He was not the only man on the hillside with eyes to see and ears to hear. Someone squalled alarm below him; excited, angry voices yelled among the trees, and then Rorik’s deep bellow summoned them back from the hunt and then called on all the gods for what he reckoned justice on his erring kinsman. Niall listened to all the trample of departure rapidly dwindling down the hill, and closed in to gather himself a Dane or two before they quitted the trees. At least he had kept them from marring Edric’s work; the fight at the stockade was done and the last Englishman running for the woods.
Rorik had seen that too, and had halted to gather his men together, shouting to guide them as they floundered to him. Niall growled in frustration, his chance lost. A tame ending it would be, to trudge the length of the valley naked and barefoot without striking another blow, after his hot resolve to die avenging Leofric, but he was no longer furious enough to charge the whole force and die killing. Then he glanced the other way, over the sea, and caught his breath. The Firedrake lay beside the shore. She rocked gently; anchored, not beached. The shore was too steep to beach a longship. A mad idea leaped into his brain. For a moment he remembered Judith’s voice calling his name, and hesitated. Then he shrugged. A castaway half-Dane could be nothing to an Englishwoman. If he was slain she would be briefly sorry, but there was no one on earth to grieve for him but his cousin Eymund, if he lived to do so; Eymund, torn as he had been by incompatible loyalties. Here was a better vengeance for Leofric than a miserable straggler or two ignobly knifed in the dark.
In a normal state of mind and body Niall, a prudent trader and no foolhardy berserk, would never have conceived so crazy a plan, but he had seen and suffered too much this day to retain any consideration of reason or commonsense when the chance to strike the deadliest of blows against Rorik’s whole force offered itself. He did not even wait for the Danes to go, but started down the hill past them. He got himself down to the shore and afterwards could scarcely remember that break-neck descent in the dark. His brief halt in the shadow of the woods to assess the task had nothing of hesitation about it.
Even in that moment his sailor’s heart leaped to see her lean, wicked beauty. His eyes followed the lovely curve of her stem, rising to the arrogant dragon’s head snarling wide-mouthed at her prow. She was anchored with room to swing on the tide, and straining to follow the ebb. Skuli had left an anchor-watch; Niall heard a rumble of voices across the hundred yards of water and shingle that divided them, and distinguished two heads along the bulwarks amidships. They were leaning there and probably speculating on whatever sounds of strife had reached them earlier. The skiff that had landed the crew was high and dry several feet up the steep shingle, where the tide had left it. The pebbles rattled quietly to every sigh of the incoming waves.
Niall knew that if he tried to plough across that slope of unstable pebbles barefoot and in haste he would probably be thrown and crippled, and certainly be detected. But further along the bay the low cliffs fell to jagged rocks, and he turned and trotted on under cover of the straggling trees. Out of their shadow night was not fully come, and he had light enough to make it an easy scramble. Rather more caution was required for the shore rocks, with their pools and crannies, sharp shellfish and slippery weeds, but he came to the open water and slid in, with a little involuntary gasp as its icy grip enclosed him. Then he was fighting the ebb with powerful strokes, his dark head scarcely visible on the dark water. The moon had not yet risen, and the last of the afterglow was fading from the sky. The headlands embraced the inlet in long black arms, stars pricked in twos and threes through the deepening blue-green above him, the waves frothed silver along the beach’s curve and the shingle clattered and sucked as they broke and drained back.
The black ship loomed before him, and he struck quietly for the stern, careful to make no splash. The sea was bitter salt on his thirsty lips, its chill barely held at bay by his active muscles.
Under the curve of her sternpost he trod water, pushed the wet hair back from his face and reached for the steering-oar. A hot fight would warm him finely, he thought, and timed his movements with the Firedrake’s roll, to him and then away as she yielded to the waves. A heave and a scramble, his bare toes seeking purchase on her downward-lapping strakes, and then he was swinging his legs over the gunwale with a tiny tinkle of falling drops.
