Sword of Kings. Bernard Cornwell

marker withies were being bent flat by the gale, and once in the creek the seas calmed to a vicious chop and we dropped the sodden sail and our oars took us into the wide channel that ran between the Isle of Sceapig and the Centish mainland. I could see farmsteads on Sceapig, the smoke from their roof-holes being whipped eastwards on the wind. The channel narrowed. The wind and rain still beat down on us, but the water was sheltered here and the creek’s banks had tamed the ship-killing waves. We went slowly, the oars rising and falling, and I thought how the dragon-boats must have crept down this waterway bringing savage men to plunder the rich fields and towns of Cent, and how the villagers must have been terrified as the serpent-headed war boats appeared from the river mists. I have never forgotten Father Beocca, my childhood tutor, clasping his hands and praying nightly: ‘From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us.’ Now I, a northerner, was bringing swords, spears and shields to Cent.

      The priest who had brought me Eadgifu’s message said that though she had announced her pious intention of praying at Saint Bertha’s tomb in Contwaraburg, in truth she had taken refuge in a small town called Fæfresham where she had endowed a convent. ‘The queen will be safe there,’ the priest had told me.

      ‘Safe! Protected by nuns?’

      ‘And by God, lord,’ he had reproved me, ‘the queen is protected by God.’

      ‘But why didn’t she go to Contwaraburg?’ I had asked him. Contwaraburg was a considerable town, had a stout wall, and, I assumed, men to defend it.

      ‘Contwaraburg is inland, lord.’ The priest had meant that if Eadgifu was threatened by failure, if Æthelhelm discovered her and sent troops, then she wanted to be in a place where she could escape by sea. From where she could cross to Frankia, and Fæfresham was very close to a harbour on the Swalwan Creek. It was, I supposed, a prudent choice.

      We rowed west and I saw the masts of a half-dozen ships showing above the sodden thatch of a small village on the creek’s southern bank. The village, I knew, was called Ora and lay a short distance north of Fæfresham. I had sailed this coast with its wide marshes, tide-swamped mudbanks, and hidden creeks often enough, I had fought Danes on its shores and had buried good men in its inland pastures.

      ‘Into the harbour,’ I told Gerbruht and we turned Spearhafoc, and my weary crew rowed her into Ora’s shallow harbour. It was a bedraggled, poor excuse for a harbour with rotting wharves either side of a tidal creek. On the western bank, where the wharves showed signs of being in repair, there were four tubby merchant ships, big bellied and squat, whose normal duties were to carry food and fodder upriver to Lundene. The water, though sheltered from the gale, was choppy and white-flecked, slapping irritably against the pilings and against three more ships that were moored at the harbour’s southern end. Those ships were long, high-prowed, and sleek. Each had a cross mounted on the bows. Finan saw them and climbed onto the steering platform beside me. ‘Whose are those?’ he asked.

      ‘You tell me,’ I said, wondering whether they were ships that Eadgifu was keeping in case she had to flee for her life.

      ‘They’re fighting ships,’ Finan said dourly, ‘but whose?’

      ‘Saxon, for sure,’ I said. The crosses on the bows told me that.

      There were buildings on both banks of the harbour. Most of them were shacks, presumably storing fishermen’s gear or cargo that awaited shipment, but some of the buildings were larger and had smoke streaming eastwards from their roof-holes. One of those, the biggest, stood at the centre of the western wharves and had a barrel hanging as a sign above a wide thatched porch. It was a tavern, I assumed, and then the door beneath the porch opened and two men appeared and stood watching us. I knew then who had brought the three fighting ships into the harbour.

      Finan knew too and swore under his breath.

      Because the two men wore dull red cloaks, and only one man insisted that his warriors wore matching red cloaks. Æthelhelm the Elder had started the fashion, and his son, my enemy, had continued the tradition.

      So Æthelhelm’s men had reached this part of Cent before us. ‘What do we do?’ Gerbruht asked.

      ‘What do you think we do?’ Finan snarled. ‘We kill the buggers.’

      Because when queens call for help, warriors go to war.