time with man-blood, not with whale's, crewmen's mixed with that of their skipper, and that of Valgrim the Wise, priest of Othin, now sacrificed to Othin's own creatures. Unnoticed by any, the spear with the ‘Gungnir’ runes drifted gently to the bottom: it had brought its last owner no luck.

Shef's charging line faltered as the men took in what was happening, a thing no-one had ever seen before. Seeing their enemies stare and hesitate, Kormak's detachment turned as well. Both sides stood, struck with horror. There was no way for anyone to intervene.

After a time, Shef stepped forward, spoke to what seemed to be the leader of the men on the jetty. “Put your weapons down,” he said. “We will give you life and limb, and passage home when we can. There is no way for you to escape now. And there has been bloodshed enough.”

Lips pale, the leader looked at his men, saw their shaken and horrified expressions, the fight drained out of them. He nodded, slowly laid down sword and shield. Cuthred moved forward, shouldered a path through the others for Shef, walked with him to the end of the jetty to see the end of the story.

As he did so, a figure rose from the planking, shrieking recognition. Ragnhild, knife in hand, unmoved by the slaughter, desperate for revenge. She came at Shef like a fury, knife low for the thrust. Shef saw her come, recognized the green eyes he had kissed, the hair he had clenched in climax. The lance drooped disregarded in his hand, he groped for words of apology. She was shrieking something as she ran in, he caught only the words “…killed my son!” He stood, arms wide, paralyzed, hoping for a word of explanation, another miracle.

Cuthred stepped between them, the knife-thrust screeching off the hard surface of his shield. Automatically he lifted it to thrust her off. Ragnhild's eyes widened with sudden shock. Then she fell backwards, dragging Cuthred's targe with her. The targe with the foot-long spike Shef had welded on himself. It had driven through her heart below her breasts.

“As God's my judge,” said Cuthred, “that was an accident. I never killed a woman in my life.”

“Too many killings,” said Shef. He stooped, searching for signs of life. Her lips were still moving, still cursing him. Then they ceased, and he saw her eyes roll upwards. As he stepped away, Cuthred walked forward, put a foot on Ragnhild's outstretched arm, and jerked his shield free. He shook his head in self-reproach, looked to see if his leader had noticed what he had done.

But Shef's eyes had turned from the corpse on the jetty to the bloodstained, fin-slashed water. Then, disbelievingly, he looked again across the bay. There, in the shallows opposite, two figures were sitting, visible in the growing daylight. Behind him a murmur of amazement arose as more and more men saw the astonishing sight. The second thing they had seen that morning that no living man had ever seen before. One of the Hidden People.

Echegorgun, gauging the whales' mood exactly, had swum easily and confidently across the narrow strait after the whale-boats. He had seen Shef take the men on shore, had seen the one over-confident boat sweep on into the harbor, to be met and butchered by the whales. He had kept well back, but had followed the whales on into the harbor, sure that he would hear if they turned towards him. He had cruised along the shore, only the tip of his skull showing, and that looking like yet another gray rock. He had watched the doings of the men with interest, but without concern—till he had seen two men load an unmistakable figure into a boat. Brand son of Barn son of Bjarni. His own aunt's grandson.

Echegorgun knew exactly what would happen next. He had a couple of minutes only in which to avert it, alter it. Like a seal he had launched himself across the water, clung for a moment to the stern of the Crane, gauged the distance between himself and the lead boat with Kormak in it, felt the swarm and flurry of whale-flukes only yards away. He submerged, striking out like an otter.

Brand, bound helpless in the bottom of the boat, Kormak's foot resting firmly on his chest, saw only a great gray hand seize the gunwale. Then the boat tipped. Tipped towards Echegorgun, tipped a fraction before the first whale struck. As the men shouted and raised their weapons, an irresistible clutch seized his tunic, dragged him over the side and down deep, deep, away from the splintering planks and thrashing limbs on the surface.

For a second Brand felt all the superstitious horror of his race. Seized by the marbendill, dragged down to the monster's dinner at the bottom of the sea. And yet, in that flash, he had half-recognized the hand. He lay motionless, not resisting, holding his one deep-drawn breath.

Slowly the grip dragged him through the water, powered by the great muscles of the not-man. Under the Crane's keel. Across the bay. Into the shallows. As they both came up, releasing their breath in a final gasp, Brand stared into the face next his own. The face staring back. As Echegorgun produced a flint knife and began to cut free the ropes that held Brand's arms, they explored each other silently, for similarity, for family resemblance.

Finally Brand spoke, sitting in the shallow water. “I have left messages for you and your folk in our secret place,” he said, “and I have always kept to our compact. Yet I never expected to see you here in the daylight. You are of the race that grandfather Bjarni met.”

Echegorgun smiled, showing his massive teeth. “And you must be my good cousin Brand.”