One King's Way

Chapter Three

From his vantage-point in the stern of the leading ship, Shef looked back at the long, trailing line. The Bedfordshire, fourth ship from the van, was sagging out of line again, as she had done ever since, by trial and error, they had picked on their present formation. All ten of the English “battleships,” as Ordlaf insisted on calling them, were heading due east with the south-west wind behind them and on the beam, as easy a point of sailing as could be imagined, certainly far easier than their awkward sail up the first part of the Dutch coast from the Rhine mouth with the wind almost directly behind them. Just the same the Bedfordshire was wallowing slowly out to sea again.

No point in shouting to the ship behind, to pass on a message mouth to mouth till it reached the Bedfordshire's skipper. He knew the importance of keeping in line, he had had it shouted at him time and time again by all the other skippers in turn every time they camped for the night. There was some error in his ship's construction. For some reason or other she made more of this “leeway” that Ordlaf was always complaining about. They would get it fixed when they returned to dock. Meanwhile the Bedfordshire would do what she always did: wallow out to sea till she was a hundred yards out of line, and then brace her sail round and awkwardly maneuver back into place. Where the others sailed along more or less straight, her progress was a string of shallow zig-zags, like the patterns on a welded sword.

It did no harm, at least for the moment, Shef concluded. He had realized one thing, though, and realized it some days before, almost as soon as he and the rest of the landsmen had stopped retching over the side. That was that the reason the Vikings ruled the seas, and could descend at any spot in the Western world regardless of the precautions and the guards of the Christian kings, was that they were very very good at something quite unexpectedly complex and difficult: sailing boats.

The seamen and skippers Shef had recruited from the English coastal ports were good enough sailors in their way, but it was not the Viking way. Fishermen almost to a man, what they were good at was coming back alive. Like Ordlaf, if the children's bellies had to be filled, they would put to sea in almost any weather. They had no interest, though, in getting anywhere unless it were to another likely bank or shoal, and certainly no interest in going anywhere fast or unexpectedly. As for the crewmen from the inland counties, aboard to man the mules and shoot the crossbows, every detail of life at sea was a burden to them. At least six of them had fallen overboard already while trying to attend to their natural functions, though it was true that they had all been recovered from the calm and shallow sea. The main reason Shef insisted on camping every night instead of pressing on was that he dreaded the results of trying to cook afloat.

Shef turned from the problems of the Bedfordshire to the low, sullen, sandy shore slipping by to the right—or to “steerboard” as the sailors called it, the side of the ship which had the long steering-oar mounted. Shef unrolled the long scroll of parchment on which he was attempting, following his earlier experience, to draw a chart of these unfamiliar lands. The natives on the coastal islands they had passed had told him a great deal—they were, of course, Frisians, and the Frisians felt strong kinship both with the English to whom they were related, and to the men of the Way, whose religion and order had been founded by their own Duke Radbod a hundred and fifty years before. But, more important, the Frisians of the islands were the poorest of the poor. On the desolate sandbanks on which they lived, sometimes twenty miles long but never more than a mile across, no hut, no flock of sheep was ever more than ten minutes from a Viking marauder. The islanders lived with little and stood ready to abandon that any moment.

That did not mean they were not happy to strike back. Once the news had spread up along the islands that the strange fleet was an English one, come to fight the Vikings, men had drifted in to every camp fire, eager to speak for a mug of ale or a good silver penny of the new coinage.

The picture they gave was clear. As one rounded the Ijsselmeer the chain of islands began, running like the coast they sheltered slightly north of east. The islands' names seemed to become more familiar as one went further along. The Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, which they had passed three days before—Shef did not know what those names meant. But then they had passed Schiermonnikoog, and further along a string of similar names, Langeoog, Spiekeroog, and Norderney. All these were easy to understand, for -oog was just the hoarse Frisian way of saying “ey,” an island, an eyot, and -koog was the familiar Norfolk “key,” a sandbank.

And all these islands were just sandbanks, drifts piled up over centuries by the rivers that flowed into the sea and that continually threatened to choke themselves with silt. The first slight break in the chain had been the Ems. Further up, the twin estuaries of the Jade and the Weser, with somewhere inside them the guarded bishop's town of Bremen. Just ahead, past Wangeroog, the last of the long Frisian island-chain now slipping past to starboard, lay the greater flow of the Elbe, with on it the port and stronghold of Hamburg under its powerful archbishop. Hamburg, famously sacked by the Vikings a dozen years before, so Brand said, who had taken part, but once again recovering, the very spear-point of the Empire of Christendom leveled at Denmark and Scandinavia beyond.