The two heads close together on the larboard gunwale moved abruptly. Either that faint sound or the Fire drake's slight lurch had alarmed the anchor-watch. For a moment they stood frozen, and he heard a sharply-indrawn breath as they saw what had boarded them in the dim ghost-light, a dead man risen from the sea. Niall paused a moment, glistening white and wet, to accustom his eyes to the shadows inboard and to mark the obstacles in his path, and then sped at them in silence, his sword glittering as he drew and lifted it.
Imminent destruction restored life to the guards’ palsied bodies. They ran at him between the oar-benches, raising a great shout to hearten themselves, and the first clash of blade on blade assured them that their foe was mortal as they were. They separated right and left to take him between them, a move of such mossy antiquity that Niall had learned long ago how to counter it. He sprang up on the right-hand bench, leaped from it to the next, and descended upon the disconcerted warrior from his left side. The sword whirled down and round inside the axe’s belated swing. The second man was charging along the central gangway shouting, “Thor aid!” Niall let him come, jumped down and past him under his stroke, and slashed home one furious blow that split his shield and tumbled him among the benches, his helmet clanging away. He rolled desperately, came to his knees, clawed himself up one-handed by bench and ranged oars, and as Niall came at him to finish the work, flopped over the gunwale and into the water.
Niall heard him gasping and splashing as he floundered for the shore, but wasted no more thought on him. He wiped and sheathed his sword, caught up the axe and bounded to the foredeck. He struck one blow upon the taut anchor-cable, which snapped back like an enormous whip and smacked noisily into the water. The Firedrake lurched, and the tide’s grip tightened on her hull and drew her slowly seaward, stern-first. He stood under the snarling dragon-head, breathing a little faster than normally, and as the shore began to slide past he laughed aloud in exultation, shook his axe at the sky and slapped the carved sternpost triumphantly. The swimmer was labouring dourly against the ebb, but any alarm he could give would be too late.
“Niall! Niall!”
The shrill yell brought him to the gunwale. Three figures broke from the woods and pelted down over the turf and sands. They floundered across the noisy shingle to the skiff, wrestled it down to the water’s edge and shoved off. Two flung themselves aboard as it rocked afloat, and one kicked at already-shortened skirts with a flick of white legs. Niall’s mouth dropped open in stupid astonishment. Judith shouted something to the third, who waded thigh-deep to speed them with a hearty thrust and then splashed back to shore. Before the creaming waves had released his feet the oars were flashing and the skiff bouncing over the breakers.
Niall glanced aft briefly to be sure the Firedrake would pass the rocks, and as the last dark fangs receded and she drifted towards the open channel, swinging broadside to the waves, the skiff closed in fast. The swimmer was struggling into shallow water, but Niall gave him no more than a cursory glance. In the skiff’s bows a white face was briefly turned to his, and a long braid swung rope-like against the gleaming water. The incredible was fact. He filled his lungs and shouted, “Judith!”
The skiff shot alongside her larboard quarter, and he ran aft. Judith shipped her oars, fumbled at her feet for a moment, and stood up, swinging a coil of rope as she balanced easily to the lift of the waves. The rope flew, and he caught it and made fast. The boat nudged at the Firedrake’s planking, and Niall reached down his long bare arms, picked Judith out of mid-air as she leaped for the gunwale and swung her over it as though she weighed nothing. She thumped solidly against his damp body, and at the impact he forgot all the respec
t due to a Thane’s sister and tightened his hold to a rib-crushing embrace. He buried his face in her hair, and nearly put out an eye on the jutting point of the javelin she had thrust under her belt.
Her arms were round his neck, clinging fiercely, and she shook with tiny sobs. Her cheek pressed tightly against his shoulder, and her breath was warm on his cold skin. Another warmth was there, trickling wetly down his breast, and a great tenderness filled him. He eased his grip to let her feet touch the deck, and his mouth moved through her hair until her brow was under his lips. “Judith!” he murmured.
Her arms tightened, and she clung to him so that her shuddering shook him too. “Hold me, Niall—hold me!” she gasped, her head burrowing into his shoulder. “Oh, Niall, I thought I had lost you too!”
Their dead were at his side too, and they held fast, taking comfort in shared grief, while the Firedrake lurched towards the open channel and the beach receded to a narrow grey line between black woods and white breakers. A faint wild howl of bereavement reached them, and Niall, lifting his head, could just distinguish the scurrying little black shapes of Skuli’s pirates at the water’s edge.
