Slowly he started to pull off his grubby woolen tunic.
“What’s this?” said the auctioneer. “Strong young man, able to do simple smith-work, offered for sale by—some webfoot, who cares.”
Shef threw the tunic to the ground, adjusted the silver pendant of Rig in the center of his chest, flexed his muscles in a parody of the behavior of farmhands at a hiring fair. The sunlight showed the old scars of flogging across his back, flogging he had received from the hands of his stepfather years before.
“Is he tractable?” shouted a voice. “He sure doesn’t look it.”
“You can make a slave tractable,” shouted Nikko, standing next to the auctioneer.
Shef nodded thoughtfully, stepped over to the pair of them. As he did so he carefully spread the fingers of his left hand and then curled them into a tight fist, thumb outside the second joint, as Karli had shown him. He had to make this dramatic. Not a shove, not a scuffle.
Stepping forward on to the left foot according to Karli’s demonstrations, he swung his left arm in a short arc, putting all the weight of his body behind it, and aiming as if to end with his fist behind his right shoulder. The left hook connected not with Nikko’s jaw—Karli had advised against that for beginners—but with his right temple. The burly man, completely unprepared, dropped instantly to his knees.
Instantly Shef had him by the collar, jerked him to his feet, turned to face the crowd.
“One webfoot,” he shouted in Norse. “Talks a lot. No good at anything. What am I bid?”
“I thought he was selling you,” shouted a voice.
Shef shrugged. “I changed my mind.” He stared round at the crowd, trying to overbear them with his one eye. What made a thrall? In the end, there must be consent. A thrall who simply disobeyed, simply fought back, could be killed, but was worth nothing. On the edge of the ring he realized there was a minor fracas going on, as Nikko’s son and nephew came forward to his assistance, only to find Karli barring their path, fists raised.
“All right, all right,” snarled the jarl almost in Shef’s ear. “I can see the pair of you are unsaleable. But I’ll tell you this—you still owe an auction fee, and if you can’t pay it I’ll take it out of both of you.”
Shef looked round. A dangerous moment. He had hoped to see a friendly face before this, if the Danes met on the road had spread the word. Now he would have to settle with the toll-jarl on his own. He had only two possessions left. One hand closed round the silver pendant—that was his last resort. The other?
The ‘Gungnir’ spear thumped into the turf at his feet. Karli, beaming and rubbing his knuckles, waved cheerfully at him. Shef started to pull the spear out, to show the rune-marks on it to the contemptuous jarl, to try to strike a deal.
“If he’s for sale, the one-eye,” called a voice, “I’ll buy him. I know someone who wants him bad.”
With a feeling of doom at his heart, Shef turned to face the voice. He had hoped a friend would recognize him. He had not forgotten the chance that it would be an enemy, but had gambled that all the followers of the Ragnarssons, the survivors of the men he had known in the Great Army, would be with the Ragnarsson fleet at sea on the other side of Denmark. He had reckoned without the loose alliances, the continuous joinings and defections, of the Viking world.
It was Skuli the Bald, who had commanded a tower in Shef’s scaling of the York walls the year before, but had then thrown in his lot with the Ragnarssons who had betrayed them. He was coming forward now, his ship’s crew closed up behind him in a disciplined formation.
At the same moment some inner warning told Shef another face was staring at him fixedly. He turned, met a pair of black, implacable eyes. Recognized them instantly. Erkenbert the black deacon, whom he had seen first at the death of Ragnar in the snake-pit, and seen last being loaded aboard the transport-ships after the defeat of the Christian Crusade at Hastings. He was standing next to the rescued black-robe priest, talking rapidly to the blond German, and pointing.