“Judith,” Niall said gently, “Eymund’s hands are clean of Leofric’s blood. Since we are adrift together, will you call truce until we come to shore?”
“Truce?” She caught back a sob. Niall longed to take her in his arms, but she was Leofric’s sister and this was for her to decide alone. Then she lifted her head and spoke steadily to Eymund. “You saved Niall, and for that I will forgive that you are a Danish pirate.”
In embarrassed silence they watched the black shore sliding past. The slap of water along the Firedrake’s flanks, the spatter of spray, the rattle and creak of gear, sounded very loud in Niall’s ears. Then Judith spoke with determined cheerfulness.
“Is there food aboard? My belly is clipping my backbone, and I doubt not yours are too.”
Alfgar had flint, iron and tinder in his pouch. They broke up oddments of wood and kindled a fire on the hearth-stones amidships. Eymund and Niall trundled out the oatmeal and herrings, those twin staples of the North. One breaker held a little stale water. Niall mixed the familiar oatmeal paste and baked thin flaps of it on the hot stones while the others grilled herrings. The bright blaze banished darkness overside, and revealed the blood clotting Eymund’s face and beard from a gash along one cheekbone. His tunic was torn to his belt. Also he was weaponless; even his dagger was gone.
They squatted round the hearth cooking and gobbling and spitting herring-bones in a silence of sheer animal satisfaction. Though both oatmeal and fish had been in barrel long enough to have passed their first freshness, none complained. Full-fed and warmed, they sat on round the fire, while sleep closed its soft grip on brains and bodies. Alfgar’s fair head drooped more and more, until it fell forward in a violent nod and jerked him awake. Niall grunted and heaved himself unwillingly to his feet. He padded forward and returned with a great stack of sleeping-bags over his shoulder.
“No sense in watching,” he said, and began to scatter and tread out the dying fire. His companions were now but shadows in the moonless night, but he saw Judith and the boy nod agreement. Eymund was already stripping off his wet clothes and wringing them out, before throwing them over a bench to dry. They shared out the sleeping-bags. Niall spread one to mitigate the planking’s hardness, inserted himself in another and rolled a third for a pillow. He laid his sword beside him with the hilt ready to his hand, and disposed his bruises as easily as he could. He took a last look at the stars, and then turned his head to the black bundle that was Judith close beside him. He smiled, reached out a hand and then drew it back. As he slid down the easy slope into darkness he found himself saying positively, “Judith will sail with me to Miklagard.” Before he had time to wonder at his certainty he was asleep.
12
The click of flint and iron roused Niall, and he crawled painfully out of his sleeping-bag, creaking in every joint and muscle, delicately straightened himself and joined Judith and Alfgar by the hearth. The tide had turned, and the Firedrake was pitching and wallowing as wind and sea wrangled against each other.
Dawn was golden in the sky, and the Wessex shore brightening out of twilight a mile or so to the south. Judith was fishing herrings from the barrel. She looked up at him and said with determined cheerfulness, “We will wreck more comfortably full-fed.”
He squatted beside her and shaped oatcakes, at which long practice had made him adept. The boy fed the fire and guarded it against scattering when the ship rolled. Eymund stood on the tiny foredeck, his yellow hair blowing about his head.
“Hild told you of Leofric?” Niall asked at last.
She nodded. “We found them before the crows did. When we did not find you, Edric said you had been taken for a harder death.”
Then they had never suspected him of desertion; they had known he would stay beside Leofric in life or death. Truly they trusted him. He put out a hand and gripped hers for a moment, without words. She looked down, and lifted her free hand to touch the red and purple weals that circled his swollen wrist. Tears glittered on her lashes.
“We did not miss you until we were near Sigebert’s, each thinking you were with the others. There was no help there; his men were all with Odda. We waited all day in the woods, and dared not attack for the hostages. We thought you were dead. Then— you know what befell. Then I called, and you answered—oh, Niall, you cannot know—” Her voice faltered, and she clutched fiercely at his hand. “When we heard you lead the Danes up the hill, Edric sent me to fetch you. We saw you swim to the ship, and came too.”
