Lords of the North

him for, though our oars sometimes struck a mudbank, Trader never grounded. The red ship, being larger, and presumably because her master did not know the coast as Sverri did, was traveling much more cautiously and we were leaving her behind.

She began to overhaul us again when we had to cross a wide stretch of open water, but Sverri found another channel at the far side, and here, for the first time, he slowed our oar-beats. He put Hakka in the bows and Hakka kept throwing a lead-weighted line into the water and calling the depth. We were crawling into a maze of mud and water, working our slow way north and east, and I looked across to the east and saw that Sverri had at last made a mistake. A line of withies marked the channel we threaded, but beyond them and beyond a low muddy island thick with birds, larger withies marked a deep water channel that cut inshore of our course and would allow the red ship to head us off, and the red ship saw the opportunity and took that larger channel. Her oar-blades beat at the water, she ran at full speed, she was overtaking us fast, and then she ran aground in a tangle of clashing oars.

Sverri laughed. He had known the larger withies marked a false channel and the red ship had fallen into the trap. I could see her clearly now, a ship laden with armed men, men in mail, sword-Danes and spear-warriors, but she was stranded.

“Your mothers are goats!” Sverri shouted across the mud, though I doubt his voice carried to the grounded ship, “you are turds! Learn to master a ship, you useless bastards!”

We took another channel, leaving the red ship behind, and Hakka was still in Trader’s bows where he constantly threw the line weighted with its lump of lead. He would shout back how deep the water was. This channel was unmarked, and we had to go perilously slowly for Sverri dared not run aground. Behind us, far behind now, I could see the crew of the red ship laboring to free her. The warriors had discarded their mail and were in the water, heaving at the long hull, and as night fell I saw her slip free and resume her pursuit, but we were far ahead now and the darkness cloaked us.

We spent that night in a reed-fringed bay. Sverri would not go ashore. There were folk on the nearby island, and their fires sparked in the night. We could see no other lights, which surely meant that the island was the only settlement for miles, and I knew Sverri was worried because the fires would attract the red ship and so he kicked us awake in the very first glimmerings of the dawn and we pulled the anchor and Sverri took us north into a passage marked by withies. The passage seemed to wriggle about the island’s coast to the open sea where the waves broke white, and it offered a way out of the tangled shore. Hakka again called the depths as we eased our way past reeds and mudbanks. The creek was shallow, so shallow that our oar-blades constantly struck bottom to kick up swirls of mud, yet pace by pace we followed the frail channel marks, and then Hakka shouted that the red ship was behind us.

She was a long way behind us. As Sverri had feared she had been attracted by the settlement’s fires, but she had ended up south of the island, and between us and her was the mystery of mudbanks and creeks. She could not go west into the open sea, for the waves broke continuously on a long half-sunken beach there, so she could either pursue us or else try to loop far around us to the east and discover another way to the ocean.

She decided to follow us and we watched as she groped her way along the island’s southern coast, looking for a channel into the harbor where we had anchored. We kept creeping north, but then, suddenly, there was a soft grating sound beneath our keel and Trader gave a gentle shudder and went ominously still. “Back oars!” Sverri bellowed.

We backed oars, but she had grounded. The red ship was lost in the half-light and in the tenuous mist that drifted across the islands. The tide was low. It was the slack water between ebb and flood and Sverri stared hard at the creek, praying that he could see the tide flowing inward to float us off, but the water lay still and cold.

“Overboard!” he shouted. “Push her!”

We tried. Or the others tried, while Finan and I merely pretended to push, but Trader was stuck hard. She had gone aground so softly, so quietly, yet she would not move and Sverri, still standing on the steering platform, could see the islanders coming toward us across the reed- beds and, more worrying, he could see the red ship crossing the wide bay where we had anchored. He could see death coming.

“Empty her,” he shouted.

