Shef dropped Karli, swung the men holding his arms into each other, trampled his way free of the man clutching his leg, filled his lungs for another and more commanding bellow.
Behind him, the old queen Asa had also entered the room. One of the English raiders stood goggling at the struggle in front of him, unable to bring himself to join in and lay hands on his master. Seizing the iron stake by which she summoned her slaves, the old queen struck him smartly over the head, snatched the seax-knife from his belt as he slumped. Took three quick hobbling paces towards Shef, the cuckolder of her son and danger to her grandson, still standing unawares with his back to her.
At the same moment the little boy Harald, also standing staring at the struggle, felt the prompting of generations of warrior-ancestors. With a shrill cry he too raised his knife again and ran forward to attack the invaders of his hall. As he ran past Shef at a line of grown men, Shef scooped him up and hugged him to his own body, wrapping both arms round him to prevent his struggles. He tried to shout again, “Everybody just stand still!”
The faces confronting him turned to alarm, men started to spring forward. Shef turned with the speed he had learned in the wrestling ring, Harald still clutched to his body.
Queen Asa thrust savagely upwards with the broad-bladed knife. Shef felt a thud, a prick of pain over his ribs. Looked down at the boy in his arms. Saw him turn up his face, start to ask some disbelieving question. Saw the knife driven clean through the boy’s heart and body. The knife in the hands of his grandmother.
Somewhere, again, Shef heard a lid slam. Slam again and again.
The room had gone completely still and silent. Shef released his grip, slowly straightened the small body out, laid it on the ground.
As he looked down, his eyes seemed for a moment to blur. He seemed to be looking not at the slight shape of a ten-year old, but at a grown man, tall and burly, with a mane of hair and beard.
This was Harald Fairhair, said a cold, amused, familiar voice. Harald Fairhair as he would have been. You are his inheritor now. You inherited his treasure from King Edmund, and paid with your youth. You inherited his luck from King Alfred, and paid with your love. Now you inherit destiny from King Harald. What will you pay with this time? And do not try to shirk my visions again.
The moment passed. Shef was once more in the parlor, staring down at a bloodstained shape. Harald was dead now. Shef had felt the life go. Arms were at his shoulders again, hustling him away, and this time he did not resist. Behind him Queen Asa took slow step after slow step towards the body of her grandson, reaching out a tentative, shaking hand. Shef lost sight of her as they ran him through the door into the hall, out through the main door shattered by the catapult-stone, into the open.
Outside the hubbub broke out again, someone shouting, “But she’s still got my knife,” other voices snarling at him, Osmod counting, “Seven, eight, nine, all right, that’s the lot, get moving.” Cwicca appeared from somewhere with a firebrand and the barrel of dry kindling the slaves used, hurled first one and then the other into the cart, watched the flame spread as he slashed the horse free of its traces.
“They won’t get our mule,” he shouted.
“What are you doing with those women?” Osmod shouted as Karli came into the light, a woman in each hand and two more running anxiously behind him.
“They’ve got to come with us.”
“It’s only a six-oar boat, there’s no room.”
“They have to come. Especially now the boy’s dead. Their throats will be cut at his burial.”
Osmod, ex-slave himself, argued no more. “All right, move it.”
In an untidy stream nine men and four women ran down the path leading to the little beach where Martha had killed Stein only the evening before, Cwicca and Osmod bringing up the rear, crossbows raised. Half way down it, Shef heard a great shriek split the air behind him. Ragnhild returned from her walk along the shore. Behind it, men’s voices shouting. The guardsmen they had left behind, rallied and anxious to avenge their defeats.