There would be a time to look into Hamburg and Bremen. But not now. Now the plan was to push ahead across the estuary of the Elbe, to the spot where the coastline turned north to the North Frisian islands, to Jutland, to the South Danes. And—so some of the seamen said—to the flatlands from which the English had come in their turn, centuries before, to the sack of Britannia and the overthrow of the Rome-folk. Shef felt a slight stirring of excitement. Who was to say that up there, there might not still be Englishmen left, who could be called to the defeat of what surely must be their Danish oppressors? But it would be enough if he could reach there—reach there and return, having tried his ships and given their crews confidence.

What he really needed, Shef reflected, still staring at the markings on his map, was a chart of what lay inside the island chain, between the islands and the main shore. If they could sail along there, his ships could defy wind and weather and water-shortage, cruise along as easily as on the Ouse or the Stour at home. Lurk inside shelter to pounce out on Viking fleets.

But Ordlaf had refused flatly to take the ships inshore, and Brand had backed him utterly. Pilot water, he had repeated. Don't try it without a man born and bred there and one you can trust. Shoals, banks, currents, tides. You can wreck a ship on sand or on chesil as easily as you can on Flamborough Head. Easier, Ordlaf had added. At least you can see Flamborough Head.

Shef wondered obstinately how much of that was the Viking contempt for English seamanship. It had grown steadily during the days of their cruise, the Viking jokes getting continually more barbed till Shef had had to restrain the crew of the Norfolk from manning the mule and sending a few of the loudest laughers to the bottom. Since then they had evolved their current formation: the ten battleships cruising inshore and using all their efforts to keep up a decent speed, while the forty accompanying craft—all Viking-manned, all built on the shores of the Kattegat or the Norway fjords, but all bearing the Hammer and Cross of the Way kingdoms stitched to their sails—swept their contemptuous arcs far ahead and out to sea. Though never out of sight. Always one sail remained on the horizon, keeping a keen eye on the English lubbering along behind, itself watched keenly by the sharpest eyes in Brand's small fleet a further horizon away.

They can laugh, thought Shef. And they can sail too, I admit it. But this is like the sack of York, a new kind of battle. My men don't have to be the best sailors since Noah. They just have to be at sea. If the Ragnarssons want to get past us, or any other damned pirates out of the North, they must come in range. Then we sink them. The best sailors in the world can do nothing on shattered planks.

He rolled up his scroll, thrust it in its waxed leather bag, and walked forward to pat the comforting bulk of the mule. Cwicca, now senior catapult-captain of the fleet, grinned gap-toothed at the gesture. He had won forty well-stocked acres and a young bride for his part in last year's successes, wealth literally unimaginable for one who had been a slave of the monks of Crowland, owning nothing but a bone-and-bladder bagpipe. Yet he had left it all, his silk tunic apart, for this cruise. Hard to tell whether he hoped for more riches or more marvels.

“Sail turning this way,” yelled the lookout suddenly from his uncomfortable stance on the single yard fifteen feet above Shef's head. “And more behind, I can see them! All coming straight for us.”

The Norfolk heeled instantly as the more excitable crew-members rushed over to the left side, the backboard, to see for themselves. Moments of confusion as the boatswain and his mates kicked them back. Ordlaf shinning deftly up the knotted rope that led to the yard, following the lookout's pointing finger. Sliding back down again, face tense, to report.

“It's Brand, lord. All his ships tearing along together, fast as they can go, wind on the beam. They've seen something right enough. They'll tack and be alongside—” he pointed at the sky “—when the sun's gone so far.”

“Couldn't be better,” said Shef. “A still morning and a long afternoon to fight in. Nowhere for the pirates to hide. Serve the men their noon-meal early.” He clutched his pendant, the silver pole-ladder. “May my father send us victory. And if Othin wants heroes for Valhalla,” he added, remembering his dream, “let him take them from the other side.”

“Well now, what do we make of that?” asked Sigurth the Snake-eye. He spoke to his two brothers, flanking him in the prow of the Frani Ormr. “A fleet in front, steering to meet us, and then suddenly they all spin round and take off as if they'd heard their wives were offering it free to all comers back home.”

A voice behind him, the skipper of the Ormr, Vestmar. “Pardon, lord. Hrani here, the lookout, he wants to say something.”

