“So cold is the problem. But Udd’s right, is he, it is Jarnberaland on the other side, maybe two hundred miles off? Ten days’ travel.”
“Twenty days’ travel. If you’re very very lucky. In some of the country I’ve seen three miles is a hard day. If you don’t get turned round and die walking in a circle.”
“Still,” Thorvin put in, pulling at his beard, “there is something few people know. And that is that the Way is strong in Jarnberaland. Naturally, for we are craftsmen and smiths. And smiths go to iron. There are priests of the Way there, working with the folk who mine the iron. Some say it is as good as a second College. Valgrim was against it. He said there could only be one College.”
And he the head of it, Shef thought. Valgrim’s errors had finally caught up with him. He had been in the boats that rowed back to the Crane, and only two of the men in them had survived, Brand and a young man who had remained hunched into a ball ever since they pulled him on shore, making small noises of fear. Ragnhild could have died that way too, Shef told himself. Just an accident. Another of the ones that surrounded him. Part of his luck, Olaf Elf-of-Geirstath would say, and King Alfred with him.
“So if we crossed the mountains,” Shef went on, “we might even find help the other side.”
“But you can’t cross the mountains,” Brand repeated, exasperated. “The mountains are full of Finns and—”
“And the Hidden Folk,” Shef completed for him. “Thank you, Brand.” He rose to his feet and walked off yet again, the lance marking his paces.
The final word came from a man whose name he did not know, one of the Crane’s crew, sweating in the pale sunlight as he and his mates heaved rocks on to a sled, to drag to the settlement to make a few more winter shelters. Halogalanders watched them from a distance, carrying bundles of seal-harpoons. Shef, still unsure of his proper course, paused to watch them for a moment. One of them looked up. A relative of Kormak, he spoke bitterly. “Today we sweat, you watch. We were defeated—but not by men, by whales! That cannot happen twice. Next time you will find no protectors. The Rogalanders are still looking out for you, and Ragnhild’s kin will pay her bounty. And behind them, the Ragnarssons. Sigurth Snake-eye will pay as much for you as Ragnhild would have. If you go south, you will meet someone. You will never see England again, one-eye. The only man who could get through what waits for you would need an iron skin. Like Sigurth Fafnirsbane. And even he left a weak spot!”
Shef looked down reflectively. He knew the story of Sigurth who killed the dragon Fafnir—he had seen a part of it himself, in vision, seen the dragon-mask. He knew too that Sigurth had been betrayed by his lover, and killed by her husband and his kin, once they found out that the dragon’s blood that had made his skin impenetrable had been checked at one spot by a leaf that stuck to it, and left him vulnerable only in the back. He, Shef, had had an angry lover as well, though she was dead, and her husband too. And he had killed a dragon, if Ivar Boneless might be considered as such.
The parallels were too close for comfort. And it was true enough that the North Way down the coast was also the one way south, and all too easily blocked.
“I hear what you say,” he answered. “And I thank you for your warning. But you meant it in malice. If you have nothing better to say, do not speak next time.” He reached out, carefully, and tapped the angry Viking on the very throat-ball with the point of his lance.
The human mind is strange. Nose-bleeds start from fear. A stammer is cured by a shock, feeble old women start from their beds in a crisis and lift great timbers from their sons’ bodies. Kormak’s relative knew he had spoken too freely. Knew that if the one-eyed man ran him through with the lance, there would be no complaint against him. As the point touched his throat, his gullet froze with fear. And remained frozen.