“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.