Conqueror

XIV

The dragon ship was fifteen paces long. She was laid down on a keel cut from a single oak timber, its curve so gentle the centre was only the length of a forearm lower than the end points. It was this carefully shaped keel that gave the ship the shallow draught that made her so easy to beach, and also gripped at the water when underway to balance the pressure from the sail and keep her from capsizing. The ship's hull was of oak too, thick polished planks laid down so they overlapped each other, and held in place by wooden pegs.

Gudrid had sailed in such ships all her life, of course – but only in the fjords, or around the coast. Never before had she sailed into the open sea, and out of sight of land; never had she taken the sail road.

In the days before the raid Gudrid helped scrub the boat clean, scrape her hull and repair its caulking, and then they lowered the hull under the sea water so that the salt could kill off rats and worms and fleas.

The men hung their war shields on racks along the ship's sides, and they embarked. When she got a chance Gudrid took her turn at the oars. She worked as hard as any man. But the woollen sail with its bright checks billowed overhead; they were fortunate with the winds, needing to resort to the oars only occasionally.

The slave Rhodri was taken along on the voyage. There was always bailing, shit-shovelling and other chores to be done, and he might have useful local knowledge at the end of the journey. But Rhodri spent most of the journey with his head hanging over the side of the boat, and Bjami got very little work out of him. He was too stupid even to avoid vomiting into the wind, and as the men wiped his bile from their faces they were all for pitching him over the side, and Gudrid had to argue for his life. She made sure that he knew he was in her debt.

Her father showed her the elements of navigation. The Norse mostly stayed within sight of land, and he showed her crude maps drawn on vellum and parchment, with key landmarks to be sighted. To get to Britain, however, it was necessary to cut west across the open sea. Sightings of the sun and the stars were used to keep to a line running dead straight east to west. The principle was simple; if you ensured the pole star never dipped or rose in your sky, you could not be travelling either north or south over the surface of the curving world. You could also use the wheeling of the sun and moon to find your way. It was harder to tell how far east or west you travelled, but estimates were made by dead reckoning, as days were counted and logs dropped over the side to gauge their speed.

The more experienced sailors had deeper skills. By the colour of the water, the fish and sea birds they saw, even the scent of the air, they seemed able to 'smell' their way across the sea, all the way to the land. Gudrid envied them.

Gudrid marvelled at how the ship and her crew performed. The ship's very hull twisted in response to the sea's buffeting. A product of centuries of sailing the fjords, she was like a sleek animal, like an otter or a whale, perfectly adapted for her environment. And her companions, slim forms dimly seen through ocean mist, looked like the dragons of myth, strange creatures from the edge of reality, hurtling across a forgiving sea to a new junction in history.

The coast of Britain came in sight within half a day of Bjarni's first guess. Their position was soon established with the maps, and they began scudding south towards Lindisfarena.