I took six men with me, leaving the remainder on Seolferwulf. All the men I took were Ragnar’s Danes and we boasted of a successful summer cruise in the lands far to the south. ‘Our ship has a belly of gold and silver,’ I crowed, and the villagers just stared at us, trying to imagine the life of men who sailed to steal treasure from far shores. I let the ale-loosened conversation turn to Skirnir, though I learned little enough. He had men, he had ships, he had family, and he ruled the inner sea. He was evidently no fool. He would let fighting ships like Seolferwulf pass unmolested, but any other vessel had to pay to use the safe channels inside the islands where he had his lair. If a shipmaster could not pay, then he forfeited his cargo, his ship and probably his life. ‘So they all pay,’ a man said glumly.
‘Who does Skirnir pay?’ I demanded.
‘Lord?’ he asked, not understanding the question.
‘Who allows him to be here?’ I asked, but they did not know the answer. ‘There must be a lord of this land,’ I explained, gesturing at the darkness beyond the fire, but if there was such a lord who permitted Skirnir to rule the sea then these villagers did not know of him. Even the village priest, a fellow as hairy and dirt-matted as his parishioners, did not know if there was a lord of the marshes. ‘So what does Skirnir want of you?’ I asked him.
‘We have to give him food, lord,’ the priest said.
‘And men,’ one of the villagers added.
‘Men?’
‘The young men go to him, lord. They serve on his ships.’
‘They go willingly?’
‘He pays silver,’ a villager said grudgingly.
‘He takes girls too,’ the priest said.
‘So he pays his men with silver and women?’
‘Yes, lord.’
They did not know how many ships Skirnir possessed, though the priest was certain he only had two the size of Seolferwulf. We heard the same things the next night when we stopped at another village in another creek on that treeless shore. We had rowed all day, the mainland to our right and the islands to our north and west. Skade had pointed to Zegge, but from our distance it looked little different from any other island. Many of them had mounds, the terpen, but we were so far off that we could see no detail. Sometimes only the shimmering dark shape of a terpen showing at the sea’s edge betrayed that there was an island just beyond the horizon.
‘So what do we do?’ Finan asked me that night.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
He grinned. The water lapped at the Seolferwulf’s hull. We slept aboard her and most of the crew had already swathed themselves in cloaks and had lain down between the benches while Skade, Finan, Osferth and Rollo, who was the leader of Ragnar’s men, talked with me on the steering platform.
‘Skirnir has around four hundred men,’ I said.
‘Maybe four hundred and fifty,’ Skade said.
‘So we kill six men apiece,’ Rollo said. He was an easygoing man like Ragnar, with a round and guileless face, though that was deceiving for, though he was young, he had already earned a reputation as a formidable fighter. He was called Rollo the Hairy, not just because he wore his fair hair down to his waist, but because he had woven the locks of hair cut from his dead enemies into a thick sword belt. ‘I wish Saxons would grow their hair longer,’ he had grumbled to me as we crossed the sea.
‘If they did,’ I had said, ‘you’d have ten sword belts.’
‘I already have seven,’ he said, and grinned.
‘How many men on Zegge?’ I now asked Skade.
‘No more than a hundred.’
Osferth spat out a fish bone. ‘You’re thinking of attacking Zegge directly, lord?’
‘It won’t work,’ I said, ‘we won’t find our way through the shoals.’ One thing I had learned from the villagers was that Zegge was surrounded by shallow waters, that the channels shifted with the sand and tide, and that none of the passages was marked.
‘What then?’ Osferth asked.
A star fell. It scratched a flicker of light across the darkness and was gone, and with its fall the answer came to me. I had been thinking that I would attack Skirnir’s ships one by one, destroying the small ships and so weakening him, but within a day or two he would realise what was happening and he would use his larger ships to destroy us. There was no safe way to attack Skirnir. He had found a perfect refuge in the islands, and I would need ten ships like Seolferwulf to challenge him there.
So I had to lure him out of his perfect refuge. I smiled. ‘You’re going to betray me,’ I told Osferth.
‘I am?’
‘Who’s your father?’
‘You know who my father is,’ he said resentfully. He never liked being reminded that he was Alfred’s bastard.
