Shef rose abruptly from his concealment and walked forward into the dell. As they saw him, fifty men leap simultaneously to their feet, swords coming out, voices raised in warning. A grunt of amazement behind him, a crashing of feet through the bracken. The sentry was behind him now, Shef knew. He did not turn to look.
Slowly the man in white turned to meet him, the two facing each other across the berry-fringed thread, looking each other up and down.
“And where are you come from?” said the man in white. He spoke English with a strong, burring accent.
What shall I say? thought Shef. From Emneth? From Norfolk? That will mean nothing to them. “I come from the North,” he said aloud. The faces in front of him changed. Surprise? Recognition? Suspicion?
The man in white gestured his followers to hold still. “And what is your business with us, the followers of the Asgarthsvegr, the Asgarth Way?”
Shef pointed to the hammer in the other’s hand, the hammer-pendant round his neck. “I am a smith, like you. My business is to learn.”
Someone was translating his words now to the others. Shef realized Hund had materialized at his left, and there was a threatening presence just behind them both. He kept his eyes fixed on those of the man in white. “Show me a sign of your craft.”
Shef pulled his sword from its sheath and passed it over, as he had to Edrich. The hammer-bearer turned it over and over, looked at it intently, flexed it gently, noting the surprising play in the thick, single-edged blade, scratched with his thumbnail at the surface discoloration of old rust. Carefully, he shaved a patch of hair from his forearm.
“Your forge was not hot enough,” he remarked. “Or you lost patience. Those steel strips were not even when you twisted them. But it is a good blade. It is not what it seems. And neither are you. Now tell me, young man—and remember, death is just behind you—what it is that you want? If you are just a runaway slave like your friend”—he gestured toward Hund’s neck, with the telltale marks on it—”maybe we will let you go. If you are a coward who wants to join the winning side, maybe we will kill you. But maybe you are something else. Or someone else. Say then, what do you want?”
I want Godive back, thought Shef. He looked into the pagan priest’s eyes and said, with all the sincerity he could muster, “You are a master-smith. The Christians will let me learn no more. I want to be your apprentice. Your learning-knave.”
The man in white grunted, handed back Shef’s sword, bone hilt first. “Lower your axe, Kari,” he said to the man behind the pair. “There is more here than meets the eye.
“I will take you as a knave, young man. And if your friend has any skill, he may join us too. Sit, both of you, to one side, till we have finished what we were doing. My name is Thorvin, which is to say, ‘the friend of Thor,’ the god of the smiths. What are yours?”
Shef flushed with shame, dropped his eyes.
“My friend’s name is Hund,” he said, “which is to say, ‘dog.’ And I too, I have only a dog’s name. My father—No, I have no father. They call me Shef.”
For the first time Thorvin’s face showed surprise, and more. “Fatherless?” he muttered. “And your name is Shef. But that is not only a dog’s name. Truly you are uninstructed.”
Shef felt his spirits sinking as they moved toward the camp. He was not afraid for himself, but for Hund. Thorvin had told the pair of them to sit to one side while they finished their strange meeting: first him talking, then some kind of discussion in the burring Norse Shef could almost follow, and then a skin of some drink passed ceremoniously from hand to hand. At the end all the men had gathered in little groups and joined hands in silence on one object or another: Thorvin’s hammer, a bow, a horn, a sword, what looked like a dried horse’s penis. No one had touched the silver spear till Thorvin had gone over, pulled it briskly into two parts and rolled them up in a cloth bag. A few moments later the enclosure had been broken up, the fire put out, the spears reclaimed, the men of the group already drifting away in fours and fives, moving warily and taking different directions.