The Burning Land

ONE

I stayed furious, unrepentant, pacing the large room beside the river where servants, cowed to silence by my rage, revived the fire. It is strange how news spreads in a city. Within minutes a crowd had gathered outside the house to see how the night would end. The folk were silent, just watching. Finan had barred the outer doors and ordered torches lit in the courtyard. Rain hissed in the flames and slicked the paving stones. Most of my men lived close by and they came one by one, some of them drunk, and Finan or Cerdic met them at the outer door and sent them to fetch their mail and weapons. “Are you expecting a fight?” I asked Finan.

“They’re warriors,” he said simply.

He was right, so I put on my own mail. I dressed as a warlord. I dressed for battle, with gold on my arms and both swords at my waist, and it was just after I had buckled the belt that Alfred’s emissary arrived.

The emissary was Father Beocca. My old friend came alone, his priest’s robes muddy from the streets and wet from the rain. He was shivering and I put a stool beside the central hearth and draped a fur cloak about his shoulders. He sat, then held his good hand toward the flames. Finan had escorted him from the front gate and he stayed. I saw that Skade, too, had crept into a shadowed corner. I caught her eye and gave a curt nod that she could remain.

“You’ve looked under the floor?” Father Beocca said suddenly.

“Under the floor?”

“The Romans,” he said, “would heat this house with a furnace that vented its heat into the space under the floor.”

“I know.”

“And we hack holes in their roofs and make hearths,” he said sadly.

“You’ll make yourself ill if you insist on walking about on cold, wet nights,” I said.

“Of course a lot of those floors have collapsed,” Beocca said as if it was a very important point he needed to make. He rapped the tiles with the stick he now used to help himself walk. “Yours seems in good repair, though.”

“I like a hearth.”

“A hearth is comforting,” Beocca said. He turned his good eye to me and smiled. “The monastery at Æscengum cleverly managed to flood the space under their floor with sewage, and the only solution was to pull the whole house down and build anew! It was a blessing, really.”

“A blessing?”

“They found some gold coins among the turds,” he said, “so I suspect God directed their effluent, don’t you?”

“My gods have better things to do than worry about shit.”

“That’s why you’ve never found gold among your turds!” Beocca said and started laughing. “There, Uhtred,” he said triumphantly, “I have at last proved my God is mightier than your false idols!” He smiled at me, but the smile slowly faded so that he looked old and tired again. I loved Beocca. He had been my childhood tutor and he was always exasperating and pedantic, but he was a good man. “You have until dawn,” he said.

“To do what?”

He spoke tiredly, as if he despaired of what he told me. “You will go to the king in penitence,” he said, “without mail or weapons. You will abase yourself. You will hand the witch to the king. All the land you hold in Wessex is forfeited. You will pay a wergild to the church for the life of Brother Godwin, and your children will be held hostages against that payment.”

Silence.

Sparks whirled upward. A couple of my wolfhounds came into the room. One smelled Beocca’s robes, whined, and then both settled by the fire, their doleful eyes looking at me for a moment before closing.

“The wergild,” Finan asked for me, “how much?”

“One thousand and five hundred shillings,” Beocca said.

I sneered. “For a mad monk?”

“For a saint,” Beocca said.

“A mad fool,” I snarled.

“A holy fool,” Beocca said mildly.

The wergild is the price we pay for death. If I am judged guilty of unjustly killing a man or woman I must pay their kin a price, that price depending on their rank, and that is fair, but Alfred had set Godwin’s wergild at almost a royal level. “To pay that,” I said, “I’d have to sell almost everything I own, and the king has just taken all my land.”

“And you must also swear an oath of loyalty to the etheling,” Beocca said. He usually became exasperated with me and would splutter as his exasperation grew, but that night he was very calm.

“So the king would impoverish me,” I asked, “and tie me to his son?”

“And he will return the sorceress to her husband,” Beocca said, looking at the black-cloaked Skade, whose eyes glittered from the room’s darkest corner. “Skirnir has offered a reward for her return.”

“Skirnir?” I asked. The name was unfamiliar to me.

“Skirnir is her husband,” Beocca said. “A Frisian.”

I looked at Skade who nodded abruptly.

“If you return her,” I said, “she dies.”

“Does that concern you?” Beocca asked.

“I don’t like killing women.”

“The law of Moses tells us we should not allow a witch to live,” Beocca said. “Besides, she is an adulterer, so her husband has the God-given right to kill her if that is his wish.”

