The Burning Land

are beautiful, but life is hard on a woman. Childbirth racks her body like storms, and the never-ending work of pounding grains and spinning yarn takes its toll on that early loveliness, yet Skade, even though she had lived longer than twenty years, had kept her fresh beauty. She knew it too, and it mattered to her, for it had carried her from a widow’s poor house to the high tables of long-beamed mead halls. She liked to say that she had been sold to Skirnir, but in truth she had welcomed him, then been disappointed by him because, for all the treasure he amassed, he had no ambitions beyond the Frisian Islands. He had found a plump patch for piracy, and it made no sense to Skirnir to sail far away to seek a plumper patch, and so Skade had found Harald, who promised her Wessex, and now she had found me.

“She’s using you,” Brida had told me in Dunholm.

“I’m using her,” I had answered.

“There are a dozen whores here who’ll prove cheaper,” Brida had retorted scornfully.

So Skade was using me, but for what? She was demanding half her husband’s hoard, but what would she do with it? When I asked her, she shrugged as if the question was unimportant, but late that night, before Osferth’s feigned betrayal, she spoke with me. Why did I want her husband’s money?

“You know why.”

“To take your fortress back?”

“Yes.”

She lay silent for a while. The water made its small noise along Seolferwulf ’s strakes. I could hear the snores of my men, the shifting feet of the sentries in the prow and above our heads on the steering platform. “And what then?” she asked.

“I will be the Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said.

“As Skirnir is Lord of Zegge?”

“There was a time,” I said, “when the Lord of Bebbanburg ruled far into the north and all the way down to the Humbre.”

“They ruled Northumbria?”

“Yes.”

I was bewitched by her. My ancestors had never ruled Northumbria, merely the northern part of that kingdom when it was divided between two thrones, but I was laying imaginary tribute at her feet. I was holding out the prospect of her being a queen, for that was what Skade wanted. She wanted to rule, and for that she needed a man who could lead warriors, and for the moment she believed I was that man.

“Guthred rules Northumbria now?” she asked.

“And he’s mad,” I said, “and he’s sick.”

“And when he dies?”

“Another man will be king,” I said.

She slid a long thigh up mine, caressed a hand across my chest and kissed my shoulder. “Who?” she asked.

“Whoever is strongest,” I said.

She kissed me again, then she lay still, dreaming. And I dreamed of Bebbanburg, of its windswept halls, its small fields and its tough, dour people. And I thought of the risk we must run in the dawn.

Earlier that night, under the cover of darkness, we had loaded a small boat with mail coats, weapons, helmets, and my iron-bound chest. We had carried that precious cargo to the uninhabited northern side of the creek and hidden it among reeds. Two men stayed to guard it, and their orders were to stay concealed.

In the morning, as the fishermen waded to their moored ships, we began the argument. We shouted, we bellowed insults, and then, as the villagers paused in their tasks to watch Seolferwulf, we began to fight. Swords clashed, there was the thump of steel on shield-wood, the screams of injured men, though none was really hurt. Some of my men were laughing at the pretense, but from the creek’s shore it would have all looked real, and slowly a part of the crew was driven to Seolferwulf ’s stern where they began to leap to safety. I was one of them. I wore no mail and the only weapon I had was Wasp-Sting and I held onto her as I leaped. Skade jumped with me. Our ship was anchored on the creek’s southern side, away from the deeper water in the channel’s center, and none of us needed to swim. I floundered for a moment, then my feet found the muddy bottom and I grabbed hold of Skade and dragged her toward the village. The men remaining on Seolferwulf jeered at us, and Osferth hurled a spear that came perilously close to me. “Go and die!” Osferth shouted.

“And take your whore with you!” Finan added. Another spear splashed into the creek, and I seized it as we struggled up the shelving beach.

There were thirty-two of us, just under half the crew, while the rest had stayed aboard Seolferwulf. We came ashore soaking wet, none of us in mail and some without even a weapon. The villagers gaped at us. The fishermen had paused to watch the fight, but now some headed out to sea, but not before I made certain they had a good view of Skade. She wore a thin linen shift that clung wetly to her shivering body, and she had gold at her neck and on her wrists. The villagers might not have recognized her, but they would remember her.

A pair of fishing boats still lay at their moorings and I waded out to one and hauled myself aboard. Back on the beach my small band was gathering round a herring-smoking fire to dry themselves. I had Rollo and ten of his men, the rest were my warriors.

We watched as Osferth’s men hauled up the stone anchor, then took Seolferwulf out of the creek. She used ten oars on each side, and she went slowly. I felt a moment of alarm as she turned northeast and her pale hull was hidden from me by the intervening dunes. A ship is a kind of fortress, and I had abandoned her, and I touched Thor’s hammer in a silent plea that the gods would preserve us.

Skirnir, I knew, would hear of the fight. He would learn that Seolferwulf was half- crewed, and he would hear of the tall, black-haired, gold-draped girl. He would know that we had been abandoned without mail and with few weapons. Thus I baited him. I had thrown down the raw meat and now waited for the wolf to come to the trap.

We used the fishing boat to cross the creek and made a driftwood fire on the beach. We stayed all day, like men who had no plan. It began to rain in the late morning, and after a while the rain became harder, crashing down from a low gray sky. We piled wood on the fire, the flames fighting the downpour that hid us as we brought back the weapons and mail we had hidden the night before. I now had thirty-four men, and I sent two of them to explore the creek’s higher reaches. Both men had been raised on the banks of the Temes where it widens into the sea, and the coast there is not unlike the shore where we were stranded. They could both swim, both were at ease in the marshes, and I told them what I wanted and they set off to find it. They came back in the late afternoon, just as the rain was easing.

In the early evening, when the fishing boats returned on an incoming tide, I took six men over the creek and used a handful of silver scraps to buy fish. We all had swords, and the villagers treated us with a cautious respect. “What lies that way?” I asked them, pointing up the creek.

They knew there was a monastery inland, but it was far off, and only three of the men had ever seen the place. “It’s a whole day’s journey,” they said with awe.

“Well I can’t go to sea,” I said, “or Skirnir will catch us.”

They said nothing to that. The very name of Skirnir was frightening.

“I hear he’s a rich man,” I remarked.

One of the old men made the sign of the cross. I had seen wooden idols in the village, but the folk knew of Christianity too, and his quick gesture told me that I had frightened him. “His treasure, lord,” he told me quietly, “is in a great mound, and a huge dragon guards it.”

“A dragon?”

“A fire dragon, lord, with black wings to shadow the moon.” He made the sign of the cross again, then, to make certain, tugged a hammer amulet from beneath his filthy shirt and kissed it.

We took the food back to our side of the creek and then, on the last of the flood, we rowed the fishing boat inland. It was crowded and our small boat floated low. The villagers watched until we vanished, and still we rowed, gliding between reed beds and mudbanks until we reached the place that my two scouts had chosen. They had done well. The place was exactly what I wanted, an island of dunes isolated in a tangle of water, and accessible only in two places. We grounded the boat and lit another driftwood fire. The day was ending. The dark clouds had