One King's Way

Chapter Nine

Against the startling blue sky the great mountain line stood out in brilliant white. In fold after fold the range tumbled down to the black water at its foot—black only where the outflowing river kept a channel clear. Elsewhere thick ice still covered the shallow water of the bay, joining the mainland to the islands scattered along the shore. A thin powder of fresh snow covered the trees on the islands, and the ice between them. Where wind had swept the snow away, the ice lay old and transparent, still feet in thickness, but taking its color from the black depths beneath.

In the prow of the longboat, Shef and Karli watched, awestruck. In the land they had left, spring was far advanced, the buds out and the birds singing and nesting. Here there was no fresh green, only the dark gloom of the conifers, and the bright sun seemed only to be thrown back by the hard snow. The longboat was moving slowly now, under oars alone and they at no more than the paddling stroke. Hagbarth had furled sail in the night, as soon as he felt the loom of the land on either side, as soon as he knew they were within the deep bay that ran up in the end to the town of Oslo. Now, from time to time, the crew heard the sharp rap-rap of ice chunks striking the boat's fragile planks. Standing above them on the very gunwale itself, holding on with one hand as he leaned outboard, a crewman called sharp directions to the helmsman at the steering-oar, directing him away from the greater ice-lumps, the small islands that came drifting down the current from the land.

“Not much risk from ice this late in the spring,” Hagbarth had said, the first time his southern passengers had jumped to their feet in alarm at the knocking beneath their feet. “But we won't risk it just the same.”

Shef had been profoundly glad, and Karli even gladder, of the reduction in speed, and not just out of fear of what awaited them at journey's end. Neither man, not even Shef, had made a fast passage in a Viking longboat before. It was an experience very different—Shef now realized—from the stately waddle of the Norfolk up the Dutch coast, the sickening roll and lurch of sailing in a Yorkshire fishing-coble. The Viking boat, Hagbarth's own Aurvendill, had seemed to slide over the water like a great, supple snake. Each wave as it came towards them rose far above the gunwales, looked down on the undecked hull, seemed certain to crash down on it in a swamping torrent. Then the prow rose, swarmed up, seemed like an intelligent creature to look over the other side and begin its downward curve while the stern-post was still rising. After a while Shef, his nerve starting to return, found Karli sitting staring in horror at the lower planks below the waterline. They shifted continually, moving away from the boat's ribs and then moving back again, held only by lashings of twisted root or sinew. Often the gaps were large enough for a man to put foot, hand, or even head through. At such moments there seemed to be nothing except habit holding the side-planks together at all. For a while after that both Karli and Shef sat together, convinced deep in their bellies that if they slackened the tension of their watch, the charm would break and the sea come rushing through.

As for anything striking the egg-shell's sides, the thought was unbearable. Shef had once asked Hagbarth if Norsemen ever carried horses or oxen from place to place, and if so, how they prevented the beasts from rushing to and fro in panic. Hagbarth had laughed. “If you put a horse in my Aurvendill,” he said, “I have always found that any of them, even the fiercest stallion, takes one good look round him and then stands very, very still.” Shef could see why.

And yet they had had to hurry, ice or no ice, running under full sail all the time during daylight, moving at a speed only a little under a horse's full gallop or a man's all-out sprint, as fast as a young man would go if he had nothing to carry and no more than a quarter of a mile to cover. For hour after hour. In the twelve hours of daylight on their first day Shef thought they might have traveled more than a hundred and fifty miles, though it was true they had tacked continually, making it less than that in a straight line. In the two nights and two days of their voyage, maybe four hundred all told—four hundred miles to bring them from the spring of flatland Denmark to the settled chill of Norway and the mountains.

All the way Hagbarth, explaining their haste, had commented on the immediate dangers on one or either side. Ships of King Hrorik had convoyed them up the South Jutland coast by night and through the Great Belt, the gap of water between the Danish mainland and Othin's own island of Fyn. Not too much risk there, Hagbarth had said. Hrorik has an arrangement with King Gamli of Fyn. But then they had swerved sharply out to sea with dawn and the turn-back of Hrorik's escorts. King Arnodd of Aalborg, Hagbarth had explained. Not hostile, does business like anyone else. But part of his business is robbing ships. Anyone without his leave, not related to him or his jarls, or just too weak to resist. Anyway, he feels threatened now: has to keep up a reputation.

