Ivar reached again, pulled out a third and last object. This time he stared at it with genuine puzzlement. It was an eel. The snake-like fish of the marshes.
“What is this?” Silence.
“Can anyone tell me?” Still only headshakes from the warriors crowding round. A slight stir from one of the slaves of the monks of York, crouching by his machine. Ivar’s eyes missed nothing.
“I grant a boon to whoever can tell me the meaning of this.”
The slave straightened up doubtfully, realizing all eyes were now on him.
“One boon, lord, given freely?”
Ivar nodded.
“It is what we call in English an eel, lord. I think it may mean a place. Ely, down the Ouse, Eel-island, only a few miles from here. Perhaps what it means is that he, the Sheaf, that is, will meet you there.”
“Because I must be the capon?” inquired Ivar. The slave gulped. “You granted a boon, lord, to whoever would speak. I choose mine. I choose freedom.”
“You are free to go,” said Ivar, stepping back from the ship’s thwart. The slave gulped again, looking round at the bearded, impassive faces. He stepped forward slowly, gained confidence as no one moved to hinder him, leapt to the side of the ship, and then, in two moves, to a trailing oar and to the side of the river. He was off like a flash, heading for the nearest cover, running in awkward bounds like a frog.
“Eight, nine, ten,” said Ivar to himself. The silver-mounted spear was in his hand; he poised, took two paces sideways. The leaf-blade took the running slave neatly between shoulders and neck, hurling him forward.
“Would anyone else care to call me a capon?” inquired Ivar generally.
Someone already has, thought Dolgfinn.
Later that night, after the ships had moored a cautious two miles north of the challenge-ground, some of Ivar’s most senior skippers were talking quietly, very quietly, round their campfire well away from Ivar’s tent.
“They call him the Boneless,” said one, “because he cannot take a woman.”
“He can,” said another. “He has sons and daughters.”
“Only if he does strange things first. Not many women survive them. They say—”
“No,” cut in a third man, “do not speak. I will tell you why he is the Boneless. It is because he is like the wind, which comes from anywhere. He could be behind us now.”
“You are all wrong,” said Dolgfinn. “I am not a Wayman, but I have friends who are. I had friends who were. They say this, and I believe them. He is the Beinnlauss, right enough. But that does not mean ‘boneless.’ ” Dolgfinn held up a beef-rib to point out which of the two meanings of the Norse word he meant. “It means ‘legless.’ ” He patted his own thigh.
“But he has legs,” queried one of his listeners.
“On this side, he does. Those who have seen him in the Otherworld, the Waymen, say that there he crawls on his belly in the shape of a great worm, a dragon. He is not a man of one skin. And that is why it will take more than steel to kill him.”
Experimentally, Shef flexed the two-foot-long, two-inch-wide strip of metal that Udd, the little freedman, had brought him. The muscles on his arms stood out as he did so: muscles strong enough to bend a soft iron slave-collar by main force alone. The mild steel gave an inch, two inches. Sprang back.
“It works on the shooters all right,” offered Oswi, watching with interest a ring of catapulteers.
“I’m wondering if it would work for anything else,” said Shef. “A bow?” He flexed the strip again, this time putting it over one knee and trying to get the weight of his body behind it. The metal resisted him, giving only a couple of inches. Too strong for a bow. Or too strong for a man’s arms? Yet there were many things that were too strong for a man’s arms alone. Catapults. Heavy weights. The yard of a longship. Shef hefted the metal once more. Somewhere in here there was a solution to his puzzle: a mixture of the new knowledge the Way sought and the old knowledge he kept on finding. Now was not the time for him to work the puzzle out.