‘You might find it easier to pay,’ said Vali. ‘Haithabyr is a town of a thousand people, if what I hear is true. Even you can’t fight that many, wolfman, though one day I will. We will come here and burn their lands from shore to shore for what they have done.’
Feileg just looked at him blankly.
The problem of turning up in a fishing boat when pretending to be an ambassador had occurred to Vali, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he decided not to let it worry him.
The wind was not entirely favourable and the men had to row their way across, which Vali thought no bad thing. It was good to get there at the oar, clearly vigorous, clearly in charge of his destiny.
As it turned out, the bjorkey was no problem. It was no more than two houses and a collection of barrels with a few people sitting around them. A couple of the men on the shore raised their arms in salute as the boat passed and Vali returned their greeting.
‘That went smoothly,’ said Vali.
‘So far,’ said Bragi.
The wolfman looked around him. Like Vali, he had never seen a place like this — small flat fields of green oats turning to gold where the dark clouds broke and the sun poured through. They were on a long narrow inlet which was much calmer than the open ocean, and for the first time since they had set off Vali saw the colour come back to Feileg’s cheeks.
As they moved up the river, there were small camps. Children ran down to the shore, trying to attract their attention, shouting out words, one in four of which Vali recognised. That word was ‘stew’, and if he had been under any misapprehension as to what they were talking about, their mothers stood by fires, rattling earthenware pots and making eating gestures.
‘What hospitality!’ said Vali.
‘Not quite,’ said Bragi.
‘They’re offering us food.’
‘Yes, and they won’t be handing it over until we’ve paid for it. In coin.’
Vali laughed. ‘It’s a poor man indeed who takes payment for food from a traveller.’
‘Well you’ll find Haithabyr full of poor men then,’ said Bragi, ‘though you wouldn’t know it by the silks they wear.’
Vali concentrated on his rowing after that. To him, it was demeaning to ask guests to pay, no matter how many there were. Likewise, it was shameful for a guest who had made great claims on his host’s hospitality to leave without offering a gift. The idea of paying for what you received had never even occurred to him until that moment, and it confirmed his view that Danes must be entirely lacking in honour. And he was going into a nest of them.
It was two hours before he saw Haithabyr. They rounded a bend in the inlet and there it was, crammed by the waterfront. He had never seen so many houses. They seemed to fill the gentle slope that led up from the river. There must have been a hundred altogether, not counting stables and wells, even a large church — as he now knew it to be — like he’d seen on the raid, marked by a cross on the roof.
It was as if the buildings were not properly anchored and had slid down to the harbour, pushing in on each other like cattle at a feed trough, shouldering each other aside in an attempt to get to — what? There were eight ships — two small snekkes, a fearsome drakkar and five merchant knarrs — moored a few yards off the wooden jetties. The narrow space between the houses and the water was devoted to boat repairs, large and small. Here was a longship taking a patch to the bottom of its hull; there were fishing boats stripped to almost nothing. The boats reminded Vali of the carcasses of beasts, half eaten by wild animals, their ribs showing.
Something strange was happening. Two of the knarrs were full of rocks and men were casting them overboard into the harbour. Vali realised that this must be some sort of defence they were building, a screening wall against sea attack. The idea was so simple and so brilliant that Vali wondered why his people or the Rygir had never thought of it.
People were on the waterfront, a knot of fifty or sixty cramming forwards shouting to them, some waving weapons, which made Vali feel he wanted to reach for his sword. Others brandished bizarre items: rich cloths, blocks of iron, necklaces and arm rings, clothes even.
‘Do they mean us harm?’ said Vali, eyeing one particularly large man waving a spear.
‘Only to our pockets,’ said Bragi. ‘They’re trying to trade with us.’
He heard calls again in uncertain languages, gibberish, some words in a weird Danish slang, followed by, ‘Where you from? My friends, where you from?’
‘We are Rygir!’ shouted Bragi, which to all intents and purposes they were.
The gibberish ceased and everything became intelligible. ‘See these silks, carried for three years from Serkland, glass from there too.’ ‘If you have furs I will buy them.’ ‘Best price, best price. Ale and mead for the weary traveller!’ ‘Hello, mates. Let’s do business!’ ‘My father was Rygir, only the best deals for them!’
Men were virtually fighting each other to get to the front of the wooden jetty, some almost falling into the water. Vali realised why the houses were crammed so tight. They too were trying to be as near as they could to the source of trade — the inlet.
Now some of the traders were climbing into boats to row out, so Vali could see he needed to act quickly. Were they traders, though? One was very bizarrely dressed, with a wolf’s mask on his face, not like Feileg’s pelt but a stiff thing made of wicker and fur.
The prince stood up in his boat and shouted to the crowd,‘I am Vali, son of Authun the Pitiless, king of the sword-Horda, ward of Forkbeard, king of the Rygir. I am here to speak to your king, Hemming the Great, son of Godfred.’
‘Greetings to the son of the White Wolf!’ shouted the man with the mask on.
Three boats came towards them, two or three men in each. Vali realised he had little choice but to let them come alongside. When they did, he almost did reach for his sword. Not pausing for a breath, three men expertly stepped into his boat — one with iron ingots, another with a roll of carved daggers and the third in the wolf mask, a small fat man in many-coloured silks. Vali could see as he climbed aboard that his hair was black and as slick as a seal’s back.
‘Best iron in the world,’ said the man with the ingots. ‘We can deliver as much as you like to your homeland. Think of the swords your smiths could forge with this.’
Vali looked at the man. He actually did find his words persuasive and began thinking about how, when he was king, he would love to equip his bodyguards with fine weapons they could use on these Danes.
‘This dagger was used to kill a dragon in the lands of the east. It will pierce even the strongest byrnie,’ said the man with the knives.
‘And what are you selling?’ said Bragi to the man in the mask. Bragi had tried to drain the belligerence from his voice, which made him sound more threatening than if he’d just shouted.
The wolf-masked man let out a deep chuckle. ‘Everything!’ he said.
Feileg, who had watched all this with a kind of horror in his eyes, suddenly jumped up and roared at the man in the mask.
‘No!’ said Vali, gesturing for him to sit down, but the ingot seller and the dagger man had both instinctively leaped for their boats. The knife merchant managed to roll into his, but the other, in his panic to get away, missed his step and fell into the water, drawing a huge laugh from the crowd. Only the man in the mask remained. He seemed entirely unperturbed by Feileg’s display and the sudden exit of his two friends.
‘Sit down,’ said Bragi, to Feileg.
The wolfman ignored him and stood glowering down at the remaining merchant. Bragi put his weight suddenly to the side of the boat, wobbling it and forcing Feileg to grab for the rail.
‘I said sit down,’ said Bragi.
The wolfman did as he was told.
‘Berserks are such formidable bodyguards, are they not, prince? And yet never quite your men for a pleasant hello. I was brought up among them, if you can believe it. We call them the Vucari, men who live as wolves. First time in the big town for the boy, I bet.’
‘Who are you?’ said Vali.
‘I am your smoother of the way in Haithabyr, your scythe in a forest of doubt, your beacon in darkness, your-’
