“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.”