Part 16 (1/2)

”Who allows him to be here?” I asked, but they did not know the answer. ”There must be a lord of this land,” I explained, gesturing at the darkness beyond the fire, but if there was such a lord who permitted Skirnir to rule the sea then these villagers did not know of him. Even the village priest, a fellow as hairy and dirt-matted as his paris.h.i.+oners, did not know if there was a lord of the marshes. ”So what does Skirnir want of you?” I asked him.

”We have to give him food, lord,” the priest said.

”And men,” one of the villagers added.

”Men?”

”The young men go to him, lord. They serve on his s.h.i.+ps.”

”They go willingly?”

”He pays silver,” a villager said grudgingly.

”He takes girls too,” the priest said.

”So he pays his men with silver and women?”

”Yes, lord.”

They did not know how many s.h.i.+ps Skirnir possessed, though the priest was certain he only had two the size of Seolferwulf Seolferwulf. We heard the same things the next night when we stopped at another village in another creek on that treeless sh.o.r.e. We had rowed all day, the mainland to our right and the islands to our north and west. Skade had pointed to Zegge, but from our distance it looked little different from any other island. Many of them had mounds, the terpen terpen, but we were so far off that we could see no detail. Sometimes only the s.h.i.+mmering dark shape of a terpen terpen showing at the sea's edge betrayed that there was an island just beyond the horizon. showing at the sea's edge betrayed that there was an island just beyond the horizon.

”So what do we do?” Finan asked me that night.

”I don't know,” I admitted.

He grinned. The water lapped at Seolferwulf Seolferwulf 's hull. We slept aboard her and most of the crew had already swathed themselves in cloaks and had lain down between the benches while Skade, Finan, Osferth, and Rollo, who was the leader of Ragnar's men, talked with me on the steering platform. 's hull. We slept aboard her and most of the crew had already swathed themselves in cloaks and had lain down between the benches while Skade, Finan, Osferth, and Rollo, who was the leader of Ragnar's men, talked with me on the steering platform.

”Skirnir has around four hundred men,” I said.

”Maybe four hundred and fifty,” Skade said.

”So we kill six men apiece,” Rollo said. He was an easygoing man like Ragnar, with a round and guileless face, though that was deceiving for, though he was young, he had already earned a reputation as a formidable fighter. He was called Rollo the Hairy, not just because he wore his fair hair down to his waist, but because he had woven the locks of hair cut from his dead enemies into a thick sword belt. ”I wish Saxons would grow their hair longer,” he had grumbled to me as we crossed the sea.

”If they did,” I had said, ”you'd have ten sword belts.”

”I already have seven,” he said, and grinned.

”How many men on Zegge?” I now asked Skade.

”No more than a hundred.”

Osferth spat out a fish bone. ”You're thinking of attacking Zegge directly, lord?”

”It won't work,” I said, ”we won't find our way through the shoals.” One thing I had learned from the villagers was that Zegge was surrounded by shallow waters, that the channels s.h.i.+fted with the sand and tide, and that none of the pa.s.sages was marked.

”What then?” Osferth asked.

A star fell. It scratched a flicker of light across the darkness and was gone, and with its fall the answer came to me. I had been thinking that I would attack Skirnir's s.h.i.+ps one by one, destroying the small s.h.i.+ps and so weakening him, but within a day or two he would realize what was happening and he would use his larger s.h.i.+ps to destroy us. There was no safe way to attack Skirnir. He had found a perfect refuge in the islands, and I would need ten s.h.i.+ps like Seolferwulf Seolferwulf to challenge him there. to challenge him there.

So I had to lure him out of his perfect refuge. I smiled. ”You're going to betray me,” I told Osferth.

”I am?”

”Who's your father?”

”You know who my father is,” he said resentfully. He never liked being reminded that he was Alfred's b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

”And your father is old,” I said, ”and his chosen heir is scarcely weaned, and you are a warrior. You want gold.”

”I do?”

”You want gold to raise men, because you want to be King of Wess.e.x.”

Osferth snorted at that. ”I don't,” he said.

”You do now,” I said, ”because you're the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a king and you have a warrior's reputation. And tomorrow you betray me.”

I told him how.

Nothing great is done without risk, but there are times I look back on those days and am amazed at the risk we ran in Frisia. It was, in its small way, like luring Harald to Fearnhamme, because again I divided my forces, and again I risked everything on the a.s.sumption that my enemy would do exactly what I wished him to do. And once again the lure was Skade.

She was so beautiful. It was a sinuous dark beauty. To look at her was to want her, to know her was to distrust her, but the distrust was ever conquered by that extraordinary beauty. Her face was high-boned, smooth-skinned, large-eyed, and full-mouthed. Her black hair was l.u.s.trous, her body was languorous. Of course many girls are beautiful, but life is hard on a woman. Childbirth racks her body like storms, and the never-ending work of pounding grains and spinning yarn takes its toll on that early loveliness, yet Skade, even though she had lived longer than twenty years, had kept her fresh beauty. She knew it too, and it mattered to her, for it had carried her from a widow's poor house to the high tables of long-beamed mead halls. She liked to say that she had been sold to Skirnir, but in truth she had welcomed him, then been disappointed by him because, for all the treasure he ama.s.sed, he had no ambitions beyond the Frisian Islands. He had found a plump patch for piracy, and it made no sense to Skirnir to sail far away to seek a plumper patch, and so Skade had found Harald, who promised her Wess.e.x, and now she had found me.

”She's using you,” Brida had told me in Dunholm.

”I'm using her,” I had answered.

”There are a dozen wh.o.r.es here who'll prove cheaper,” Brida had retorted scornfully.

So Skade was using me, but for what? She was demanding half her husband's h.o.a.rd, but what would she do with it? When I asked her, she shrugged as if the question was unimportant, but late that night, before Osferth's feigned betrayal, she spoke with me. Why did I want her husband's money?

”You know why.”

”To take your fortress back?”

”Yes.”

She lay silent for a while. The water made its small noise along Seolferwulf Seolferwulf 's strakes. I could hear the snores of my men, the s.h.i.+fting feet of the sentries in the prow and above our heads on the steering platform. ”And what then?” she asked. 's strakes. I could hear the snores of my men, the s.h.i.+fting feet of the sentries in the prow and above our heads on the steering platform. ”And what then?” she asked.

”I will be the Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said.

”As Skirnir is Lord of Zegge?”

”There was a time,” I said, ”when the Lord of Bebbanburg ruled far into the north and all the way down to the Humbre.”

”They ruled Northumbria?”