Warriors of the Storm

Nine

One hundred and twenty-two of us rode before dawn, our hoofbeats loud in the stone tunnel of Ceaster’s northern gateway where two torches blazed and smoked. Servants followed with thirteen packhorses loaded with shields, spears, and sacks of hard-baked bread, smoked fish, and flitches of bacon. We were riding to war.

My helmet hung from my saddle’s pommel, Serpent-Breath was at my side, Finan rode to my right and Sihtric to my left. Behind me my standard-bearer carried Bebbanburg’s flag of the wolf’s head. We followed the Roman road that took us north through the cemetery where the spectres watched from their shadowed stones and from their dark grave mounds. The road turned sharply east just before it reached the bank of the Mærse, and it was there I stopped and looked back. Ceaster was a dark shape, its ramparts outlined by the small glow of torches inside the city. There was no moonlight, clouds hid the stars, and I reckoned no one on the city walls could see us.

Ragnall’s men were somewhere far to the east. Dawn would reveal great smears of smoke to show where they plundered and burned plump homesteads. Those fires had moved steadily southwards the previous day, showing that his army was moving away from the northern burhs into land that was less protected.

That war was being waged to the east of Ceaster. And we turned west.

We rode west to Brunanburh, following the dyked path that edged the river’s southern bank. The darkness forced us to go slowly, but as the wolf-light slowly grew behind us we quickened our pace. The tide was ebbing and the river made gurgling noises as it drained from the mudbanks. Sea birds cried to welcome the dawn. A fox raced across our path with a broken-winged gull in its jaws and I tried to find some good omen in that sight. The river shimmered like dull silver, stirred by the smallest wind. I had been hoping for more wind, for a half gale of wind, but the air was almost still.

And then we came to Brunanburh and the fort was a dark shape, its rampart’s top edged with a line of red to show that fires burned in the courtyard. The track turned left here, going to the fort’s main gate, but we swerved right, heading for the river where dark shapes showed against the silvered water. They were the two ships that Æthelstan and his companions had loosed from their moorings north of Eads Byrig. The larger one was named Sæbroga, the Sea-Terror, and she was now mine.

I had chosen the name because I did not know what the Norsemen had called her. Some ships have a name carved into a strake of the bow, but Sæbroga had no such carving. Nor was a name scratched into her mast. All seamen will tell you that it is bad luck to change a ship’s name, though I have done it often enough, but never without the necessary precaution of having a virgin piss into the bilge. That averts the ill luck, and so I had made certain a child had peed into the Sæbroga’s ballast stones. The newly baptised ship was the largest of the two, and she was a beauty; wide-bellied, sleek in her long lines, and high-prowed. A great axe blade carved from a massive piece of oak was mounted on her rearing prow where most pagan ships flaunted a dragon, a wolf, or an eagle, and the axe made me wonder if this had been Ragnall’s own ship. The axe blade had once been painted bright red, though now the paint had largely faded. She had benches for sixty oarsmen, a finely woven sail, and a full set of oars.

‘God save us,’ Dudda said, then hiccuped, ‘but she’s lovely.’

‘She is,’ I agreed.

‘A good ship,’ he said, sketching a shape with his hands, ‘is like a woman.’ He said that very seriously, as if no one had ever had the thought before, then slid from his saddle with all the grace of a stunned ox. He grunted as he hit the ground, then lumbered onto the mud at the river’s edge where he lowered his hose and pissed. ‘A good ship,’ he said again, ‘is like a woman.’ He turned, still pissing mightily. ‘Did you ever see that Mus, lord? Little girl Mus? The one with the apple mark on her forehead? Talk about lovely! I could chew her apple down to the core!’

Dudda was, or had been, a shipmaster who had sailed the Irish sea since boyhood. He had also probably drunk the equivalent of that sea in ale and mead, which had left him bloated, red-faced and unsteady on his feet, but he was sober that morning, an unnatural state, and trying to impress me with his knowledge. ‘We need,’ he said, waving vaguely towards the Sæbroga, ‘to bring her closer. Warp her in. Lord, warp her in.’ She was moored to one of the few pilings that had survived Ragnall’s first attack. A new pier was being built, but it had not yet reached the deeper water.

‘Why don’t you swim out to her?’ I suggested to Dudda.

‘Christ on his little wooden cross,’ he said, alarmed, ‘I don’t swim, lord! I’m a sailor! Fish swim, not me!’ He suddenly sat at the track’s edge, tired out by the effort of walking five paces. We had searched Ceaster’s taverns for a man who knew the Irish coast, and Dudda, hopeless as he seemed, was the only one we discovered. ‘Loch Cuan?’ he had slurred when I had first questioned him, ‘I could find Loch Cuan blindfolded on a dark night, been there a hundred times, lord.’

‘But can you find it when you’re drunk?’ I had asked him savagely.

‘I always have before, lord,’ he had replied, grinning.

Two of my younger men were stripping off their mail and boots, readying themselves to wade out to the Sæbroga that tugged on her piling as the ebbing tide tried to carry her to sea. One of them nodded towards the fort, ‘Horsemen, lord.’

I turned to see Osferth approaching with four companions. He was now commanding Brunanburh’s garrison, placed there by Æthelflaed, his half-sister. He was one of my oldest friends, a man who had shared many a shield wall, and he smiled when he saw me. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you, lord!’