‘And your father is old,’ I said, ‘and his chosen heir is scarcely weaned, and you are a warrior. You want gold.’
‘I do?’
‘You want gold to raise men, because you want to be King of Wessex.’
Osferth snorted at that. ‘I don’t,’ he said.
‘You do now,’ I said, ‘because you’re the bastard son of a king and you have a warrior’s reputation. And tomorrow you betray me.’
I told him how.
Nothing great is done without risk, but there are times I look back on those days and am amazed at the risk we ran in Frisia. It was, in its small way, like luring Harald to Fearnhamme, because again I divided my forces, and again I risked everything on the assumption that my enemy would do exactly what I wished him to do. And once again the lure was Skade.
She was so beautiful. It was a sinuous dark beauty. To look at her was to want her, to know her was to distrust her, but the distrust was ever conquered by that extraordinary beauty. Her face was high-boned, smooth-skinned, large-eyed and full-mouthed. Her black hair was lustrous, her body was languorous. Of course many girls are beautiful, but life is hard on a woman. Childbirth racks her body like storms, and the never-ending work of pounding grains and spinning yarn takes its toll on that early loveliness, yet Skade, even though she had lived longer than twenty years, had kept her fresh beauty. She knew it too, and it mattered to her, for it had carried her from a widow’s poor house to the high tables of long-beamed mead halls. She liked to say that she had been sold to Skirnir, but in truth she had welcomed him, then been disappointed by him because, for all the treasure he amassed, he had no ambitions beyond the Frisian Islands. He had found a plump patch for piracy, and it made no sense to Skirnir to sail far away to seek a plumper patch, and so Skade had found Harald, who promised her Wessex, and now she had found me.
‘She’s using you,’ Brida had told me in Dunholm.
‘I’m using her,’ I had answered.
‘There are a dozen whores here who’ll prove cheaper,’ Brida had retorted scornfully.
So Skade was using me, but for what? She was demanding half her husband’s hoard, but what would she do with it? When I asked her, she shrugged as if the question was unimportant, but late that night, before Osferth’s feigned betrayal, she spoke with me. Why did I want her husband’s money?
‘You know why.’
‘To take your fortress back?’
‘Yes.’
She lay silent for a while. The water made its small noise along Seolferwuf’s strakes. I could hear the snores of my men, the shifting feet of the sentries in the prow and above our heads on the steering platform. ‘And what then?’ she asked.
‘I will be the Lord of Bebbanburg,’ I said.
‘As Skirnir is Lord of Zegge?’
‘There was a time,’ I said, ‘when the Lord of Bebbanburg ruled far into the north and all the way down to the Humbre.’
‘They ruled Northumbria?’
‘Yes.’
I was bewitched by her. My ancestors had never ruled Northumbria, merely the northern part of that kingdom when it was divided between two thrones, but I was laying imaginary tribute at her feet. I was holding out the prospect of her being a queen, for that was what Skade wanted
. She wanted to rule, and for that she needed a man who could lead warriors, and for the moment she believed I was that man.
‘Guthred rules Northumbria now?’ she asked.
‘And he’s mad,’ I said, ‘and he’s sick.’
‘And when he dies?’
‘Another man will be king,’ I said.
She slid a long thigh up mine, caressed a hand across my chest and kissed my shoulder. ‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Whoever is strongest,’ I said.
She kissed me again, then she lay still, dreaming. And I dreamed of Bebbanburg, of its windswept halls, its small fields and its tough, dour people. And I thought of the risk we must run in the dawn.
Earlier that night, under the cover of darkness, we had loaded a small boat with mail coats, weapons, helmets and my iron-bound chest. We had carried that precious cargo to the uninhabited northern side of the creek and hidden it among reeds. Two men stayed to guard it, and their orders were to stay concealed.