Sigurth turned, looked at the young man now being thrust forward. A young man, where almost everyone else on the ship, Sigurth's fifty picked champions, was in his prime. A poor man, too, without a gleam of gold on him, and a plain bone hilt to his sword. Picked out by Vestmar and added to the crew, Sigurth remembered, for his sharp sight. Sigurth did not bother to speak, merely raised an eyebrow.

Staring into the famous snakes' eyes with their white-bordered pupils, Hrani flushed and stammered. Then collected himself, swallowed, and began. “Lord. Before they turned I got a good look at the lead ship. There was a man standing in the prow, like you are, lord, looking at us.” He hesitated. “I think it was Brand. Viga-Brand.”

“You've seen him before?” asked Sigurth.

The young man nodded.

“Now, think carefully. Are you sure it was him?”

Hrani hesitated again. If he were wrong—Sigurth had a fearsome reputation for vengeances, and every man in the fleet knew of his and his brothers' consuming desire. To find and kill the men responsible for the death of their mad brother Ivar, Skjef the Englishman and Viga-Brand, Brand the Killer. If the brothers were disappointed… Yet on the other hand to lie to them, or to hide what one saw, both were equally dangerous. Hrani considered for a moment what he had actually seen, as the leading enemy ship rose on a wave. No, he had no real doubt. The figure he had seen was too big for any other man.

“Yes, lord. In the prow of the lead ship stood Viga-Brand.”

Sigurth held his gaze for a moment, then slowly stripped a gold bracelet from his own arm, handed it over. “Good news, Hrani. Take this for your sharp eyes. Now tell me one more thing. Why do you think Brand turned away?”

Another gulp as the young man hefted the weight of the bracelet, hardly able to believe his luck. Turn away? Why would anyone turn away? “Lord, he must have recognized the Frani Ormr, and feared to meet us. Feared to meet you,” he corrected hastily.

Sigurth waved a hand in dismissal, turned back to his brothers.

“Well,” he remarked. “You heard what the idiot thinks. Now what do we think?”

Halvdan stared at the waves, felt the wind on his cheek, watched the faint dots of sail on the horizon. “Scouting ahead,” he observed. “Fallen back on reinforcements. Trying to lead us on.”

“Lead us on to what?” asked Ubbi. “There were forty of them. That's about what we expected, of our own folk known to be—” he spat over the side “—with the Waymen.”

“More Wayfolk might have sailed south,” suggested Halvdan. “Their priests have been stirring them up.”

“We'd have heard, if there'd been any great number of them.”

“So if the reinforcements are there,” concluded the Snake-eye, “they must be from England. Englishmen in ships. A new thing. And where there is a new thing…”

“There you find the Sigvarthsson,” completed Ubbi, his teeth showing in a snarl.

“Up to something,” said Sigurth. “Up to something, or he wouldn't dare to challenge us, not at sea. Look, the Waymen are tacking, turning in to the land. Well, we'll take their dare. Let's see how good their surprise is. And maybe we can surprise them too.”

He turned to Vestmar, standing a careful few paces to the rear. “Vestmar, pass the word. All ships ready for battle. Reef sail, rig the oars. But don't step the masts. Leave the yards up.”

Vestmar goggled for a moment. He had been at a dozen sea battles round the coasts of Britain and Denmark, Norway and Sweden and Ireland too. Masts and yards were always stepped and stowed, to decrease the top-hamper, give the ships every yard of speed under oars that they could make. In close-quarter battle there were no men free to trim sails, and no wish for anything that would block a man's sight of arrow or javelin.

He caught himself, nodded, turned back, bellowing orders to his own crew and the ships nearest to him, orders to be passed on along and back to the hundred and twenty longships cruising behind and aside. Quickly, skillfully, the Ragnarsson fleet prepared for action.

Shef leaned over the backboard as Brand's ship, the Walrus, ranged easily alongside at the end of the long turn that had brought it and the rest of the Wayman fleet back into line with his own ten.

“The Snake-eye?” he shouted.

“Yes. It's the Frani Ormr in the lead right enough. They outnumber us three to one. Have to fight them now. If you tried to get away they'd sail you down before the sun started to sink.”

“That's what we came for,” called Shef. “You know the plan?”

Brand nodded, stepped back, pulled from round his neck a long red silken scarf. Stepping to the leeward side he let it stream in the breeze.