“Edric will want my head and hide for salting now,” Niall said wryly.
“Why?”
“For bearing you off in a drifting ship.”
“Edric has a deal more sense than you.” She looked up into his face, and her own strained pallor suddenly brightened to a real smile. “If you will drift about our coast someone must vouch for you as a harmless lackwit.”
He grinned at the hit, his first laughter since Leofric’s feast ended, and knew they were the closer for a jest shared in the face of bitter sorrow. He patted oatcakes onto the hot stones, while she and Alfgar spitted herrings on slivers of wood and propped them to the blaze. He watched her profile against the flames, sharp and clear and intent; then she glanced up and smiled at him, and his heart thumped faster. He marvelled that he had set all his desire on a freckled firehead with a scalding tongue and more brain than he had ever reckoned seemly in a woman, but she was the salt and savour of life to him. A Muslim’s Paradise of plump and lovely maidens would not tempt him from her; there was only one lass on earth for him.
Drawn by the sight or the scent of their activities, Eymund came down from the foredeck and joined them. He had washed his face and restored his carefully-trained moustaches to their normal symmetry, but he still looked the worse for the night’s work, with the raw gash along his cheekbone and his torn garments dyed in rusty blotches of blood diluted by seawater. The gay impudence of his grin was unabated; whatever his demerits, no detractor could ever have claimed that adversity cast Eymund into despondency.
“A fine fair morning to be shipwrecked,” he greeted Niall.
“Perfect for the purpose,” Niall agreed equably.
“I wish I could say as much for the shore, which appears to match its folk in sharp-pointed welcomes, but I make no complaints. A less certain death than my comrades offered.”
“What was that?” Niall asked bluntly.
Eymund grinned again. “Some suggested that I should replace you, but others reckoned that I was debarred from that martyrdom because I am no Christian, and were all for cutting the blood-eagle on me. What Skuli would have proposed when his ship was lost I did not wait to learn.”
“Challenged you to holmgang and killed you with his own hands, most likely,” Niall guessed shrewdly.
“Oh, he could not. Some man of Wessex broke his sword-arm for him yesterday. His raid was even less lucky than Rorik’s. They claimed that it was Odda himself who fell on them.” He peeled an oatcake from the stone, laid it aside to cool and spread another in its place. “I reckon myself best out of their unlucky company.”
“Do not reckon this any luckier until you are ashore,” Niall advised dryly. He prodded a herring, decided that it was cooked, and offered it to Judith, watching and listening beside him somewhat grimly. They fell to, accepting without comment the obvious fact that Heaven alone knew when another chance to fill themselves might come, once the Firedrake had grounded.
Eymund eyed Judith rather warily. He had a way with girls which had once been Niall's entertainment and envy, when he had watched him take his pick of the harbour wenches who gathered about him like wasps to fruit, but even Eymund must feel some discomfort in the company of a girl whose brother his comrades had killed. He addressed himself to Niall as he deftly lifted the backbone out of his herring and dropped it into the fire. “Neither of us will ever dare show his nose in a Danish port again,” he observed, glancing up at the dragon-head, “and the sooner we are back in the Middle Sea the easier I shall draw breath. But
how shall we find a crew?”
“You said no Dane would ever sail with you again,” Judith observed.
“There are Christian seamen in Frisia to be hired.”
She too looked up at the carven dragon. “She is great and proud and terrible. Niall, she is all warship. Will she serve for trade?”
“No,” he told her ruefully. He had been grappling unwillingly with that problem during wakeful hours last night, while his friends slept. “I shall have to sell her for a smaller ship and a cargo.” Though trading in the Middle Sea carried most of war’s hazards, the Firedrake would require so large a crew for her cargo-space that no normal voyage could show a profit. He had never had more than forty in the Raven, and so many had been more than he could comfortably content when it came to sharing the gains; not for him a warship’s lavish complement of three oar-crews of warriors and a handful to spare. Only piracy could support so many.
“No need to sell her!” Eymund suggested eagerly. “Ship a fighting crew, join your friends in Spain and make war on the Moors. A worthy aim, and profitable.”