“If they follow us they will have to swim,” he murmured aloud.
Judith gulped, set a hand against his chest and pushed back. He freed her at once, and she looked quickly about her. The Firedrake was rocking past the western headland with fifty yards or more to spare.
“Are you run mad, Niall, to cut yourself adrift alone?”
“It was not altogether prudent,” he agreed meekly, his lips twitching involuntarily, “but it seemed the deadliest blow I could strike against them.”
“To cut her moorings—yes. But yourself in her—did you plan to drift to wreck?”
“I swim well enough.”
“And where in Wessex could you come ashore without having your throat cut for an escaped Dane?” she demanded in exasperation that delighted him.
He looked down into her angry face, dim in the darkness. “Do you know, I never thought of that!” he confessed truthfully.
She gripped his arms and shook him slightly. “Did you think at all?”
“It seems not,” he answered soberly.
The Firedrake, free upon the open channel with the ebb-tide running out against a fresh south-westerly wind, rolled and lurched and pitched like a thing demented, presenting prow or stern or broadside indifferently to wind and sea. He caught at Judith to support her, but there was no need; she was as steady as he was. She pulled away from him and stared over the sea, still stained by the afterglow.
“Forgive me, Niall. I—I am sorry I was angry, but—we thought you were dead. And then you were alive—-but drifting alone—”
He laid his hand over the tense one gripping the gunwale. “I do not deserve that you should concern yourself enough to scold me, Judith.”
She stood unmoving a moment, and then turned back, jerking her hand free. “In God’s Name find something to cover you before you freeze!” she commanded abruptly. Recalled to his senses, he dropped from the afterdeck. He was shivering violently now, his teeth clacking together unless he clenched his jaws against the chill, and his heavy hair dripped icy trickles over his shoulders and back.
He wrung it out, and then dragged the dead man clear of the benches. He did not even approach Niall's size, so he gained nothing there but a pair of rawhide shoes. He trotted aft, and lifted the stiff curtain of untanned hide that covered the doorway of the aftercabin, where any loot Skuli had taken would be stored. But the Viking had found small profit in this cruise; pawing about in the dark hole he encountered only empty water-breakers, a barrel half-full of oatmeal, another of salt herrings that flavoured the gloom with their unmistakable aroma, oddments of rope, wood and canvas and a chest of tools. He padded forward to the other cabin to see what the crew’s gear offered. He rooted briefly in a pile of leather sleeping-bags for garments to cover his nakedness, but obviously all clothing had gone ashore on its owners’ backs. He turned a bag inside-out and towelled himself vigorously with its blanket lining.
The Firedrake, well out upon the channel now, was spinning aimlessly as the wind dictated; the urgent power tugging at her keel had spent itself. It was slack water, quiet as the Severn Sea could be. Niall ducked back into the cabin, and delved again among the sleeping-bags for one which felt newer and smelled sweeter than most. He slashed a foot or so off its length and ripped gaps in the side and bottom seams to admit his head and arms. With that makeshift tunic belted about him he was easier; a prudent trader could only feel ridiculous doing battle in his bare skin like the heathen heroes of the Red Branch. The warm woollen lining comforted his half-frozen body, and he returned to Judith in a state nearer normal, half-ashamed of his crazy venture.
The familiar headland was a good half-mile away, and the thrust of the wind, though it took the Firedrake back up-channel, was also pushing her off-shore. The last of the sunset had faded now, and the stars were out behind the high black woods. Niall halted by the great mast lying unstepped along the central gangway, and looked fore and aft, a seaman afloat again. Suddenly he rejoiced that he had set her adrift. Even helpless and uncontrolled, the Firedrake was a creation of power and beauty, and pride of possession seized him. He had cut her cable in pure vindictiveness, not to take her for his own, but now she was his and he would not relinquish her. “What will Judith say to Miklagard?” he murmured, and ran to her.
She was leaning to talk to her companion, patiently awaiting their pleasure in the skiff, but she straightened as he swung up onto the poop.
