“But tomorrow Ivar prepares a new fate. They tell me that he meant to save this for the man who killed their father, for Ella of Northumbria. But they have decided I merit it just as much.
“They will take me out, and lay me on their altar, face down. In the hollow of my back, Ivar will place a sword. Then—you have felt how your ribs make a house of bone, and how each of the ribs fits into its place on the backbone? Ivar will cut each of them away, working up from the lowest to the highest. They say he will use a sword only for the first cut. After that he will use hammer and chisel. When he has cut them all away, he will cut the flesh free, and then he will put his hands in and pull the ribs up and out.
“I expect I will die then. They say he can keep a man alive to that point, if he is careful not to cut deep. But when they pull the ribs out, your heart must burst. When it is done, they pull your lungs out of your back, and then turn the ribs out so they look like a raven’s wings, or an eagle’s. They call it ‘cutting the blood-eagle.’
“I wonder what it will feel like when he first puts the sword in the hollow of my back. You know, young churl, I think that if I can hold my courage at that point, the rest will be easier. But the feel of the cold steel on skin, before the pain begins…
“I never thought that I would come to this. I have defended my people, kept all my oaths, been charitable to orphans.
“Do you know, churl, what the Christ said when he hung dying on the cross?”
Father Andreas’s lessons had been confined usually to the merits of chastity or the importance of paying contributions duly to the Church. Shef shook his head dumbly.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The king paused for a long while.
“I know why he means to do it, though. After all, I am a king too. I know what his men need. These few months have been bad ones for the Army. They thought they would have an easy start here for their real march on York. And so they might have—if they had not done what they did to your foster father. But since then they have made no gains, caught few slaves, had to fight for every few beeves. And now—say what anyone wishes, there are many fewer of them than there were two nights ago. They have seen their friends die of wounds, and more of them are sitting waiting for the flesh-rot. If there is nothing grand for them to see, then they will lose heart. Ships will row off in the night.
“Ivar needs a display. A triumph. An execution. Or…”
Shef remembered the warning of the man who had pushed him into the pen.
“Do not speak too freely, lord. They want you to speak. And me to listen.”
Edmund laughed, in one sharp bark. The light had almost gone by now, the sun well down, though the long English twilight lingered.
“Then listen. I promised you a half of Raedwald’s hoard if you broke the Viking line, and break it you did. So I will give you the whole of it, and you may make your own bargain. The man who gives them this can have his life and more. If I gave it to them, I could be a Viking jarl. But Wigga and all the others died rather than speak. It would not be fitting for a king, one of the line of Wuffa, to give way out of fear.
“But you, boy. Who knows? You may gain something.
“Now listen and do not forget. I will tell you the secret of the hoard of the Wuffingas, and from that I swear by God a wise man can find the hoard.
“Listen and I will tell you.”
The king’s voice dropped to a hoarse murmur and Shef strained to hear.
“In willow-ford, by woody bridge,