One King's Way

Too late. As he shouted, one of the oarsmen, swinging stoutly but unskillfully, felt his oar turn under him, twist and throw him bodily off his bench, half over the side. Jammed in the sand, the stout ash wood held the weight of the driving ship for an instant, dragged her over, snapped into splinters. As the ship heeled, more oars caught, throwing the rowers this way and that. The last gust of the squall caught the sail, drove the keel on to the crest of a wave. Dropped her with a grinding thud on the sand. For seconds there was total confusion as Ordlaf and his mates, yelling frenziedly, kicked men out of their way, heaved ropes, seized oars, tried first to boom the ship off the bank on to which she had run, then to prop her at least on an even keel. Slowly the noise died, the landsmen, their king included, huddled nervously in the center of the boat. Shef found himself facing a pair of reproachful eyes.

“We didn't ought to have done it. Run aground right on top of the tide. Look—” Ordlaf pointed over the gunwale at the sandbanks already appearing to either side, as the sea started its long six-hour ebb.

“Are we in any danger?” asked Shef, remembering the way Ragnar's two knorrs had run aground and gone to pieces before both of them two long springs before.

“No, not danger of breaking up. It's soft sand, and we hit fairly slow. But they took us in proper.” Ordlaf shook his head with rueful admiration. “I bet that skipper there knew where he was to the inch. Swinging away with that old lead-line, and just drawing us on. And now a mile off and making his way back to sea.”

Shef looked round sharply, suddenly conscious of what might happen if the Snake-eye and his picked crew came wading across the shallows. But they were nowhere to be seen. He stepped to the prow and looked slowly and carefully right round the flat gray horizon, looking for the mast, the Raven banner that had been flying in front of them not ten minutes before. Nothing to be seen. In some inlet or creek the Frani Ormr was lurking like a poison snake, waiting for the tide and clear passage out. Shef sighed deeply, tension released, and turned back to Ordlaf and the silent crew. “Can we get off before nightfall?” Ordlaf shrugged. “We can try and kedge her off. Keep everyone busy.”

Hours later, the mood round the stranded ship had lightened, lifted by hard work, sweat and a growing feeling that at least the battle had been won, even if some of the enemy had got away.

The dropping tide—fifteen feet of drop in these parts—had revealed to everyone what the Norfolk had done. She lay now half a mile from the main Elbe channel, in a shallow valley between two long sandbanks, with runnels and streamlets stretching in all directions through the rounded hillocks of the shoals, broken here and there only by planks and ribs from long-forgotten wrecks. At first Ordlaf had had the crew over the side, digging round and under the keel with the intention of dragging the boat bodily backward the way she had come. As the tide fell and the distance to the main channel became clear, they had abandoned that idea. Not more than sixty or seventy feet ahead there lay another deep-water channel, still ten feet or more deep even with the tide almost out. Clearly the Ragnarsson skipper had reached it, knowing well it was there, and then swung right or left while his enemy's attention was distracted. Inland towards Hamburg and the main channel, or out to sea by some unknown route, it made no difference now. Now the business of the Norfolk's crew was to drag their ship the few feet needed to get her over the almost imperceptible crest of the shoal, and then down and into deep water. Already they had dug the sand away in front of her so that her bows now pointed definitely if gently down. But to shift her before the night-time tide, they needed a purchase.

Ordlaf had rigged one rope already, fixed at one end to the ship's anchor firmly planted in hard sand, passed round the base of the mast, and then handed to thirty men hauling together. The ship had stirred, groaned. Remained motionless.

“We need another rope,” said Ordlaf. “With a straighter pull if we can get it, and room for the rest of the lads to heave. Best if we could fix it over there.” He pointed to the sandbank the other side of the channel in front of them, maybe thirty yards wide.

“Have you got one long enough?” asked Shef.

“Yes. And we've fixed up another anchor out of halberd-heads. We just got to get it over there.”

