“That is the one who invented those crossbows you are carrying,” said Shef. “A Skraeling, he seems, yet some would say he is the man who defeated the king of the Franks and all his lancers.”
Herjolf looked at Udd’s unimpressive form with a new surprise and respect. “Be welcome, then,” he said. “But from the look of you I doubt whether many of you will be fit to travel on soon. Here, look at that one!”
Cuthred, who had skied awkwardly but uncomplainingly for the last three days, was tugging at his woollen breeches and leggings, trying to roll them down. As he did so he swayed, holding himself up only by the effort of his will. Moving to help him Shef suddenly saw a splotch of dark blood soaking through the thick layers of wool. “It is the disease I told you of,” said Hund, stripping away the wool as Shef and Thorvin held the big man up. “See, the cut he got from Vigdjarf. It healed as if it were magic, but now it has broken out again. Come, get him indoors. He will not be fit to move for many days. Not ever, if this place has no store of greenstuffs.”
The poor condition Shef’s people were in became obvious once they had been taken indoors and the clothes they had worn for weeks on end stripped from them. It was the disease a later age would call scurvy: a disease of long voyages and dried food. The symptoms were obvious. Long-healed wounds opening of their own accord, teeth loosening in the jaws, fetid breath, and over it all a general weakness, lassitude and gloom. It was not unfamiliar to anyone in the North, but they expected to find it in the late spring, when folk had been cooped up in their cabins for months, eating salt herring and stored grain. The cure was light and sun, some said. Fresh food, said others. The two went together, usually. This time, Hund pointed out, there was a chance to know for sure, since there was no chance of light and sun—but leeks, onions, garlic, peas and beans to hand. If the sufferers improved, then food was the cure. Which showed, reasonably enough, that there was something in some kinds of food that there was not in others. One day a true priest of the Way might be able to extract it, dry it and store it, for the benefit of all.
But not this year, as Herjolf pointed out. There was no chance of moving on. When Herjolf, Hagbarth, Thorvin and Hund came to Shef in a body to confront him with the fact, he sat silent for a while. Ever since the first meeting with Echegorgun he had felt a fierce urge to turn, to attack his pursuers, to act instead of reacting. For weeks he had been driven on by desire to get back to the main cogwheels of the action, instead of lurking out on the edges. The desire had been sharpened by the vision he had seen in the shaman’s tent, of the Ragnarssons round Hedeby and King Hrorik in the breach of the stockade.
Yet at the same time there was something very tempting in the idea of staying where they were, in the wilds yet under cover, unknown yet not lost. Patiently the priests explained things to him. They had supplies, they could get more. The road was easy to drive in any but the worst weather, or one could take sleigh down the river, once it was firmly frozen. Cultivated farmlands lay not impossibly far away, with surplus of grain and meat and all kinds of stores. No great suspicion would be aroused by the priests of the Way buying more. It might be thought they had miscalculated, or needed the food to trade with the Finns.
“And you can make yourselves useful,” added Herjolf. “Your little man Udd is never out of the forge even now, and he knows a great deal. Has learnt it for himself too. Have you seen how he has found to harden steel? He should be a priest of the Way—” Herjolf barked with amusement at the thought of the scrawny Englishman reaching that dignity, then said more soberly, “No, if he were to think of that I would be willing to stand his sponsor. He is talking already of millwheels and devices, of great hammers to pound out the iron by machinery rather than by muscle. If a tenth of what he says is true, his stay will be worth all the supplies it costs us. So stay. Thorvin tells me you are a smith too, and a seeker of new knowledge. You and Udd can think, the rest can burn charcoal or blow the bellows. In the spring, then you can seek your destiny. Hagbarth’s ship is laid up here in the boathouse till spring. It will take you on your way faster than any other.”