Who's threatening him, Shef had asked, wondering already if the sea-legs he had acquired weeks before would keep off sea-sickness in the strange swoopings of the Aurvendill. Hagbarth had spat carefully past Karli's vomiting form and jerked a thumb to starboard, to the dim shapes of Fyn and Sjaelland beyond.

“The real bastards,” he had said briefly. “Your friends. The Ragnarssons. Their base is over there, the Braethraborg, and the Emperor of the Greeks himself wouldn't want to meet them at sea. Don't worry,” he had added. “As far as we know the Snake-eye took the whole lot south to meet you, and they haven't come back yet. If they have, they'll be coming round the point over there on the backboard right about now. Unless they've strung out to make a nice long line from coast to coast just ahead.”

Even after they had cleared the menace of the Skaggerak and were sailing, wind abeam, ten miles off the long coast of the South Swedes, Hagbarth's conversation was a long list of human hazards: King Teit of the East Gauts, King Vifil of the West Gauts, reports of independent pirates off the Weder islands, rumors of a fleet of broken men out of the Small Lands trying their luck up towards Norway, King Hjalti of the Farmsteads, and always—or so Hagbarth had said, though by this time Shef was suspecting him of deliberate terrorization—the possibility of the fearsome kings of the West-fjords taking a change from their usual raiding-grounds in the Atlantic islands and against the Irish, and coming over to vex the Swedes, whom they hated.

“In your country,” Karli had asked once, pale with sickness and terror, “can anyone call himself a king?”

“Not anyone,” Hagbarth had said with all seriousness. “It helps if you can call yourself one of the god-born, and there are plenty of people to check that. Us for a start, we priests of the Way. And there are some who are too proud to lie about their ancestry, like the Hlathir jarls—if they are descended from anyone it must be the trolls.

“But as a rule, if you can raise a fleet, say sixty ships or so, and you can find yourself a base on land, even if it is only a few square miles like the Braethraborg—the Ragnarssons took that from old King Kolfinn of Sjaelland, and defied him to take it back—then you can call yourself a king. Sea-king is what they usually say.”

“And how do you get to be a king of somewhere? Like the Farmsteads or the Small Lands or the Midden-heaps or the Further Cow-byre,” asked Shef, temper strained by fear.

“Get a Thing to accept you,” said Hagbarth briefly. “Easiest way to do that is to stand in the clearing and say you're king and you're going to tax everybody. If you get out of the clearing, you're probably a king. God-born or no.”

The tension had only slackened at dawn that day when Hagbarth, looking carefully round him at the first blink of dawn, had pronounced them within the waters of the Norwegian kings, Olaf and Halvdan.

“Kings of Norway?” Shef had asked.

“Kings of the Westfold and the Eastfold,” Hagbarth replied. “One each, but co-kings of both. And don't look like that, what about you and Alfred? You're not even brothers. Half-brothers, that is.”

Further argument had been cut out by the appearance from either side of heavily-manned warships, each half the size again of the Aurvendill, long pennants flying. Shef knew enough of the sea to recognize them as coast-defense craft only, unfit for a deep-sea passage or a hard gale because of their riveted keels, but capable of jamming in a hundred warriors each for a short while, untroubled by the need to carry rations and water. As the ice narrowed in from either side they closed up, eventually falling into line astern, each ship paddling gently into the whirlpools made by the one ahead, as the oars dipped and pulled in the dark water.

Ahead Shef could see what looked like a substantial township, many log houses with plumes of smoke rising from all of them. At its center rose a large hall, horns jutting from ridge and gables. Further away, outside the town but below the mountains, he could see with his one sharp eye a collection of larger buildings, some of them strangely shaped, but all half-hidden by the firs. Where the town ran down to the shore, dozens of boats of all sizes lay at jetties. And, at the largest and longest of the jetties, he could pick out what seemed to be a welcoming committee. Or a group of jailers. Shef looked longingly at the islands scattered thickly to the left. The ice was barely fifty yards away now. Then a few hundred yards more to the land, and on every island plumes of smoke to show shelter and habitation.

All ruled by the co-kings, of whichever Fold it was. If your heart did not stop beating as soon as you touched the freezing water. If you did not freeze solid as soon as you climbed out of it.

Shef belatedly realized that he cut hardly a kingly figure himself. He had started the trip in exactly the same tunic, breeches and leather shoes that he had worn continually since he had struggled ashore on the Ditmarsh two weeks before: bemired, salt-stained, bloodstained from his own blood and the Viking he had killed on the sandbanks, with a fortnight's accumulation of tar-patches, spilt broth, and sweat on top. It was no worse than what he had worn most of his boyhood in the Norfolk marsh, but Vikings, he had noticed, were cleanlier than Englishmen, or at least than English churls. Only Karli sat next to him when they came to eat. As they sailed further north and the sea-wind came keener, Hagbarth had tossed each of them a thick blanket, which they now hugged round them.

