“I must thank you for what you did for me.”

“I did it because it was my duty to the Way. Or so I thought. Maybe I was wrong. But I’m not a fool, boy. I am sure that you’re after something I don’t know about. I just hope it doesn’t get you into trouble. Maybe our paths will run together again another day.”

They parted with no more words, Shef stepping for only the second time over the rowan-berry cords of the precinct and for the first time walking down the lane between the tents without fear, face forward, not looking furtively around him. He headed not for the encampment of Ivar and the other Ragnarssons, but for the tent of Ingulf the leech.

As usual there was a small crowd standing round it, watching something. It dispersed as Shef strolled up, the last few men to leave carrying a stretcher with a bandaged shape on it. Hund came to meet his friend, wiping his hands on a rag.

“What were you doing?” Shef asked.

“Helping Ingulf. It’s amazing what he can do. That man there was wrestling, fell awkwardly—leg broken, just like that. What would you do with that if you were back at home?”

Shef shrugged. “Bandage it up. Nothing else you can do. In the end it would heal.”

“But the man would never walk straight again. The bones would just join each other wherever they happened to be. The leg would be all lumps and twists—like Crubba, who was rolled on by his horse. Well, what Ingulf does is pull the leg out straight before he starts bandaging, squeezes hard to feel if the broken ends of the bone are together. Then he bandages the leg between two stakes, so that the whole thing stays straight while it is healing. But what is even more marvelous is what he does in cases like this one, when it’s broken so badly that the bones are sticking up through the skin. If he has to he even cuts back the bone, and opens the leg so that he can push the bone back straight! I didn’t think that anyone would live through being opened and cut like that. But he is so quick—and he knows exactly what to do.”

“Could you learn to do it?” Shef asked, watching the glow of enthusiasm on his friend’s normally sallow face.

“With enough practice. Enough instruction. And something else. Ingulf studies the bodies of the dead, you know, to see how bones fit together. What would Father Andreas say to that?”

“So you mean to stay with Ingulf?”

The runaway slave nodded slowly. He pulled from under his tunic a chain. On it was a small silver pendant, an apple.