“What I did once for friendship I will not do for profit. I am a peaceful trader, not a berserk.”
“A peaceful trader? You forget I have seen you fight! What of the time the Moorish galley attacked us?” For the benefit of Judith and Alfgar he launched upon an enthusiastic account of that memorable occasion, and added with loving particularity an inventory of the plunder obtained. Niall, who had brought away from the encounter an arrow-head between his ribs that he had been a deal less easily rid of, remembered it with less pleasure.
“The battle was of their choosing,” he pointed out a little sourly, pushed the last piece of oatcake into his mouth and stood up impatiently. He looked keenly about him, stiffened, and then bounded to the poop with that surprising speed his long limbs could achieve. He peered under a shading hand almost into the sun’s low eye. Hardly visible on the silver dazzle, tiny and far away, two longships nosed along the coast like disappointed wolves, seeking what they might devour.
The ship rocked a little, and soft shoes thudded on the deck beside him. Eymund was leaning to look, Judith and Alfgar scrambling to join them.
“What is it, Niall?” she exclaimed.
“Two Danish longships up-channel.”
“Will they have sighted us?”
“Before we sighted them, with the sun behind them.” She gazed questioningly at him, and he shrugged. “They will have seen we are adrift, but Ubba is dead, and it is every man for himself.”
“We shall be aground long before they reach us,” Eymund stated, nodding to the coast sliding past. The wind had veered to a little north of west, and was inexorably setting them inshore.
Alfgar jumped down and ran to stamp out the fire; the boy had a dependable head on his slim young shoulders. Judith exchanged with Niall one look whose promise set his heart thumping, and went to help him, leaving the kinsmen together on the poop. Eymund stared after her, frankly interested.
“Cultivate a little of the prudence you vaunted,” Niall recommended him in some amusement. “She is no mean hand with a javelin.”
“She is like a javelin herself. And as uncomfortable a bedmate, I should reckon.”
“You would be unwise to venture it,” Niall answered rather grimly.
“You know I never forced a virgin in my life! Dull sport, virgins, even when willing.”
“Judith would prove it in your vitals.”
“Is she your girl, Niall?” He gaped at him. “If I have angered you I am sorry!”
“You have not.” He was neither angry nor offended. Eymund was as God had made him. Niall, though the younger by some four years, regarded him as an adult regards an unschooled brat who still reckons himself the centre of the world.
Eymund sat on the poop and swung his legs over the edge of the deck. His brow was furrowed and his face unwontedly sober. It was some time before he spoke, abruptly and without lifting his head. “I should never have quitted you, Niall.”
“Then Ubba’s warfare was not to your liking?”
“No.”
Niall contemplated the top of his yellow head and wondered what was going on inside it. Eymund continued to stare ahead so fixedly that it was plain he saw nothing of what was before his eyes. “I am for peace,” Niall said, after another long silence. “Whatever you choose, Niall, I abide by it and you.” Compunction struck Niall afresh. Eymund had been fate-driven until no other way was left him, and the blame was his. “I am sorry that saving me has cost you so dearly,” he said gravely.
“That was the one deed I need not repent, so why should you?” He still would not look at his kinsman, but in a sudden flash of enlightenment Niall realized that he had been devoting some time to the task of examining his conscience, and with the clear insight of one strange to that exercise. “Besides, I think it has saved me from being slain by your redhead’s kinsmen—which I deserve.”
“Very likely,” Niall agreed, a harsh satisfaction in him as he imagined the plight of Rorik and Skuli, stranded on an enemy shore.
Eymund shifted uneasily, squirming inside his stained, damp clothing. He kicked moodily at the useless tiller. Then he suddenly braced his shoulders back, and lifted a face half-shamed, half-entreating, and wholly earnest. “Niall, give me baptism in the Christian faith!”
Niall gasped as though Eymund had doused him with cold water. It was the last request he would have anticipated of his kinsman, and in sheer bewilderment he demanded, “Why?”
“It is the faith for a man to die in,” Eymund answered simply, and the bright colour flooded up under his fair skin as he faced Niall’s incredulous gaze.
