Sword Song

I sensed that he grinned in the darkness. “Then I’ll collect you,” he said, “and you make that decision.”

Because if I failed to move the ship that blocked the channel then ?thelflaed would be trapped in the creek and I would have to decide whether to commit Sea-Eagle to a fight against a ship with higher sides and an angry crew. It was not a fight I wanted and I doubted we could win it, which meant I had to open the channel before such a fight became necessary.

“Slow!” Ralla called to the oarsmen. He had turned the ship northward and now we rowed slow and cautious toward Caninga’s black shore. “You’ll get wet,” he told me.

“How long till dawn?”

“Five hours? Six?” he guessed.

“Long enough,” I said, and just then the Sea-Eagle’s bows touched the shelving mud and her long hull shivered.

“Back oars!” Ralla shouted, and the oar banks churned the shallow water to pull the bows away from that treacherous shore. “Go quickly,” he told me, “tide falls fast here. Don’t want to be stranded.”

I led Clapa and Rypere to the bows. I had debated whether to wear mail, hoping that I would need to do no fighting in the approaching summer dawn, but in the end caution had prevailed and I wore a mail coat, two swords but had no helmet. I feared my helmet, with its bright wolf-symbol, would reflect the night’s small light, and so I wore a dark leather helmet liner instead. I also wore the black cloak that Gisela had woven for me, that dark night- hiding cloak with its savage stab of lightning running down the back from nape to hem. Rypere and Clapa also wore dark cloaks that covered their mail and each of them had swords, while Clapa carried a huge, beard-bladed war ax strapped to his back.

“You should let me come,” Finan said to me.

“You’re in charge here,” I told him. “And if we get into trouble you might have to abandon us. That will be your decision.”

“Back oars!” Ralla shouted again, and the Sea-Eagle retreated another few feet from the threat of being grounded on the falling tide.

“We won’t abandon you,” Finan said, and held out a hand. I clasped it, then let him lower me over the ship’s side where I splashed into a soggy mess of mud and water.

“See you at dawn,” I called up to Finan’s dark shape, then led Clapa and Rypere across the wide mudflats. I heard the creak and splashing of Sea-Eagle’s oars as Ralla backed her offshore, but when I turned she had already vanished.

We had landed at the western end of Caninga, the island that bordered Beamfleot’s creek, and we had come ashore a long way from where Sigefrid’s ships were moored or beached. We were far enough away so that the sentries on the fort’s high walls would not have seen our dark dismasted ship come to the dark land, or so I prayed, and now we had a long walk. We crossed the wide, glistening, moon-rippled stretch of mud that widened as the tide receded, and in places we could not walk, but only struggle. We waded and tripped, fought the sucking mud, we cursed and splashed. That foreshore was neither land nor water, but a sticky, clinging morass, and so I hurried on until, at last, there was more land than water and the shrieks of woken birds surrounded us. The night air was filled with the beat of their wings and the shrillness of their protests. That noise, I thought, would surely alert the enemy, but all I could do was strike inland, praying for higher ground, and at last the going became easier, though still the land smelled of salt. At the highest tides, Ralla had told me, Caninga could vanish entirely beneath the waves and I thought of the Danes I had drowned on the western sea-marshes when I had lured them into just such a rising tide. That had been before Ethandun when Wessex had seemed doomed, but Wessex still lived and the Danes had died.

We found a path. Sheep were sleeping among the tussocks and this was a sheep track, though it was a crude and treacherous path for it was constantly interrupted by ditches through which the tendrils of the falling tide gurgled. I wondered if a shepherd was close by. Perhaps these sheep, being on an island, did not need guarding from wolves, which would mean no shepherd and, better, no dogs to wake and bark. But if there were dogs, they slept as we moved eastward. I looked for the Sea-Eagle, but though there was moonshine glittering wide on the estuary, I could not see her.

After a while we rested, first kicking three sleeping sheep awake so we could occupy their patches of warm dry earth. Clapa was soon asleep and snoring, while I gazed out to the Temes trying once more to see the Sea-Eagle, but she was a shadow among shadows. I was thinking of Ragnar, my friend, and how he would react when Erik and Alfred’s daughter turned up at Dunholm. He would be amused, I knew, but how long would that amusement last? Alfred would send envoys to Guthred, King of Northumbria, demanding his daughter’s return, and every Northman with a sword would eye Dunholm’s crag hungrily. Madness, I thought, as the wind rustled across the stiff marsh grasses.

“What’s happening there, lord?” Rypere asked, startling me. He had sounded alarmed and I turned from searching the water to see a huge blaze springing from Beamfleot’s hilltop. Flames were leaping into the dark sky, outlining the ramparts of the fort, and above those tortuous flames bright sparks whirled in the thick pillar of fire-lit smoke that churned above Sigefrid’s hall.

I swore, kicked Clapa awake and stood.

Sigefrid’s hall was ablaze, and that meant the whole encampment was awake, but whether the fire was an accident or deliberate, I could not tell. Perhaps this was the diversion that Erik had planned so he could smuggle ?thelflaed from her smaller hall, but somehow I did not think Erik would risk burning his brother to death. “Whatever caused that fire,” I said grimly, “is bad news.”

The fire had only just taken hold, but the thatch must have been dry because the flames were spreading with extraordinary swiftness. The blaze grew larger, lighting the hilltop and throwing garish shadows across Caninga’s low, marshy land. “They’ll see us, lord,” Clapa said nervously.

“We have to risk that,” I said, and hoped that the men on the ship that blocked the channel would be watching the fire instead of looking for enemies on Caninga.

I planned to reach the creek’s southern bank where the great chain that held the ship against the currents was looped about its huge post. Cut or release that chain and the ship must drift with the outgoing tide and so swing open like a great gate as her bow chain held her fast to the post on the northern bank.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we followed the sheep track, our journey now made easy by the light thrown by the great fire. I kept glancing eastward where the sky was turning pale. Dawn was close, but the sun would not show for a long time. I thought I saw Sea-Eagle once, her low shape stark against the shimmer of gray and black, but I could not be certain of what I saw.

As we drew closer to the moored guard-ship we moved off the sheep track to push our way through reed beds that grew high enough to conceal us. Birds screamed again. We stopped every few paces and I would look over the reeds and see the crew of the blocking ship staring up at the high burning hill. The fire was vast now, an inferno in the sky, scorching the high clouds red. We reached the edge of the reeds, and crouched there, a hundred paces from the huge post that tethered the ship’s stern.

“We might not need your ax,” I told Clapa. We had brought the ax to try to chop through the heavy iron links.

“You’re going to bite the chain, lord?” Rypere asked, amused.

I gave him a friendly cuff around the head. “If you stand on Clapa’s shoulders,” I said, “you should be able to lift that chain clean off the post. It’ll be quicker.”

“We should do it before it gets light,” Clapa said.

“Mustn’t give them time to re-moor the ship,” I said, and wondered if I should have brought more men ashore, and then knew I should.

Because we were not alone on Caninga.

I saw the other men and laid a hand on Clapa’s arm to silence him. And everything that had seemed easy became difficult.

I saw men running down the southern bank of the creek. There were six men armed with swords and axes, six men who ran toward the post that was our goal. And I understood what happened then, or I hoped I did, but it was a moment when all the future hung in the balance. I had an instant to make a decision, and I thought of the three Norns sitting at Yggdrasil’s roots and I knew that if I made the wrong choice, the choice they already knew I would make, then I could ruin all that I wanted of that morning.

Perhaps, I thought, Erik had decided to open the channel himself.