enough. Now that we were almost upon Haakon’s winter fastness, however, it became clear just how powerful a position it commanded, perched as it was atop the rocky promontory. Gradually I began to make out the rough shadows of two sentries standing atop the gatehouse, behind the parapet, with spears in hand, the points presented to the sky. They saw us as surely as we saw them. Recognising us for the party that had been sent to the spring, straightaway they called down to whoever was manning the gates. With a long creak of timbers, those great doors swung open. This was the moment of reckoning. All our careful planning would be for naught if we failed here.
Loose pebbles crunched beneath my feet as I led my horse up the track towards the open gates, and I breathed deeply to try to still the pounding in my chest, convinced that someone would hear it.
The sentries on the gatehouse called out something that might have been either a greeting or a challenge; I guessed it was the former, because Magnus, at the head of the column, raised a hand in acknowledgement. He and Ælfhelm passed beneath the gatehouse’s arch, followed by Eithne and the girls, and then Godric and myself. Two fair-haired boys, both no older than thirteen or fourteen, their cloaks huddled about them to guard against the cold, stood just inside the gates. From the red rims around their eyes, the sorry-looking expressions on their faces and their unsteadiness on their feet, I reckoned they were suffering from having overindulged the previous night. Perhaps that was why they had been placed on gate duty this cold morning, as a punishment for their drinking, and perhaps if they had been more awake then they might have spotted that we were not the same men who had ridden out from the fortress earlier. But, as I’d often found, folk will often see only what they expect to see. The thought that we might attempt such a ruse wouldn’t even have entered their heads, and so they had no reason to pay us close attention.
Nevertheless I dared not meet their eyes, but instead fixed my gaze on the way ahead, concentrating merely on putting one foot in front of the other, and on coaxing my stubborn horse on. Behind us, I heard the great oak gates creak as they were closed once more.
We were inside Jarnborg. Against the odds, against even my expectations, we had done it. I could scarcely believe it. Under the very noses of Haakon’s men, we had slipped inside his precious stronghold, his so-called iron fortress, against the walls of which Magnus’s assault had been broken and scores of his loyal followers had been killed. The place that not so long ago we had considered all but unassailable.
All was deathly still, and strangely so, considering that it had to be more than an hour since first light. Usually by this time I would have expected to hear shouting and laughing as men trained at arms in the yard, and the steady ring of hammer upon anvil as a farrier worked at his forge. But there was none of that. Save for those at the gate, no one seemed yet to have risen. Instead there was only an eerie hush, broken occasionally by a dog’s bark or a cock’s crow, as if the whole of Jarnborg were still asleep, its defenders all snoring soundly in their beds.
‘Where is everyone?’ I murmured to Eithne once we were far enough away from the gate and the sentries posted there that we could talk without fear of being overheard.
Even as I spoke, through the lingering mist, I spied an array of tents, more than I could easily count but numbering in the scores, arranged in rings around burnt-out campfires. A few men had emerged from them, but not many, and they looked barely able to stand. They sat upon the muddy ground outside their tents, groaning and holding their heads in their hands. One lay curled on the ground, his dog licking his face, eagerly trying to wake him from his stupor, while a pair of hogs that must have escaped their pen wandered the wreckage in search of morsels. Everywhere the ground was littered with wineskins and ale-flasks, with chicken bones from which strings of flesh still hung, with half-eaten hunks of bread, wooden bowls in which the remains of some kind of bean stew had frozen, browned apple cores, broken clay cups, knives and skewers, iron ladles, spoons carved from antler and bone, and empty casks half the height of a man, some of which had been overturned.
‘There was a feast last night,’ Eithne said at last, after passing on my question to the other girls. ‘A celebration.’
‘A celebration?’ Godric put in, frowning. ‘Of what?’
A smile crossed my face then, and I had to stifle a laugh as, even before Eithne had the chance to explain, I realised what had happened. Our ploy had worked better than I could ever have dared imagine.
