“Think a little, Kleggi,” he urged. “It’s not easy to frighten a man who’s already lost so much. What’s an eye or an ear now?
“So tell me, heimnar. You are a dead man already; you have been since they did this. Who did it to you? Maybe he was no friend of mine either.”
Ivar spoke in Norse, but slowly, clearly, so an Englishman could pick out some of the words.
“It was Sigvarth Jarl,” said Wulfgar. “Jarl of the Small Isles, they tell me. But I want you to know, what he did to me, I did to him. Only more. I caught him in the marsh by Ely—if you are the Ragnarsson, then you were not far away. I trimmed him finger by finger and toe by toe. He did not die till there was nothing left a knife could reach. Nothing you can do to me will equal what I did to him.”
He spat suddenly, the spittle landing on Ivar’s shoe. “And so may perish all you Godless heathen! And it is my comfort. As you die in torment, for you it is only the gateway to the eternal torment. I will look down from Neorxnawang, from the plain of the blessed dead, and see you blister in the heat. Then you will beg for the smallest drop from my ale-cup to cool your agony. But God and I will refuse.”
The blue eyes stared up, jaw set in determination. Ivar laughed suddenly, throwing his head back, raised the horn in his right hand and drained it to the last drop.
“Well,” he said. “Since you mean to be so niggard with me, I will do what your Christian books say and return you good for evil. “Throw him in the keg!”
As the men gaped, Ivar stepped forward, slashing at the straps which held Wulfgar’s trunk and stumps in place. Seizing him by belt and tunic he lifted him bodily out of the container, took three heavy paces to the side, and thrust the heimnar deep into the four-foot-high, hundred-gallon butt of ale. Wulfgar bobbed, thrashing with the stumps of his arms, truncated legs not quite reaching the bottom.
Ivar put one hand on Wulfgar’s head, looked round like a teacher demonstrating.
“See, Kleggi,” he pointed out. “What is a man maimed like this afraid of?”
“Of being helpless.”
He pushed the head firmly down. “Now he can take a good drink,” he remarked. “If what he says is true, he won’t need it on the other side, but it’s as well to be sure.”
Many of the watching Vikings laughed, calling to their mates to come and see. Dolgfinn allowed himself a smile. There was no credit in this, no glory or drengskapr. But maybe it would keep Ivar happy.
“Let him up,” he shouted. “Maybe he will offer us a drink from heaven after all.”
Ivar seized the hair, heaved Wulfgar’s head up out of the frothing brew. The mouth gaped wide, sucking in air by frantic reflex, the eyes bulged with terror and humiliation. Wulfgar threw the stump of one arm over the edge of the barrel, tried to lever himself up.
Carefully Ivar knocked it free, stared into the eyes of the drowning man as if searching for something. He nodded, thrust the head back down again.
“Now he is afraid,” he said to Kleggi, standing by. “He would bargain for his life if he could. I do not like them to die defying me. They must give in.”
“They all give in in the end,” said Kleggi, laughing. “Like women.”
Ivar thrust the head spasmodically deeper.
Shef hefted the object Udd had brought him. They stood in the center of an interested circle—all Englishmen, all freedmen, catapulteers and halberdiers together—near the front the gang Udd had collected to help him forge the strips of mild steel.
“See,” Udd said, “we done what you told us. We made the strips, two-foot long. You said try and make bows out of them, so we filed notches in the ends and fitted strings. Had to use twisted gut. Nothing else strong enough.”
Shef nodded. “But then you couldn’t pull them.”
“Right, lord. You couldn’t, and we couldn’t. But we thought about that for a bit, and then Saxa here”—Udd indicated another member of his gang—”said anyone who’s ever carried loads for a living knows legs are stronger than arms.