In the morning, as the fishermen waded to their moored ships, we began the argument. We shouted, we bellowed insults, and then, as the villagers paused in their tasks to watch Seolferwulf, we began to fight. Swords clashed, there was the thump of steel on shield-wood, the screams of injured men, though none was really hurt. Some of my men were laughing at the pretence, but from the creek’s shore it would have all looked real, and slowly a part of the crew was driven to Seolferwulf’s stern where they began to leap to safety. I was one of them. I wore no mail and the only weapon I had was Wasp-Sting and I held onto her as I leaped. Skade jumped with me. Our ship was anchored on the creek’s southern side, away from the deeper water in the channel’s centre, and none of us needed to swim. I floundered for a moment, then my feet found the muddy bottom and I grabbed hold of Skade and dragged her towards the village. The men remaining on Seolferwulf jeered at us, and Osferth hurled a spear that came perilously close to me. ‘Go and die!’ Osferth shouted.
‘And take your whore with you!’ Finan added. Another spear splashed into the creek, and I seized it as we struggled up the shelving beach.
There were thirty-two of us, just under half the crew, while the rest had stayed aboard Seolferwulf. We came ashore soaking wet, none of us in mail and some without even a weapon. The villagers gaped at us. The fishermen had paused to watch the fight, but now some headed out to sea, but not before I made certain they had a good view of Skade. She wore a thin linen shift that clung wetly to her shivering body, and she had gold at her neck and on her wrists. The villagers might not have recognised her, but they would remember her.
A pair of fishing boats still lay at their moorings and I waded out to one and hauled myself aboard. Back on the beach my small band was gathering round a herring-smoking fire to dry themselves. I had Rollo and ten of his men, the rest were my warriors.
We watched as Osferth’s men hauled up the stone anchor, then took Seolferwulf out of the creek. She used ten oars on each side, and she went slowly. I felt a moment of alarm as she turned northeast and her pale hull was hidden from me by the intervening dunes. A ship is a kind of fortress, and I had abandoned her, and I touched Thor’s hammer in a silent plea that the gods would preserve us.
Skirnir, I knew, would hear of the fight. He would learn that Seolferwulf was half-crewed, and he would hear of the tall, black-haired, gold-draped girl. He would know that we had been abandoned without mail and with few weapons. Thus I baited him. I had thrown down the raw meat and now waited for the wolf to come to the trap.
We used the fishing boat to cross the creek and made a driftwood fire on the beach. We stayed all day, like men who had no plan. It began to rain in the late morning, and after a while the rain became harder, crashing down from a low grey sky. We piled wood on the fire, the flames fighting the downpour that hid us as we brought back the weapons and mail we had hidden the night before. I now had thirty-four men, and I sent two of them to explore the creek’s higher reaches. Both men had been raised on the banks of the Temes where it widens into the sea, and the coast there is not unlike the shore where we were stranded. They could both swim, both were at ease in the marshes, and I told them what I wanted and they set off to find it. They came back in the late afternoon, just as the rain was easing.
In the early evening, when the fishing boats returned on an incoming tide, I took six men over the creek and used a handful of silver scraps to buy fish. We all had swords, and the villagers treated us with a cautious respect. ‘What lies that way?’ I asked them, pointing up the creek.
They knew there was a monastery inland, but it was far off, and only three of the men had ever seen the place. ‘It’s a whole day’s journey,’ they said with awe.
‘Well I can’t go to sea,’ I said, ‘or Skirnir will catch us.’
They said nothing to that. The very name of Skirnir was frightening.
‘I hear he’s a rich man,’ I remarked.
One of the old men made the sign of the cross. I had seen wooden idols in the village, but the folk knew of Christianity too, and his quick gesture told me that I had frightened him. ‘His treasure, lord,’ he told me quietly, ‘is in a great mound, and a huge dragon guards it.’
‘A dragon?’
‘A fire dragon, lord, with black wings to shadow the moon.’ He made the sign of the cross again, then, to make certain, tugged a hammer amulet from beneath his filthy shirt and kissed it.
We took the food back to our side of the creek and then, on the last of the flood, we rowed the fishing boat inland. It was crowded and our small boat floated low. The villagers watched until we vanished, and still we rowed, gliding between reed beds and mudbanks until we reached the place that my two scouts had chosen. They had done well. The place was exactly what I wanted, an island of dunes isolated in a tangle of water, and accessible only in two places. We grounded the boat and lit another driftwood fire. The day was ending. The dark clouds had blown westwards so that Skirnir’s sea was in deep shadow, while to the east the land glowed beneath the dying sun. I could see the smoke of three settlements and, far on the horizon, some low hills where the tangle of marsh and sand ended and the higher land began. I assumed the monastery was in those hills, but it was too far away to be seen. Then the sun slid below the rain clouds and everything was in shadow, but a call from Rollo made me turn to see ships approaching the coast in the last of the daylight. Two large ships came first. They came from the direction of the islands, and then a third ship, paler than the first two and travelling much slower because she had fewer oarsmen.
