“Or others like them. It may be a boat for Njörth, a hammer for Thor, a penis for Frey. I do not say they will help you. But they will treat you as a man, not as a horse or a heifer.”
“You do not wear one,” said Halfi.
“I do not know what to wear.”
Around them, the normal noise of the camp was turning to hubbub as news spread; voices were raised, warriors shouted to each other. The men in the smithy looked up as one of Brand’s men appeared, a broad grin splitting the tangle of his beard.
“We’re off!” he cried. “The jarls and the Ragnarssons and the Snakeeye have all stopped riding round and round and pondering and scratching their arses. We take the wall tomorrow! Let the women and girls there beware!”
Shef looked darkly at the man, finding no humor in his words. “My girl was called Godive,” he said. “That is, ‘God’s gift.’ ” He pulled on his gauntlets, swung his halberd thoughtfully. “I shall call this Thrall’s-wreak’—the vengeance of the slave. One day it will do vengeance for Godive. And other girls as well.”
Chapter Two
In the gray morning light the Army began to filter through the narrow, hovel-lined streets of the outer town of York. All three main bridges over the Ouse were commanded by the walls of the old colonia, on the south bank of the river, but this had caused no difficulty for the skilled shipwrights and axemen who filled the Viking ranks. They had torn down a few houses and an outlying church for some bigger timbers, and had thrown a wide bridge over the Ouse close to their own encampment. The Army had crossed, and were now lapping their way up, like the tide, toward the yellow stone walls at the heart of the town. There was no sense of hurry, no shouting of commands, just eight thousand men, less the crews detailed to guard the camp, pressing forward toward their obvious goal.
As they tramped up through the narrow streets, men turned aside in small groups to kick down doors or break open shutters. Shef turned his head, stiff and clumsy with the unaccustomed weight of the helmet, and raised brows in silent inquiry at Brand, strolling peacefully by his side, flexing the scarred hand just unwrapped from its bandages.
“There are fools everywhere,” remarked Brand. “The runaways say the king here ordered the place cleared days ago, the men inside the fortress, all the others off into the hills somewhere. But there’s always someone who knows better, thinks it won’t happen.”
Commotion broke out ahead of them to lend force to his words: voices shouting, a woman shrieking, the sound of a sudden blow. Out from a shattered doorway squeezed four men, grins splitting their faces, a grubby, slatternly young woman writhing and twisting in their grip. The other men pushing up the hill stopped to exchange jokes.
“Make you too weak to fight, Tosti! You’d be better off with another pancake, keep your strength up.”
One of the men pulled the girl’s gown up over her head like a sack, pinning her arms and muffling her shrieks. Two others seized her bare legs and pulled them roughly apart. The mood of the crowd passing by changed. Men began to stop and watch.
“Room for more when you’re finished, Skakul?”
Shef’s gauntleted hands clenched on the shaft of “Thrall’s-wreak,” and he too turned toward the writhing, grunting group. Brand’s enormous fist closed gently over Shef’s biceps.
“Leave it, boy. If there’s a fight she’ll be killed for sure. Easy targets always are. Leave them to it, and maybe they’ll let her go at the end. They’ve a battle to fight, so they can’t take too long.”
Reluctantly Shef turned his eyes and walked on, trying not to hear the sounds coming from behind—and, as they walked further, from other sides as well. The town, he realized, was like a cornfield in autumn. It seemed to be empty, but as the scythemen walked through it, cutting the wheat down into a smaller and smaller square, so its inhabitants became more and more visible, anxious, terrified, finally running anywhere to get away from the voices and the blades. They should have gone when they were told, he told himself. The king should have made sure. Why can no one see sense in this world?