“Is Skirnir a Christian?” I asked, but neither Skade nor Father Beocca answered. “Will he kill you?” I asked Skade and she just nodded. “So,” I turned back to Beocca, “until I pay the wergild, make my oath to Edward, and send Skade to her death, my children are hostages?”

“The king has decreed that your children will be cared for in the Lady Æthelflæd’s household,” Beocca answered. He looked me up and down with his good eye. “Why are you dressed for war?” I made no answer and Beocca shrugged. “Did you think the king would send his guards?”

“I thought he might.”

“And you would have fought them?” He sounded shocked.

“I would have them know who they came to arrest,” I said.

“You killed a man!” Beocca at last found some energy. “The man offended you, I know, but it was the Holy Spirit who spoke in him! You hit him, Uhtred! The king forgave the first blow, but not the second, and you must pay for that!” He leaned back, looking tired again. “The wergild is well within your ability to pay. Bishop Asser wished it set much higher, but the king is merciful.” A log in the hearth spat suddenly, startling the hounds, who twitched and whined. The fire found new life, brightening the room and casting shaky shadows.

I faced Beocca across the flames. “Bishop Asser,” I spat angrily.

“What of him?”

“Godwin was his puppy.”

“The bishop saw holiness in him, yes.”

“He saw a way to his ambition,” I snarled, “to rid Wessex of me.” I had been thinking of the feast’s events ever since my hand took Godwin’s life, and I had decided that Asser was behind the mad monk’s words. Bishop Asser believed Wessex safe. Harald’s power was destroyed, and Haesten had sent his family to be baptized, so Wessex had no need of a pagan warlord, and Asser had used Godwin to poison Alfred’s mind against me. “That twist of Welsh shit told Godwin what to say,” I said. “It wasn’t the holy spirit speaking in Godwin, father, it was Bishop Asser.”

Beocca looked at me through the shimmer of fire. “Did you know,” he asked, “that the flames in hell cast no light?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“It is one of the mysteries of God,” Beocca said, then grunted as he stood. He shrugged off the borrowed fur cloak and leaned heavily on his stick. “What shall I tell the king?”

“Is your god responsible for hell?” I asked.

He frowned, thinking. “A good question,” he finally said, though he did not answer it. “As is mine. What shall I tell the king?”

“That he will have my answer at dawn.”

Beocca half smiled. “And what will that answer be, Lord Uhtred?”

“He will discover that at dawn.”

Beocca nodded. “You are to come to the palace alone, without weapons, without mail, and dressed simply. We shall send men to take the witch. Your children will be returned on payment of one hundred shillings, the remainder of the wergild is to be paid within six months.” He limped toward the courtyard door, then turned and stared at me. “Let me die in peace, Lord Uhtred.”

“By watching my humiliation?”

“By knowing that your sword will be at King Edward’s command. That Wessex will be safe. That Alfred’s work will not die with him.”

That was the first time I heard Edward called king.

“You’ll have my answer at sunrise,” I said.

“God be with you,” Beocca responded, and hobbled into the night.

I listened to the heavy outer door bang shut and the locking bar drop into place, and I remembered Ravn, the blind skald who had been Ragnar the Elder’s father, telling me that our lives are like a voyage across an unknown sea, and sometimes, he said, we get tired of calm waters and gentle winds, and we have no choice but to slam the steering oar’s loom hard over and head for the gray clouds and the whitecaps and the tumult of danger. “That is our tribute to the gods,” he had told me, and I still do not know quite what he meant, but in that sound of the door closing I heard the echo of the steering oar slamming hard to one side.

“What do we do?” Finan asked me.

“I tell you what I won’t do,” I snarled. “I will not give that damned child my oath.”

“Edward’s no child,” Finan said mildly.

“He’s a milksop little bastard,” I said angrily. “He’s addled by his god, just like his father. He was weaned on that bitch wife’s vinegar tits, and I will not give him an oath.”

“He’ll be King of Wessex soon,” Finan observed.

“And why? Because you and I kept their kingdom safe, you and I! If Wessex lives, my friend, it’s because an Irish runt and a Northumbrian pagan kept it alive! And they forget that!”

“Runt?” Finan asked, smiling.

“Look at the size of you,” I said. I liked teasing him because of his small stature, though that was deceptive because he had a speed with the sword that was astonishing. “I hope their god damns their damn kingdom,” I spat, then went to a chest in the corner of the room. I opened it and felt inside, finding a bundle that I carried to Skade. I felt a pang as I touched the leather wrapping, for these things had belonged to Gisela. “Read those,” I said, tossing her the package.

