"Harrison, Harry - Hammer 2 - One King's Way" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

In the right-hand pew at the very front of the nave of the great Minster at Winchester
was Shef Sigvarthsson, co-king of the English -- and king in his own right of all those parts
of it north of the Thames which he could persuade into obedience. He sat uneasily, aware
of the many eyes on him.
They saw a man whose age was hard to guess. His thick dark hair and smooth-shaven
face made him seem young, too young for the gold circlet of royalty on his brow and the
heavy bracelets on both arms. He had the height and the broad shoulders of a warrior in his
prime -- or of an ironsmith, which was what he had been. Yet for all his youth the dark hair
was already streaked with white, and his face showed the betraying grooves of care and
pain. His right eye-socket was an empty hollow, and the patch that covered it could not
disguise the way the flesh had drawn and fallen in. The whole of England and half of
Europe beyond knew how he had been half-blinded on the order of Sigurth Snake-eye,
eldest of the sons of Ragnar. And how the smith's apprentice had taken his revenge by
killing Sigurth's brother, Ivar the Boneless, Champion of the North, rising from near-thrall
to carl of the Viking Great Army, to jarl under the orders of Alfred Atheling. Now to being
king and co-ruler with Alfred himself, joint victors over the Frankish Crusade only the year
before. Rumors ran everywhere about the meaning of the strange sign he wore round his
neck as emblem of the Asgarth Way, an emblem none had worn before him: the kraki, the
pole-ladder of the mysterious deity Rig.
Shef had no wish to see the coronation, still less the ceremony that would follow. The
grooves of pain deepened in his face as he watched. Yet he understood why he had to be
there, he and his men: to make a point, to support his co-king. It was Alfred's request, as
close to a command as possible, that had brought him here.
"You don't have to take the Mass," Alfred had said firmly to Shef and his supporters.
"You don't even have to sing the hymns. But I want you there at the coronation, wearing
your pendants, wearing your crown, Shef. Making a show. Pick out your most impressive
men, and look rich and powerful. I want everyone to see that I am supported fully by the
men of the North, the conquerors of Ivar the Boneless and Charles the Bald. The pagans.
Not the wild pagans, the slavers and sacrificers, like the sons of Ragnar: but the men of the
Way, the Way of Asgarth, the pendant- folk."
They had at least managed to do that, Shef thought, looking about. Put on their mettle,
the two dozen Way- folk selected to sit in the front ranks had responded nobly. Guthmund
the Greedy was carrying more gold and silver on his person, in arm-rings, torque, and beltbuckle,
than any five thanes of Wessex put together. Of course he had shared in three successive distributions of plunder under Shef, whose fame, though fabulous, was not all
exaggeration. Thorvin priest of Thor and his colleague Skaldfinn priest of NjЎrth, though
opposed to worldly display, had nevertheless dressed in shining white and brought with
them their signs of office, the short hammer for Thorvin and the seaman's boat for
Skaldfinn. Cwicca, Osmod and the other English freedmen now veterans of Shef's
campaigns, though hopelessly unimpressive in person from youthful hunger, had managed
to dress themselves in the unheard-of luxury of silken tunics. They also carried carefully
sloped the tools of their trade: halberds, crossbows, and catapult-winders. Shef suspected
that the mere sight of men so obviously English, so obviously low-born, and so obviously
rich beyond the dreams of the average Wessex thane, let alone churl, was the most
powerful silent argument for Alfred's success that could be found.
The ceremony had begun hours before with the forming of a great procession from the
king's residence to the Minster itself -- a walk of barely a hundred yards, but every yard of
them seeming to demand some special observance. Then the high mass in the Minster, the
nobles of the realm crowding up to take communion, not so much out of reverence as out of
an earnest desire not to miss any luck or blessing that might be granted to others. Among
them, Shef had noted, had been many seemingly incongruous figures, the undersized