Reluctantly Shef turned his eyes and walked on, trying not to hear the sounds coming from behind—and, as they walked further, from other sides as well. The town, he realized, was like a cornfield in autumn. It seemed to be empty, but as the scythemen walked through it, cutting the wheat down into a smaller and smaller square, so its inhabitants became more and more visible, anxious, terrified, finally running anywhere to get away from the voices and the blades. They should have gone when they were told, he told himself. The king should have made sure. Why can no one see sense in this world?

The buildings ended and before them was a cleared zone of mud and rubble with the yellow stone wall some eighty yards off, the wall the Rome-folk had made. Brand and his crew emerged from the alley, looked up at the top of the wall where figures moved and called jeeringly. A zip in the air, and an arrow thumped into the wattle and daub of a house wall. Another, and a Viking swore in anger as he looked at the shaft sticking from his hip. Brand reached over and pulled it out, glanced at it, tossed it over his shoulder.

“Hurt, Arnthor?”

“Just got through the leather. Six inches higher and it would have bounced off my jacket.”

“No punch,” remarked Brand again. “Don’t look at those fellows. Someone gets one in the eye now and then.”

Shef plodded forward, trying to ignore the zips and thuds like the others. “Have you done this kind of thing before?” he asked.

Brand halted, called to his crews to halt as well, turned toward the wall and promptly hunkered down on his heels.

“Can’t say I have. Not on this scale. But today we just do what we’re told. The Ragnarssons say they’ve a plan and they will take the city if everybody stands by to lend their weight where needed. So we watch and wait.

“Mind you, if anyone knows what they’re doing it should be them. Do you know, their old man, their father Ragnar, tried to take the city of the Franks—oh, it must be twenty years ago. Paris, it’s called. So the Ragnarssons have thought a lot about stone walls and cities ever since. Though it’s a far cry from some rath in Kilkenny or Meath to this. I’d like to see how they go about it.”