“Not for nothing is there no priest of Othin with the army, and few within the Way. If that is his birth, we must know. And it may be that is not his birth. There are other gods than Allfather who walk in the world.”
Thorvin looked meaningfully at the crackling fire to his left. “So: let me do what should have been done before. Ride to ask his mother. We know which village she comes from. It is not twenty miles off. If she is still there I will ask her—and if her answer is wrong, then I say we must cast him off before worse befalls us. Remember the warning of Vigleik!”
A long silence followed Thorvin’s words. Finally Farman, the priest of Frey, broke it.
“I remember Vigleik’s warning, Thorvin. And I too fear the treachery of Othin. Yet I ask you to think that Othin, and his followers, may be as they are for a reason. To keep off worse powers.”
He too looked thoughtfully at the Loki-fire. “As you know, I have seen your former apprentice in the Otherworld, standing in the place of Völund the smith. But I have seen other things in that world. And I can tell you that not far from here there is far worse than your apprentice: one of the brood of Fenris himself, a grandchild of Loki. If you had seen them in the Otherworld, you would never again confuse the two, Othin and Loki, or think that the one might be the other.”
“Very well,” replied Thorvin. “But I ask you, Farman, to think this. If there is a war between two powers in this world, gods and giants, with Othin at the head of one and Loki at the other—how often do we see it even in this world, that as the war goes on, the one side begins to resemble the other?”
Slowly the heads nodded, even, in the end, Geirulf’s, then Farman’s.
“It is decided,” said Farman. “Go to Emneth. Find the boy’s mother and ask her whose son hers is.”
Ingulf the healer, priest of Ithun, spoke for the first time. “A deed of kindness, Thorvin, that may come to good. When you go, take with you the English girl Godive. She has realized in her way what we have. She knows he did not rescue her for love. Only to use her as bait. That is no good thing for anyone to know.”
Shef had been dimly aware, through first the racking cramps and then the paralyzing weakness that succeeded them, of the leaders of his army’s factions arguing. At some point Alfred had threatened to draw sword on Brand, an action dismissed like some great dog brushing aside a puppy. He could remember Thorvin pleading passionately for something, some rescue or expedition. But most of the day he had been aware of nothing except hands lifting him, attempts made to get him to drink, hands holding him through the retchings that followed: Ingulf’s hands sometimes, then Godive’s. Never Hund’s. With just a fragment of mind Shef realized that Hund feared his leech-detachment might suffer if he saw too closely what he had done. Now, as the dark came on, he felt recovered, weary, ready to sleep: to wake to action.
But first the sleep must come. It had the nauseous taste about it of Hund’s mold-and-carrion draft.
He was in a gully, a rocky defile, in the dark. Slowly he clambered forward, unable to see more than a few feet, lit only by a last pale light in the sky—the sky visible only many yards above his head, where the gully’s jagged outline showed black against gray. He moved with agonized care. No stumble, no dislodgement of stone. Or something would be on him. Something no human could fight against.
He had a sword in his hand, gleaming very faintly in the starlight. There was something about the sword: it had a will of its own, a fierce urge. It had already killed its creator and master, and would gladly do so again, even though he was its master now. It tugged at his hand, and from time to time it rang faintly, as if he had knocked it on stone. It seemed to know about the need for stealth, though. The sound would be inaudible to anyone or anything except himself. It was covered, too, by the rushing of the water at the bottom of the gully. The sword was anxious to kill, and ready to keep silent till its chance came.