Knights of the Hawk

almost as warm, too. In Ysland, these fetch many a penny. Enough for Snorri to feed himself and his kin through the winter, at least.’

I had to admit it didn’t look much like fur to me, but if that was what folk wanted to wear, who was I to argue?

‘Take care,’ I said. ‘Especially with men like Haakon Thorolfsson roaming the seas.’

‘I’ll take care, don’t you worry about that. Besides, once we’re beyond the Suthreyjar, the only thing we have to fear is the ocean.’

One of his crewmen shouted to him then. He bade me safe travels in turn, then stepped down from the quayside as the wide-bellied vessel cast off from her mooring. I called my thanks, and saw him wave in reply, then I watched from the wharves as Hrithdyr slipped out downriver, towards the sun- glistening sea, until she was out of sight.

It took several days for word to reach Magnus’s followers, scattered as they were across the lands that lay upriver of Dyflin, and another few for word from them to return. In the meantime Magnus showed us to his ship, which was grounded a half-mile downriver from the city, close to where the shipwrights had their slipways and their boathouses, drawn up on to the shore above a beach of mud and shingle and covered with an oilskin sheet. He called her Nihtegesa, which was English for ‘night terror’, the name that his people gave to the fear-dreams that cause a man to wake suddenly, drenched in sweat and with heart pounding. Not that she looked capable of striking dread in anyone’s heart.

‘This is your ship?’ I asked when the tarpaulin was drawn back by Magnus and two of his retainers. I did not know much of ships, but I knew enough to be able to tell when one was seaworthy, and Nihtegesa was clearly not. The topmost strakes on both sides were dry and crumbling, while a few others were cracked and darkened with rot; they would need replacing, as would the rigging. ‘How long since she was last out on the water?’

‘A full year, nearly,’ Magnus said.

‘We’d almost do better to buy ourselves a new ship,’ Serlo muttered, a little unkindly perhaps, though I would be lying if I said that the same thought hadn’t briefly crossed my mind.

‘And you have enough coin for that, do you?’ Magnus ran a hand over her timbers, stroking her gently as if she were a horse, at least where barnacles hadn’t encrusted her timbers. This was the first time I had seen him without a wine-jug either in his hand or close by, and he seemed a little brighter of spirit for it. ‘All she needs is a little care, and she’ll float again. Besides, she used to belong to my father. She’s all I have left of his, and I’ll not sail to war in any other vessel.’

At eighteen benches in length, she was fairly small for a warship, but she was sleek and, to judge by the waterline on her hull, would sit high on the waves. I had not measured her, but she looked to be around seven times from prow to stern what she was in beam, which were generally agreed to be the ideal proportions when building a boat with speed in mind. Assuming that Magnus was right and she could be repaired in good time, she ought to be quick enough to outpace any danger we might happen to run into. I had never fought from the deck of a ship, and had no desire to, if I could help it.

‘He reckons it’ll be a week’s work to patch her up well enough to ride the waves,’ Magnus told me later that day, after he’d had one of the shipwrights who plied their trade nearby examine her. ‘Possibly as much as ten days’, though he couldn’t be sure.’

We would have to be content with that, I supposed, and hope that the winds didn’t change in that time, because if they did then we might be waiting a while longer still. At least Magnus seemed more favourable towards this expedition than he had the other evening. The very fact that he was seeing to the repair of his ship was a sign of that, although I was wrong to assume his opinion of me had changed for the better.

‘I know what you are,’ he told me that night as we shared a pitcher of ale in one of Dyflin’s many taverns. It was late; the others were already abed in the rooms on the up-floor, and so we sat alone at a table in an otherwise all but empty common room.

‘You do?’ I asked, surprised, and not just because of what he’d said, but because he had said it in the French tongue.

‘I know you’re no Fleming, and that your name isn’t Goscelin.’

‘Snorri told you, did he?’ I ought to have known better than to trust the Dane, for all he had helped me.

There was fire in the young man’s eyes. ‘You’re one of them. One of the Devil-fiends who stole our kingdom from us, who ravaged our land with fire and sword.’

I would be lying if I said that his words didn’t sting. But after all these years I was well used to hearing such things from his kind. I wasn’t going to waste my breath trying to explain to him that England was King Guillaume’s by right, as the Pope had confirmed by giving his blessing to our invasion. Of course that did not by any means excuse the violence he had visited last winter upon the Northumbrians when he had scoured their lands. But whether I agreed with his actions or not, the fact remained that he was the lawfully crowned king.

‘If you’re so sure,’ I asked instead, ‘then why are we still talking? Why don’t you kill me now and be done with it?’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

I rose from my stool and nodded in the direction of the door. ‘I’ll fight you right now, if that’s what you want, but not here.’

Out of the corner of my eye I’d spotted the tavern-keeper, a slight, grubby man with hair that was a tangle of red curls, glance in our direction. He sensed trouble and wanted no part of it. Better, if we were to do this, for it to be out in the street.

‘Sit back down,’ Magnus growled. ‘If I had even the slightest chance of besting you, I might be tempted to try my luck. But I’m not as foolish as all that. I’ve grown up in the company of warriors. I know a swordsman when I see one.’

I remained standing. ‘What, then?’ I demanded. I probably shouldn’t have been provoking him, in case he changed his mind and decided he did want a fight after all. Because of one killing I had already been forced to leave England; I didn’t want to have to flee this place because of another. ‘If you’re not looking for a brawl, what do you want with me?’

Magnus rose so that we faced each other, eye to eye. ‘Do you know what you and your bastard duke took from us?’

‘Tell me,’ I said, even though I suspected he was about to do so anyway.

‘Because of you,’ he said, almost spitting, ‘I find myself an outlaw, a wanderer, treading the paths of exile, in flight from my own country, my halls and my home. And now you dare to ask for my help?’

‘I have no quarrel with you,’ I said. ‘We have an enemy in common, and, so far as I am concerned, that makes us friends.’

He didn’t seem to be listening. ‘For years we fought against your kind, and what good has it done us?’

I wasn’t sure if he expected me to answer that or not, and so kept quiet.

‘All that struggle,’ he went on, ‘all that hardship, and all for nothing. Even if I did manage to kill you, what would it change? It wouldn’t help us regain what is rightfully ours. The taking of one Norman life would not undo the slaughter your countrymen have wrought.’

I disliked his tone, but his reasoning at least showed he had a wise head upon those shoulders. Wiser, indeed, than those of many older and, one would have hoped, clearer-thinking Englishmen I had encountered in these last few years.

‘Did you fight for Eadgar Ætheling?’ I asked.

Magnus’s cheeks flushed red, not with ale but with anger. ‘That pretender? What makes you think I would ever march under his banner?’

‘Then who? Wild Eadric, was it?’

‘Eadric?’ he echoed, frowning. ‘Are you trying to insult me?’

‘You tell me, then. King Sweyn? Morcar?’

‘Enough,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘I didn’t fight for any of them. I fought for myself, for my brothers, and for my family.’ He stopped then, frustration writ upon his brow and in the set of his teeth. ‘You still don’t have the slightest notion who I am, do you?’

My patience, too, was running thin. ‘Should I?’

He sat back down upon his stool and buried his head in his hands. An anguished groan escaped his lips that