Crowbone asked and Hoskuld told him.
‘A message. I was to pick it up on the return and take it to Orm.’
To Orm? Crowbone closed one thoughtful eye. ‘And you delivered it?’
Hoskuld nodded.
‘You know what this message spoke?’ he asked and watched Hoskuld closely.
The trader shook his head, more sullen than afraid now.
‘I was to tell you of it,’ he replied bitterly, ‘when you asked why we were headed for Mann at all.’
Crowbone did not show his annoyance in his face. It was a hard truth he did not care to dwell on, that he had simply thought Mann was where Hoskuld wanted to go with his strange cargo. Either he was paid more after that, or Crowbone found a ship of his own was what the young Prince of Norway had assumed.
Now he knew — a message had been left by this Drostan, in Latin which Hoskuld did not read — he knew runes and tallied on a notched stick well enough, so he could carry it to Orm and not know the content.
And the thought slid into him like a grue of ice — there was a trap to lure him to Mann.
He said so and saw Hoskuld’s scorn.
‘Why would Orm set you at a trap?’ he scathed. ‘He knows the way of monks. They would not have written this message to Orm only once.’
That was a truth Crowbone had to admit — monks, he knew, would copy it into their own annals and if he went to Mann he would find it simply by saying Orm’s name and asking with a silver offering attached. For all that, he wanted to bury the blade in the gape-mouthed face of the trader, but the surge of it, which raised his arm, was damped by a thought of what Orm might have to say. He had fretted Orm enough this year, he decided — yet the effort not to strike burst sweat on him. In the end, the lowering of his arm came more from the nagging to know what this writing held than any desire to appease Orm.
‘Get me to Mann, trader,’ he managed to harsh out. ‘I may yet feed you to the fish if it takes too long a sailing — or if I find this message or you plays me false.’
‘We are sailing nowhere,’ Onund interrupted with an annoyed grunt, bent over the steering oar so that his hunched shoulder reared up like an island. ‘We are drifting until this is lashed. Fetch what line you have — I can get us to land safely and then we will need to find decent leather.’
‘I would hurry, hunchback,’ said Halk the Orkneyman, staring out towards the distant land. ‘It would seem the sharks have found their cod.’
He pointed, leading everyone’s eyes to the faint line, marked with little white splashes where oars dug, which grew steadily larger.
‘It is all of us who are doomed,’ Gorm hissed, his eyes wide, then jumped as Kaetilmund clapped him on the back.
‘Ach, you fret too much,’ he said.
Gorm saw the Oathsworn moving more swiftly than he had seen them shift since they had come aboard. Sea-chests were opened, ringmail unrolled from sheepskins, domed helmets brought out, oiled against the sea-rot and plumed with splendid horsehair.
‘Our turn to do the work,’ Murrough macMael grunted and hefted his long axe, grinning. ‘You can join in if you like, or just watch.’
Gorm licked his lips and looked at the rest of the Swift-Gliding crew, who all had the same stare on them.
Not fear. Relief, that they were not Frisians.
Hrodfolc was smiling, though his teeth hurt. He did not have many left, yet the few he had hurt all the time these days — but even the nagging pain of them could not keep the smile from his face, laid there when the watchers brought word to the
It had been a time since such a prize had come their way. Ships sped past this stretch of coast like arrows, Hrodfolc thought, half-muttering to himself, for they know the red-murder fame of the folk living along it.
He turned to where his twenty men pulled and sweated, grunting with the effort, slicing the long snake-boat through the slow, rolling black swell. No mast and no sail on his boat, which is how cargo ships with a good wind at their back could always outrun us, Hrodfolc thought, leaving us rowing in their wake.
Not this time. This time, there would be blood and booty.
‘Fast, fast,’ he bellowed, the boom of his voice in his head bursting tooth-pain in him. The riches called to him and he could see them, taste them — wool and grain and skins. Casks filled with salt fish, or beer, or cheeses; boxes stuffed with bone, buckles, boots, pepper. Perhaps even gold and silver. Honey, or some other lick of sweetness after a long winter. His mouth watered.
‘Fast,’ he called and his men grunted and pulled, wild-haired, mad-bearded, their weapons handy to grab up when they left off the oars and flung them inboard.
Hrodfolc eyed the fat ship, focusing the pain on them, the ones on the ship. He would rend them. He would tear them …
They streaked up to the side of the slow-rocking cargo ship and saw pale faces, four, maybe six and that widened Hrodfolc’s brown smile. The oars backed water furiously, then clattered inboard a breath or two before the long, sleek boat kissed the side of the
It was a surprise to them all, then, when a line of shields suddenly rose up and slapped together like a closing door. It was shock when a great, bearded axe on a long shaft arced out from under them, making Hrodfolc shy away sideways, though he was not the target of it. The axe chunked over the thwarts, the powerful arms wielding it snugging the snake-boat to the
Crowbone saw the gaping, snaggle-toothed mouth of the man who led these Frisian raiders, his face a great rune of terror at the sight of the shields and ring-mailed, spear-armed men who stood behind them, scowling from under the rims of horse-plumed helmets.
Crowbone hurled his own spear and it took the man in the middle of his twisted tooth, which flew out of his mouth as he fell backwards, spraying blood and head-gleet all over his own men. He hurled his second spear with his left hand and it went through the thigh of another Frisian, pinning the man to the deck of the snake-boat — his screeches were as high as a gull’s.
Yet more spears flicked and the men on the snake-boat screamed and flapped like fox-stalked chickens. A few grabbed up oars and tried to push their boat away, but Murrough’s long axe and a grip like a steel band held them. There were splashes as men hurled themselves into the sea rather than wait to die, for the Oathsworn were pillars of iron with big round shields, spears which they hurled and blades which they followed up with, crashing to the rocking deck of the snake-boat. The Frisian raiders had cheap wool the colour of mud and charcoal, spears with rusted heads and little wood axes.
Some did not even have that and Drosbo took a half-pace backwards as a raider with a knife, fear-maddened to fighting like a desperate rat in a barrel, hurled himself forward, screaming, slashing. The knife scored down the ringmail with little hisses of sound and Drosbo let him do it for the time it took him to grin and the Frisian to realise it was doing no good.
Just at the point the Frisian thought of aiming for the face, Drosbo brought his sword down in a cutting stroke that took the man in the join between neck and shoulder, a great, wet-sounding chop that popped the blade out of the man’s armpit and the whole arm, knife and all, into the sea.
Then Drosbo booted him in the chest, hard enough to pitch the shrieking raider into the slow-shifting, crow- black water in a whirl of blood.
There was a moment of crouching caution, then Murrough gave a coughing grunt, like a new-woken bear, and offered a final spit on the whole affair as he worked his bearded axe loose from the snake-ship’s planks and straightened, rolling the overworked muscles of neck and shoulder. Hoskuld’s crew stared at the astounded, gape- mouthed dead, at the blood washing greasily in the bowels of the snake-boat, at those still alive and swimming hopelessly for the far-away shore, black, gasping heads rising and sinking on the glass swell.
‘That is that, then,’ Onund growled out and clapped the stunned Orkneyman on the shoulder. ‘See if you can find some decent rope.’