I had last seen him a few days before when I had ridden to Brunanburh to see the two prizes for myself. Now I jerked my head at Sæbroga. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed wants that one moved to the Dee,’ I said. ‘She thinks it will be safer there.’

‘It’s safe enough here!’ he said confidently. ‘We haven’t seen a pagan ship in a week now. But if the Lady Æthelflaed wishes it …’ He left the thought unfinished as he looked east to where the dawn was blushing the sky with a pale pink glow. ‘You’ve got a good day for your voyage, lord!’

‘You want to come with us?’ I asked, praying he refused.

He smiled, evidently amused at the thought of taking a day away from his duties. ‘We must finish the wharf.’

‘You’re making good progress!’ I said, looking to where the sturdily rebuilt pier crossed the muddy foreshore.

‘We are,’ Osferth said, ‘though the difficult part of the work is still ahead, but with God’s help?’ He made the sign of the cross. He had inherited all of his father’s piety, but also Alfred’s sense of duty. ‘You’re leaving the smaller ship here?’ he asked anxiously.

I had thought of taking both ships, but decided Sæbroga should sail alone. ‘Lady Æthelflaed said nothing about the smaller ship,’ I said.

‘Good! Because I plan to use it to drive the pilings into the deeper water,’ he explained. He watched as my two men tied a long hempen line to Sæbroga’s bow. One of them brought the line ashore while the other unmoored the ship from her piling, then a score of my men chanted enthusiastically as they hauled Sæbroga in to the beach.

‘Load her up!’ Finan shouted when her high bow slid onto the mud.

I gave Osferth what news I had as my men heaved sacks of provisions onto the ship. I told him how Ragnall had fled eastwards and was now raiding deep into Mercia. ‘He won’t be coming back here,’ I told him, ‘at least not for a while, so Lady Æthelflaed might want some of your men back in Ceaster.’

Osferth nodded. He was watching Sæbroga’s loading and seemed puzzled. ‘You’re taking a lot of supplies for a short voyage,’ he said.

‘You never go to sea without precautions,’ I told him. ‘Everything might look calm this morning, but that doesn’t mean a storm couldn’t blow us off course by midday.’

‘I pray that doesn’t happen,’ he said piously, watching the last sack being heaved on board.

I tossed Godric a small purse filled with hacksilver. ‘You’ll take the horses back to Ceaster,’ I ordered him.

‘Yes, lord.’ Godric hesitated. ‘Can’t I come with you, lord? Please?’

‘You’ll look after the horses,’ I said harshly. I was taking no one except my shield-wall warriors. No servants were coming, only men who could pull an oar or wield a sword. I suspected I would need all the space I could find in Sæbroga if we were to bring Sigtryggr’s men off their fort, and however heavily we loaded her we still would not have enough space for all his people. That might have been a good reason to take the smaller ship as well, but I feared dividing my small force into two. We only had the one shipmaster, only one man who claimed to know how to reach Loch Cuan, and if the smaller ship lost touch with Sæbroga in the night I might never see her crew again. ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ I lied to Godric for Osferth’s benefit, then waded out to Sæbroga’s waist and waited as the massive Gerbruht hauled Dudda over the ship’s side. Dudda grunted and gasped, then collapsed onto a rowers’ bench like an exhausted seal. Gerbruht grinned, held out a meaty hand, and pulled me up onto the ship. Godric had also waded out and now handed me my helmet, sword, and shield. Finan was already standing beside the steering oar. ‘Pole us off,’ I told my men, and a half-dozen of them used the long oars to thrust Sæbroga off the shelving bank and into deeper water.

I called farewell to Osferth. Away to the east I could see three horsemen hurrying along the track from Ceaster. Too late, I thought, too late. I grinned, watching as my men found their places on the benches and thrust the oars into their tholes, and then we turned that high, proud axe towards the distant sea. I took hold of the steering oar and Finan thumped his foot on the deck. ‘On my command!’ he called. ‘Now!’

And the oar-blades bit and the long hull surged and the wildfowl scattered like scraps in the small wind. I felt the steering oar respond, felt the shudder of a ship in my hand, and felt my heart lift to the song of a boat on the sea. The tide was ebbing fast, rippling the river with glittering new sunlight, and Finan shouted the rhythm, stamping his foot, and the sixty rowers pulled harder and I felt the ship coming alive, pulsing with the oar beats, the steering loom resisting me now, and I heard the sound of water sluicing along the hull and saw a wake spreading behind. The three messengers, I assumed they had come from Ceaster, had reached Osferth and he was now galloping along the bank, waving and shouting. I thought I heard him call that we were to come back, that we were ordered back, but Sæbroga was moving fast into the river’s centre, going ever further from the shore, and I just waved to him. He beckoned frantically and I waved again.

What did Æthelflaed think I would do? In the name of her so-called merciful god, what? Did she think I would abandon my daughter to Ragnall’s hunger? Let him slaughter my grandchild so he could plant his own seed in Stiorra? He had already gelded my son, now he would rape my daughter? I vowed I would hear him screaming, I would watch him bleed, I would tear his flesh piece by piece before I would worry about Æthelflaed. This was family. This was revenge.