She unwrapped the alder sticks. There were two dozen, none longer than a man’s forearm, and all polished with beeswax to a fine gleam. Finan made the sign of the cross as he saw this pagan magic, but I had learned to trust the runesticks. Skade held them in one hand, raised them slightly, closed her eyes, and let them fall. The sticks clattered on the floor and she leaned forward to deduce their message.

“She won’t see her own death there,” Finan warned me softly, implying I could not trust her interpretation.

“We all die,” Skade said, “and the sticks don’t talk of me.”

“What do they say?” I asked.

She stared at the pattern. “I see a stronghold,” she finally said, “and I see water. Gray water.”

“Gray?” I asked.

“Gray, lord,” she said, and that was the first time she called me “lord.” “Gray like the frost giants,” she added, and I knew she meant northward toward the ice-world where the frost giants stalk the world.

“And the fortress?” I asked.

“It burns, lord. It burns and it burns and it burns. The sand of the shore is black with its ashes.”

I motioned her to sweep up the runesticks, then walked onto the terrace. It was still the middle of the night and the sky was black with cloud and spiteful with small rain. I listened to the rush of water squeezing through the piles of the old bridge and I thought of Stiorra, my daughter.

“Gray?” Finan asked, joining me.

“It means north,” I said, “and Bebbanburg is in the north and a south wind will carry its ashes to the sands of Lindisfarena.”

“North,” Finan said quietly.

“Tell the men they have a choice,” I said. “They can stay and serve Alfred, or they can come with me. You have the same choice.”

“You know what I’ll do.”

“And I want Seolferwulf ready by dawn.”

Forty-three men came with me, the rest stayed in Lundene. Forty-three warriors, twenty-six wives, five whores, a huddle of children, and sixteen hounds. I wanted to take my horses, especially Smoka, but the boat was not equipped with the wooden frames that hold stallions safe during a voyage, and so I patted his nose and felt sad to abandon him. Skade came aboard, because to stay in Lundene would mean her death. I had put my mail and weapons and helmets and shields and treasure chest into the small space beneath the steering platform, and I saw her place her own small bundle of clothes in the same place.

We did not have a full crew, but sufficient men took their places on the rowing benches. The dawn was breaking as I ordered the wolf’s head mounted on the prow. That carving, with its snarling mouth, was stored beneath the platform in the bows and was only displayed when we were away from our home waters. It risks bad fortune to threaten the spirits of home with a defiant dragon or a snarling wolf or a carved raven, but now I had no home and so I let the wolf defy the spirits of Lundene. Alfred had sent men to guard my house, and though those mailed warriors could see us in the dock beside the terrace, none interfered as we cast off the lines and pushed Seolferwulf into the Temes’s strong current. I turned and watched the city beneath its smear of smoke. “Raise!” Finan called, and twenty oar-blades were poised above the river’s filth.

“And strike!” Finan called and the boat surged toward the dawn. I was without a lord. I was outcast. I was free. I was going Viking.

There is a joy at being afloat. I was still under the thrall of Gisela’s death, but going to sea brought hope again. Not much, but some. To drive a boat into the gray waves, to watch the wolf’s head dip into the crests and rear in an explosion of white water, to feel the wind hard and cold, to see the sail taut as a pregnant woman’s belly, to hear the hiss of the sea against the hull, and to feel the steering oar tremble in the hand like the very heartbeat of the boat, all that brings joy.

For five years I had not taken a ship beyond the wide waters of the Temes estuary, but once we had cleared the treacherous shoals at the point of Fughelness we could turn north and there I had hoisted the sail, shipped the long oars, and let Seolferwulf run free. Now we went northward into the wider ocean, into the angry wind-whipped ship-killing sea, and the coast of East Anglia lay low and dull on our left and the gray sea ran into the gray sky to our right, while ahead of me was the unknown.

Cerdic was with me, and Sihtric, and Rypere, as were most of my best men. What surprised me was that Osferth, Alfred’s bastard, came too. He had stepped silently aboard, almost the last man to make the choice, and I had raised an eyebrow and he had just given a half-smile and taken his place on a rower’s bench. He had been beside me as we lashed the oars to the cradles that usually held the sail on its long yard and I had asked if he was certain about his decision.

“Why should I not be with you, lord?” he asked.

“You’re Alfred’s son,” I said, “a West Saxon.”

“Half these men are West Saxons, lord,” he said, glancing at the crew, “probably more than half.”

“Your father won’t be pleased you’ve stayed with me.”

