‘There’ll be no one to stop us,’ Finan said with amusement, ‘the bastards are all here!’
He was staring at the house, my old house where we had taken refuge when we first arrived in Lundene. A ship was moored there, a long, low ship moored to face upstream, with a high prow on which a cross was mounted. Her mast was raked, giving her a predatory appearance. I guessed she was twice as long as the Brimwisa, which made her a much faster ship, and for a heartbeat I was tempted to steal her, but rejected the idea when I saw men come from the house onto the terrace. There were a dozen men, half of them in mail, and they watched as we slid past. I waved to them, hoping the gesture would convince them that we were no threat.
Then one man, taller than the others, came from the house and pushed through his companions. He stood at the edge of the stone wharf and stared at us.
And I cursed. It was Waormund. I stared at him and he stared at me, and he recognised me. I heard his bellow of rage, or perhaps of challenge, and then he was shouting at the men around him and I saw them running towards the lethal-looking ship. I swore again.
‘What?’ Father Oda asked.
‘Speed the rowers,’ I told Finan.
‘Speed them?’
‘We’re being pursued,’ I said. I looked up at the sky and saw that darkness was still many hours away.
And we were no longer safe.
The ebbing tide was nearing low water, which meant it was running faster and gave us some help as, with the river’s current, it swept us downriver. Finan was hammering the time with a stave and he quickened it, but the oarsmen were too tired after rowing upriver against the ebb. The current, of course, would help our enemy as much as it helped us, but I hoped it would take Waormund a long time to assemble sufficient oarsmen, but hope is never something to rely on in warfare. My father had always said that if you hope the enemy will march east, then plan for them marching west.
We passed the old Roman fort that marked the eastern extremity of the old city and I looked back and saw my father had been right. The ship was already pulling away from the wharf, her rowers turning the longsleek hull to follow us. ‘It’s not a full crew,’ Finan said.
‘How many?’
‘Maybe twenty-four oars?’
‘They’ll still catch us,’ I said grimly.
‘That’s a big ship for just twenty-four oars.’
‘They’ll catch us.’
Finan touched the cross at his neck. ‘I thought someone said this was a fast ship?’
‘For her size, she is.’
‘But the longer a ship, the faster she is,’ Finan said unhappily. He had heard me say that too many times, but had never understood why that was true. I did not understand it either, yet I knew the pursuing ship must inevitably catch us. I was steering Brimwisa to follow the huge horseshoe bend in the river that would sweep us southwards before curving north. I was using the outside of the bend, which was a longer row, but there the current was fastest and I needed all the speed I could find. ‘There are men at her prow,’ Finan said, still staring behind.
‘They’re the ones who’ll board us,’ I said.
‘So what do we do? Go ashore?’
‘Not yet.’
The current was racing us southwards. The river was low, with wide stretches of glistening mud on each bank, and beyond them little but desolate marshland where a few hovels showed where folk made a living from trapping eels. I turned and saw our pursuer was gaining on us. I could see the mailed men in the prow, see their shields with Æthelhelm’s leaping stag, and see the afternoon sun glinting from spearheads. Those men planned to jump down onto the Brimwisa’s deck. ‘How many in the prow?’ I asked Finan.
‘Too many,’ he said grimly. ‘I reckon he has forty men at least.’
So Waormund had roughly half his men rowing and the other half armed and ready to overwhelm us. ‘They’ll ram us,’ I said, ‘and board us.’
‘And what do we do? Die?’
‘We outrun them, of course.’
‘But you said they’ll catch us!’
‘They will!’ I could feel the water vibrating through the loom of the steering-oar. That meant we were going fast, but we needed to be faster. ‘If you want to be free men,’ I shouted at the oarsmen, ‘then row as you’ve never rowed before! I know you’re tired, but row as if the devil is at your heels!’ Which he was. ‘Row!’
They put their feeble strength into the oars. Four of my men had taken the places of the weaker oarsmen, and they called the time as the strokes quickened. We had gone around the vast southern bend and were heading northwards now. The pursuing ship was a little more than three hundred paces behind us and her rowers, fresher than ours, were pulling faster. I saw the river break white at her cutwater, saw how each pull of the oars surged her a pace nearer. ‘If we go ashore,’ Finan began nervously.
‘They’ll hunt us in the marshes. It won’t be pretty.’
‘So?’
‘So we don’t go ashore,’ I said, deliberately confusing him.
‘But—’
‘Yet,’ I finished.
He gave me a weary look. ‘So tell me.’
‘We won’t reach Bebbanburg, at least not for a while.’
‘Because?’
‘See those trees ahead?’ I pointed. About a mile ahead of us the river turned east again towards the sea, but on the northern bank was a prominent clump of trees. ‘Just beyond those trees is a river,’ I went on, ‘the Ligan, and it takes us north into Mercia.’
‘It takes them north too,’ Finan said, nodding astern.
‘Half a lifetime ago,’ I went on, ‘the Danes took their ships up the Ligan and Alfred built a fort to block the river. They lost all their ships. That was a fight we missed.’
‘We didn’t miss many,’ Finan said grumpily.
I turned to look behind and