The Sæbroga reared her prow to the larger seas as we left the river. To my left now were the wide treacherous mudbanks that edged Wirhealum, the land between the rivers. In a hard gale and a high tide those flats were a maelstrom of whipping waves and wind-blown foam, a place where ships died, and the bones of too many vessels stood stark and black where the tide sluiced out across the rippled shallows. The wind was rising, but coming from the west, which was not what we needed, but ahead of me was the Blesian, hove to about a mile offshore.

My younger son, the one I had renamed Uhtred, was waiting in the smaller ship. He and six men had waited all night, their boat laden with ale barrels, the one thing we could not have carried from Ceaster on our horses. We drew alongside, lashed the two boats together, then rigged a whip from the yardarm and hoisted ale, more food, and a bundle of heavy spears aboard the Sæbroga. Dudda, who was watching the ale barrels come aboard, had assured me the voyage should not take longer than a day, perhaps a day and a half, but the Irish Sea was notorious for its sudden storms. I was taking enough ale to last us a week just in case a malevolent fate drove us out to the wider ocean.

‘What do we do with the Blesian?’ my son asked. He looked cheerful for a man who had just spent a nervous night keeping his boat away from the sound of waves seething across a nearby mudflat.

‘Just let her go.’

‘It seems a pity,’ he said wistfully, ‘she’s a good ship.’

I had thought of towing her and had immediately rejected the thought. The Blesian was heavy and her weight would slow us by half. ‘Just let her go,’ I said again, and we retrieved the lines that had held her close and let her drift. The wind would eventually strand her on Wirhealum’s mudflats where she would be pounded to death. We rowed on, driving the Sæbroga into the wind and waves until Dudda, reckoning we were far enough offshore, turned us north-westwards. ‘We’ll come to Mann if you hold this course,’ he said, sitting on the deck and leaning against the side of the ship. ‘Will you be opening one of those barrels?’ he looked longingly at the ale that had been lashed to the base of the mast.

‘Soon,’ I said.

‘Be careful at the island,’ he said, meaning Mann. ‘There’s nothing they like better than capturing a ship.’

‘Do I go west of it or east?’

‘West.’ He glanced up at the rising sun. ‘Just stay as you are. We’ll get there.’ He closed his eyes.

The wind backed by mid-morning and we could raise Sæbroga’s great sail, and the sight of it convinced me that we had indeed captured Ragnall’s own ship because the sail flaunted a great red axe blade. The sail itself was made from heavy linen, an expensive cloth, close woven and double layered. The axe was a third layer, sewn onto the other two, which were reinforced by a criss-cross pattern of hemp ropes. We shipped the oars when the sail was sheeted home and the boat leaned over, driven by the freshening wind that was flicking the wave-tops white. ‘She’s a beautiful thing,’ I said to Finan as I felt the sea’s pressure on the steering-oar.

He grinned. ‘To you, yes. But you love ships, lord.’

‘I love this one!’

‘Me,’ he said, ‘I’m happiest when I can touch a tree.’

We saw two other ships that morning, but both fled from the sight of the great red axe on our sail. They were either fishing or cargo vessels and they rightly feared a sea-wolf seething northwards with the waves foaming white at her jaws. Dudda might have warned me of the pirates of Mann, but it would take a brave fool to tackle Sæbroga with her full crew of savage warriors. Most of those savage warriors were sleeping now, slumped between the benches.

‘So,’ Finan said, ‘your son-in-law.’

‘My son-in-law.’

‘The fool’s got himself trapped, is that right?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘With nigh-on five hundred folk?’

I nodded.

‘It’s just that I’m thinking,’ he said, ‘that we might cram another forty people on board this bucket, but five hundred?’

Sæbroga dipped her bows and a spatter of spray flicked down the hull. The wind was rising, but I sensed no malice in it. I leaned on the oar to turn our bows slightly westwards, knowing that the wind would be pressing us ever to the east. A mound of clouds showed far ahead of our bows, and Dudda reckoned they were heaping above the island called Mann. ‘Just hold your course, lord,’ he said, ‘hold your course.’

‘Five hundred people,’ Finan reminded me.

I grinned. ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Orvar Freyrson?’

‘Never,’ he shook his head.

‘Ragnall left him in Ireland,’ I said, ‘with four ships. He’s already attacked Sigtryggr once and got a bloody nose for his trouble. So now, I suspect, he’s content to make sure no one supplies Sigtryggr with food. He’s keeping other ships away, hoping to starve the fort into surrender.’

‘Makes sense,’ Finan said.

‘But why does Orvar Freyrson need four ships?’ I asked. ‘That’s just greedy. He’ll have to learn to share, won’t he?’

Finan smiled. He looked back, but the land had vanished. We were out in the wide sea now, reaching on a brisk wind and splitting the green waves white. We were a sea-wolf given her freedom. ‘Her ladyship won’t be happy with you,’ he remarked.

‘Æthelflaed? She’ll be spitting like a wildcat,’ I said, ‘but it’s Eadith I feel sorry for.’

‘Eadith?’

‘Æthelflaed hates her. Eadith won’t like being left alone in Ceaster.’

‘Poor lass.’

‘But we’ll be back,’ I said.

‘And you think either woman will forgive you?’

‘Eadith will.’

‘And Lady Æthelflaed?’

‘I’ll just have to take her a gift,’ I said.

He laughed at that. ‘Christ, but it will have to be some gift! It’s not as if she needs any more gold or jewels! So what were you thinking of giving her?’