“And what has he done for me?” Osferth asked bitterly. “Tried to make me a monk or priest so he could forget I existed? And if I stayed in Wessex what could I expect? Favor?” he laughed bitterly.

“You may never see Wessex again,” I said.

“Then I’ll thank God for that,” he said and then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “There’s no stench, lord,” he added.

“Stench?”

“The stink of Lundene,” he explained, “it’s gone.”

And so it had, because we were at sea and the sewage-soured streets were far behind us. We ran under sail all that day and saw no other ships except a handful of small craft that were fishing and those vessels, seeing our rampant wolf’s head, scattered from our path, their men pulling desperately on oars to escape Seolferwulf ’s threat. That evening we ran the ship close inshore, lowered the sail, and felt our way under oars into a shallow channel to make a camp. It was late in the year to be voyaging and so the cold dark came early. We had no horses so it was impossible to explore the country about our landing place, but I had no fears because I could see no settlements except for one reed-thatched hovel a long way north, and whoever lived there would fear us far more than we feared them. This was a place of mud and reed and grass and creeks beneath a vast wind-driven sky. I say camp, but all we did was carry cloaks above the thick tideline of weed and driftwood. I left sentries on the boat, and placed others at the small island’s extremities, and then we lit fires and sang songs beneath the night clouds.

“We need men,” Finan said, sitting next to me.

“We do,” I agreed.

“Where do we find them?”

“In the north,” I said. I was going to Northumbria, going far from Wessex and its priests, going to where my friend had a fortress in the bend of a river and my uncle had a fortress by the sea. I was going home.

“If we’re attacked,” Finan said, and did not finish the thought.

“We won’t be,” I said confidently. Any ship at sea was prey to pirates, but Seolferwulf was a warship, not a trader. She was longer than most merchant ships and, though her belly was wide, she had a sleekness that only fighting ships possessed. And from a distance she would appear fully manned because of the number of women aboard. A pair of ships might dare to attack us, but even that was unlikely while there was easier prey afloat. “But we do need men,” I agreed, “and silver.”

“Silver?” He grinned. “What’s in that big treasure chest?” He jerked his head toward the grounded ship.

“Silver,” I said, “but I need more. Much more.” I saw the quizzical look on his face. “I am Lord of Bebbanburg,” I explained, “and to take that stronghold I need men, Finan. Three crews at least. And even that might not be enough.”

He nodded. “And where do we find silver?”

“We steal it, of course.”

He watched the brilliant heart of the fire where the driftwood burned brightest. Some folk say that the future can be read from the shifting shapes inside that glowing inferno, and perhaps he was trying to scry what fate held for us, but then he frowned. “Folk have learned to guard their silver,” he said softly. “There are too many wolves and the sheep have become canny.”

“That’s true,” I said. In my childhood, when the northmen returned to Britain, the plundering was easy. Viking men landed, killed, and stole, but now almost anything of value was behind a palisade guarded by spears, though there were still a few monasteries and churches that trusted their defense to the nailed god.

“And you can’t steal from the church,” Finan said, thinking the same thoughts.

“I can’t?”

“Most of your men are Christians,” he said, “and they’ll follow you, lord, but not into the gates of hell.”

“Then we’ll steal from the pagans,” I said.

“The pagans, lord, are the thieves.”

“Then they have the silver I want.”

“And what of her?” Finan asked softly, looking at Skade, who crouched close to me, but slightly behind the ring of folk around the fire.

“What of her?”

“The women don’t like her, lord. They fear her.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Because she’s a sorceress?” I twisted to look at her. “Skade,” I asked, “do you see the future?”

She looked at me in silence for a while. A night-bird called in the marsh and perhaps its harsh voice prompted her because she gave a curt nod. “I glimpse it, lord,” she said, “sometimes.”

“Then say what you see,” I ordered her, “stand up and tell us. Tell us what you see.”

She hesitated, then stood. She was wearing a black woolen cloak and it shrouded her body so that, with her black hair that she wore unbound like an unmarried girl, she appeared a tall slim night-dark figure in which her pale face shone white. The singing faltered, then died away, and I saw some of my people make the sign of the cross. “Tell us what you see,” I commanded her again.

She raised her pale face to the clouds, but said nothing for a long while. No one else spoke. Then she shuddered and I was irresistibly reminded of Godwin, the man I had murdered. Some men and women do hear the whisper of the gods, and other folk fear them, and I was convinced Skade saw and heard things hidden from the rest of us. Then, just as it seemed as though she would never speak, she laughed aloud.

“Tell us,” I said irritably.