By contrast to their squalor, Shef could pick out on the jetty scarlet capes, gleaming armor, polished shields reflecting the sun, and in a solid body at the water's edge, the shining white clothes of the priests of the Way, competing with the snow behind. Shef ran a hand ineffectually through his hair, dislodging a louse, and turned for advice to Hagbarth. Then turned back again, with sudden incredulous joy.

One figure over there by the shore stood out even among the tall shapes around him. Surely—yes, that must be Brand. Scanning quickly along the jetty, Shef realized that there were other men there in a little knot, smaller than the rest as Brand was bigger. And one of them showed up in a bright flash of scarlet—it was the silk tunic the ex-slave Cwicca wore for great occasions. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Shef could pick them out readily. Brand there well to the fore, Guthmund the Greedy standing beside him, and in a self-effacing clump to the rear Cwicca and Osmod and a gang of their mates. Shef looked again at the white tunics and cloaks of the priests of the Way, standing at the very edge of the jetty. Yes, Thorvin was there among them, and Skaldfinn too, and Hund: outnumbered, though, by a cluster of other priests, one formidable figure near the front almost rivaling Brand even in size. And there was another group there as well, standing separate both from the priests and from Brand and his friends. A puff of wind from the mountains caught the pennants held by standard-bearers, and for a moment Shef saw the Hammer of the Way, white on black, and from the group he could not identify a blue streamer with a strange design he did not recognize. He looked a mute question at Hagbarth.

“It is the Gripping Beast,” said Hagbarth, dropping his voice, the jetty now only fifty yards away.

“Of King Halvdan? Or King Olaf?”

“Neither,” said Hagbarth with a touch of grimness. “Of Queen Ragnhild.”

The crewmen tossed oars, dropped them clattering into the bottom of the boat. Ropes flew out from prow and stern, were caught and snubbed to tree-trunk bollards. The Aurvendill settled gently alongside the jetty. The gangplank was thrown across.

Shef hesitated, conscious of his own appearance. Facing him, the big unknown priest looked down, what seemed to be scorn and mistrust on his face. Shef remembered the last time he had stood face to face with an enemy on a gangplank: when he had killed Ivar, Champion of the North. No-one else could ever say that. Shedding his blanket, and snatching the ‘Gungnir’ spear from Karli's ready hand, he stepped on to the gangplank, strode across it, meaning to force the priest to stand back.

As he reached the other end an arm like the base of a mast quietly thrust the priest aside, and Brand shoved forward, holding out an immense fur cape, made from the skin of a white bear, its brooch and chain of gold. In an instant he had wrapped it round Shef's shoulders, fastened the links. Then he fell to one knee, his face still only just below Shef's own level.

“Hail, King of the East and Middle Angles,” he called. On the signal, Cwicca and his mates, and the crews of the Walrus and the Seamew further behind, cheered and clashed their weapons.

Brand, who had never knelt in his life before, winked one staring eye, and jerked his head infinitesimally at the others on the jetty. Shef caught the hint, turned to Hagbarth, who had followed him up the gangplank.

“You may present your colleagues,” he said imperiously.

“Why, this is—ah—King Shef, may I present to you Valgrim the Wise, Head of the College of the Way and priest of Othin? Valgrim, this is…”

Valgrim was paying no attention. With a scowl for Brand, he reached out one hand, seized the spear in Shef's grip, and turned it so that he could read the runes on it. After a moment he released the spear, turned and walked wordlessly off.

“He didn't like that,” muttered Brand. “What do the runes say?”

“Gungnir. It's not my spear anyway, I took it from Sigurth Ragnarsson.”

Most of the other priests of the Way had moved off after their leader, leaving Thorvin and Hund behind. As they departed, Shef saw the other group coming towards them under the blue and silver banner. He gaped up at it: a strange design, of a beast with snarling face, seemingly throttling itself with one paw while clutching its own ankle with another. He dropped his eyes, found himself face to face with the most striking woman he had ever seen.