I smiled. ‘I was thinking of giving her Eoferwic.’

‘Holy Mary!’ Finan said, suddenly coming alert. He sat up straight and stared at me for a heartbeat. ‘You’re serious! And how in God’s name are you going to do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, then laughed.

Because I was at sea and I was happy.

The weather worsened that afternoon. The wind veered, forcing us to lower the great sail and lash it to the yard, and then we rowed into a short sharp sea, struggling against wind and current, while above us the clouds rolled from the west to darken the sky. Rain spattered the rowers and dripped from the rigging. Sæbroga was a beautiful craft, elegant and sleek, but as the wind rose and the seas shortened I saw she had a bad habit of burying her head to shatter spray along the deck. ‘It’s the axe,’ I said to Finan.

‘Axe?’

‘On the prow! It’s too heavy.’

He was huddled in his cloak beside me. He peered forward. ‘It’s a massive piece of wood, that’s for sure.’

‘We need to move some of the ballast stones aft,’ I said.

‘But not now!’ he sounded alarmed at the thought of wet men struggling with heavy stones while Sæbroga pitched in the pounding seas.

I smiled. ‘Not now.’

We made landfall at Mann and I kept the island well to our east as the night fell. The wind calmed with the darkness and I held Sæbroga off the island’s coast, unwilling to journey further in the blackness of night. Not that the night was all black. There were gleams of firelight from the island’s distant slopes, faint lights that kept us safe by letting us judge our position. I let my son take the steering-oar and slept till dawn. ‘We go west now,’ a bleary-eyed Dudda told me in the wolf-light, ‘due west, lord, and we’ll come to Loch Cuan.’

‘And Christ only knows what we find there,’ Finan said.

Sigtryggr dead? My daughter abducted? An ancient fort smeared with blood? There are times when the demons persecute us, they give us doubts, they try to persuade us that our fate is doom unless we listen to them. I am convinced that this middle earth swarms with demons, invisible demons, Loki’s servants, wafting on the wind to make mischief. I remember, years ago, how dear Father Beocca, my childhood tutor and old friend, told me that Satan sent demons to tempt good Christians. ‘They try to keep us from doing God’s purpose,’ he had told me earnestly. ‘Did you know that God has a purpose for all of us, even for you?’

I had shaken my head. I was perhaps eight years old and even then I thought my purpose was to learn sword-craft, not to master the dull skills of reading and writing.

‘Let me see if you can discover God’s purpose on your own!’ Beocca had said enthusiastically. We had been sitting on a ledge of Bebbanburg’s rock, staring at the wild sea as it foamed about the Farnea Islands. He had been making me read aloud from a small book that told how Saint Cuthbert had lived on one of those lonely rocks and had preached to the puffins and seals, but then Beocca started bouncing up and down on his scrawny bum as he always did when he became excited. ‘I want you to think about what I say! And perhaps you can find the answer on your own! God,’ his voice had become very earnest, ‘made us in His own image. Think of that!’

I remember thinking that was very strange of God because Beocca was club-footed, had a cock-eyed squint, a squashed nose, wild red hair, and a palsied hand. ‘So God’s a cripple?’ I had asked.

‘Of course not,’ he had said, slapping me with his good right hand, ‘God is perfect!’ He slapped me again, harder. ‘He is perfect!’ I remember thinking that perhaps God looked like Eadburga, one of the kitchen maids, who had taken me behind the fortress chapel and shown me her tits. ‘Think!’ Father Beocca had urged me, but all I could think of was Eadburga’s breasts, so I shook my head. Father Beocca had sighed. ‘He made us look like Him,’ he explained patiently, ‘because the purpose of life is to be like Him.’

‘To be like Him?’

‘To be perfect! We must learn to be good. To be good men and women!’

‘And kill children?’ I had asked earnestly.

He had squinted at me. ‘And kill children?’

‘You told me the story!’ I had said excitedly. ‘How the two bears killed all the boys! And God made them do it. Tell me again!’

Poor Beocca had looked distraught. ‘I should never have read that story to you,’ he had said miserably.

‘But it is true?’

He had nodded unhappily. ‘It is true, yes. It’s in our scripture.’

‘The boys were rude to the prophet?’

‘Elisha, yes.’

‘They called him baldie, yes?’

‘So the scripture tells us.’

‘So God sent two bears to kill them all! As a punishment?’

‘Female bears, yes.’

‘And forty boys died?’

‘Forty-two children died,’ he had said miserably.

‘The bears tore them apart! I like that story!’

‘I’m sure God wanted the children to die quickly,’ Beocca had said unconvincingly.

‘Do the scriptures say that?’

‘No,’ he had admitted, ‘but God is merciful!’

‘Merciful? He killed forty-two children …’

He had cuffed me again. ‘It’s time we read more about the blessed Saint Cuthbert and his mission to the seals. Start at the top of the page.’

I smiled at the memory as Sæbroga slammed her prow into a green-hearted sea and slung cold spray down the length of her deck. I had liked Beocca, he was a good man, but so easy to tease. And in truth that story in the Christians’ holy book proved that their god was not so unlike my own. The Christians pretended he was good and perfect, but he was just as capable of losing his temper and slaughtering children as any god in Asgard. If the purpose of life was to be an unpredictable, murderous tyrant then it would be easy to be godlike, but I suspected we had a different duty and that was to try to make the world better. And that too was confusing. I thought then and think still that the world would be a better place if men and women worshipped Thor, Woden, Freya, and Eostre, yet I drew my sword on the side of the child-slaughtering Christian god. But at least I had no doubts about the purpose of this voyage. I sailed to take revenge. If I discovered that Sigtryggr had been defeated and Stiorra captured then we would turn Sæbroga back eastwards and hunt Ragnall down to the last shadowed corner on earth, where I would rip the guts out of his belly and dance on his spine.

