Now, at the end of the long night, his guards carried him out of the longhouse where the great fresh-tarred flagship lay, and down the long row of rollers that led down the slipway to the sea.
“Here will do. This one here,” grunted the burly middle-aged warrior in charge.
“How do we do it?” asked one of the others, a young man without the campaign-marks, the scars and silver arm-rings of the others. “I’ve never seen this done before.”
“So watch and you’ll learn. First, cut that rawhide round his wrists. No, don’t worry,” as the younger man hesitated, looked round automatically for any slightest glimpse of an escape, “he’s a goner, look at him, couldn’t even crawl if we let him go. Don’t let him go, mind. Just cut his wrists free, right.”
A few minutes of sawing, and the bound man staggered as the lashings freed, stared a moment in the pale but growing light at the hands in front of him.
“Now lay him out flat on that roller. Belly down. Feet together. Now see here, young Hrani, because this is the important bit. The thrall has to have his back upwards, for why you’ll see very shortly. He can’t have his hands behind him, same reason, and he mustn’t be able to move. But he mustn’t be able to stop himself moving either.
“So what I do is this.” The middle-aged leader pressed his captive’s face down on to the solid pine trunk he lay on, seized both arms and dragged them forward above his head, till the victim looked like a man diving. He pulled a hammer and two short iron spikes from his belt.
“We used to tie them, but I think you get a better roll like this. I saw something like it once in one of the Christers’ churches. Course, they put the nail in the wrong place. Half-wits.”
Grunting with effort, the veteran began to hammer a spike carefully through the junction of wrist and hand. Behind him, there came a rustle of many men moving. Against the dawn-light of the east, dark shapes began to show. Spears and helmets silhouetted against the sky where the sun would soon show its first glimmer on this, the first day of the warriors’ new year, when day and night were the same length.
“He’s taking it well,” said the young man as his instructor started to hammer in the second spike. “More like a warrior than a thrall. Who was he, anyway?”
“Him? Just some fisherman we picked up on the way back last year. And he’s not taking it well, he can’t feel a thing, his hands have been dead for hours.
“Soon over now,” he added to the man now firmly nailed to the log, patting his cheek. “Speak well of me in the next world. This could go a lot worse if I bungled it. But I haven’t. Just lash his legs down, you two, no need for another spike. Feet together. He’s got to turn when the moment comes.”
The little group got to their feet, leaving their victim stretched out along the pine-trunk.
“Ready, Vestmar?” said a voice behind them.
“Ready, lord.”
The space behind them had filled up while they worked. At the rear, away from the shore and the long sea inlet, lay hump after hump of dark shapes, slave-pens, workshops, boathouses, and in dimly-sensed ranks the rows of regular barracks that housed the trusted troops of the sea-kings, the sons of Ragnar—once four, now three. From the barracks the men had come streaming, all men, no women, no youths, to see the solemn spectacle: the launch of the first ship, the start of the annual campaigning season that once again was to bring terror and ruin to the Christians and their allies of the South.
Yet the warriors hung back, ranking themselves round the inlet’s shore in a deep semi-circle. Pacing down to the very shore itself came only three men, all tall and powerful, men in their prime, the three remaining sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks: Ubbi the grizzled, despoiler of women, Halvdan the redbeard, the fanatical dueller and champion, dedicated to the warrior’s life and code. Before even them, Sigurth the Snake-eye, so called for the whites that surrounded every part of his eye-pupils like the gaze of a snake: the man who meant to make himself King of all the lands of the North.