“I have been your bane, brother. Bad luck lay on us.
Ill is the Norns’ doom, I will never forget.”
But he had not said the words. He meant to forget. He hoped one day Godive would forget too. Forget that he had first saved her, then deserted her, then used her. Now that the constant stress of planning and action was over, he felt inside himself as though he loved her as much as he ever had before he rescued her from Ivar’s camp. But what kind of love was it that had to wait for the right moment to be admitted?
So Godive had thought. She had taken her husband and half brother’s body for burial, left Shef unsure when or whether she might return. This time he would have to decide for himself.
He looked past his friends at the prisoners still filing by—the sullen, hating faces—thought of the humiliated Charles, the enraged Pope Nicholas, the Snakeeye in the North with a brother now to avenge. He looked again at the silver sign in his hand.
“A pole-ladder,” he said. “Difficult to balance on.”
“You have to do it one rung at a time,” replied Thorvin.
“Hard to climb, difficult to balance, to reach the top. But at the top there are two rungs to grasp on to. One opposite the other. It could almost be a cross.”
Thorvin frowned. “Rig and his sign were known in the ages before there ever was a cross. It is not a sign of death. No. It is one of reaching higher, of living better.”
Shef smiled, the first time he had done that for many days. “I like your sign, Thorvin,” he said. “I will wear it.” He slipped the Wayman’s pendant round his neck, turned and looked at the misted sea.
Some knot, some pain within him was released, fled.
For the first time in his entire life he felt at peace.