We fought weather all that day, butting Sæbroga’s heavy prow into a west wind. I had begun to think the gods did not want me to make this voyage, but late in the afternoon they sent a raven as an omen. The bird was exhausted and landed on the small platform in the ship’s prow where, for a time, it just huddled in misery. I watched the bird, knowing it was sent by Odin. All my men, even the Christians, knew it was an omen, and so we waited, pulling oars into short seas, swept by showers, waited for the bird to reveal its message. That message came at dusk as the wind dropped and the seas settled and the Irish coast appeared off our bows. To me the far coast looked like a green blur, but Dudda preened. ‘Just there, lord!’ he said, pointing a shade or two to the right of our bows. ‘That’s the entrance, right there!’

I waited. The raven strutted two steps one way, two steps the other. Sæbroga pitched as a larger wave rolled under her hull, and just then the raven took to the air and, with renewed energy, flew straight as a spear for the Irish coast. The omen was favourable.

I leaned on the steering oar, turning Sæbroga northwards.

‘It’s there. Lord!’ Dudda protested as I turned the ship’s head past the place he had indicated and kept on turning her. ‘The entrance, lord! There! Just beyond the headland. We’ll make the narrows before dark, lord!’

‘I’m not taking a ship into enemy waters at dusk,’ I growled.

Orvar Freyrson had four ships in Loch Cuan, four warships manned by Ragnall’s warriors. When I entered the loch I needed to take him by surprise, not row in and immediately be forced to look for somewhere safe to anchor or moor. Dudda had warned me that the loch was full of ledges, islands, and shallows, so it was no place to arrive in the near darkness while enemy ships that were familiar with the dangers might lurk nearby. ‘We enter at dawn,’ I told Dudda.

He looked nervous. ‘Better to wait for slack water, lord. By dawn the tide will be flooding.’

‘Is that what Orvar Freyrson would expect?’ I asked. ‘That we’d wait for slack water?’

‘Yes, lord.’ He sounded nervous.

I clapped him on a meaty shoulder. ‘Never do what an enemy expects, Dudda. We’ll go in at dawn. On the flood.’

That was a bad night. We were close to a rockbound coast, the sky was clouded, and the seas choppy. We rowed, always heading north, and I worried that one of Orvar’s men might have recognised Sæbroga’s distinctive prow when we first made landfall. That was unlikely. We had turned northwards well offshore and had been under oars so no one on land could have seen the much larger red axe on the big sail. But if the ship had been recognised then Orvar would be wondering why we had turned away rather than seek shelter for the night.

The wind fretted in the darkness, blowing us towards the Irish shore, but I had twelve men pulling on the oars to hold us steady. I listened for the dreaded sound of surf breaking or of seas crashing on rocks. Sometimes I thought I heard those noises and felt a surge of panic, but that was likely a sea-demon playing tricks, and Ran, the sea-goddess, who can be a jealous and savage bitch, was in a good mood that night. The sea sparkled and glimmered with her jewels, the strange lights that flicker and glow in the water. When an oar-blade dipped the sea would shatter into thousands of glowing droplets that faded slowly. Ran only sent the jewels when she was feeling kind, but even so I was fearful. Yet there was no need to be nervous because when the dawn broke grey and slow we were still well offshore. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Dudda said when at last he could make out the coast, ‘sweet mother of God. Thank Christ!’ He too had been nervous, drinking steadily through the night, and now he gazed bleary-eyed at the green strip of land. ‘Just go south, lord, just go south.’

‘How far?’

‘One hour?’

It took longer, not because Dudda was wrong, but because I gave my men time to eat, then to pull on their mail coats. ‘Keep your helmets and weapons close,’ I told them, ‘but I don’t want anyone in a helmet yet. And put cloaks over your mail!’ We could not arrive at the loch looking ready for war, but rather like men tired from a voyage and wanting nothing more than to join their comrades. I called Vidarr, the Norseman who had deserted to join his wife, back to the stern. ‘What can you tell me of Orvar Freyrson?’ I asked him.

Vidarr frowned. ‘He’s one of Ragnall’s shipmasters, lord, and a good one.’

‘Good at what?’

‘Seamanship, lord.’

‘Good at fighting too?’

Vidarr shrugged. ‘We’re all fighters, lord, but Orvar’s older now, he’s cautious.’

‘Does he know you?’

‘Oh yes, lord. I sailed with him in the northern islands.’

‘Then you’ll hail him, or hail whoever we meet, understand? Tell him we’re sent to attack Sigtryggr. And if you betray me …’

‘I won’t, lord!’

I paused, watching him. ‘Have you been into the loch?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Tell me about it.’

He told me what Dudda had already described to me, that Loch Cuan was a massive sea-lake dotted with rocks and islets, and entered by a long and very narrow channel through which the tide flowed with astonishing speed. ‘There’s plenty of water in the channel’s centre, lord, but the edges are treacherous.’