Seolferwulf was the last of the three ships, while the darker pair belonged to Skirnir.
The wolf had come for his bitch.
I had told Finan to play the madman, a thing he could do well. Not mad as in moon-touched, but dangerously mad as though one wrong word could send him into a welter of killing. Finan, if you did not know him well, was frightening. He was small and wiry, his strength tensed in a thin frame, while his face was all bone and scar. To look at Finan was to see a man who had endured battle and slavery and extreme hardship, a man who might have nothing to lose, and I counted on that to persuade Skirnir to treat Seolferwulf’s crew with caution. There was very little to stop Skirnir simply taking Seolferwulf and slaughtering its men, except the possibility that he might lose his own men in the capture. True, he would not lose many, but even twenty or thirty casualties would hurt him. Besides, Osferth and Finan brought him a gift and, as far as Skirnir knew, they were ready to help deliver that gift. I did not doubt that Skirnir would want to take Seolferwulf for his own, but guessed he would wait until he had gained Skade and my death before he made that attempt. So I told Finan to frighten him.
Osferth and Finan, once they left the creek, took Seolferwulf up the coast and then, as if they did not know what to do, rowed to the centre of the inner sea and there let the ship roll on the small waves. ‘We saw the fishing boats racing over the water,’ Finan told me later, ‘and knew they were going to Zegge.’
Skirnir, of course, h
eard about the fight in the creek and how the Viking ship was now wallowing aimlessly, and curiosity made him send one of his two large ships to investigate, though he did not go himself. His youngest brother talked with Finan and Osferth, and heard how they had mutinied against Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and heard too that Uhtred had Skade, and that now Uhtred, Skade and a small group of men were stranded among the tangle of islands and creeks. ‘I let the brother come aboard,’ Finan told me later, ‘and I showed him the heap of mail and weapons. I said they were all yours.’
‘So he thought we were weaponless?’
‘I told him you had a wee sword,’ Finan said, ‘but just a wee one.’ Grageld, Skirnir’s brother, did not count the heaped coats, nor even the tangle of swords, spears and axes. If he had, he might have suspected Finan’s lies, because there were only enough mail coats and weapons to equip Finan’s shrunken crew. Instead he simply believed what the Irishman told him. ‘So then,’ Finan went on, ‘we spun him our tale.’
That tale began with truth. Finan told Grageld that we had sailed to the Frisian Islands in an attempt to rob Skirnir, but then he decorated the truth with fantasy. ‘I said we learned the gold was too well guarded, so we insisted you sold Skade back to her husband. But you wouldn’t agree to that. I said we all hated the bitch, and he said we were right to hate her.’
‘Grageld didn’t like her?’
‘None of them liked her, lord, but Skirnir was stricken by her. The brother thought she’d cast a spell on Skirnir.’
Finan told me this tale in Skirnir’s hall, and I remember looking across at Skade in the light of the great fire that burned in the central hearth. She was an aglæcwif, I thought, a sorceress. Years ago Father Beocca told me a story from the olden days, from the far-off days when men built in shining marble, the days before the world turned dark and dirty. For once it was not a tale about God or his prophets, but about a queen who ran away from her husband because she fell in love with another man, and the husband took a great fleet of ships to get her back, and in the end a whole city was burned and all its men were killed, and all because of that long-dead aglæcwif. The poets say we fight for glory, for gold, for reputation and for our homes, but in my life I have just as often fought for a woman. They have the power. I frequently heard Ælswith, Alfred’s sour wife who resented that Wessex never granted the title of queen, complain that it was a man’s world. So it may be, but women have power over men. It is for women that the long fleets cross the salt seas, and for women that the proud halls burn, and for women that the sword-warriors are buried.
The Warrior Chronicles Page 158
