“It is a kraki,” replied Thorvin. “A pole-ladder. It is the sign of Rig.”

“I have never heard the name of that god. What can you tell me about him that should make me wear his sign?”

“He is the god of climbers. Of wanderers. He is mighty not through himself but through his children. He is the father of Thrall, of Carl, of Jarl. And of others.”

Shef looked round at the many watching faces: Alfred. Thorvin. Ingulf. Hund. There were some not there. Brand, of whose recovery he still had no news. His mother Thryth. He did not know if she would ever wish to see him again.

Most of all, Godive. After the battle a group of his catapulteers had brought him the body of his half brother—his mother’s son, Godive’s husband. Both he and she had looked for a long time at the purple face, the twisted neck, trying to find in it some memory of childhood, some clue to the hatred in the brain. Shef had thought of lines from one of Thorvin’s old poems, said by a hero over the brother he had killed:

“/ have been your bane, brother. Bad luck lay on us.

Ill is the Norns’ doom, I will never forget.”

But he had not said the words. He meant to forget. He hoped one day Godive would forget too. Forget that he had first saved her, then deserted her, then used her. Now that the constant stress of planning and action was over, he felt inside himself as though he loved her as much as he ever had before he rescued her from Ivar’s camp. But what kind of love was it that had to wait for the right moment to be admitted?

So Godive had thought. She had taken her husband and half brother’s body for burial, left Shef unsure when or whether she might return. This time he would have to decide for himself.

He looked past his friends at the prisoners still filing by—the sullen, hating faces—thought of the humiliated Charles, the enraged Pope Nicholas, the Snakeeye in the North with a brother now to avenge. He looked again at the silver sign in his hand.

“A pole-ladder,” he said. “Difficult to balance on.”

“You have to do it one rung at a time,” replied Thorvin.

“Hard to climb, difficult to balance, to reach the top. But at the top there are two rungs to grasp on to. One opposite the other. It could almost be a cross.”

Thorvin frowned. “Rig and his sign were known in the ages before there ever was a cross. It is not a sign of death. No. It is one of reaching higher, of living better.”