The boat scraped and slid across the stones to the ocean’s edge. Another push and it came upright in the water, floating. Vali and Bragi pushed for all they were worth and then jumped aboard, leaping to the oars.
Vali bent his back, rowing hard. Twenty paces from the shore, he looked back at the wolfman on the beach. He was now running for the water. The farmers took courage from his flight and gave chase. Vali heaved at the oars, no time to get the sail up, as the wolfman splashed after them, thrashing through the surf in extravagant swipes. It was then that Vali realised he couldn’t swim.
Willpower alone was keeping him going but he was taking huge gulps of water with very little progress to show for it. The farmers were now raining stones at them. Vali ducked and turned to Bragi. He had been going to tell Bragi to pull them out of range of the farmers as quickly as he could but he heard his voice say something else. ‘Get him.’
Bragi didn’t hesitate, just rowed the boat around under the hail of missiles. A rock bounced off his helmet as they turned.
‘That works then,’ he said, tapping his helmet, but Vali could hardly hear him. They came alongside the wolfman not twenty yards from the shore. More stones crashed into the boat. Bragi had armed himself with pebbles for Ageirr’s hunting sling but his attempts to balance in the boat and return fire were doomed to failure, so he opted to do one task well rather than two badly and put the sling away.
‘I’ll come back on that beach and shove those stones somewhere they’re not meant to go!’ shouted Bragi. He took up his shield and started insulting the men on the shore, to draw their fire while Vali worked.
Vali leaned over the side. The wolfman’s legs were pumping to little effect, his arms thumping at the water. Bragi moved to the opposite side of the boat as Vali bent down to grab Feileg. Every part of his conscious mind told him this was stupid. He didn’t know why he was rescuing this dangerous wildman. All he knew was that after the mire he would never be able to watch someone drown. But was it something even more fundamental? He remembered that rune, the floating body beneath him that he had seen in his visions — the body that was him, the wolfman and Adisla all at once. He grabbed the thrashing man.
The prince took a couple of blows on the shoulder and back from Feileg’s flailing arms but then he had him. As he took the wolfman’s weight all the tiredness of the last few days seemed to descend on him — the battle, the ordeal in the mire, the pit, the flight to the beach — but then he looked into his face. It was his own, looking back at him.
The stones suddenly stopped, which Vali thought strange. He hauled Feileg into the boat and regained his oar. As he and Bragi heaved on the oars to get themselves to a distance where it was safe to put up the sail, he looked back. Brunn the fisherman was standing in front of the stone throwers, begging them not to throw any more.
‘He thinks they’ll damage his boat!’ said Bragi. ‘You bastards throw one more rock and I’ll chop it to bits and swim just to spite you!’
Vali felt guilty. He realised there was no hope of Brunn applying to his father if a war broke out and his promises had been useless. He had made a poor man poorer. Still, Brunn wouldn’t starve; the community would rally as it always did.
One hundred paces from shore, they fitted the mast into the socket sailors called the old lady and let the offshore wind take the sail. As the boat surged forward, Vali allowed himself a glance back at the land.
‘We shan’t see this place again,’ he said.
Bragi was lost in practical concerns.
‘There’s no chest for this byrnie,’ he said, stripping off the mail. ‘It’ll be a game keeping our war gear dry.’ He was right. The seats for rowing were just strengthening spars across the ship. They kept the vessel sturdy but they offered no storage.
The wolfman lay coughing on the bottom of the boat, looking very ill.
‘No sailor,’ said Bragi, nodding towards him.
‘Well,’ said Vali, as the land receded, ‘he won’t be murdering us while we’re at sea, at least.’
He looked down at the wolfman, as he had looked down on him in that vision in the mire. From now on, he knew, their destinies were inseparable.
26
Adisla sat shaking in the bottom of the ship. She’d had the courage to do what she needed to do to her mother but her resolve had failed her when it came to herself.
She had tried to get her mother out of the bed but it was no use. Disa was too heavy and in too much pain to be moved. Then they’d heard the Danes coming through the farms. Her mother had begged her to do it but the Dane had been grinning at her from the doorway of the house before she’d had the courage. He hadn’t tried to stop her until her mother’s throat was cut. Then she faced him with the knife. He was a jarl, a tough-looking man with a hard, lean face. He was wearing a byrnie and a helmet, carrying a shield and a long seax.
‘Come boat, quick,’ he said in bad Norse. ‘Boat now, quick. Bad for me no time with you. Knife down, break arm. Choose.’
Adisla had heard his words and understood some of them but she could hardly make sense of what he was saying. She’d just stood sobbing, soaked in her mother’s blood, the knife loose in her hand. The Dane had taken it from her and led her out.
She’d often wondered what it would be like to set out in a drakkar for one of the great markets, or to see the southern lands. Now she was going where she had dreamed of, but in the most horrible circumstances. She had feared what would happen to her on the ship but, numb with the horror of what she had done, real terror didn’t bite at first. They had said things, of course — how she was going to get it across a week of ocean until she’d never be able to put her legs together again. Some had even come and drunkenly tried to talk to her, a cross between taunting and a strange sort of wooing.
There was one who chilled her even more than the rough warriors. He was a foreigner, she could see, wearing clothes of blue wool, trimmed with red. On his head was a four-cornered hat, he wore a thick sea cloak and on his back was a shallow round parcel, like a big disc, wrapped in seal skin. He came to her as soon as she was on the ship, examined her with his brilliant blue eyes as if she was a horse he was thinking of buying and then sat down next to her. Adisla looked back at the fires rising from her homeland and wept.
The ship pulled away and the king stood up, declared her his prisoner and told his men that anyone who touched her would find himself swimming home. The oars moved in a steady rhythm, the men drank as they rowed, and Adisla wondered how long the king would be able to control them. He said nothing to her, just threw her a heavy cloak and went back to the tiller.
Adisla resolved not to cry and tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she heard the Danes at the door of her house, saw Manni, brave with his seax, heard her mother begging her to kill her, saw the blood and saw the fires. When she opened them, she saw only the strange savage in his odd clothes, staring at her from not two paces away. She didn’t see lust in his expression, or anything in particular, just an implacable, constant observation.
After an hour at sea she allowed herself a look around. Haarik’s remaining drakkar was alongside but land was nowhere. Her hands were shaking with anxiety. Adisla had never been more than half a day away from her own home but she knew that ships had to cling to the coast. What other way was there to navigate? It was possible to take to the open sea in times of dire emergency, but sailors avoided it whenever they could.
Thick cloud was rolling in and the sun was just a lighter patch on the grey horizon. She could see they were heading north. The rain came on, nagging at the sail in squalls so they moved forward in sudden lurches and drops, making Adisla queasy. Then it really began to pour, curtains of water sweeping across the ship in the rising wind. The crew had abandoned their oars and were now employed in full-time bailing, using helmets, bowls and wooden pails.
Eventually Haarik shook his head. ‘Sail down,’ he shouted.
The problem was not the wind, nor even the swell, which was nothing to trouble an experienced sailor, but