‘And the place where Sigtryggr is trapped?’

‘It’s almost an island, lord. The land bridge is narrow. A wall of ten men can block it easily.’

‘So Orvar would attack by sea?’

‘That’s difficult too, lord. The headland is surrounded by rocks, and the channel to the beach is narrow.’

Which explained why Orvar was trying to starve Sigtryggr into submission unless, of course, he had already captured the fort.

We were close to the land now, close enough to see smoke drifting up from cooking fires and close enough to see the waves breaking on rocks and then draining white to the foam-scummed sea. An east wind had livened after the dawn and allowed us to raise the sail again, and Sæbroga was moving fast as she dipped her steerboard strakes towards the brisk waves. ‘When we get there,’ I told Dudda, ‘I want to sail or row straight through the channel. I don’t want to stop and feel my way through shallows.’

‘It’s safer …’ he began.

‘Damn safer!’ I snarled. ‘We have to look as if we know what we’re doing, not as if we’re nervous! Would Ragnall look nervous?’

‘No, lord.’

‘So we go in fast!’

‘You can sail in, lord,’ he said, ‘but for Christ’s sake stay in the channel’s centre.’ He hesitated. ‘The narrows run almost straight north, lord. The wind and tide will carry us through, but the hills confuse the wind. It’s no place to be taken aback.’ He meant that the hills would sometimes block the wind altogether, or veer it unexpectedly, and such a change could drive Sæbroga onto the rocks that evidently lined the narrows, or drive her into the whirlpool that Dudda described as ‘vicious’.

‘So we use oars as well as sail,’ I said.

‘The current is frightening, lord,’ Vidarr said warningly.

‘Best to go really fast then,’ I said. ‘Do you know where Orvar keeps his men when they’re ashore?’ I asked him.

‘Just off the channel, lord. On the western bank. There’s a bay that offers shelter.’

‘I want to run straight past him,’ I told Dudda, ‘as fast as we can.’

‘The tide will help,’ he said, ‘it’s flooding nicely, but Vidarr’s right. The current will take you like the wind, lord. It runs like a deer.’

We hit rough water south of the headland that protected the entrance to the narrows. I suspected there were rocks not far beneath Sæbroga’s keel, but Dudda was unworried. ‘It’s a bad place when the tide ebbs, lord, but safe enough on the flood.’ We were running before the wind now, the big red axe sail bellied out to drive Sæbroga’s prow hard into the churning water. ‘Before we sail back,’ I said, ‘I want to move ballast stones aft.’

‘If we live,’ Dudda said quietly, then sketched the sign of the cross.

We turned north, slewing the sail around to keep the ship moving fast and I felt her picking up speed as the tide caught her. I could see Dudda was nervous. His hands were clenching and unclenching as he gazed ahead. The waves seemed to be racing northwards, lifting Sæbroga’s stern and hurling her forward. Water seethed at the hull, waves shattered white at the prow, and the sound of seas crashing on rocks was incessant. ‘Loch Cuan,’ Finan had to speak loudly, ‘means the calm lake!’ he laughed.

‘We call it Strangrfjörthr!’ Vidarr shouted.

The sea was thrusting us as if she wanted to dash us onto the great rocks either side of the channel’s entrance. Those rocks were wreathed in huge plumes of white spray. The steering-oar felt slack. ‘Oars!’ I shouted. We needed speed. ‘Row harder!’ I bellowed. ‘Row as if the devil were up your arse!’

We needed speed! We already had speed! The tide and wind were carrying Sæbroga faster than any boat I had ever sailed, but most of that speed was the current, and we needed to be faster than the seething water if the long steering-oar was to control the hull. ‘Row, you ugly bastards,’ I shouted, ‘row!’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan muttered.

My son made a whooping noise. He was grinning, holding onto the boat’s side. The waves were broken, slapping into white caps, shredding the heaving rowers with spray. We were racing into a cauldron of rock and churning seas. ‘When you’re past the entrance,’ Dudda was shouting, ‘you’ll see an island! Go to the east of it!’

‘Does it get calmer inside?’

‘It gets worse!’

I laughed. The wind was rising, whipping my hair across my eyes. Then suddenly, we were in the entrance, in the jaws of rock and wind-driven foam, and I could see the island and I pulled to steerboard, but the blade had no bite. The current was stronger than ever, sweeping us towards the rocks ahead. ‘Row!’ I bellowed. ‘Row!’ I heaved on the steering-oar and Sæbroga slowly responded. Then the hills caused a wind shadow and the huge sail flapped like a crazy thing, but still we raced inland. To right and left were maelstroms where the water eddied and broke over hidden rocks, where white birds shrieked at us. The waves no longer heaved us forward, but the current was rushing us through the narrow channel. ‘Row!’ I shouted at my sweating men. ‘Row!’

The green hills on either bank looked so calm. The day promised to be fine. The sky was blue with just a few tattered white clouds. There were sheep grazing on a green meadow. ‘Glad to be home?’ I called to Finan.

‘If I ever get home!’ he said morosely.

I had never seen a channel so rockbound or so treacherous, but by staying in the centre where the current ran strongest, we stayed in deep water. Other ships had died here, their black ribs stark above the hurrying water. Dudda guided us, pointing out the whirlpool that ripped the sea’s surface into turmoil. ‘That’ll kill you,’ he said, ‘sure as eggs are eggs. I’ve seen that thing tear the bottom out of a good ship, lord! She went down like a stone.’ The pool was to our right and still we seethed on, leaving it safely behind.