“But—but what do you know of Christian faith?”
“I have been shipmates with you and Helgi.”
Niall, utterly disconcerted that his stand against Rorik had brought forth such unlikely fruit, had no idea what to say to this heathen. He was no priest to tamper with souls. He looked helplessly about him for inspiration, and found none in sea or sky or land. “It—it needs a priest—Christian teaching—” he stammered.
Eymund nodded. “Mind you, I do not promise to lead a life of perfect Christian holiness—-not at once,” he warned him, his impudent grin breaking briefly through his earnestness. “But the first priest we find, Niall—”
“He shall baptise you,” Niall promised, and hoped that he might be a man of understanding, and not Odda’s Father Oswald. He could not imagine that formidable cleric’s extending any kind of welcome to so unlikely a convert. Then, reading the sincerity behind Eymund’s grin, he dismissed all misgivings and jumped down to haul him from the poop into an enthusiastic embrace, “Kinsman, you do better than you know!”
“That I shall learn, though your faith seems to forbid the more profitable enterprises,” Eymund retorted. “I only know I must.” He pushed Niall off, glanced forward, and said lightly, “Your javelin maid is a rare jewel. Any other wench would be listening with ears a-twitch.”
Niall looked also at Judith, and his strained face relaxed into a smile of tenderness that betrayed him completely. Out of his eye-corner he glimpsed Eymund’s mocking grin. “Yes, she is my girl,” he admitted. “I shall wed her.”
“Brave hero!” Eymund jeered, met Niall’s hard stare and understood that further pursuit of that jest would be very ill regarded, and demanded in awed respect, “Are you bearing her off in the teeth of all Wessex?”
“No. I shall ask her at her brother’s hand in Christian wedlock.”
“Are you mad? An Englishman would cut his sister’s throat before he gave her to a Dane! If she be willing, carry her off as your father did!”
Though Edric would scarcely resort to so extreme a measure, Niall reckoned it impossible that he would willingly bestow Judith on him, but his father’s way was closed to him. “I will wed her in all honour and with her kinsmen’s consent, no less,” he said flatly, and reminded himself that to God nothing was impossible.
“There was
never any accounting for your odd fits, nor any turning you from them. You will hack through Guthrum’s host at her brother’s side, eh?” A flush scorched Niall to his hair, and Eymund chuckled. “May I be at your back to see it!”
“Eymund, I do not ask that of you!”
“Hey, you never expect me to stand aside and pray for victory?”
The Firedrake suddenly spun about like a chip of driftwood caught in an eddy, and Judith shouted. The ship was driving broadside-on for the headland Niall had thought to pass by a quarter-mile. The two seamen leaped as one for the larboard side. “You should have provided another girl,” Eymund declared, laying competent hands on an oar-loom. “You will play a hero’s part by your firehead, and leave me only a bony boy to save!”
The tide had fallen to show the reef, and an uncomely sight they found it, with the green seas sucking and churning about the shining rocks, or roaring over them in boiling foam. The ship spun again, and he and Eymund, standing by with oars in the wild hope that they might boom her off, had to run forward. Niall shouted to Judith to hold fast, and she obeyed with a cheerful wave. Alfgar was coolly hauling in the boat’s painter.
He poised his oar and braced himself for the impact. He could see the individual strands of weed fringing the rocks and the white shells encrusting them. Eymund’s shouted jest reached his deafened ears as an incomprehensible yelping. Then the ship lurched as though a monster clutched her bows, the dragon’s head snarled emptily at the sky, and they were rocking through confused seas and past the reef. The rocks spouted white, so near that the backlash spattered them with stinging rain, and the cross-currents twitched the Firedrake clear.
They looked at each other and drew new breath. The two men clattered the oars back into their places. Niall swung to the foredeck. Approvingly he slapped the stempost, carved with entwined serpents, and grinned up at the dragon’s head, painted green and black, with scarlet jaws and tongue, and gilded teeth, eyes and crest. The Firedrake was a bold and lucky ship, and she accepted him as captain.
The Price of Blood Page 18
