One of the scouts cleared his throat. “More bad news, lord, I’m afraid. Catapults. We saw them unloading them. Big jobs, weighing a ton, I would say. Three or four of them.”
Hrorik’s face regained its concerned expression. “Catapults! What sort were they? Were they the stone-throwers we’ve heard about, or the dart-throwers, or what?”
“We don’t know. Never seen one work. We’ve just heard these stories, same as you. They all come from men who’ve been defeated by them.”
“Thor help us. This is where we need some men who know about these things.”
Hrorik’s port-warden, sitting in on the conference, broke in. “I can help you there, lord. I got a report from a skipper yesterday. He was up at the Gula Thing. He said there had been a lot of excitement up there—I’ll tell you another time. But at the end of it he said that one of our ships had recruited two Englishmen and was bringing them south. Englishmen,” he added with emphasis. “Those are the real experts. These are guys who were there when Ivar got his, and the Frankish king too. Ship should be in in a couple of days.”
“So. While Sigurth Snake-arse crawls through the marsh, we can have these men building machines to fight his machines. That’s good. But let’s do the obvious things too. If the Ragnarssons are there on the west coast, the east coast’s clear. So let’s get ships out to King Arnodd, and King Gamli, and ask them to send every ship and man they can spare. Clean out the Ragnarssons, and we’ll all sleep easier.”
“Clean out the Ragnarssons,” said the port-warden, “and maybe it’ll be time to have just one king in Denmark.”
“Just don’t say that anywhere else,” agreed Hrorik.
Many days’ sail to the north, far from the gathering war-storms that would determine the fate of many kingdoms, Shef and Cuthred crouched immobile in the shadow of a rock. Twice they had got into what they thought was good cover. Both times Echegorgun had moved them out, muttering in his own strange language. “You Thin Ones,” he said finally. “You don’t know how to hide. Or how to look. I could walk through one of your towns in broad daylight and you would never see me.” Shef did not believe him, but he had to acknowledge the uncanny skill of the Hidden People in vanishing, in the day, at night, or in the pale twilight that had come again after another long day of sleep and waiting.
In front of them, Echegorgun stood knee deep in the water at the edge of the inlet. He had led them down to it by barely manageable paths, the men slipping and scrambling on the rock, propped up by Echegorgun or Miltastaray, sometimes lowered from one place to the next. Finally, once they were concealed to his satisfaction, Echegorgun had told them to sit motionless, and watch. Watch what a True Person could do. They would see something no Hairless One had seen for many a lifetime. How the True Folk called their kinfolk, the whales.
Now Echegorgun stood facing out to the open sea. High above, Miltastaray kept watch for any boats that might appear, ferrying men or meat between the place of the grind and Brand’s threatened home on Hrafnsey.
In one hand Echegorgun held a long paddle, its blade curiously rounded, cut laboriously with stone tools from the trunk of a mountain-aspen. Strange curlicues ran around its inside face. Echegorgun held it up, high above his head, the grotesque length of his arm suddenly clear. Then he brought it down with all his strength on the calm water. The sound of the slap seemed to run from horizon to horizon, as the ripples ran out into the Atlantic swell. Again Echegorgun brought it down. And again. The two men crouched, wondering how far the sound would run above water. And how far below it.
After a dozen blows, Echegorgun turned and put the paddle carefully on a rock on the steep shore. He took another implement, a long tapering tube, made out of layers of coiled and glued birch-bark, and took another cautious step further out, waist-deep now, standing on some unseen projection. He put the thinner end of the tube in his mouth, the trumpet end deep in the water.