Moving carefully, the man pulled forward a silver pair of wings, hanging from a chain round his neck.
In response Shef pulled from under his tunic the sign he himself bore, the kraki, the pole-ladder of his own patron and perhaps-father, the little-known god Rig.
“None have worn the wings of Völund before,” Shef remarked to Thorvin.
“Few wore the ladder of Rig either.”
Shef nodded. “Success changes many things. But tell me, devotee of Völund—what makes you think you can fly with this cape, besides the words of the lay.”
The bird-man looked surprised. “Is it not obvious, lord? Birds fly. They have feathers. If men had feathers, they would fly.”
“Why has it not been done before?”
“Other men have not my faith.”
Shef nodded once more, leapt suddenly up to the top of the battlements, stood on the narrow stone lip. His bodyguards moved forward urgently, were met by the bulk of Brand. “Easy, easy,” he growled. “The king is not a Halogalander, but he is something of a seaman now. He will not fall off a flat ledge in broad daylight.”
Shef looked down, saw two thousand faces staring up. “Back,” he shouted, waving his arms. “Back from under. Give the man room.”
“Do you think I will fall, lord?” asked the bird-man. “Do you mean to test my faith?”
Shef’s one eye looked past him, saw in the crowd behind Alfred the face of the one woman who had accompanied them to the top of the stair: Godive, Alfred’s wife, now known to all as the Lady of Wessex. His own childhood sweetheart and first love, who had left him for a kinder man. One who did not look at others to use them. Her face reproached him.
He dropped his gaze, gripped the man by the arm, careful not to disturb or disarrange his feathers.
“No,” he said. “Not at all. If they are too close to the tower they will not see well. I wish them to have something to tell their children and their children’s children. Not just, ‘he flew too fast for me to see.’ I wish you the best of fortune.”
The bird-man smiled proudly, stepped first onto a block, then, carefully, onto the wall where Shef had stood. A gasp of amazement came up from the crowd below. He stood, spread his cape widely in the strong wind. It blew from behind him, Shef noted, flattening the feathers against his back. He thinks the cape is a sail, then, which will sweep him on as if he were a ship. But what if it should instead be a…?
The man crouched, gathering his strength, and then suddenly leapt straight out, crying at the top of his voice, “Völund aid me!”
His arms beat the air, the cape flapping wildly. Once, and then as Shef craned forward, again, and then… A thud came up from the stone-flagged courtyard below, a long simultaneous groan from the crowd. Looking down, Shef saw the body lying perhaps sixteen feet from the base of the tower. Priests of the Way were already running towards him, priests of Ithun the Healer. Shef recognized among them the diminutive shape of another childhood friend, Hund the one-time slave, who shared a dog’s name with himself, but was now thought the greatest leech and bone-setter of the island of Britain. Thorvin must have stationed them there. So he had shared his own misgivings.
They were looking up now, shouting. “He has broken both legs, badly smashed. But not his back.”
Godive was looking over the wall now, next to her husband. “He was a brave man,” she said, a note of accusation in her voice.
“He will get the best treatment we can give him,” Shef replied.
“How much would you have given him if he had flown, say, a furlong?” asked Alfred.
“For a furlong? A hundred pounds of silver.”
“Will you give him some now, as compensation for his injuries?”
Shef’s lips tightened suddenly into a hard line, as he felt the pressure put on him, the pressure to show charity, respect good intentions. He knew Godive had left him for his ruthlessness. He did not see himself as ruthless. He did only what he needed to. He had many unknown subjects to protect as well as those who appeared before him.