“You will lead armies,” she said, “armies to shadow the land, lord, and behind you the crops will grow tall, fed by the blood of your enemies.”

“And these people?” I asked, waving at the men and women who listened to her.

“You are their gold-giver, their lord. You will make them rich.”

There were murmurs round the fire. They liked what they heard. Men follow a lord because the lord is a gift-giver.

“And how do we know you do not lie?” I asked her.

She spread her arms. “If I lie, lord,” she said, “then I will die now.” She waited, as if inviting a blow from Thor’s hammer, but the only sounds were the sighing of wind in the reeds, the crackle of burning driftwood, and the slur of water creeping into the marsh on the night’s tide.

“And you?” I asked, “what of you?”

“I am to be greater than you, lord,” she said, and some of my people hissed, but the words gave me no offense.

“And what is that, Skade?” I asked.

“What the Fates decide, lord,” she said, and I waved her to sit down. I was thinking back across the years to another woman who had eavesdropped on the murmurs of the gods, and she had also said I would lead armies. Yet now I was a man who was the most contemptible of men; a man who had broken an oath, a man running from his lord.

Our peoples are bound by oaths. When a man swears his loyalty to me he becomes closer than a brother. My life is his as his is mine, and I had sworn to serve Alfred. I thought of that as the singing began again and as Skade crouched behind me. As Alfred’s oath-man I owed him service, yet I had run away, and that stripped me of honor and left me despicable.

Yet we do not control our lives. The three spinners make our threads. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable. Yet if fate decrees, and the spinners know what that fate will be, why do we make oaths? It is a question that has haunted me all my life, and the closest I have come to an answer is that oaths are made by men, while fate is decreed by the gods, and that oaths are men’s attempts to dictate fate. Yet we cannot decree what we would wish. Making an oath is like steering a course, but if the winds and tides of fate are too strong, then the steering oar loses its power. So we make oaths, but we are helpless in the face of wyrd. I had lost honor by fleeing from Lundene, but the honor had been taken from me by fate, and that was some consolation in that dark night on the cold East Anglian shore.

There was another consolation. I woke in the dark and went to the ship. Her stern was rising gently on the incoming tide. “You can sleep,” I told the sentries. Our fires ashore were still glowing, though their flames were low now. “Join your women,” I told them, “I’ll guard the ship.”

Seolferwulf did not need guarding because there was no enemy, but it is a habit to set sentries, and so I sat in her stern and thought of fate and of Alfred, and of Gisela and of Iseult, of Brida and of Hild, and of all the women I had known and all the twists of life, and I ignored the slight lurch as someone climbed over Seolferwulf’s still-grounded bow. I said nothing as the dark figure threaded the rowers’ benches.

“I did not kill her, lord,” Skade said.

“You cursed me, woman.”

“You were my enemy then,” she said, “what was I supposed to do?”

“And the curse killed Gisela,” I said.

“That was not the curse,” she said.

“Then what was it?”

“I asked the gods to yield you captive to Harald,” she said.

I looked at her then for the first time since she had come aboard. “It didn’t work,” I said.

“No.”

“So what kind of sorceress are you?”

“A frightened one,” she said.

I would flog a man for not keeping alert when he is supposed to be standing watch, but a thousand enemies could have come that night, for I was not doing my duty. I took Skade beneath the steering platform, to the small space there, and I took off her cloak and I lay her down, and when we were done we were both in tears. We said nothing, but lay in each other’s arms. I felt Seolferwulf lift from the mud and pull gently at her mooring line, yet I did not move. I held Skade close, not wanting the night to end.

I had persuaded myself that I had left Alfred because he would impose an oath on me, an oath I did not want, the oath to serve his son. Yet that had not been the whole truth. There was another of his conditions I could not accept, and now I held her close. “Time to go,” I said at last because I could hear voices. I later learned that Finan had seen us and had held the crew ashore. I loosened my embrace, but Skade held onto me.

“I know where you can find all the gold in the world,” she said.

I looked into her eyes. “All the gold?”

She half smiled. “Enough gold, lord,” she whispered, “more than enough, a dragon-haunted hoard, lord, gold.”

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

I took a golden chain from my treasure chest and I hung it about Skade’s neck, which was announcement enough, if any announcement were needed, of her new status. I thought that my people would resent her more, but the opposite happened. They seemed relieved. They had seen her as a threat, but now she was one of us, and so we sailed north.

