A man was coming forward to greet them, no weapon drawn, right hand up for parley. He and Brand stared at each other.
“Well, Vigdjarf,” said Brand. “We haven’t met since Hamburg. Or was it the raid on the Orkneys?”
“The Orkneys it was,” said the other man. He was shorter than Brand by some way, but heavily-built, thick-necked and balding. Squat arms bulged with muscle over gold bracelets: a bad sign in both ways. This man had made heavy profits out of something, and here in the poor mountain lands it would not be from rearing cattle.
Vigdjarf looked pointedly at the hammer pendant on Brand’s chest, then past him at the clump of horses, men and women behind him. “You are in strange company,” he remarked. “Or maybe not so strange. Once people start wearing things round their necks I always think it’s the next thing to turning Christian. And then what? They start talking to the other slaves, start helping them to run off. Start being one yourself. Are you that bad yet, Viga-Brand? Or is there a bit of your old self yet?”
Brand slid off the pony he had been riding, walked forward, axe in hand. “You can cut the talk, Vigdjarf,” he said. “When we last met I never heard a peep out of you. Now you think you’re something. Well, what’s it to be? Are you and your cousins just going to try to jump us? Because if you do we’ll kill a lot of you, that’s for sure.”
Behind him Osmod raised a crossbow, sighted on the thick oak of the temple door, squeezed the trigger with its carefully-ground sear. A flash too fast for sight, a thump echoing round the silent square. Osmod reloaded without haste, four easy movements, a click, another square iron bolt dropped home.
“Try digging that out,” Brand went on. “Or have you got some other deal? Just you and me, maybe, man to man.”
“Just you and me,” Vigdjarf confirmed.
“And if I win?”
“Free passage through, for all of you.”
“And if you win, Vigdjarf?”
“We take the lot. Horses, slaves, men, women. We can find a place for the women. Not the men. Thralls who’ve been allowed to run around thinking they’re people get funny ideas. They’ll go to the sacred tree, to hang for Othin’s ravens. Maybe we’ll keep some of them, if we think they’re safe. But you know how we deal with runaways up here. If we don’t kill them we geld and brand them. Only safe thing to do.
“But you’ve got another way out Brand. You personal, I mean. Just walk away from them. They’re not your folk. Join us, hand them over, no trouble for you or me, we’ll even cut you in on the profits.”
“No deal,” said Brand. He flipped his axe up, to grip it in both hands. “Here and now?”
Vigdjarf shook his head. “Too many people want to watch. I told them you’d say that. Now they’re coming down from all the garths in three dales. We’ve marked out a dueling-ground down by the river. Tomorrow morning. Me against you.”
As Shef stood listening to the talk, the talk that might condemn him to the gelding-iron, the brand, and the iron collar, he felt the familiar pinch at the back of his neck which meant his vision was being directed. This time he did not struggle against the sight he was being shown. As had happened when he sat on the howe by Hedeby, his eye remained open, he still saw the small muddy square, the wooden temple, the armed men tensely waiting. But at the same time another picture swam across his vision, filling his brain, as if the eyeball they had taken from him were somewhere else, reporting on what it saw as well as the one still in his head.
He saw a great mill, like the one Udd had first shown him at the college in Kaupang, two horizontal stones, the one turning over the other, fed by a hopper from above. But no cog-wheels, no water running. Instead the mill-room was dry, like the middle of summer in a hot year, and the dust rose chokingly from the ground with never a drop of water to lay it.