He would not have thought her beautiful if some one had described her. Since his childhood Shef had framed his ideas of beauty on Godive: tall but slight of figure, with brown hair, gray eyes, and the perfect complexion she had inherited from her Irish slave-concubine mother. This woman was tiger to Godive's sleek leopard: as tall as Shef, with broad cheekbones and great green eyes set wide apart. Her breasts swelled out the dark green gown she was wearing, and heavy hip-bones showed through as she walked. Two long plaits hung round her face and over her shoulders, held in place by a heavy gold band low over her forehead. She was not a young woman either, Shef realized belatedly, but double his age or Godive's. At her side walked a young boy, maybe ten years old.

Confused, and unwilling to face the woman's stare, Shef dropped on one knee to the boy's level.

“And who are you?”

“I am Harald, son to King Halvdan and Queen Ragnhild. What happened to your eye?”

“Someone put it out with a hot needle.”

“Did it hurt?”

“I fainted before it was finished.”

The boy looked scornful. “That was not drengiligr. Warriors do not faint. Did you kill the man who did it?”

“I killed the man who caused it. The one who did it is standing over there, and the one who held me. They are friends.”

The boy looked nonplused. “How can they be friends if they blinded you?”

“Sometimes you will take from your friends what you will not from your enemies.”

Belatedly Shef realized the boy's mother's thigh was only inches from his blind side. He rose to his feet, conscious as he did so of the strong female warmth. There, on the jetty, with dozens of men all around, he could feel his manhood stirring as it had not for all the Ditmarsh girl's efforts. In another moment he would feel the urge to throw her down on the wooden deck—if he were strong enough, which he doubted.

The queen looked scrutinizingly at him, seemingly aware of what he felt. “You will come when I call you, then,” she said, and turned away.

“Most men do,” muttered Brand again in Shef's ear.

Over his voice, as he watched the green gown retreating magnificently towards the snow, Shef heard a sound he would once have picked out through any distractions: the clink-clink, beat-beat of light and heavy hammers working at a forge. And other sounds too which he could not place.

“We've a lot to show you,” said Thorvin, finally making his way up to his former apprentice.

“Right,” said Brand. “But first, the bath-house. I can see the lice in his hair, and it puts me off even if Queen Ragnhild likes it.”

“He came stalking ashore with one eye and a spear in his hand with the ‘Gungnir’ runes on it,” growled Valgrim. “What else has he to do to declare himself Othin? Ride an eight-legged horse? He is a blasphemer!”

“Many men have one eye,” replied Thorvin. “And as for the ‘Gungnir’ runes, he did not have them cut. The only reason he has the spear is that Sigurth Snake-eye threw it at him. If there is a blasphemer, it is Sigurth.”

“You have told us that when he first appeared to you out of nowhere two winters ago he said he came from the North.”

“Yes, but all that he meant was that he came from the north of his kingdom.”

“And yet you have presented this to us as if this accident were proof that he is the One we await. That he is the One who will come from the North to overthrow the Christians and put the world on its better path. If this aping of Othin is an accident, then what he said to you was an accident. But if what he said to you was a sign from the gods, then this too is a sign. He is setting himself up as Othin. And I, the priest of Othin in this college, I say that such as he cannot have Othin's favor. Did he not refuse the Othin-sacrifice when he had the Christian army at his mercy?”

Thorvin fell silent, unable to see a way round Valgrim's logic.

“I can tell you that he is one who sees visions,” put in Hagbarth. “And not only in his sleep.”

The listening priests, a score of them together, looked at him with interest. They had not formed their holy circle nor set up the holy cordon of rowan-berries round the spear and the bale-fire: what they said was still unprivileged, not done under the guidance of the gods. Still, they were not forbidden to speak of holy things.

“How do you know?” grunted Valgrim.

“I saw him in Hedeby. He sat on a mound outside the town, a grave-mound, an old king's howe. They told me he made his way there unprompted.”

“Means nothing,” said Valgrim. He quoted derisively lines from one of the traditional poems of the past:

“Then the bastard sat on the barrow,

When the princes parted the spoil.“

“Bastard or not,” Hagbarth went on. “I saw him with his eyes wide open, seeing nothing and replying to no-one. When the fit passed I asked him what he had seen and he replied, he saw things as they were.”

“What did he look like when the fit was on him?” asked a priest with the sign of Ull the hunter-god round his neck.

“Like him.” Hagbarth jerked a thumb at the most respected of the priests in the conclave, Vigleik of the visions, seated unspeaking at the end of the table.