North along East Anglia’s low coast beneath gray skies and driven by a southerly wind that brought thick and constant fogs. We sheltered in marshy creeks when the fog blew dense above the sea or, if a fog took us by surprise and gave us no time to discover a safe inlet, we steered the ship offshore where there were no mudbanks to wreck us.

The fog slowed us, so that it took six long days to reach Dumnoc. We arrived at that port on a misted afternoon, rowing Seolferwulf into the river’s mouth between glistening mounds of mud thick with waterfowl. The channel was well marked with withies, though I still had a man in the bows probing with an oar in case the withies betrayed us onto some shipwrecker’s shoal. I had taken down the wolf’s head to show that we came peacefully, but sentries keeping watch from a rickety wooden tower still sent a boy racing to the town to warn of our coming.

Dumnoc was a good and wealthy port. It was built on the river’s southern bank and a palisade surrounded the town to deter a land attack, though the port was wide open from the water that was studded with piers and thick with fishing and trading boats. The tide was almost at the flood when we arrived and I saw how the sea spread from the muddy banks to drown the lower part of the palisade. Some of the houses nearest the sea were built on short stilts, and all the town’s timbers had been weather-beaten to a silvery gray. It was an attractive place, smelling richly of salt and shellfish. A church tower crowned with a wooden cross was the highest building, a reminder that Guthrum, the Dane who had become King of East Anglia, had converted his realm to Christianity.

My father had never loved the East Anglians because, years in the past, their kingdom had combined with Mercia to attack Northumbria. Later, much later, during my own childhood, the East Anglians had provided food, horses, and shelter to the Danish army that had conquered Northumbria, though that treachery had rebounded on them when the Danes returned to take East Anglia that still remained a Danish kingdom, though now it was supposedly a Christian kingdom as the church tower attested. Mist blew past the high cross as I steered Seolferwulf to the river’s center, just upstream of the piers. We turned her there, slewing her about by backing one bank of oars, and only when her wolfless bows faced the sea did I take her alongside a fat-bellied merchant ship that was tied to the largest of the piers. Finan grinned. “Ready to make a quick escape to sea, lord?” he asked.

“Always,” I said. “Remember the Sea-Raven?”

He laughed. Shortly after we had captured Lundene, the Sea-Raven, a Danish ship, had come to the city and innocently tied to a wharf only to discover that a West Saxon army now occupied the place and was not friendly to Danes. The crew had fled back to their ship, but needed to turn her before they could escape downriver, and panic muddled them so that their oars clashed and she had drifted back to the wharf, where we captured her. She was a horrible boat, leaky and with a stinking bilge, and eventually I broke her up and used her ribs as roofbeams for some cottages we built at Lundene’s eastern side.

A big-bellied, fat-bearded man in rusty mail clambered from the pier onto the trading boat, then, after receiving permission, hauled himself up and over Seolferwulf ’s flank. “Guthlac,” he introduced himself, “Reeve of Dumnoc. Who are you?” The question was peremptory, backed by a dozen men who waited on the pier with swords and axes. They looked nervous, and no wonder, for my crew outnumbered them.

“My name is Uhtred,” I said.

“Uhtred of where?” Guthlac asked. He spoke Danish and was belligerent, pretending to be unworried by my crew’s formidable appearance. He had long mustaches bound with black-tarred twine that hung well below his clean-shaven chin. He kept tugging on one mustache, a sign, I deduced, of nervousness.

“Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I said.

“And where’s Bebbanburg?”

“Northumbria.”

“You’re a long way from home, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” Guthlac said. He was peering into our bilge to see what cargo we carried. “A long way from home,” he repeated. “Are you trading?”

“Do we look like traders?” I asked. Other men were gathering on the low shore in front of the closest houses. They were mostly unarmed, so their presence was probably explained by curiosity.

“You look like vagabonds,” Guthlac said. “Two weeks ago there was an attack a few miles south. A steading was burned, men killed, women taken. How do I know that wasn’t you?”

“You don’t know it,” I said, returning a mild answer to his hostility.

“Maybe I should hold you here until we can prove it one way or the other?”

“And maybe you should clean your mail?” I suggested.

He challenged me with a glare, held my gaze a few heartbeats, then nodded abruptly. “So what’s your business here?” he demanded.

“We need food, ale.”

“That we have,” he said, then waited as some gulls screamed above us, “but first you have to pay the king’s wharfage fee.” He held out a hand. “Two shillings.”

“Two pence, perhaps.”