Instantly the ships behind him lowered the sails they had half-reefed and began to surge ahead, spreading into line abreast as they did so. A volley of orders from Ordlaf and the Norfolk began to check her already sluggish pace, while her consorts also began to range up on her, not moving abreast, but forming a close line, so close that the prow of each battleship almost overlapped the stern of the one ahead. Steersmen watched with anxious care as the clumsy craft edged up on each other.

At a wave from Cwicca, the catapult-crews lowered their throwing bars to the deck, fixed them with the well-greased sliding bolts, began to throw their weight on to the winding-handles to bring the stout ropes to maximum torsion. “Wind both sides,” called Cwicca, looking at his master. “We might get a shot either way, God be good to us. I mean Thor be good to us.” He pulled his hammer-pendant out to swing free.

Slowly the Wayman fleet edged into its agreed battle-formation, like an inverted T thrusting at the enemy. In front, lined up abreast, Brand's forty ships, sails now furled and masts stepped, moving forward at easy pace under oars alone—Shef could hear the men grunting as they put their weight into the easy swell of the waves. Behind their center, in line ahead and still under sail, the ten English battleships.

As the formation took shape, Shef felt the familiar sense of relief. All battles to him, he realized, had come to feel the same. Terrible, gnawing anxiety before they started, while he thought of the hundred and one things that could go wrong with a plan—skippers not understanding, crews not moving fast enough, the enemy coming up unexpectedly, before they were ready. Then the relief, followed instantly by a desperate curiosity. Would it work? Could there be something he had forgotten?

Brand was bellowing from the stern of his ship, breaking off to point forward urgently at the Ragnarsson fleet, now a bare half-mile off and closing quickly, oars threshing. What was he shouting? Shef heard the words and realized for himself at the same moment. The enemy were coming on to battle just as predicted. But their masts were still standing, though the sails were furled.

“…he's smelled a rat!” came the tail-end of Brand's bellow.

Smell it or no, thought Shef. The rat is in range now. Now all it has to do is bite. From his neck he pulled a long blue scarf—Godive's gift, he remembered with a pang, given him the day she had told him she would marry Alfred. He streamed it to leeward, saw the faces turning as the lookouts saw it. Not a good luck memory, he thought. He loosed his grip on the silk, let the wind carry it into the yellow turbid sea.

Sigurth Ragnarsson, standing in the prow of his ship, noted the strangely-cut sails at the rear of Brand's thin line. Noted, too, the giant figure of Brand standing directly opposite him, waving an axe in ironic salute. Up to something, he thought again. Only one way to find out what it is. With elaborate care he stripped off his long scarlet cape, turned, threw it into the bottom of the boat. At the same instant a man stationed by the mast jerked a rope. From the top of the mast, above the yard, there flew free suddenly a great banner, with on it a black raven: the Raven Banner of the sons of Ragnar, woven it was said all in one night, with magic in its weft for victory. No man had seen it fly since the death of Ivar.

As the watching fleet saw it break out, each oarsman put his back into five mighty heaves, then simultaneously tossed oars upright and hurled them clattering into the longships' wells. Over the din, they gave one short cheer and seized up shields and weapons. Each steersman swung his suddenly accelerated boat so as to close on its next neighbor, boatswains swinging grapnels so as to lash them fast. As was always the custom, the fleet would gain momentum and then drift down on its enemies lashed together, to lock prows with the opposing fleet and there fight it out with spears and swords over the half-decked forecastles, till one side or other gave way and tried—usually unsuccessfully—to break free.

Brand saw the banner fly, saw the men bracing themselves for their last sudden spurt. Even as the oars bent under the first fierce stroke, he bellowed, in a voice fit to carry over an Atlantic gale: “Back oars and turn!”

The Wayman front line, carefully rehearsed, split instantly in the center. Brand's ship and all those to seaward of it swung hard to port, starboard oars pulling madly, port oars backing water. All those to shoreward swung hard the other way. Then, as the helmsmen struggled to keep from running foul of their fellows, the oars swung again, the fast maneuverable boats leapt away.

Shef, standing by the mast of the Norfolk, saw Brand's ships swerve away to left and right with the unanimity of two flocks of migrating birds. With a stab of fear—not fear for himself but for his plan—he realized the Ragnarsson fleet was closer than he expected and coming on fast. If those veteran warriors laid aboard him there could be only one ending. In the same moment he felt the Norfolk surge forward as Ordlaf spread sail to its fullest extent. Slowly the battleship swung round to port, presenting her starboard beam to the dragon prows not a hundred yards off. Behind her, her nine consorts swung round in close line ahead. Again the Norfolk picked up a yard or two of speed as the wind came more directly over her stern.