Slowly Vigleik stirred. “One other thing we must remember,” he offered. “The evidence of Farman priest of Frey, our brother still in England. He says that two winters ago he was in the camp of the Ragnarssons, searching for new knowledge, trying to see whether even among the Loki-brood there might be the One we await. He had seen Thorvin's apprentice whom they now call King Shef, but he knew nothing of him, thought him only an English runaway. Yet the day after the great battle with King Jatmund he too saw a vision, in daylight. A vision of the smithy of the gods. In it he saw Thorvin's apprentice in the shape and place of Völund, the lame smith. And he saw Othin speak to him. Farman told me, though, that Othin did not take him under his protection. So maybe Valgrim, as priest of Othin, is right to fear him. There may be other plans than Othin's.”

Valgrim's chest swelled with rage, both at the challenge to Othin's plans and at the thought that he might be a prey to fear. He did not venture to defy Vigleik. Among the priests who had gathered to the College from the whole of Norway, and the other Scandinavian lands, there were more who knew of Vigleik the Seer than of Valgrim the Wise—wise in the ways of kings and the arts of government. One of the arts of government was to keep silent till the moment came.

“Guidance may come to us,” he said pacifically.

“Who from?” asked a priest from Ranrike to the north.

“From our holy circle, when the time comes to form it.”

“Also,” said Vigleik, “if we are fortunate, from King Olaf. He is the wisest of kings on the earth, though not the most lucky. I suggest we invite him to attend our conclave, to sit outside the circle. He is not the One, though once we thought he might be. Yet if anyone may recognize a true king, it is he.”

“I thought Olaf Elf-of-Geirstath was dead,” muttered the Ranrike priest to one of his back-country fellows.

Washed from head to foot in a great tub of heated water, his hair cut short and scrubbed again and again with lye, Shef stepped cautiously across the old, hard-packed snow of the College's precinct. His clothes had been taken away and replaced with a hemp shirt and tight-fitting woolen drawers, a thick wool tunic and trousers over them. Brand had repossessed the bearskin cape, muttering that if he found lice in that he would send Shef out to hunt down another one, but he had replaced it with a mantle of homespun. His gold bracelets again shone on Shef's biceps, though he had refused to replace the gold circlet of kingship on his cropped head. He walked clumsily in a pair of thick winter boots borrowed from Guthmund, padded out with wound rags. In spite of the cold and the snow, he felt warm for the first time in days. Udd the undersized steelmaster kept pace with him. After the rough administrations of Brand, Shef had greeted Cwicca and the rest of his faithful gang, handed Karli over to them, scowling distrustfully, and told them to consider him a new and valued recruit, and then become aware that Udd was standing to one side, tongue-tied as ever. One only became aware of Udd when he had something to say or to show. It was certainly something to do with metal. Remembering the forge-noises he had heard from the jetty, Shef clapped Udd on the shoulder, added a final warning about good behavior to Karli, and followed Udd out into the open. Cwicca and the other English ex-slaves who had come to this unknown land in the north had promptly slammed the door, wedged every chink they could find, and returned to their normal habit of clustering round the fire in as much animal warmth as they could manage.

Udd was not heading towards the place from which familiar forge-noises came, but to a small building separate from the main frequented halls and dormitories. As they walked a figure shot suddenly past them at a speed no man could match. Shef jumped to one side, fumbling for the sword at his belt, saw the figure sweep away down the slope to the township well below.

“What was that?” he gasped. “Skates? On snow? Downhill?”

“They call 'em skis,” said Udd. “Or ski-runners or something. Wooden boards you tie to your feet. They all use 'em up here. Strange folk. But now look at this.” He pushed the door open and led Shef into an empty shed.

For a few moments Shef could see nothing in its dark interior. Then, as Udd fumbled open a shutter he saw a great stone wheel lying in the middle of the shed. As his eyes grew used to the dimness, Shef realized that there were actually two wheels, one over the other. A machine of some kind.

“What do they do?” he asked.

Udd lifted a trapdoor, pointed under the shed to a channel below. “When the snow melts there's a stream under here. See the wheel down there? With the paddles on it? Water flows, turns the paddles. Axle on that wheel turns these two above. The surfaces touching each other have channels cut in 'em. Pour grain in. Grinds the grain.”

Shef nodded, remembering the monotonous noise of the old woman grinding corn in the Ditmarsh hut, the job that never ceased, the job that warriors hated.

“Does it much faster than women with the old pestle and mortar,” Udd added. “Mind you, it's been frozen solid since we got here. They say when it's working it grinds as much corn as forty women working all day. The folk come up from the town and pay the priests to use it.”

