As if sleepwalking, Shef drifted over to Oswi’s catapult—“Dead Level,” wound and loaded, trained on the center of the Frankish army, milling in confusion below them. He looked down at the crosses on the shields: remembered the orm-garth. The wretched slave Merla. His own torments at the hands of Wulfgar. Godive’s back. Sibba and Wilfi, burned to ashes. The crucifixions. His hands were steady as they pulled out the coigns, trained the weapon up to launch its missile over the Frankish heads.

Inside him the voice spoke again, the voice like a calving glacier. “Go on,” it said. “Give the Christians to me.”

Suddenly Godive was beside him, hand on his sleeve. She said nothing. As he looked at her, he remembered Father Andreas, who had given him life. His friend Alfred. Father Boniface. The poor woman in the forest clearing. He looked round from his daze, realized that the priests of the Way, all of them, had appeared from somewhere, were gazing at him with grave and intent faces.

He stepped back from the catapult with a deep sigh.

“Skaldfinn,” he said. “You are an interpreter. Go down and tell the Frankish king to surrender or be killed. I will give them their lives and passage home. No more.”

Again he heard a voice: but this time, the amused one of the wanderer in the mountains, which he had first heard over the gods’ chessboard.

“Well done,” it said. “You defeated Othin’s temptation. Maybe you are my son. But who knows his own father?”

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

“He was tempted,” said Skaldfinn.”Whatever you may say, Thorvin, there is something of Othin in him.”

“It would have been the greatest slaughter since men came to these islands,” added Geirulf. “The Franks on the beach were worn out and helpless. And the English churls would have had no mercy.”

The priests of the Way sat again in their holy circle, around the spear and the fire, within the rowan cords. Thorvin had picked great bunches of the freshest berries of autumn. Their bright scarlet answered the sunset.

“Such a thing would have brought us the worst of luck,” said Farman. “For with such a sacrifice it is essential that no loot or profit be taken. But the English would not have regarded that. They would have robbed the dead. Then we would have had against us both the Christian God and the wrath of Allfather.”

“Nevertheless he did not shoot the dart,” said Thorvin. “He held his hand. That is why I say he is not a creature of Othin. I thought so once. Now I know better.”

“You had better tell us what you learned from his mother,” said Skaldfinn.