‘The harbour, lord!’ Vidarr shouted, and he pointed to where two masts could be seen above a low rocky headland.

‘Row!’ I shouted. The channel was at its narrowest and the current was sliding us at astonishing speed. A gust of wind bellied the sail, adding speed, and we cleared the point of land and I saw the huts above a shingle beach and a dozen men standing on the rocky shore. They waved and I waved back. ‘Orvar has four ships, yes?’ I asked Vidarr.

‘Four, lord.’

So two were probably ahead of us, somewhere in the long reaches of the loch, and that lay not far ahead, just beyond a low grassy island.

‘Don’t go near the island, lord,’ Dudda said, ‘there are rocks all around it.’

Then suddenly, amazingly, Sæbroga shot into calm water. One moment she was in the grip of an angry sea, the next she was floating as placid as a swan on a sun-dappled lake. The sail that had beaten dementedly now filled tamely, the hull slowed, and my men slumped on their oars as we gently coasted on a limpid calm. ‘Welcome to Loch Cuan,’ Finan said with a crooked smile.

I felt the tension go from my arms. I had not even realised I was gripping the steering-oar so hard. Then I stooped and took the pot of ale from Dudda’s hand and drained it. ‘You’re still not safe, lord,’ he said with a grin.

‘No?’

‘Ledges! Reefs! This place can claw your hull to splinters! Best put a man on the prow, lord. It looks calm enough but it’s full of sunken rocks!’

And full of enemies. Those who had seen us did not pursue us because they must have thought we had been sent by Ragnall and they were content to wait to discover our business. The great axe on the prow and the huge axe on the sail had lulled them, and I trusted those blood-dark symbols to deceive the other ships that waited somewhere ahead.

And so we rowed into a heaven. I have rarely seen a place so beautiful or so lush. It was a sea-lake dotted by islands with seals on the beaches, fish beneath our oars, and more birds than a god could count. The hills were gentle, the grass rich, and the loch’s edges lined with fish traps. No man could starve here. The oars dipped slowly and Sæbroga slid through the gentle water with scarcely a tremor. Our wake widened softly, rocking ducks, geese, and gulls.

There were a few small crude fishing boats being paddled or rowed, none with more than three men, and all of them hurried out of our path. Berg, who had refused to stay in Ceaster despite his wounded thigh, stood high in the prow with one arm hooked over the axe head, watching the water. I kept glancing behind, looking to see if either of the two ships we had seen in the narrows would put to sea and follow us, but their masts stayed motionless. A cow lowed on shore. A shawled woman collecting shellfish watched us pass. I waved, but she ignored the gesture. ‘So where’s Sigtryggr?’ I asked Vidarr.

‘The western bank, lord.’ He could not remember precisely where, but there was a smear of smoke on the loch’s western side and so we rowed towards that distant mark. We went slowly, wary of the sunken ledges and rocks. Berg made hand signals to guide us, but even so the oars on the steerboard side of the ship scraped stone twice. The small wind dropped, letting the sail sag, but I left it hanging as a signal that this was Ragnall’s ship.

‘There,’ Finan said, pointing ahead.

He had seen a mast behind a low island. Orvar, I knew, had two ships on the loch and I guessed one was north of Sigtryggr and the other south. They had evidently failed to assault Sigtryggr’s fort, so the task of the ships now was to stop any small craft from carrying food to the besieged garrison. I strapped Serpent-Breath at my waist, then covered her with a rough brown woollen cloak. ‘I want you by my side, Vidarr,’ I said, ‘and my name is Ranulf Godricson.’

‘Ranulf Godricson,’ he repeated.

‘A Dane,’ I told him.

‘Ranulf Godricson,’ he said again.

I gave the steering-oar to Dudda, who, though half hazed by ale, was a competent enough helmsman. ‘When we reach that ship,’ I said, nodding towards the distant mast, ‘I’ll want to go alongside. If he doesn’t let us then we’ll have to break some of his oars, but not too many because we need them. Just put our bow alongside his.’

‘Bow to bow,’ Dudda said.

I sent Finan with twenty men to Sæbroga’s bow where they crouched or lay. No one wore a helmet, our mail was covered by cloaks, and our shields were left flat on the deck. To a casual glance we were unprepared for war.

The far ship had seen us now. She appeared from behind the small island and I saw the sunlight flash from her oar banks as the blades rose wet from the water. A ripple of white showed at her prow as she turned towards us. A dragon or an eagle, it was hard to tell which, reared at that prow. ‘That’s Orvar’s ship,’ Vidarr told me.

‘Good.’

‘The Hræsvelgr,’ he said.

I smiled at the name. Hræsvelgr is the eagle that sits at the topmost branch of Yggdrasil, the world tree. It is a vicious bird, watching both gods and men, and ever ready to stoop and rend with claws or beak. Orvar’s job was to watch Sigtryggr, but it was Hræsvelgr that was about to be rended.

We brailed up the sail, tying it loosely to the great yard. ‘When I tell you,’ I called to the rowers, ‘bring the oars in slow! Make it ragged! Make it look as if you’re tired!’

‘We are tired,’ one of them called back.