That was a hard decision for Sverri to take, but it was better than death, and so we threw all the ingots overboard. Finan and I could no longer shirk, for Sverri could see how much work we were doing, and he lashed at us with a stick and so we destroyed the profits of a year’s trading. Even the sword-blades went, and all the time the red ship crept closer, coming up the channel, and she was only a quarter-mile behind us when the last ingots splashed over the side and Trader gave a slight lurch. The tide was flooding now, swirling past and around the jettisoned ingots.

“Row!” Sverri shouted. The islanders were watching us. They had not dared approach for fear of the armed men on the red ship, and now they watched as we slid away northward, and we fought the incoming tide and our oars pulled on mud as often as they bit water, but Sverri screamed at us to row harder. He would risk a further grounding to get clear, and the gods were with him, for we shot out of the passage’s mouth and Trader reared to the incoming waves and suddenly we were at sea again with the water breaking white on our bows and Sverri hoisted the sail and we ran northward and the red ship seemed to have grounded where we had been stranded. She had run onto the pile of ingots and, because her hull was deeper than Trader’s, it took her a long time to escape and by the time she was free of the channel we were already hidden by rain squalls that crashed from the west and pounded the ship as they passed.

Sverri kissed his hammer amulet. He had lost a fortune, but he was a wealthy man and could afford it. Yet he had to stay wealthy and he knew that the red ship was pursuing him and that it would stay on the coast until it found us and so, as dark fell, he dropped the sail and ordered us to the oars.

We went northward. The red ship was still behind us, but far behind, and the rain squalls hid us from time to time and when a bigger squall came Sverri dropped the sail, turned the ship westward into the wind and his men whipped us to work. Two of his men even took oars themselves so that we could escape across the darkening horizon before the red ship saw that we had changed course. It was brutally hard work. We were thumping into the wind and seas, and every stroke burned the muscles until I thought I would drop from exhaustion. Deep night ended the work. Sverri could no longer see the big waves hissing from the west and so he let us ship the oars and plug the oar-holes and we lay like dead men as the ship heaved and wallowed in the dark and churning sea.

Dawn found us alone. Wind and rain whipped from the south, and that meant we did not have to row, but instead could hoist the sail and let the wind carry us across the gray waters. I looked aft, searching for the red ship and she was not to be seen. There were only the waves and the clouds and the squalls hurtling across our wake and the wild birds flying like white scraps in the bitter wind, and Trader bent to that wind so that the water rushed past us and Sverri leaned on the steering oar and sang to celebrate his escape from the mysterious enemy. I could have wept again. I did not know what the red ship was, or who sailed her, but I knew she was Sverri’s enemy and that any enemy of Sverri was my friend. But she was gone. We had escaped her.

And so we came back to Britain. Sverri had not intended to go there, and he had no cargo to sell though he did have coins hidden aboard to buy goods, but the coins would also have to be expended in survival. He had evaded the red ship, but he knew that if he went home he would find her lurking off Jutland and I do not doubt he was thinking of some other place he might spend the winter in safety. That meant discovering a lord who would shelter him while Trader was hauled ashore, cleaned, repaired, and re-caulked, and that lord would require silver. We oarsmen heard snatches of conversation and gathered that Sverri reckoned he should pick up one last cargo, take it to Denmark, sell it, then find some port where he could shelter and from where he could travel overland to his home to collect more silver to fund the next year’s trading.

We were off the British coast. I did not recognize where we were. I knew it was not East Anglia for there were bluffs and hills. “Nothing to buy here,” Sverri complained.

“Fleeces?” Hakka suggested.

“What price will they fetch at this time of year?” Sverri demanded angrily. “All we’ll get is whatever they couldn’t sell in the spring. Nothing but rubbish matted with sheep shit. I’d rather carry charcoal.”

We sheltered one night in a river mouth and armed horsemen rode to the shore to stare at us, but they did not use any of the small fishing craft which were hauled on the beach to come out to us, suggesting that if we left them alone then they would leave us alone. Just as dark fell another trading boat came into the river and anchored near us, and its Danish shipmaster used a small craft to row across to us and he and Sverri squatted in the space beneath the steering platform and exchanged news. We heard none of it. We just saw the two men drinking ale and