‘Which is why I need you here,’ she said, still holding my arm. I said nothing, but she knew I was thinking about Stiorra. ‘You say she’s trapped by the sea?’
‘In a sea loch.’
‘And you’d bring her back? If you could?’
‘Of course I would.’
She smiled. ‘You can send the fishing boat we use to provision Brunanburh.’ She was talking of a small boat with room enough for perhaps ten men, but well-made and a good sea boat. It had belonged to a stubborn Mercian who had settled in the empty land west of Brunanburh. We had told him that Norse raiders regularly crossed the mouth of the Mærse to steal cattle or sheep, but he had insisted he would survive. He did survive too, for all of a week, after which he and his family had all been killed or enslaved, but for some reason the raiders had left the man’s boat tied to its post in the river’s mud, and we now used it to send heavy supplies from Ceaster to Brunanburh. It was much easier to float ten barrels of ale around to the fort by sea than lumber them across the land by wagon.
‘Send men in that boat,’ she told me. ‘They can give Stiorra and her daughter the chance to escape.’ I nodded, but said nothing. Ten men in a small boat? When Ragnall had left dragon-ships crammed with sea-warriors in Loch Cuan? ‘We can spare a few men,’ Æthelflaed went on, ‘but if we’re to catch Ragnall and kill him? You must stay.’ She paused. ‘You think like Ragnall so I need you here to fight him. I need you.’
So did my daughter.
And I needed a shipmaster who knew Ireland.
We had sent scouts to follow the retreating army and, just as I had predicted, Ragnall’s force divided into two parts. The smaller part went north, presumably towards Eoferwic, while the other, about seven hundred strong, travelled on eastwards. The next day, the day after we had ambushed his retreat, we saw the first pillars of smoke smudge the distant sky, which told us that Ragnall was burning homesteads and barns in northern Mercia.
‘He needs to be harassed,’ Æthelflaed told me as we watched the far smoke.
‘I know what needs to be done,’ I said testily.
‘I’ll give you two hundred men,’ she said, ‘to add to your men. And I want you to pursue him, harry him, make his life hell.’
‘It will be hell,’ I promised her, ‘but I need a day to prepare.’
‘A day?’
‘I’ll be ready to leave before dawn tomorrow,’ I promised her, ‘but I need a day to get things ready. The horses are tired, the weapons are blunt, we have to carry our own food. And I have to equip Blesian.’
And all of that was true. Blesian, which meant blessing, was the fishing boat the Norse had left behind in the Mærse, perhaps because they thought the vessel cursed by the big wooden cross mounted at its prow. ‘I’m sending Uhtred to Ireland,’ I told Æthelflaed.
‘He’s well enough to travel?’
‘Not him! My younger son.’ I made sure she heard the resentment in my voice. ‘The boat needs food, supplies.’
She frowned. ‘It’s not a long voyage, is it?’
‘A day if the wind is good,’ I said, ‘two days if it’s calm, but you don’t go to sea without provisions. If they get hit by a storm they could be a week at sea.’
She touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry about Stiorra,’ she began.
‘So am I.’
‘But defeating Ragnall is our first duty,’ she said firmly. ‘Once he’s finally beaten, you can go to Ireland.’
‘Stop worrying,’ I told her, ‘I’ll be ready to leave before dawn tomorrow.’
And I was.
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.’