Shef nodded again, reflecting on how the monks of Saint John or Saint Peter would have appreciated such an addition to their income. He saw the potential of the device. But he could not understand Udd's interest: it was notorious that the little man cared for nothing but metal. Best not to rush him.

Silently Udd led his king out and down the slope to a second shed. “This is like rung two,” he said, with a glance at Shef's ladder-emblem. “And this is down to us. See, ever since last year the priests here have been fascinated by what they heard of our catapults. Cwicca and his mates have already built a couple, to show 'em how we do it. But they'd already got the idea of the little wheels: the cog-wheels, you know. And the priest who was working with the mill, he got the idea of using real big cog-wheels not to wind a catapult but to make a different mill.”

The pair approached the second building. On one wall of it, another big wooden wheel with paddles, exactly like the first one: but set vertically in the snow-choked ravine, not horizontally. Clearly the water would turn this even better, with a better purchase. But what use would an axle be turning two vertical millstones? The corn would run straight through them and never be ground at all. It was the weight of the stone that did the grinding.

Still silently Udd led Shef in and pointed to the gearing. At the end of the millwheel-axle an immense iron cog-wheel stood vertical. Its teeth meshed into a matching horizontal cog, fitted over a stout oak axle. Below it, on the same axle, the two familiar stone wheels. Above them, a hopper showed where men could stand to pour in sacks of kernels.

“Yes, lord, it's well-done. But what I wanted to say was there's something to do with this that these folk haven't thought of yet. See, lord,” Udd dropped his voice, though there was no-one near, no-one within a furlong of them. “What's our problem with iron? With making it, like?”

“Beating it out,” said Shef.

“How many days does it take a man to get fifty pound of iron out of, say, five times that amount of ore?”

Shef whistled, remembering the hours he had spent pounding out the slag for his first home-made sword. “Ten,” he guessed. “Depends how strong the smith is.”

“That's why smiths have to be strong,” agreed Udd, looking down at his own puny frame. “I couldn't ever be one. But then I thought, if this mill does the work of forty grinding-slaves, women that is, could it not do the work of, say, twenty smiths?”

Shef began to feel a familiar warning itch in his brain. Many minds were working here, as they had worked to make the catapults, the pulley-wound crossbow. Some priest of the Way had thought of the water-mill. Some long-dead Roman had left behind the cog-wheels. Shef and his crewmen had rebuilt the catapults. And from hearing about that alone, some other priest had worked out how to transfer the force in the flow of a river to the task he needed in a different dimension. Now Udd had returned that thought to his own obsession. It was as if people too were cog-wheels, the one fitting into the other, one brain turning the next.

“How could stone wheels grind iron?” he asked cautiously.

“Well, lord, what came to me was this.” Udd dropped his voice even further. “What everyone's always thought in this line is, a wheel drives a wheel. But I thought, what if it doesn't? What if it drives something a different shape? And much, much bigger? See, axle turns here. Turns a shape like this. The shape turns, and all the time it's turning, it's lifting a heavy weight, as heavy as a millwheel. Only not a millwheel, a hammer. But when it gets to this point here—it stops lifting. The hammer drops instead. A really heavy hammer, a hammer six smiths couldn't lift, not even if they were as strong as Brand! And hammering as fast as the axle on this millwheel turns. How long would it take to beat out fifty pounds of iron then? Five hundred pounds?”

The little man's pale face shone with excitement, the thrill of the inventor. Shef caught the feeling, felt his palms itch to start the work.

“Listen, Udd,” he said, trying to keep a cool head. “I don't see what you mean about the shape to lift and to drop.”

Udd nodded energetically. “That's what I've been thinking about every night in my bunk. What we need, I reckon, is something like this…”

On the floor of the hut, planks overlaid with a thin layer of drifted snow from under the warped door, Udd began to draw a cross-section of a reciprocating cam. After a few moments Shef seized his own straw and began to draw as well. “If it turns like this,” he said, “you'd have to have a groove on the handle of the hammer, to stop it flying off. But does it have to have a hammer-shape?”

An hour later Thorvin the smith-priest, coming from his doubtful meeting, saw the tall king and the puny freedman walking down the snowy path, their arms waving wildly as they designed imaginary machines. For an instant he understood Valgrim's doubts. Farman and Vigleik might see the One King in their visions. No vision or prophecy had ever included a word, he was sure, about scrawny foreign thrallborn assistants.