‘And Christians,’ I called, ‘hide your crosses!’ I watched as the talismans were kissed, then tucked beneath mail coats. ‘And when we attack we go in fast! Finan!’

‘Lord?’

‘I want at least one prisoner. Someone who looks as if he knows what he’s talking about.’

We rowed on, rowing slow as weary men would, and then we were close enough for me to see that it was an eagle on Hræsvelgr’s bow and the bird’s eyes were painted white and the tip of her hooked beak red. A man was in her bows, presumably watching for sunken rocks just as Berg did. I tried to count the oars and guessed there were no more than twelve on each side. ‘And remember,’ I shouted, ‘look dozy. We want to surprise them!’

I waited through ten more lazy oar beats. ‘Ship oars!’

The oars came up clumsily. There was a moment’s confusion as the long looms were brought inboard and laid in Sæbroga’s centre, then the ship settled as we coasted on. Whoever commanded the other ship saw what we intended and shipped his oars too. It was a lovely piece of seamanship, the two great boats gliding softly together. My men were slumped on their benches, but their hands were already gripping the hilts of swords or the hafts of axes.

‘Hail them,’ I told Vidarr.

‘Jarl Orvar!’ he shouted.

A man waved from the stern of the Hræsvelgr. ‘Vidarr!’ he bellowed. ‘Is that you? Is the Jarl with you?’

‘Jarl Ranulf is here!’

The name could not have meant anything to Orvar, but he ignored it for the moment. ‘Why are you here?’ he called.

‘Why do you think?’

Orvar spat over the side. ‘You’ve come for Sigtryggr’s bitch? You go and fetch her!’

‘The Jarl wants her!’ I shouted in Danish. ‘He can’t wait!’

Orvar spat again. He was a burly man, grey-bearded, sun-darkened, standing beside his own steersman. Hræsvelgr had far fewer men than Sæbroga, a mere fifty or so. ‘He’ll have the bitch soon enough,’ he called back as the two ships closed on each other, ‘they must starve soon!’

‘How does a man starve here?’ I demanded, just as a fish leaped from the water with a flash of silver scales. ‘We have to attack them!’

Orvar strode between his rowers’ benches, going to Hræsvelgr’s prow to see us better. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Ranulf Godricson,’ I called back.

‘Never heard of you,’ he snarled.

‘I’ve heard of you!’

‘The Jarl sent you?’

‘He’s tired of waiting,’ I said. I did not need to shout because the ships were just paces apart now, slowly coming together.

‘So how many men must die just so he can get between that bitch’s thighs?’ Orvar demanded, and at that moment the two boats touched and my men seized Hræsvelgr’s upper strake and hauled her into Sæbroga’s steerboard flank.

‘Go!’ I shouted. I could not leap the gap from the stern, but I hurried forward as the first of my men scrambled across, weapons showing. Finan led, jumping across the gap with a drawn sword.

Jumping to slaughter.

The crew of Hræsvelgr were good men, brave men, warriors of the north. They deserved better. They were not ready for battle, they were grinning a welcome one moment and dying the next. Few even had time to find a weapon. My men, like hounds smelling blood, poured across the boats’ sides and started killing. They gutted the centre of Hræsvelgr instantly, clearing a space in her belly. Finan led his men towards her stern while I took mine towards the eagle-proud bows. By now some of Orvar’s crew had seized swords or axes, but none was dressed in mail. A blade thumped on my ribs, did not cut the iron links, and I chopped Serpent-Breath sideways, striking the man on the side of his neck with the base of the blade. He went down and my son finished him with a thrust of his sword Raven-Beak. Men retreated in front of us, tripping over the benches, and some leaped overboard rather than face our wet blades. I could not see Orvar, but I could hear a man roaring, ‘No! No! No! No!’

A youngster lunged at me from the deck, plunging his sword two-handed at my waist. I turned the lunge away with Serpent-Breath and kneed him in the face, then stamped on his groin.

‘No! No!’ the voice still roared. The youngster kicked me and I tripped on a stiff coil of rope and sprawled onto the deck, and two of my men stepped protectively over me. Eadger slid his sword point into the youngster’s mouth, then drove the point hard down to the deck beneath. Vidarr gave me his hand and hauled me upright. The voice still shouted, ‘No! No!’

I rammed Serpent-Breath at a man readying to strike at Eadger with an axe. The man fell backwards. I was ready to slide Serpent-Breath into his ribcage when the axe was snatched from his hand and I saw that Orvar had pushed his way from the ship’s prow and now stood on a bench above the prone axeman. ‘No, no!’ Orvar shouted at me, then realised he had been bellowing the wrong message because he dropped the axe and spread his hands wide, ‘I yield!’ he called, ‘I yield!’ He was staring at me, shock and pain on his face, ‘I yield!’ he cried again. ‘Stop fighting!’

‘Stop fighting!’ It was my turn to shout. ‘Stop!’

The deck was slippery with blood. Men groaned, men cried, men whimpered as the two ships, tied together now, rocked slightly on the lake’s placid water. One of Orvar’s men lurched to Hræsvelgr’s side and vomited blood.

‘Stop fighting!’ Finan echoed my shout.

Orvar still stared at me, then he took a sword from one of his men, stepped down from the bench and held the sword’s hilt to me. ‘I yield,’ he said again, ‘I yield, you bastard.’

And now I had two ships.