Shef heard Ordlaf shouting encouragingly: “The wind's rising! We'll get round in time.”

Maybe, thought Shef. But just the same, they were too close. Time to check them. He nodded to Cwicca, crouched expectantly by the release.

Cwicca hesitated for only an instant. He knew the plan was to sink the lead center ship, the one with the great gilded snake's head on its prow. But his mule was still not bearing directly on it. Impossible to train it round. Waiting a split second for the heel of the waves, he jerked free the release bolt.

A flash of motion, a violent thud against the padded beam, a thud that shook the whole ship and seemed for an instant to check her way. The black streak that was a thirty-pound boulder lashing across the water. A streak that ended just behind the prow of the ship immediately to port of the Frani Ormr.

For a second or two the advancing line of ships seemed to roll on as if nothing had happened, sending Shef's heart leaping into his mouth. Then tiredly, irresistibly, the ship fell apart. The flying rock had smashed the stem-post to matchwood. The planks carefully fitted into it sprang from their notches. Below the waterline the sea rushed in, forced on by the ship's own motion. As it shot through the well the sinews holding planks to ribs and ribs to keel sprang apart. The mast, its keelson pulled from under it, swayed forward, held for an instant by its stays, then swung wearily to one side. Like a giant's club it scythed through the gaping crew of the ship next alongside.

To the watchers in the English line it seemed as if the ship had suddenly vanished, been pulled under by one of the water-hags of Brand's stories. For a moment or two they could see men apparently standing on the water, then fighting for their footing on loose planks, then down in the sea, or struggling for a hand-hold on the gunwales of the ships alongside.

And then the Suffolk too brought her mule to bear. Another streak flashed into the heart of the Ragnarsson fleet. And another as the third ship in line swung round.

Suddenly, as Shef gaped, noise seemed to be added to the battle. All at once he was aware of the snap of the crossbows, the song of the rope as Cwicca's handlers frantically wound their machine, the crash of rock on wood and waves of cheering as Brand's ships swung round to come in on the Ragnarsson flanks. At the same time Shef felt a sudden lash of rain and the ships opposite blurred for a moment. A rain shower passing over the sea. Would it soak the ropes and at this worst moment take his artillery out of action?

Out of the blur came three dragon prows, shockingly close. Not the snake's head of the enemy flagship, now a hundred yards behind them, but some other alert enemy skipper, who had cast his grapnels free and re-manned his oars, realizing his foe had no intention of closing to fight fair. If they managed to lay alongside…

Cwicca raised a thumb. Shef nodded. The bone-jarring thud again, the streak of movement that ended this time almost before it had begun, at the very base of the center ship's mast. Again, suddenly, no ship, just a flurry of planks and men gasping in the water.

The other two were still coming on, only yards away now, men in each prow with grapnels swinging, fierce bearded faces staring over their shields, a simultaneous deep grunt as the oarsmen took one last stroke to drive themselves over the gap.

A storm of cheering almost in Shef's ear and a great bulk like a whale shouldering past only feet in front of the Norfolk's bow. One of Brand's ships driving in under oars to intercept. Its prow swept along the starboard side of the Ragnarsson ship at a closing speed of twenty miles an hour, snapping the oars, hurling their butt-ends back to cave in the ribs and shatter the spines of the rowers. As the two ships ground past each other Shef saw the Wayman rowers rising from their benches to pour a storm of javelins over the side at point-blank range. The third Ragnarsson ship saw the carnage, swung away past the Norfolk's stern, picking up speed for the open sea.

Shef caught Ordlaf by the shoulder, pointed across a half-mile of sea filled with shattered ships, drowning men, and desperate combats of single ships and groups. Through the showers of rain and spray picked up by the rising wind he could see the Raven banner still flying. But already turned and moving east. The Frani Ormr, masterfully handled, had swerved its way unscathed through the English line, swung about and was already in full flight. As the two men watched her sail swept down from the yard, bellied out, and began to glide easily to safety.

“Follow,” said Shef.

“She sails two yards to our one.”

“Cut her off from the open sea while you have a chance. Drive her inshore.”

“But that's the Elber Gat,” protested Ordlaf.

Shef's fingers tightened commandingly on his shoulder.