Shrugs. “Who hasn’t?” asked Vestmund. “English, Irish. My grandmother was a Lapp.”
“He was brought up a Christian, too. He has been baptized.”
This time, grunts of amusement. “We’ve all seen the scars on his back,” said Thorvin. “He hates the Christians, just as we do. No. He doesn’t even hate them. He thinks they are fools.”
“All right. But this is the sticking point: He has not taken the pendant. He has no belief in us. He sees the visions, Thorvin, or so he has told you. But he does not think they are visions of another world. He is not a believer.”
This time the men sat silent, eyes turning slowly to Thorvin. The Thor-priest rubbed his beard.
“Well. He is not an unbeliever, either. If we asked him, he would say that a man with a pendant of a heathen god, as the Christians call them, could not rule Christians, not even for as long as it will take for them to stop being Christians. He would say that wearing a pendant is not a matter of belief, it would just be a mistake, like starting to hammer before the iron was hot. And he does not know which pendant he should wear.”
“I do,” said Brand. “I saw it and said it last year, when he killed his first man.”
“I think so too,” agreed Thorvin. “He should wear the spear of Othin, God of the Hanged, Betrayer of Warriors. Only such a one would have sent his own father to death. But he would say, if he were here, that it was the only thing to do at that time.”
“Is Vigleik only talking of probabilities?” asked Farman suddenly. “Or did he have some particular message? Some message a god sent him?”
Silently Brand pulled a packet of thin boards wrapped round with sealskin from inside his tunic and passed it over. Runes were cut on the wood, and inked in. Slowly Thorvin scanned them, Geirulf and Skaldfinn leaning close to look also. The faces of all three darkened as they read on.
“Vigleik has seen something,” said Thorvin at length. “Brand, do you know the tale of Frodi’s mill?”
The champion shook his head.
“Three hundred years ago there was a king in Denmark called Frodi. He had, they say, a magic mill, which did not grind corn, but instead ground out peace and wealth and fertility. We believe it was the mill of new knowledge. To grind the mill he had two slaves, two giant-maidens called Fenja and Menja. But so anxious was Frodi to have continuing peace and wealth for his people that no matter how much the giantesses begged for rest, he denied it to them.”
Thorvin’s deep voice broke into sonorous chant:
” ‘You shall not sleep,’ said Frodi the king,
‘Longer than the time it takes a cuckoo
To answer another, or an errand-lad
To sing a song as he steps on his way.’
“So the slaves grew angry and remembered their giant-blood, and instead of grinding peace and wealth and fertility, they began to grind out flame and blood and warriors. And his enemies came on Frodi in the night and destroyed him and his kingdom, and the magic mill was lost forever.
“That is what Vigleik has seen. He means one can go too far, even in hunting new knowledge, if the world is not ready for it. One must strike while the iron is hot. But one can also blow the bellows too long and too furiously.”
A long pause. Reluctantly, Brand got ready to reply. “I had better tell you,” he said, “what the jarl, what Skjef Sigvarthsson told me this morning of his intentions. Then you must decide how this fits Vigleik’s visions.”
A few days later, Brand stood staring at the great stone now sunk into the meadow, near the spot where the muddy causeway from Ely debouched into the fields outside March.
On it was carved a curling ribbon of runes, their edges still sharp from the chisel. Shef touched them lightly with his fingertips.
“What they say is this. I composed it myself, in verse in your language as Geirulf taught me. The runes read: