“I need to know about the Franks,” said Shef. “We have beaten everyone else. You were sure they would beat Alfred.”
Brand’s head nodded, very faintly.
“So what is dangerous about them? How can I fight them? I have to ask you, for no one else in the army has met them in the field and lived. Yet many say they have had years of good plunder from the Frankish kingdom. How can they let themselves be robbed and still be enemies even you would rather not face?”
Shef could see Brand trying to work out not the answer, but how to say the answer in fewest words. Finally he spoke, in a gravelly whisper.
“They fight among themselves. That is what has always let us in. They are no seamen. And they breed few warriors. With us—a spear, a shield, an axe—you are a warrior. With them, it takes a whole village to arm one man. Mail-shirt, sword and lance and helmet. But most of all, the horse. Big horses. Stallions a man can hardly control. Have to learn to ride them with a shield on one arm and a lance in the other. Start when you’re a baby. Only way.
“One Frankish lancer, no problem. Get behind him, hamstring horse. Fifty of ’em, problem. A thousand…”
“Ten thousand?” asked Shef.
“Never believed it. Aren’t that many. Lot of light horsemen. Can be dangerous because they’re quick, turn up when you don’t think they’re near.”
Brand summoned his failing energies. “They’ll ride over you if you let ’em. Or cut you up on the march. Stick to rivers is what we do. Or keep behind a stockade.”
“To beat them in open field?”
Brand shook his head faintly. Shef could not tell whether he meant “Impossible,” or “I don’t know.” After a moment Ingulf’s hand fell on his shoulder, urged him out.
As he came blinking from the tent into daylight, Shef found himself once more besieged with problems. Guards to be detailed for the substantial plunder of Ivar’s army, on its way to the treasury in Norwich. Prisoners’ fate to be decided: some of them Ivar’s torturers, some of them mere rank and file. Messages to be received and dispatched. At the back of Shef’s mind there hung always the query: Godive. Why had she gone off with Thorvin? And what did Thorvin himself think was so important that it could not wait?
But now, immediately in front of him, Father Boniface, his own priest-turned-scribe, beside him another little man in clerical black with an expression of bitter, malignant spite on his face. Slowly Shef realized that he had seen him before, if only from a distance. In York.
“This is Deacon Erkenbert,” said Boniface. “We took him from Ivar’s own ship. He is the master of the machines. The slaves who wound the machines—slaves first to York Minster and then to Ivar—they say that he built the machines for Ivar. They say the whole Church in York now works night and day for the Ragnarssons.” He looked down at Erkenbert with heartfelt contempt.
The master of the machines, thought Shef. There was a day when I would have given everything for a chance to talk with this man. Now, I wonder what he can tell me. I can guess how his machine works, and in any case I can go to see for myself. I know how slowly they shoot, how hard they hit. One thing I do not know: how much else is there in his head and in his books? But I do not think he will tell me that.
Yet I think I can use him. Dimly, Brand’s words were working inside Shef’s brain. Collecting into a plan.
“Keep close watch on him, Boniface,” said Shef. “See the York slaves are well treated, and tell them they are free from this moment. Then send Guthmund to me. After him, Lulla and Osmod. And Cwicca, Udd and Oswi, too.”
“We don’t want to do that,” said Guthmund flatly.
“But you could do it?” asked Shef.
Guthmund hesitated, not wanting to tell a lie, reluctant to concede a point.
“Could do it. Still don’t think it’s a good idea. Take all the Vikings out of the army, load them into Ivar’s boats, press Ivar’s men into service as galley-slaves, and head round the coast to some rendezvous near this Hastings place…