But blind Hoder was watching over me. The ship-guards were no more alert than their comrades at the hill’s foot, and why should they be? They were further from Odda’s forces, and they expected no trouble, indeed they were there only because the Danes never left their ships unguarded, and these ship-guards had mostly gone into the fishermen’s hovels to sleep, leaving just a handful of men sitting by the small fires. Those men were motionless, probably half asleep, though one was pacing up and down beneath the high prows of the beached ships.
I stood.
I had shadow-walked, but now I was on Danish ground, behind their sentries, and I undid the cloak’s cords, took it off and wiped the mud from my mail and then walked openly towards the ships, my boots squelching in the last yards of marshland, and then I just stood by the northernmost boat, threw my helmet down in the shadow of the ship, and waited for the one Dane who was on his feet to discover me.
And what would he see? A man in mail, a lord, a shipmaster, a Dane, and I leaned on the ship’s prow and stared up at the stars. My heart thumped, my thigh quivered, and I thought that if I died this morning at least I would be with Ragnar again. I would be with him in Valhalla’s hall of the dead, except some men believed that those who did not die in battle went instead to Niflheim, that dreadful cold hell of the Northmen where the corpse goddess Hel stalks through the mists and the serpent Corpse-Ripper slithers across the frost to gnaw the dead, but surely, I thought, a man who died in a hall-burning would go to Valhalla, not to grey Niflheim? Surely Ragnar was with Odin, and then I heard the Dane’s footsteps and I glanced at him with a smile. ‘A chill morning,’ I said.
‘It is.’ He was an older man with a grizzled beard and he was plainly puzzled by my sudden appearance, but he was not suspicious.
‘All quiet,’ I said, jerking my head to the north to suggest I had been visiting the sentries on the Sæfern’s side of the hill.
‘They’re frightened of us,’ he said.
‘So they should be.’ I faked a huge yawn, then pushed myself away from the ship and walked a couple of paces north as though I was stretching tired limbs, then pretended to notice my helmet at the water’s edge. ‘What’s that?’
He took the bait, going into the ship’s shadow to bend over the helmet and I drew my knife, stepped close to him and drove the blade up into his throat. I did not slit his throat, but stabbed it, plunged the blade straight in and twisted it and at the same time I pushed him forward, driving his face into the water and I held him there so that if he did not bleed to death he would drown, and it took a long time, longer than I expected, but men are hard to kill. He struggled for a time and I thought the noise he made might bring the men from the nearest fire, but that fire was forty or fifty paces down the beach and the small waves of the river were loud enough to cover the Dane’s death throes, and so I killed him and no one knew of it, none but the gods saw it, and when his soul was gone I pulled the knife from his throat, retrieved my helmet, and went back to the ship’s prow.
And waited there until dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Waited till there was a rim of grey at the edge of England.
And it was time.
I strolled towards the nearest fire. Two men sat there. ‘Kill one,’ I sang softly, ‘and two then three, kill four and five, and then some more.’ It was a Danish rowing chant, one that I had heard so often on the Wind-Viper. ‘You’ll be relieved soon,’ I greeted them cheerfully.
They just stared at me. They did not know who I was, but just like the man I had killed, they were not suspicious even though I spoke their tongue with an English twist. There were plenty of English in the Danish armies.
‘A quiet night,’ I said, and leaned down and took the unburned end of a piece of flaming wood from the fire. ‘Egil left a knife on his ship,’ I explained, and Egil was a common enough name among the Danes to arouse no suspicion, and they just watched as I walked north, presuming I needed the flame to light my way onto the ships. I passed the hovels, nodded to three men resting beside another fire, and kept walking until I had reached the centre of the line of beached ships and there, whistling softly as though I did not have a care in the world, I climbed the short ladder left leaning on the ship’s prow and jumped down into the hull and made my way between the rowers’ benches. I had half expected to find men asleep in the ships, but the boat was deserted except for the scrabble of rats’ feet in the bilge.
I crouched in the ship’s belly where I thrust the burning wood beneath the stacked oars, but I doubted it would be sufficient to set those oars aflame and so I used my knife to shave kindling off a rowers’ bench and, when I had enough scraps of wood, I piled them over the flame and saw the fire spring up. I cut more, then hacked at the oar shafts to give the flames purchase, and no one shouted at me from the bank. Anyone watching must have thought I merely searched the bilge and the flames were still not high enough to cause alarm, but they were spreading and I knew I had very little time and so I sheathed the knife and slid over the boat’s side. I lowered myself into the Pedredan, careless what the water would do to my mail and weapons, and once in the river I waded northwards from ship’s stern to ship’s stern, until at last I had cleared the last boat and had come to where the grey-bearded corpse was thumping softly in the river’s small waves, and there I waited.
And waited. The fire, I thought, must have gone out. I was cold.
And still I waited. The grey on the world’s rim lightened, and then, suddenly, there was an angry shout and I moved out of the shadow and saw the Danes running towards the flames that were bright and high on the ship I had fired, and so I went to their abandoned fire and took another burning brand and hurled that into a second ship, and the Danes were scrambling onto the burning boat that was sixty paces away and none saw me. Then a horn sounded, sounded again and again, sounding the alarm and I knew Ubba’s men would be coming from their camp at Cantucton, and I carried a last piece of fiery wood to the ships, burned my hand as I thrust it under a pile of oars, then I waded back into the river to hide beneath the shadowed belly of a boat.
The horn still sounded. Men were scrambling from the fishermen’s hovels, going to save their fleet, and more men were running from their camp to the south, and so Ubba’s Danes fell into our trap. They saw their ships burning and went to save them. They streamed from the camp in disorder, many without weapons, intent only on quenching the flames that flickered up the rigging and threw lurid shadows on the bank. I was hidden, but knew Leofric would be coming, and now it was all timing. Timing and the blessing of the spinners, the blessing of the gods, and the Danes were using their shields to scoop water into the first burning ship, but then another shout sounded and I knew they had seen Leofric, and he had surely burst past the first line of sentries, slaughtering them as he went, and was now in the marsh. I waded out of the shadow, out from beneath the ship’s overhanging hull, and saw Leofric’s men coming, saw thirty or forty Danes running north to meet his charge, but then those Danes saw the new fires in the northernmost ships and they were assailed by panic because there was fire behind them and warriors in front of them, and most of the other Danes were still a hundred paces away and I knew that so far the gods were fighting for us.
I waded from the water. Leofric’s men were coming from the marsh and the first swords and spears clashed, but Leofric had the advantage of numbers and Heahengel’s crew overran the handful of Danes, chopping them with axe and sword, and one crewman turned fast, panic in his face when he saw me coming, and I shouted my name, stooped to pick up a Danish shield, and Edor’s men were behind us and I called to them to feed the ship-fires while the men of Heahengel formed a shield wall across the strip of firm land. Then we walked forward. Walked towards Ubba’s army that was only just realising that they were being attacked.
We marched forward. A woman scrambled