Hardly had our two ships been sighted leaving his shores, she said, than Haakon had ordered two dozen barrels of ale brought up from his cellars, and another dozen of wine, and haunches of meat and rounds of cheese and all manner of other foodstuffs from his storehouses. There had been dancing and there had been singing, as the Dane and his followers savoured their victory and fell about with laughter at how he had driven us off with mere words, at how he had frightened us into fleeing. And so it had gone on most of the way through the night, until, insensible with drink, they had eventually given themselves up to sleep.
The deceiver had himself been deceived. He had been too ready to believe in appearances, and so he had let down his guard. He had underestimated us, underestimated our cunning. Now we would make him pay for that blunder.
A thrill awakened within me: a thrill of a kind I hadn’t known in what felt like an age. All the doubts, all the fears, all the misgivings that I’d harboured suddenly fell away. With every heartbeat, as I stared out across the yard and the debris left over from the feasting, my confidence grew.
For that was when I truly began to believe that we could do this. Victory was ours for the taking. All we had to do was to seize the opportunity we’d been given.
‘What now?’ Ælfhelm growled under his breath. He kept glancing about, as if expecting hordes of foemen to descend upon us at any moment.
‘Now we find my woman,’ I said, knowing that we had no time to lose. The past few days at sea had taught me that once this early fog did start to lift, it lifted quickly. Already it was decidedly thinner now than it had been when we’d ambushed Haakon’s men. Whereas before we could barely see further than a stone’s throw, now I was able to see on the far side of the enclosure the faint outlines of barns and storehouses, halls and workshops, stables and chicken-pens. Above the palisade to the east, meanwhile, the sun’s disc was struggling to make itself shown, its feeble light just about visible through the gloom.
Earlier, with Eithne’s help, I’d described Oswynn to the slaves, and asked if they knew her. It was as I’d feared when Haakon showed me the marriage-band on her finger. He wasn’t keeping her as a mere house- servant, or a dairymaid or corn-grinder or washerwoman. As if I’d believed for a heartbeat that he would. Rather, she was one of the chosen few he often liked to take to his bed. They were quartered separately from the other thralls, in a building close by his own hall, from which they could be readily summoned at a moment’s notice whenever Haakon’s lusts consumed him. My blood boiled at the thought.
‘They’re well treated,’ Eithne had added. ‘They’re fed well, better than his other slaves, at least, and he makes sure they always have the finest clothes-’
I’d stopped her before she’d been able to go on. Eithne hadn’t been with us when we’d met Haakon the previous day. She hadn’t seen the bruises decorating Oswynn’s cheek, or how thin she looked.
Those thoughts were foremost in my mind now, as I bade Eithne ask the slave-girls where I could find this building where Oswynn was being held. No sooner had she finished speaking than they began pointing in the direction of a long stone-and-thatch hall in the far corner of the enclosure, and the squat, low-gabled house that stood beside it.
So near. Little more than a hundred paces stood between myself and Oswynn. My throat was dry and I swallowed to moisten it. Soon I would be able to hold her, as I hadn’t held her in three long years.
‘Go with the girls,’ I told Eithne. ‘Get word to the other slaves. Tell them there’s going to be a battle, but that they have nothing to fear from us. They’ll be safe provided that they stay out of sight of Haakon’s men. So long as they’re ready to leave this place when his hall goes up in flames, I can guarantee them freedom. Can you remember all that?’
‘I think so,’ she replied, somewhat stiffly. ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’
‘Then don’t waste time quarrelling with me. Go now.’
Her eyes betrayed her anxiety, but she did as she was told without further argument. I watched the four of them go, still carrying those pails lest anyone looking on suspected there was something awry.
‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We can’t tarry here.’
A cock crowed, heralding the morning, but that was the only sound to break the stillness. Leaving the horses tethered to a post, we trudged across the muddy yard towards that low building. Icy water seeped into my boots, making my toes numb, as we skirted our way around the tents and the men camped there, walking with purpose