“Bid him make fast and come aboard,” Niall suggested. He had been gravely discourteous, giving no thought to him.
“Why, is there aught worth bringing off but his weapons?” Judith asked, gesturing to the dead man.
“Bringing off?” he repeated in surprise.
“Time to leave this heathen craft and get ashore, if we are not to row all night,” she said as patiently as to a child, nodding to the widening space of sea that sundered them from the shore. But he stared as if he had not heard aright.
“Abandon the Firedrake? Leave her to wreck?” he exclaimed, forgetting that a girl of Wessex could not share a seaman’s feeling for all ships.
She put out her hand. “Why, Niall, will you stay by her until she strikes?”
“She is mine now, Judith. You do not expect me to abandon her?” He put out a hand and caressed the carved sternpost in pride.
“I see,” she said dryly, “that even a Christian Dane is at heart a pirate. So you hope to save her?”
“Of course. Now she is mine I will not give her up.”
“Content you, I know when persuasion is wasting breath,” she said rather tartly, but he saw her teeth gleam in a reluctant smile. “And what will you do with a war-galley, peaceful trader?”
“Go back to trading in the Middle Sea, of course.”
She nodded, and spoke to the Englishman below. “Come aboard, Alfgar.”
Niall knew Alfgar, one of the raw boys new-blooded to war in Odda’s battle, with a man’s steady eyes in a tanned face that showed no trace of a beard’s first fluff. He came aboard, looking gravely from one to the other. He moved to strip the dead man of his weapons, worth men’s lives in beleaguered Wessex, and then Niall tumbled the corpse overside and it disappeared in a noisy spatter of spray. They stood together looking about them at land and sea, and the boy caught his breath on a little exclamation.
“What is it?”
“On Gull Point there—a man, I think!”
Something moved obscurely on the headland, flitting blackly across the stars. Man or beast, it was scrambling down to the rocks at the furthest point. The flood tide, already gathering its forces, was bearing the Firedrake back towards it, and after that first glimpse the moving shape was lost against the blackness of the headland behind it. Then a hail came thinly over the water, a spurt of white flashed and was gone among the breaking waves, and a regular pale glint of spray in the moonless dark showed
that a swimmer was churning across the current to intercept the ship.
“None of us can swim like that,” said Judith at Niall’s shoulder. Alfgar spat on his hands and hefted the dead Dane’s axe. Niall made no move; he had guessed already who swam so strongly in the dark sea, and one fear left him.
At the distance of a javelin-cast the swimmer trod water, his head a black blot on the faintly shining water. “Niall!” he hailed. “Need an oarsman?”
“I can use one, Eymund,” Niall answered in the same tone, and as Eymund struck out again, explained quietly, “This is the kinsman who set me free.”
Eymund was at the ship’s side, reaching up to grip Niall’s hand. A heave and a scramble, and he was swinging his long legs over the gunwale, remarking casually, “Even with a full crew, it may prove worth while to squeeze in a handy seaman.” He landed on his feet between the benches, and seized Niall in a fierce wet hug. “Niall, you cannot be rid of me!”
Niall caught him by the shoulders and held him off. “You were forced to flee—for my sake?”
Eymund chuckled. “Rorik howled of blood-eagles, but it was when Skuli learned his ship was gone that I reckoned it prudent not to stay. You always counselled prudence.” He shook himself like a dog and laughed breathlessly. Niall, acquainted with the light-headed laughter that follows escape from extreme peril, discounted it. He was miserably aware that Eymund for his sake had betrayed kinsmen and comrades, and like him was a dead man if ever he came again into their power.
“At least you are now clear of English vengeance, which they can scarcely escape,” he muttered, and then, regrets for what was done being singularly profitless, gathered his wits for the formalities. “Judith, this is my kinsman Eymund Eystein’s son. Eymund, the Lady Judith of Brockhurst, and her man Alfgar.” Eymund drew breath in audible consternation. There was no way of glossing over their differences, and he chose the forthright and only way of meeting them. “If you are sister to Niall’s redhead, you would rather run me through than greet me,” he said flatly.
The Price of Blood Page 17
