for a ship?’ Alfred asked me. One of the priests dipped his quill in the ink in readiness for my answer, then staggered as the ship hit a wave. God knows what his writing looked like that day. ‘The sail?’ Alfred prompted me. ‘Spears? Archers? Shields? Oars?’
‘Buckets,’ I said.
‘Buckets?’ He looked at me with disapproval, suspecting I was mocking him.
‘Buckets to bail the ship, lord,’ I said, nodding down into Heahengel’s belly where four men scooped out sea water and chucked it over the side, though a good deal landed on the rowers. ‘What we need, lord, is a better way of caulking ships.’
‘Write that down,’ Alfred instructed the priests, then stood on tiptoe to look across the intervening low land into the sea-lake where the enemy ships had been sighted.
‘They’ll be long gone,’ Leofric growled.
‘I pray not,’ Alfred said.
‘The Danes don’t wait for us,’ Leofric said. He was in a terrible mood, so terrible that he was willing to snarl at his king. ‘They aren’t fools,’ he went on, ‘they land, they raid and they go. They’ll have sailed on the ebb.’ The tide had just turned and was flooding against us now, though I never did quite understand the tides in the long waters from the sea to Hamtun for there were twice as many high tides there as anywhere else. Hamtun’s tides had a mind of their own, or else were confused by the channels.
‘The pagans were there at dawn,’ Alfred said.
‘And they’ll be miles away by now,’ Leofric said. He spoke to Alfred as if he were another crewman, using no respect, but Alfred was always patient with such insolence. He knew Leofric’s worth.
But Leofric was wrong that day about the enemy. The Viking ships were not gone, but still off Heilincigae, all seven of them, having been trapped there by the falling tide. They were waiting for the rising water to float them free, but we arrived first, coming into the sea-lake through the narrow entrance which leads from the northern bank of the Solente. Once through the entrance a ship is in a world of marshes, sandbanks, islands and fish traps, not unlike the waters of the Gewæsc. We had a man aboard who had grown up on those waters, and he guided us, but the Danes had lacked any such expertise and they had been misled by a line of withies, stuck into the sand at low tide to mark a channel, which had been deliberately moved to entice them onto a mudbank on which they were now firmly stuck.
Which was splendid. We had them trapped like foxes in a one-hole earth and all we had to do was anchor in the sea-lake entrance, hope our anchors held against the strong currents, wait for them to float off and then slaughter them, but Alfred was in a hurry. He wanted to get back to his land forces and insisted we return him to Hamtun before nightfall, and so, against Leofric’s advice, we were ordered to an immediate attack.
That too was splendid, except that we could not approach the mudbank directly for the channel was narrow and it would mean going in single file and the lead ship would face seven Danish ships on its own, and so we had to row a long way to approach them from the south, which meant that they could escape to the sea-lake’s entrance if the tide floated them off, which it might very well do, and Leofric muttered into his beard that we were going about the battle all wrong. He was furious with Alfred.
Alfred, meanwhile, was fascinated by the enemy ships, which he had never seen so clearly before. ‘Are the beasts representations of their gods?’ he asked me, referring to the finely carved prows and sterns that flaunted their monsters, dragons and serpents.
‘No, lord, just beasts,’ I said. I was beside him, having relinquished the steering oar to the man who knew these waters, and I told the king how the carved heads could be lifted off their posts so that they did not terrify the spirits of the land.
‘Write that down,’ he ordered a priest. ‘And the wind-vanes at the mastheads?’ he asked me, looking at the nearer one which was painted with an eagle, ‘are they designed to frighten the spirits?’
I did not answer. Instead I was staring at the seven ships across the slick hump of the mudbank and I recognised one. Wind-Viper. The light-coloured strake in the bow was clear enough, but even so I would have recognised her. Wind-Viper, lovely Wind-Viper, ship of dreams, here at Heilincigae.
‘Uhtred?’ Alfred prompted me.
‘They’re just wind-vanes, lord,’ I said. And if Wind-Viper was here, was Ragnar here too? Or had Kjartan taken the ship and leased it to a shipmaster?
‘It seems a deal of trouble,’ Alfred said pettishly, ‘to decorate a ship.’
‘Men love their ships,’ I said, ‘and fight for them. You honour what you fight for, lord. We should decorate our ships.’ I spoke harshly, thinking we would love our ships more if they had beasts on their prows, and had proper names like Blood-Spiller, Sea-Wolf or Widow-Maker. Instead the Heahengel led the Ceruphin and Cristenlic through the tangled waters, and behind us were the Apostol and the Eftwyrd, which meant Judgment Day and was probably the best named of our fleet because she sent more than one Dane to the sea’s embrace.
The Danes were digging, trying to deepen the treacherous channel and so float their ships, but as we came nearer they realised they would never complete such a huge task and went back to their stranded boats to fetch armour, helmets, shields and weapons. I pulled on my coat of mail, its leather lining stinking of old sweat, and I pulled on the helmet, then strapped Serpent-Breath on my back and Wasp-Sting to my waist. This was not going to be a sea-fight, but a land battle, shield wall against shield wall, a maul in the mud, and the Danes had the advantage because they could mass where we must land and they could meet us as we came off the ships, and I did not like it. I could see Leofric hated it, but Alfred was calm enough as he pulled on his helmet. ‘God is with us,’ he said.
‘He needs to be,’ Leofric muttered, then raised his voice to shout at the steersman. ‘Hold her there!’ It was tricky to keep Heahengel still in the swirling current, but we backed oars and she slewed around as Leofric peered at the shore. I assumed he was waiting for the other ships to catch up so that we could all land together, but he had seen a spit of muddy sand projecting from the shore and had worked out that if we beached Heahengel there then our first men off the prow would not have to face a shield wall composed of seven Viking crews. The spit was narrow, only wide enough for three or four men to stand abreast and a fight there would be between equal numbers. ‘It’s a good enough place to die, Earsling,’ he told me, and led me forward. Alfred hurried behind us. ‘Wait,’ Leofric snapped at the king so savagely that Alfred actually obeyed. ‘Put her on the spit!’ Leofric yelled back to the steersman, ‘now!’
Ragnar was there. I could see the eagle wing on its pole, and then I saw him, looking so like his father that for a moment I thought I was a boy again.
‘Ready, Earsling?’ Leofric said. He had assembled his half-dozen best warriors, all of us in the prow, while behind us the bowmen readied to launch their arrows at the Danes who were hurrying towards the narrow stretch of muddy sand. Then we lurched forward as Heahengel’s bow scraped aground. ‘Now!’ Leofric shouted, and we jumped overboard into water that came up to our knees, and then we instinctively touched shields, made the wall, and I was gripping Wasp-Sting as the first Danes ran at us.
‘Kill them!’ Leofric shouted, and I thrust the shield forward and there was the great clash of iron boss on limewood, and an axe whirled overhead, but a man behind me caught it on his shield and I was stabbing under my shield, bringing the short sword up, but she rammed into a Danish shield. I wrenched her free, stabbed again, and felt a pain in my ankle as a blade sliced through water and boot. Blood swirled in the sea, but I was still standing, and I heaved forward, smelling the Danes, gulls screaming overhead, and more of the Danes were coming, but more of our men were joining us, some up to their waists in the tide, and the front of the battle was a shoving match now because no one had room to swing a weapon. It was a grunting, cursing shield battle, and Leofric, beside me, gave a shout and we heaved up and they stepped back a half-pace and our arrows slashed over our helmets