“Founder of the Skioldungs, the old Danish kings. The ones whom Ragnar and his sons would drive out if they could.”
“The English call him Scyld Sceafing—Shield with the Sheaf—and they tell a foolish tale of how he drifted over the ocean on a shield with a sheaf beside him, and that was how he got his name. But anyone can tell that Sceafing means ‘the son of Sheaf,’ not ‘with a sheaf.’ So who, then, is Sheaf? Whoever he was, he was the one who sent the mightiest king of all over the waves, and taught him all that he knew to make the lives of men better and more glorious. It is a name of great good luck. Especially if given in ignorance. Shef is only the way the English in these parts say ‘Sheaf.’
“We have to save that boy from Ivar. Ivar the Boneless. People have seen him on the other side too, you know. But he did not have the shape of a human being.”
“He is not a man of one skin,” agreed Brand.
“He is one of the brood of Loki, sent to bring destruction on the world. We have to get my apprentice away from him. How can we do it? If he will not do it on your urging, Brand, or on mine, can we bribe him? Is there something he wants more than vengeance?”
“I do not know how to take this talk of other worlds and wanderers,” said Brand. “You know I am with the Way because of the skills it teaches, like Ingulf’s here, and because I have no love for the Christians or for the madmen like Ivar. But the boy did a brave deed to come into this camp for a girl. It took guts to do that. I know. I went into the Braethraborg to bait the Ragnarssons into this venture, as your colleagues told me to, Thorvin.
“So I wish the boy well. Now I do not know what Ivar wants—who does? But I can tell you what he needs. Ivar may see that too, even if he is mad. But if he does not, then the Snakeeye will make him.”
As he spoke on, the other two nodded, thoughtfully.
They were not Ivar’s men who came for him, Shef noticed as soon as they appeared. Just from his few days in the Viking camp he had come to be able to discriminate at least in an elementary way between the various grades of heathen. These were not the Gaddgedlar, nor did they have the somehow non-Norse or half-Norse air of the Hebrideans and Manxmen whom Ivar recruited in such numbers, nor did they even have that vaguely footloose and less-than-respectable look that so many of even his Norse followers had. Younger sons and outlaws, the bulk of them, detached from their parent communities and with no homes to go to and no lives outside the camp. The men who came into the stockade now were heavily built, mature in years, almost middle-aged; their hair was grizzled. Their belts were silver, gold armlets and neck-rings shone on them, to prove years or decades of success. When the warden of the pen blocked their self-assured way, ordering them back, Shef could not hear the reply. It was given in a low voice, as if the speaker no longer expected to have to shout. The warden replied again, crying out and pointing down the ruined campsite, as if to the burned tents of Ivar. But before his sentence had ended there was a thud and a groan. The leader of the newcomers looked down for a moment, as if to see if there was any chance of further resistance, slid the sandbag back up his sleeve, and marched on without deigning to look round again.
In a moment Shef found the lashings on his ankles cut and himself jerked to his feet. His heart leapt suddenly and uncontrollably. Was this death? Were they dragging him out of the pen to a clear patch of ground, where in an instant they could force him to his knees and behead him? He bit his lip savagely for an instant. He would not speak or plead for mercy. Then the savages would have the chance to laugh, to mock the way an Englishman died. He stumbled along in grim silence.