It had been a week since I had heard the news of Swealwe, a week in which my fisherfolk never went far from land. Up and down the coast, on all Bebbanburg’s harbours, there was fear, and so Spearhafoc went to seek vengeance. The tide was flooding, there was no wind, and my oarsmen stroked hard and well, surging the ship against the current to leave a widening wake. The only noises were the creak of the oars as they pulled against the tholes, the ripple of water along the hull, the slap of feeble waves on the beach, and the forlorn cries of gulls over Bebbanburg’s great fortress.
Forty men hauled on the long oars, another twenty crouched either between the benches or on the bow’s platform. All wore mail and all had their weapons, though the rowers’ spears, axes and swords were piled amidships with the heaps of shields. Finan and I stood on the steersman’s brief deck. ‘There might be wind later?’ Finan suggested.
‘Or might not,’ I grunted.
Finan was never comfortable at sea and never understood my love of ships, and he only accompanied me that day because there was the prospect of a fight. ‘Though whoever killed Haggar is probably long gone,’ he grumbled as we left the harbour channel.
‘Probably,’ I agreed.
‘So we’re wasting our time then.’
‘Most likely,’ I said. Spearhafoc was lifting her prow to the long, sullen swells, making Finan grip the sternpost to keep his balance. ‘Sit,’ I told him, ‘and drink some ale.’
We rowed into the rising sun, and as the day warmed a small wind sprang from the west, enough of a breeze to let my crew haul the yard to the mast’s top and let loose the wolf’s head sail. The oarsmen rested gratefully as Spearhafoc rippled the slow heaving sea. The land was lost in the haze behind us. There had been a pair of small fishing craft beside the Farnea Islands, but once we were further out to sea we saw no masts or hulls and seemed to be alone in a wide world. For the most part I could let the steering-oar trail in the water as the ship took us slowly eastwards, the wind barely sufficient to fill the heavy sail. Most of my men slept as the sun climbed higher.
Dream time. This, I thought was how Ginnungagap must have been, that void between the furnace of heaven and the ice beneath, the void in which the world was made. We sailed in a blue-grey emptiness in which my thoughts wandered slow as the ship. Finan was sleeping. Every now and then the sail would sag as the wind dropped, then belly out again with a dull thud as the small breeze returned. The only real evidence that we were moving was the gentle ripple of Spearhafoc’s wake.
And in the void I thought of kings and of death, because Edward still lived. Edward, who styled himself Anglorum Saxonum Rex, King of the Angles and the Saxons. He was King of Wessex and of Mercia and of East Anglia, and he still lived. He had been ill, he had recovered, he had fallen sick again, then rumour said he was dying, yet still Edward lived. And I had taken an oath to kill two men when Edward died. I had made that promise, and I had no idea how I was to keep it.
Because to keep it I would have to leave Northumbria and go deep into Wessex. And in Wessex I was Uhtred the Pagan, Uhtred the Godless, Uhtred the Treacherous, Uhtred Ealdordeofol, which means Chief of the Devils, and, most commonly, I was called Uhtredærwe, which simply means Uhtred the Wicked. In Wessex I had powerful enemies and few friends. Which gave me three choices. I could invade with a small army, which would inevitably be beaten, I could go with a few men and risk discovery, or I could break the oath. The first two choices would lead to my death, the third would lead to the shame of a man who had failed to keep his word, the shame of being an oathbreaker.
Eadith, my wife, had no doubts about what I should do. ‘Break the oath,’ she had told me tartly. We had been lying in our chamber behind Bebbanburg’s great hall and I was gazing into the shadowed rafters, blackened by smoke and by night, and I had said nothing. ‘Let them kill each other,’ she had urged me. ‘It’s a quarrel for the southerners, not us. We’re safe here.’ And she was right, we were safe in Bebbanburg, but still her demand had angered me. The gods mark our promises, and to break an oath is to risk their wrath. ‘You would die for a stupid oath?’ Eadith had been angry too. ‘Is that what you want?’ I wanted to live, but I wanted to live without the stain of dishonour that marked an oathbreaker.
Spearhafoc took my mind from the quandary by quickening to a freshening wind and I grasped the steering-oar again and felt the quiver of the water coming through the long ash shaft. At least this choice was simple. Strangers had slaughtered my men, and we sailed to seek revenge across a wind-rippled sea that reflected a myriad flashes of sunlight. ‘Are we home yet?’ Finan asked.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘Dozing,’ Finan grunted, then heaved himself upright and stared around. ‘There’s a ship out there.’
‘Where?’
‘There,’ he pointed north. Finan had the sharpest eyesight of any man I’ve ever known. He might be getting older, like me, yet his sight was as keen as ever. ‘Just a mast,’ he said, ‘no sail.’
I stared into the haze, seeing nothing. Then I thought I saw a flicker against the pale sky, a line as tremulous as a charcoal scratch. A mast? I lost it, looked, found it again, and turned the ship northwards. The sail protested until we hauled in the steerboard sheet and Spearhafoc leaned again to the breeze and the water seethed louder down her flanks. My men stirred, woken by Spearhafoc’s sudden liveliness, and turned to look at the far ship.
‘No sail on her,’ Finan said.
‘She’s going into the wind,’ I said, ‘so they’re rowing. Probably a trader.’ No sooner had I spoken than the tiny scratch mark on the hazed horizon disappeared, replaced by a newly dropped sail. I watched her, the blur of the big square sail much easier to distinguish than the mast. ‘She’s turning towards us,’ I said.
‘It’s Banamaðr,’ Finan said.
I laughed at that. ‘You’re guessing!’
‘No guess,’ Finan said, ‘she has an eagle on her sail, it’s Egil.’
‘You can see that!’
‘You can’t?’
Our two ships were sailing towards each other now, and within moments I could clearly see a distinctive lime-washed upper strake that showed clearly against the lower hull’s darker planks. I could also see the big black outline of a spread-winged eagle on the sail and the eagle’s head on her high prow. Finan was right, it was Banamaðr, a name that meant ‘killer’. It was Egil’s ship.
As the Banamaðr drew closer I dropped my sail and let Spearhafoc wallow in the livening waves. It was a sign to Egil that he could come alongside, and I watched as his ship curved towards us. She was smaller than Spearhafoc, but just as sleek, a Frisian-built raider that was Egil’s joy because, like almost all Norsemen, he was happiest when he was at sea. I watched the sea break white at Banamaðr’s cutwater, she kept turning, the great yard dropped and men hauled the sail inboard, turned the long yard with its furled sail fore and aft, and then, sweet as any seaman could desire, she slewed alongside our steerboard flank. A man in Banamaðr’s bows threw a line, a second line sailed towards me from her stern, and Egil was shouting at his crew to drape sailcloth or cloaks over the pale upper strake so our timbers did not crash and grind together. He grinned at me. ‘Are you doing what I think you’re doing?’
‘Wasting my time,’ I called back.
‘Maybe not.’
