Chapter Nine
Hund was sitting by his bed. Shef stared at him for a moment, then felt the sudden bite of fear deep within him, sat up with a jerk.
“Ivar?”
“Easy, easy,” said Hund, pushing him back on the bed. “Ivar’s dead. Dead and burned to ashes.”
Shef’s tongue felt too big for him to control. With an effort he managed to gasp, “How?”
“A difficult question,” replied Hund judiciously. “It could be that he drowned. Or he might have bled to death. You cut his face and neck to pieces with the edge of your helmet. But personally, I think he died of pain. You would not loose him, you know. In the end we had to cut him free. If he had not been dead before, he would have died then.
“Funny,” Hund added reflectively. “He was quite normal, you know, in body. Whatever was the matter with him and women—and Ingulf had heard many tales of it—it was in his head, nowhere else.”
Slowly Shef’s muddled brain disentangled the questions he needed to ask.
“Who got me out?”
“Ah. That was Cwicca and his mates. The Vikings just stood and watched, both sides. Apparently men trying to drown each other is a sport in their homeland, and no one wanted to interfere till they could see who had won. It would have been very bad manners. Fortunately Cwicca has no manners.”
Shef thought back to the moments before he had faced Ivar on the swaying plank. Remembered the sudden shocking sight of Brand jerking himself backward off Ivar’s sword.
“And Brand?”
Hund’s face changed to an expression of professional concern. “He may live. He is a man of great strength. But the sword went right into his guts. It was impossible for them not to be pierced. I gave him the garlic porridge to eat myself, and then bent down and sniffed the wound. It stank, right enough. Most times that means death.”
“This time?”
“Ingulf did what he has done before. Cut him open, stitched the gut, put it back. But even with the poppy and henbane drink we gave to Alfgar, it was hard, very hard. He did not lose consciousness. His belly muscles are thick as cables. If the poison starts to work inside him…”
Shef levered his legs over the side of the bed, tried to stand up, felt an instant rush of faintness. With the relics of his strength he fended off Hund’s attempts to push him back.
“I have to see Brand. Especially if he is going to die. He has to tell me—tell me things. Things about the Franks.”
Many miles to the south, a weary and dispirited figure crouched over the fire in the hearth of a wretched hut. Few would have recognized it as the one-time atheling of Wessex, the king that was to be. His golden circlet had gone—knocked from his helmet by the stab of a lance. His mail and shield decorated with animal-patterns had gone, too, stripped off and dropped in the intervals of desperate flight. Even his weapons were missing. He had cut his sword-scabbard free to run when, finally, after a long day’s slaughter there had been no final alternative but flight or death—or surrender to the Franks. He had carried his sword drawn for miles, fighting again and again with his last few bodyguards to get free of the pursuing Frankish light cavalry. Then, as his horse died under him he had dropped it, rolled over. When the running fight had moved past his body and he had staggered to his feet again, there was nothing there. He had run off into the welcome dusk and the deep, thick forest of the Kentish Weald as empty-handed as a beggar. He had been lucky to see a glimmer of light before the night came. To beg shelter in the poor, starve-acre cottage where he now crouched, watching the oatcakes on the griddle while his reluctant hosts secured their goats outside. Discussed, perhaps, who they should betray him to.
Alfred did not think they would betray him. Even the poorest folk of Kent and Sussex knew now that it was deadly dangerous to so much as approach the Cross-wearers from across the sea. They spoke even less English than Vikings, cared no more for the harm they did than pagans. It was not personal fear that bowed his shoulders, brought the tears prickling unmanfully to his eyes.