We settled on four pence, of which no doubt two went into Guthlac’s pouch, and after that we were free to go ashore, though Guthlac sensibly insisted we were to carry no weapons other than short knives. “The Goose is a good tavern,” he said, pointing to a large building hung with the sign of a painted goose, “and it can sell you dried herring, dried oysters, flour, ale, and Saxon whores.”

“The tavern is yours?” I asked.

“What of it?”

“I just hope its ale is better than its owner’s welcome,” I said.

He laughed at that. “Welcome to Dumnoc,” he said, climbing back onto the trading ship, “and I give you leave to spend a night here in peace. But if any of you commit a crime I’ll hold you all in custody!” He paused and looked toward Seolferwulf ’s stern. “Who’s that?”

He was staring at Skade, though he must have noticed her earlier. She was again cloaked in black so that her pale face seemed bright in the misted late afternoon. There was gold at her neck. “Her name is Edith,” I said, “and she’s a Saxon whore.”

“Edith,” he repeated, “maybe I’ll buy her from you?”

“Maybe you will,” I said, and we looked at each other and neither trusted the other, and then Guthlac gave a careless wave and turned away.

We drew lots to decide who could go ashore that evening. I needed men to stay and guard the boat, and Osferth volunteered to command that group. We put twenty-three dried peas in a bowl with twenty silver coins, then Finan took the bowl and stood with his back to me as I faced the assembled crew. One by one Finan drew either a coin or a pea from the bowl and held it aloft. “Who’ll have this one?” he would ask and I would pick a man from the crew without knowing whether Finan held a pea or a coin. Those who drew peas had to stay with Osferth, the rest were allowed ashore. I could have just chosen which men should stay aboard, but a crew work better when they believe their lord is fair. The children all stayed, but the wives of the shore party accompanied their men. “You stay in the tavern,” I told them. “This town isn’t friendly! We stay together!”

The town might have been unfriendly, but the Goose was a good tavern. The ale was pungent, freshly brewed in the great vats in the inn’s yard. The large main room was beamed with keels from broken-up ships, and warmed by a driftwood fire burning in a central hearth. There were tables and benches, but before I let my men loose on the ale I negotiated for smoked herring, flitches of bacon, barrels of ale, bread, and smoked eels, and had all those supplies carried to the Seolferwulf. Guthlac had placed guards on the landward end of the pier, and those men were supposed to make certain none of us carried weapons, but I had Wasp-Sting hanging in a scabbard at my back where she was hidden by a cloak, and I did not doubt that most of my crew were similarly armed. I went from table to table and told them they were to start no fights. “Not unless you want to fight me,” I warned them, and they grinned.

The tavern was peaceable enough. A dozen local men drank there, all Saxons and none showing any interest in the Seolferwulf ’s crew. Sihtric had drawn a silver shilling in the lottery and I ordered him to make frequent visits to the yard. “Look for men with weapons,” I told him.

“What do you fear, lord?” he asked me.

“Treachery,” I said. The Seolferwulf was worth a thegn’s annual income from a substantial estate and Guthlac must have realized we carried coin on board. His men would find it hard to capture the ship while Osferth and his band defended the pier’s end, but drunken men in a tavern were easier prey. I feared he could hold us hostage and demand a huge ransom, and so Sihtric slipped constantly through the back door, returning each time with a shake of his head. “Your bladder’s too small,” one of my men mocked him.

I sat with Skade, Finan, and his Scottish wife, Ethne, in a corner of the room where I ignored the laughter and songs that were loud at the other tables. I wondered how many men lived in Dumnoc, and why so few were in the Goose. I wondered if weapons were being sharpened. I wondered where all the gold in the world was hidden. “So,” I asked Skade, “where is all the gold in the world?”

“Frisia,” she said.

“A large place.”

“My husband,” she said, “has a stronghold on the sea.”

“So tell us of your husband.”

“Skirnir Thorson,” she said.

“I know his name.”

“He calls himself the Sea-Wolf,” she said, looking at me, but aware that Finan and Ethne were listening.

“He can call himself what he likes,” I said, “but that doesn’t make it true.”

“He has a reputation,” she said, and she told us of Skirnir and what she said made sense. There were nests of pirates on the Frisian coast, where they were protected by treacherous shoal waters and shifting dunes. Finan and I, when we had been enslaved by Sverri, had rowed through those waters, sometimes feeling our oar-blades strike the sand or mud. Sverri, a clever shipmaster, had escaped the pursuing red ship because he knew the channels, and I did not doubt that Skirnir knew the waters intimately. He called himself a jarl, the equivalent of a lord, but in truth he was a savage pirate who preyed on ships. The Frisian Islands had always produced wreckers and pirates, most of them desperate men who died soon enough, but Skade insisted that Skirnir had flourished. He captured ships or else took payment for safe passage and by so doing he had made himself rich and notorious.