Shef heard a silent appeal. The Norfolk, big as she was in comparison with other vessels of her day, was far too small to carry even a dinghy in the cramped space that had to hold everything, crew and provisions. She had instead a tiny craft made of skin over a pole frame, more a coracle than a canoe, hard to steer and easy to capsize. Ordlaf or any of his Norfolk fishermen could handle it, but they were busy at skilled tasks. Any of the landsmen who made up the rowers and mule-team would certainly capsize it and drown.

Shef sighed. An hour before he had drawn out the last of the ship's scanty, daily-renewed store of firewood, and told Cwicca to light a fire on the sand, rig the ship's great iron kettle, and make what he could out of the hard rations: flour, salt fish and barley meal. To a hungry man the smell beginning to rise from the kettle was tempting. He looked at the sun already sinking down the sky, considered a night spent struggling in rising water, and gave in.

“All right. I suppose I was a fenman before they made me a jarl or a king. I'll do it.”

“Can you handle it?”

“Watch me. If I didn't have the anchor to carry I could swim over in a dozen strokes anyway.”

Ordlaf's boatswain loaded the anchor carefully in the bottom of the coracle, keeping sharp edges away from the hide, made certain the rope attached ran freely. Shef looked again at the kettle, calculated the distance and the chances of an upset, and removed the gold circle he wore as a sign of rank. He handed it to Hwithelm, a handsome youth of noble family and impenetrable stupidity who had been forced upon him as his ceremonial swordbearer, and who was already carrying his sword-belt.

“Hold that till I come back.”

Hwithelm frowned at the casualness of the gesture, but slowly accepted its sense. “And your bracelets, lord?”

Shef thought for a moment, then slowly pushed the gold bracelet he wore on each bicep down and over his wrists, passed them to Hwithelm. They were unlikely to fall off, but if the coracle tipped over, as was likely enough, who knew what might happen?

He strolled to the edge of the channel, settled himself in the coracle, accepted the paddle, and shoved off. A difficult craft to steer with only one paddle and an awkward weight in it that brought the sea to within three inches of the gunwale. The trick lay in a twist of the paddle to straighten her up with every stroke. Cautiously Shef navigated across, tormented all the while by the smell of food, splashed ashore, dug the anchor in to cries of direction from Ordlaf. Then, with more haste as he heard the sounds of pottery bowls being served out, scrambled back in for the return crossing.

The rope was stretched across the channel. Easier than paddling was to sit with his back to the ship and haul himself along the rope, hand over hand.

Slowly Shef realized that the shouting from the ship had changed its tone, become urgent, frantic. He turned to the left, as he always did with his one eye, to see what was happening. Nothing visible, but Ordlaf with a look of horror on his face gesturing and pointing. Pointing to the right.

Shef swung hastily the other way, almost overturning the coracle with the jerk. For a moment all he could see was a black bulk throwing white water, almost on top of him. Then his mind took in what it saw.

The Frani Ormr bearing down on top of him, oars flashing, bow-wave curling to either side of the narrow channel. With mast stepped and snake-prow and dragon-tail removed she had lain concealed, no higher than a war-canoe, behind some nameless and invisible bank, watching her opportunity. Now she had seen it and was coming down as if to ram and trample her frail enemy under. In the same instant that he recognized the boat Shef saw a scarlet-caped warrior leaning over the prow, a mighty spear balanced in his hand. His teeth showed in a grimace of hate and concentration. In that instant Shef knew that there was no chance such a man would miss his throw. The arm went back, the spear poised.

Shef hurled himself instantly over the side, down into the water, plunging desperately for depth. A great surge in the water pressed him further down till he felt the sand grate on his chest, for a moment he felt as if he would be caught between keel and sea-bottom, he scrabbled furiously up and away. Something struck him a glancing blow on the side of the head, an oar digging deep, and he dived again. Then his lungs would bear no more, he had to surface and breathe, but the surface was not there, he fought his way up with frantic strokes…

Shef shot gasping into the air a few yards behind the Ormr's stern, stared wildly round him, struck out for the nearest shore. Found himself back on the sandbank where he had sunk the anchor. On the opposite bank someone had turned over the kettle, swords and halberds were being thrown to men clustered