the ship’s side and the water flowed in again, but Leofric and a dozen men somehow managed to heave the mast overboard and it banged down our flank, then jerked because it was still held to the ship by a tangle of seal-hide ropes. I saw Leofric pluck an axe from the swamped bilge and start to slash at that tangle of lines, but I screamed at him with all my breath to put the axe down.
Because the mast, tied to us and floating behind us, seemed to steady the ship. It held Heahengel into the waves and wind, and let the great seas go rolling beneath us, and we could catch our breath at last. Men looked at each other as if amazed to find themselves alive, and I could even let go of the steering oar because the mast, with the big yard and the remnants of its sail still attached, was holding us steady. I found my body aching. I was soaked through, must have been cold, but did not notice.
Leofric came to stand beside me. Heahengel’s prow was facing eastwards, but we were travelling westwards, driven backwards by the tide and wind, and I turned to make certain we had sea room, and then touched Leofric’s shoulder and pointed towards the shore.
Where we saw a fleet dying.
The Danes had been sailing south, following the shore from the Poole’s entrance to the rearing headland, and that meant they were on a lee shore, and in that sudden resurgence of the storm they stood no chance. Ship after ship was being driven ashore. A few had made it past the headland, and another handful were trying to row clear of the cliffs, but most were doomed. We could not see their deaths, but I could imagine them. The crash of hulls against rocks, the churning water breaking through the planks, the pounding of sea and wind and timber on drowning men, dragon prows splintering and the halls of the sea god filling with the souls of warriors and, though they were the enemy, I doubt any of us felt anything but pity. The sea gives a cold and lonely death.
Ragnar and Brida. I just gazed, but could not distinguish one ship from another through the rain and broken sea. We did watch one ship, which seemed to have escaped, suddenly sink. One moment she was on a wave, spray flying from her hull, oars pulling her free, and next she was just gone. She vanished. Other ships were banging each other, oars tangling and splintering. Some tried to turn and run back to the Poole and many of those were driven ashore, some on the sands and some on the cliffs. A few ships, pitifully few, beat their way clear, men hauling on the oars in a frenzy, but all the Danish ships were overloaded, carrying men whose horses had died, carrying an army we knew not where, and that army now died.
We were south of the headland now, being driven fast to the west, and a Danish ship, smaller than ours, came close and the steersman looked across and gave a grim smile as if to acknowledge there was only one enemy now, the sea. The Dane drifted ahead of us, not slowed, as we were, by trailing wreckage. The rain hissed down, a malevolent rain, stinging on the wind, and the sea was full of planks, broken spars, dragon prows, long oars, shields and corpses. I saw a dog swimming frantically, eyes white, and for a moment I thought it was Nihtgenga, then saw this dog had black ears while Nihtgenga had white. The clouds were the colour of iron, ragged and low, and the water was being shredded into streams of white and green-black, and the Heahengel reared to each sea, crashed down into the troughs and shook like a live thing with every blow, but she lived. She was well-built, she kept us alive, and all the while we watched the Danish ships die and Father Willibald prayed.
Oddly his sickness had passed. He looked pale, and doubtless felt wretched, but as the storm pummelled us his vomiting ended and he even came to stand beside me, steadying himself by holding onto the steering oar. ‘Who is the Danish god of the sea?’ he asked me over the wind’s noise.
‘Njorð!’ I shouted back.
He grinned. ‘You pray to him and I’ll pray to God.’
I laughed. ‘If Alfred knew you’d said that you’d never become a bishop!’
‘I won’t become a bishop unless we survive this! So pray!’
I did pray, and slowly, reluctantly, the storm eased. Low clouds raced over the angry water, but the wind died and we could cut away the wreckage of mast and yard and unship the oars and turn Heahengel to the west and row through the flotsam of a shattered war fleet. A score of Danish ships were in front of us, and there were others behind us, but I guessed that at least half their fleet had sunk, perhaps more, and I felt an immense fear for Ragnar and Brida. We caught up with the smaller Danish ships and I steered close to as many as I could and shouted across the broken seas. ‘Did you see Wind-Viper?’
‘No,’ they called back. No, came the answer, again and again. They knew we were an enemy ship, but did not care for there was no enemy out in that water except the water itself, and so we rowed on, a mastless ship, and left the Danes behind us and as night fell, and as a streak of sunlight leaked like seeping blood into a rift of the western clouds, I steered Heahengel into the crooked reach of the River Uisc, and once we were behind the headland the sea calmed and we rowed, suddenly safe, past the long spit of sand and turned into the river and I could look up into the darkening hills to where Oxton stood, and I saw no light there.
We beached Heahengel and staggered ashore and some men knelt and kissed the ground while others made the sign of the cross. There was a small harbour in the wide river reach and some houses by the harbour and we filled them, demanded that fires were lit and food brought, and then, in the darkness, I went back outside and saw the sparks of light flickering upriver. I realised they were torches being burned on the remaining Danish boats that had somehow found their way into the Uisc and now rowed inland, going north towards Exanceaster, and I knew that was where Guthrum must have ridden and that the Danes were there, and the fleet’s survivors would thicken his army and Odda the Younger, if he lived, might well have tried to go there too.
With Mildrith and my son. I touched Thor’s hammer and prayed they were alive.
And then, as the dark boats passed upstream, I slept.
In the morning we pulled Heahengel into the small harbour where she could rest on the mud when the tide fell. We were forty-eight men, tired but alive. The sky was ribbed with clouds, high and grey-pink, scudding before the storm’s dying wind.
We walked to Oxton through woods full of bluebells. Did I expect to find Mildrith there? I think I did, but of course she was not. There was only Oswald the steward and the slaves and none of them knew what was happening.
Leofric insisted on a day to dry clothes, sharpen weapons and fill bellies, but I was in no mood to rest so I took two men, Cenwulf and Ida, and walked north towards Exanceaster that lay on the far side of the Uisc. The river settlements were empty, for the folk had heard of the Danes coming and had fled into the hills, and so we walked the higher paths and asked them what had happened, but they knew nothing except that there were dragon ships in the river, and we could see those for ourselves. There was a storm-battered fleet drawn up on the riverbank beneath Exanceaster’s stone walls. There were more ships than I had suspected, suggesting that a good part of Guthrum’s fleet had survived by staying in the Poole when the storm struck, and a few of those ships were still arriving, their crews rowing up the narrow river. We counted hulls and reckoned there were close to ninety boats, which meant that almost half of Guthrum’s fleet had survived, and I tried to distinguish Wind-Viper’s hull among the others, but we were too far away.
Guthrum the Unlucky. How well he deserved that name, though in time he came close to earning a better, but for now he had been unfortunate indeed. He had broken out of Werham, had doubtless hoped to resupply his army in Exanceaster and then strike north, but the gods of sea and wind had struck him down and he was left with a crippled army. Yet it was still a strong army and, for the moment, safe behind Exanceaster’s Roman walls.
I wanted to cross the river, but there were too many Danes by their ships, so we walked further north and saw armed men on the road which led west from Exanceaster, a road which crossed the bridge beneath the city and led over the moors towards Cornwalum, and I stared a long time at those men, fearing they might be Danes, but they were staring east, suggesting that they watched the Danes and I guessed they were English and so we went down from the woods, shields slung on our backs to show we meant no harm.
There were eighteen men, led by a thegn