He swept suddenly at the lines he had been drawing in the dirt. “It is a waste of time. Do you see what I mean, Thorvin? There must be some sort of skill, some sort of craft, which would tell men where it would go without me having to try again and again. When I first saw the stockade round your camp by the Stour, I was amazed. I thought, how do the leaders know how many logs to bring with them to build a stockade that will hold all their men? But now I know how even the Ragnarssons do it. They notch a stick for each ship, ten notches to a stick, and then they throw the sticks down in turn in separate piles, one pile for each one of the three walls, or the four walls, or however many there are, and when there are no more sticks they pick the piles up and count them. And that is the reckoning of the greatest leaders and captains in the world. A pile of sticks. But what they have over there in the city is the knowledge of the Rome-folk, who could write in numbers as easily as they could write in letters. If I could learn to write in Roman numbers, then I would build a machine!”
Thorvin laid down the tongs and looked thoughtfully at the silver hammer displayed on his chest.
“You should not think the Rome-folk had the answers to everything,” he remarked. “If they had they would still be ruling England from York. And they were only Christians, when all is said and done.”
Shef jumped impatiently to his feet. “Hah! How do you explain the other instrument then? The one that shot the great arrow. I have thought and thought about that. Nothing will do. You could not make a bow big enough. The wood would break. But what can shoot except a bow?”
“What you need,” said Hund, “is a runaway from the city, or from Marystown. One who has seen the machines work.”
“Maybe one will come,” said Thorvin. A silence fell, broken only by the renewed pounding of Thorvin’s hammer and the puffing of the bellows as Shef blew angrily at the forge. Runaways were a subject better avoided. After the failure of the assault the Ragnarssons, in rage, had turned on the countryside around the city of York—a defenseless countryside, since its armed men and nobles, its thanes and champions, were shut up with King Ella inside the city. “If we cannot take the town,” Ivar had cried, “we will ravage the shire.” Ravage it they had.
“I’m getting sick of it,” Brand had confided to Shef after the last sweep of an already-gutted countryside, all crews taking their turn. “Don’t think I’m a milksop, or a Christian. I want to get rich and there are few things I won’t do for money. But there’s no money in what we’re doing. Not much sport either, to my eye, in what the Ragnarssons and the Gaddgedlar and the riffraff are doing. No fun going through a village after they’ve been through. They’re only Christians, I know, and maybe they deserve what they get for cringing to the Christ-god and his priests.
“It still won’t do. We’re picking up slaves by the hundred, good quality stuff. But where to sell them. Down South? If you do that you need to go with a strong fleet and a sharp eye open. We aren’t popular down there—and I blame Ragnar and his brood for that. Round in Ireland? A long way, and a long time before you get your cash. And slaves apart, there’s nothing. The churches got their gold and silver into York before we arrived. What money the peasants have got, or the thanes—it’s poor stuff. Very poor stuff. Strange. It’s a rich land, anyone can see. Where’s all their silver gone? We’ll never get rich the way we’re going. Sometimes I wish I had not taken the news of Ragnar’s death to the Braethraborg, no matter what the priests of the Way said to me. It’s little enough I have got out of it.”
But Brand had taken the crews out again, probing up across the shire to the shrine of Strenshall, hoping for a haul of gold or silver. Shef had asked not to accompany him, sickened with the sights and sounds of a land crisscrossed by the Ragnarssons and their followers, each one intent on showing to the others his skill on racking secrets and information and buried treasure out of churls and thralls who had no information, and certainly no treasure, to yield. Brand had hesitated, scowling.