The old kings lie, keels beneath them.
On down they sleep, deep home guarding.
Four fingers push in flattest line,
From underground, Grave the northmost.
There lies Wuffa, Wehha’s offspring.
On secret hoard. Seek who dares it.”
The voice trailed away. “My last night, young churl. Maybe yours too. You must think what you will do to save yourself tomorrow. But I do not think the riddle of an Englishman will prove easy to the Vikings.
“And, if churl you are, the riddle of the kings will do you no good either.”
The king spoke no more, though after a while Shef tried faintly and despondently to rouse him. After an age Shef’s battered body too began to drift off into uneasy dozing. In his sleep the king’s words repeated themselves, twining round and round and running into each other like the dragon-shapes carved on a burning stem-post.
Chapter Eleven
This time the Great Army was troubled and unsure. So much King Edmund had foreseen. It had been taken in its own base, by a small state and a petty kinglet of whom no one had ever heard, and while they knew the matter had ended well enough, too many also knew in their hearts that for a time they had been outfought. The dead had been buried, the irreparable ships dragged onshore, the wounded had been treated. Arrangements had been made between this chieftain and that to sell or trade ships, to transfer or exchange men to bring contingents up to the mark. But the warriors, the rank-and-file oar-pullers and axe-wielders, still needed reassurance. Something that would show their leaders still had confidence. Some ritual to demonstrate that they were still the Great Army, the terror of the Christians, the invincibles of the North.
From the early morning, men were crowding down to the marked-out space outside the camp, which would be the site of the wapentake: the meeting where men could show their assent by vapna takr, the clashing of weapons, of blade on shield. Or, on rare occasions, under careless leaders, their dissent. From even earlier in the morning, from well before day, the Viking leaders had been making their plan, and considering the balance of forces, the sentiments that might swing their dangerous and unpredictable followers one way or the other.
When they came for him, Shef was ready, at least physically. His hunger was a hole inside him, thirst once more drying his tongue and his lips, but he was awake, alert and fully conscious. Edmund too was awake, he knew, but made no sign. Shef was ashamed to disturb him.
The Snakeeye’s men arrived with the same brisk certainty as the day before. In a moment one had Shef’s iron collar in his tongs and was forcing the rivet out. It came free, the collar jerked off, and brawny hands were pulling Shef out into the cold murk of an early-autumn morning. Fog still clung to the river, condensed in drops on the bracken roof of the shelter. Shef stared at it for a moment, wondering if he might lick it off.
“You were talking yesterday. What did he tell you?”
Shef shook his head and gestured with bound hands to the leather bottle at a man’s belt. Silently the man passed it over. It was full of beer—muddy, thick with barley husks, drawn all too obviously from the bottom of a cask; Shef drank it down in steady gulps, till he could tilt his head back and drain out the last drops. He finished, wiped his mouth, feeling as if the beer had swollen him out like an empty skin, handed the bottle back. There was a grunt of amusement as the pirates watched his face.
“Good, eh? Beer is good. Life is good. If you want more of both, you’d better tell us. Tell us everything he said.”
Dolgfinn the Viking watched Shef’s face with his usual, unblinking intensity. He saw on it doubt, but no fear. Also, stubbornness, knowledge. The lad would do a deal, he reflected. It would have to be the right one. He turned away and beckoned, a preconcerted signal. From a group a little way off, a large man came walking, gold round his neck, left hand resting on the silver pommel of a sword. Shef recognized him instantly. It was the big man he had fought in the skirmish on the causeway. Sigvarth, jarl of the Small Isles. His father.