Гарри Гаррисон - King and Emperor

The bird-man nodded respectfully towards Alfred, standing a pace behind Shef. “From the land of Alfred King, my lord. From Wiltshire.”

Shef forbore to ask why he had come to the land of another king. Only one king paid silver for new knowledge, and at a rate that drew experimenters from all across the Northern lands.

“What gave you the idea?”

The bird-man drew himself up, as if ready with a prepared speech. “I was born and baptized a Christian, lord, but years ago I heard the teachings of the Way. And I heard the story of the greatest of smiths, of Völund the Wise, whom we English call Wayland Smith. It came to me that if he could rise and fly from his enemies, then so might I. Since then I have spared no effort in making this garment, the last of many I have tried. For it says in the ‘Lay of Völund’, ‘Laughing, he rose aloft, flew with feather-hame.’ And I believe the words of the gods are true, truer than the Christians' stories. See, I have made myself a sign in token of my devotion.”

Moving carefully, the man pulled forward a silver pair of wings, hanging from a chain round his neck.

In response Shef pulled from under his tunic the sign he himself bore, the kraki , the pole-ladder of his own patron and perhaps-father, the little-known god Rig.

“None have worn the wings of Völund before,” Shef remarked to Thorvin.

“Few wore the ladder of Rig either.”

Shef nodded. “Success changes many things. But tell me, devotee of Völund—what makes you think you can fly with this cape, besides the words of the lay.”

The bird-man looked surprised. “Is it not obvious, lord? Birds fly. They have feathers. If men had feathers, they would fly.”

“Why has it not been done before?”

“Other men have not my faith.”

Shef nodded once more, leapt suddenly up to the top of the battlements, stood on the narrow stone lip. His bodyguards moved forward urgently, were met by the bulk of Brand. “Easy, easy,” he growled. “The king is not a Halogalander, but he is something of a seaman now. He will not fall off a flat ledge in broad daylight.”

Shef looked down, saw two thousand faces staring up. “Back,” he shouted, waving his arms. “Back from under. Give the man room.”

“Do you think I will fall, lord?” asked the bird-man. “Do you mean to test my faith?”

Shef's one eye looked past him, saw in the crowd behind Alfred the face of the one woman who had accompanied them to the top of the stair: Godive, Alfred's wife, now known to all as the Lady of Wessex. His own childhood sweetheart and first love, who had left him for a kinder man. One who did not look at others to use them. Her face reproached him.

He dropped his gaze, gripped the man by the arm, careful not to disturb or disarrange his feathers.

“No,” he said. “Not at all. If they are too close to the tower they will not see well. I wish them to have something to tell their children and their children's children. Not just, ‘he flew too fast for me to see.’ I wish you the best of fortune.”

The bird-man smiled proudly, stepped first onto a block, then, carefully, onto the wall where Shef had stood. A gasp of amazement came up from the crowd below. He stood, spread his cape widely in the strong wind. It blew from behind him, Shef noted, flattening the feathers against his back. He thinks the cape is a sail, then, which will sweep him on as if he were a ship. But what if it should instead be a…?

The man crouched, gathering his strength, and then suddenly leapt straight out, crying at the top of his voice, “Völund aid me!”

His arms beat the air, the cape flapping wildly. Once, and then as Shef craned forward, again, and then… A thud came up from the stone-flagged courtyard below, a long simultaneous groan from the crowd. Looking down, Shef saw the body lying perhaps sixteen feet from the base of the tower. Priests of the Way were already running towards him, priests of Ithun the Healer. Shef recognized among them the diminutive shape of another childhood friend, Hund the one-time slave, who shared a dog's name with himself, but was now thought the greatest leech and bone-setter of the island of Britain. Thorvin must have stationed them there. So he had shared his own misgivings.

They were looking up now, shouting. “He has broken both legs, badly smashed. But not his back.”

Godive was looking over the wall now, next to her husband. “He was a brave man,” she said, a note of accusation in her voice.

“He will get the best treatment we can give him,” Shef replied.

“How much would you have given him if he had flown, say, a furlong?” asked Alfred.

“For a furlong? A hundred pounds of silver.”

“Will you give him some now, as compensation for his injuries?”

Shef's lips tightened suddenly into a hard line, as he felt the pressure put on him, the pressure to show charity, respect good intentions. He knew Godive had left him for his ruthlessness. He did not see himself as ruthless. He did only what he needed to. He had many unknown subjects to protect as well as those who appeared before him.

“He was a brave man,” he said, turning away. “But he was a fool as well. All he had to go on was words. But in the College of the Way it is works alone that count. Is that not so, Thorvin? He has taken your book of holy song and turned it into a Bible like the Christians' gospel. To be believed in, not thought about. No. I will send my leeches to him, but I will pay him nothing.”

A voice drifted up from the courtyard again. “He has his wits back. He says his mistake was to use hen's feathers, and they are earth-scratchers. Next time he will try with gull-feathers alone.”

“Don't forget,” Shef said more loudly and to all, still answering an unspoken accusation. “I spend my subjects' silver for a purpose. All this could be snatched from us any summer. Think how many enemies we have over there.” He pointed at right angles to the wind, out across the meadows to the south and east.

If some bird or bird-man could have followed the wave of the king across sea and land for a thousand miles, across the English Channel and then across the whole continent of Europe, it would have come in the end upon a meeting: a meeting long-prepared. For many weary months go-betweens had ridden down muddy roads and sailed stormy seas, to ask careful questions, in the languages of Byzantium and of Rome.

“If it might be that the Imperator , in his wisdom, might be prepared to consider thus and so; and might attempt to use such slight influence as he has with His Holiness the Pope to persuade him in his turn to reconsider such and such a formula; then (accepting the foregoing as a working possibility or if I may use your so-flexible tongue, a hypothesis ) could it be so that in his turn the Basileus might turn his mind to the thoughts of so and thus?” So spoke the Romans.

“Esteemed colleague, leaving your interesting hypothesis to one side for the moment only, if it were so that the Basileus might—saving at all times his orthodoxy and the rights of the Patriarch—consider a working and perhaps temporary arrangement in such and such a field of interest, might we then enquire what the attitude of the Imperator would be to the vexed question of the Bulgarian embassy, and the unhappy attempts of previous administrations to detach our newly-baptized converts from their faith and attach them to the allegiance of Rome?” So replied the Greeks.

Slowly the emissaries had conversed, fenced, felt each other out, returned for further instructions. The emissaries had risen higher and higher in rank, from mere bishops and second secretaries to archbishops and influential abbots, drawing in military men, counts and strategists. Plenipotentiaries had been dispatched, only to discover that however full their powers might be, they did not dare to commit their emperors and churches on their word alone. Finally there had been no help for it but to arrange a meeting of the supreme powers, the four greatest authorities in Christendom: the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Emperor of the Romans and the Emperor of the Greeks.