“How many crews does he have?” I asked Skade.

“When last I was there,” she said, “sixteen small ships and two large.”

“When were you last there?”

“Two summers ago.”

“Why did you leave?” Ethne asked.

Skade gave the Scottish woman a speculative look, but Ethne held the gaze. She was a small, red-haired, and fiery woman whom we had freed from slavery, and she was fiercely loyal to Finan, by whom she now had a son and a daughter. She could see where this conversation was going, and before her husband went into battle she wanted to know all she could discover.

“I left,” Skade said, “because Skirnir is a pig.”

“He’s a man,” Ethne said, and got a reproving dig in her ribs from Finan.

I watched a servant girl carry logs to the tavern’s hearth. The fire brightened and I wondered again why so few men were drinking in the Goose.

“Skirnir ruts like a pig,” Skade said, “and he snorts like a pig, and he hits women.”

“So how did you escape the pig?” Ethne persisted.

“Skirnir captured a ship which had a chest of gold coins,” Skade said, “and he took some of the gold to Haithabu to buy new weapons, and he took me with him.”

“Why?” I asked.

She looked at me levelly. “Because he could not bear to be without me,” she said.

I smiled at that. “But Skirnir must have had men to guard you in Haithabu?”

“Three crews.”

“And he let you meet Harald?”

She shook her head. “I never met him,” she said, “I just took one look at him and he looked at me.”

“So?”

“That night Skirnir was drunk,” she said, “snoring, and his men were drunk, so I walked away. I walked to Harald’s ship and we sailed. I had never even spoken to him.”

“Stop that!” I shouted at two of my men who were squabbling over one of the Goose’s whores. The whores earned their living in a loft that was reached by a ladder, and one of the men was trying to pull the other off the rungs. “You first,” I pointed at the more drunken of the two, “and you after. Or both of you together, I don’t care! But don’t start a fight over her!” I watched till they subsided, then turned back to Skade. “Skirnir,” I said simply.

“He has an island, Zegge, and lives on a terpen.”

“Terpen?”

“A hill made by hand,” she explained, “it is the only way men can live on most of the islands. They make a hill with timber and clay, build the houses, and wait for the tide to wash it away. Skirnir has a stronghold on Zegge.”

“And a fleet of ships,” I said.

“Some are very small,” Skade said. Even so I reckoned Skirnir had at least three hundred fighting men, and maybe as many as five hundred. I had forty-three. “They don’t all live on Zegge,” Skade went on, “it is too small. Most have homes on nearby islands.”

“He has a stronghold?”

“A hall,” she said, “built on a terpen, and ringed with a palisade.”

“But to reach the hall,” I said, “we have to get past the other islands.” Any ship going through what would doubtless be a shallow and tide-torn channel would find Skirnir’s men following, and I could imagine landing on Zegge with two crews of enemies close behind me.

“But in the hall,” Skade said, lowering her voice, “is a hole in the floor, and beneath the floor is a chamber lined with elm, and inside the chamber is gold.”

“There was gold,” Finan corrected her.

She shook her head. “He cannot bear parting with it. He is generous with his men. He buys weapons, mail, ships, oars, food. He buys slaves. But he keeps what he can. He loves to open the trapdoor and stare at his hoard. He shudders when he watches it. He loves it. He once made a bed of gold coins.”

“They dug into your back?” Ethne asked, amused.

Skade ignored that, looking at me. “There’s gold and silver in that chamber, lord, enough to light your dreams.”

“Other men must have tried to take it,” I said.

“They have,” she said, “but water, sand, and tide are as good a defense as stone walls, lord, and his guard is loyal. He has three brothers, six cousins, and they all serve him.”

“Sons?” Ethne asked.

“No children by me. Many by his slaves.”

“Why did you marry him?” Ethne asked.

“I was sold to him. I was twelve, my mother had no money, and Skirnir wanted me.”

“He still does,” I said speculatively, remembering that his offer of a reward for Skade’s return had reached Alfred’s ears.

“The bastard has a lot of men,” Finan said dubiously.

“I can find men,” I said softly, and then turned because Sihtric had come running from the tavern’s back door.

“Men,” he told me, “there’s at least thirty out there, lord, and all with weapons.”

So my suspicions were right. Guthlac wanted me, my treasure, my ship, and my woman.

And I wanted Skirnir’s gold.