the skull from side to side. Beyond that ship was a larger one, prowed with a great dragon that reared its fanged mouth high, and at the ship’s stern I could see a cloaked man wearing a silver helmet crowned with black ravens’ wings. He took the helmet off and gave me a mocking bow, and I saw that it was Haesten. He was laughing. He had burned my boats and had stolen a few cattle, and for Haesten that was victory enough. It was not revenge for Beamfleot, he would need to kill me and all my men to balance that bloody scale, but he had made us look fools and he had opened the Mærse to a great fleet of Northmen who now rowed upriver. A fleet of enemies who came to take our land, led by Haesten.
‘How can a bastard like Haesten lead so many men?’ I asked aloud.
‘He doesn’t.’ My son had walked his horse into the shallows and reined in beside me.
‘He doesn’t?’
‘Ragnall Ivarson leads them.’
I said nothing, but felt a chill pass through me. Ragnall Ivarson was a name I knew, a name we all knew, a name that had spread fear up and down the Irish Sea. He was a Norseman who called himself the Sea King, for his lands were scattered wherever the wild waves beat on rock or sand. He ruled where the seals swam and the puffins flew, where the winds howled and where ships were wrecked, where the cold bit like a knife and the souls of drowned men moaned in the darkness. His men had captured the wild islands off Scotland, had bitten land from the coast of Ireland, and enslaved folk in Wales and on the Isle of Mann. It was a kingdom without borders, for whenever an enemy became too strong, Ragnall’s men took to their long ships and sailed to another wild coast. They had raided the shores of Wessex, taking away slaves and cattle, and had even rowed up the Sæfern to threaten Gleawecestre, though the walls of that fortress had daunted them. Ragnall Ivarson. I had never met him, but I knew him. I knew his reputation. No man sailed a ship better, no man fought more fiercely, no man was held in more fear. He was a savage, a pirate, a wild king of nowhere, and my daughter Stiorra had married his brother.
‘And Haesten has sworn loyalty to Ragnall,’ my son went on. He watched the ships pull away. ‘Ragnall Ivarson,’ he still gazed at the fleet as he spoke, ‘has given up his Irish land. He’s told his men that fate has granted him Britain instead.’
Haesten was a nothing, I thought. He was a rat allied to a wolf, a ragged sparrow perched on an eagle’s shoulder. ‘Ragnall has abandoned his Irish land?’ I asked.
‘So the man said.’ My son gestured to where the prisoners stood.
I grunted. I knew little of what happened in Ireland, but over the last few years there had come news of Northmen being harried out of that land. Ships had crossed the sea with survivors of grim fights, and men who had thought to take land in Ireland now sought it in Cumbraland or on the Welsh coast, and some went even further, to Neustria or Frankia. ‘Ragnall’s powerful,’ I said, ‘why would he just abandon Ireland?’
‘Because the Irish persuaded him to leave.’
‘Persuaded?’
My son shrugged. ‘They have sorcerers, Christian sorcerers, who see the future. They said Ragnall will be king of all Britain if he leaves Ireland, and they gave him warriors to help.’ He nodded at the fleet. ‘There are one hundred Irish warriors on those ships.’
‘King of all Britain?’
‘That’s what the prisoner said.’
I spat. Ragnall was not the first man to dream of ruling the whole island. ‘How many men does he have?’
‘Twelve hundred.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
My son smiled. ‘You taught me well, Father.’
‘What did I teach you?’
‘That a spear-point in a prisoner’s liver is a very persuasive thing.’
I watched the last boats row eastwards. They would be lost to sight soon. ‘Beadwulf!’ I shouted. He was a small wiry man whose face was decorated with inked lines in Danish fashion, though Beadwulf himself was a Saxon. He was one of my best scouts, a man who could cross open grassland like a ghost. I nodded at the disappearing ships. ‘Take a dozen men,’ I told Beadwulf, ‘and follow the bastards. I want to know where they land.’
‘Lord,’ he said, and started to turn away.
‘And Beadwulf!’ I called, and he looked back. ‘Try to see what banners are on the ships,’ I told him, ‘and look for a red axe! If you see a red axe I want to know, fast!’
‘The red axe, lord,’ he repeated and sped away.
The red axe was the symbol of Sigtryggr Ivarson, my daughter’s husband. Men now called him Sigtryggr One-Eye because I had taken his right eye with the tip of Serpent-Breath. He had attacked Ceaster and been beaten away, but in his defeat he had taken Stiorra with him. She had not gone as a captive, but as a lover, and once in a while I would hear news of her. She and Sigtryggr possessed land in Ireland, and she wrote letters to me because I had made her learn writing and reading. ‘We ride horses on the sand,’ she had written, ‘and across the hills. It is beautiful here. They hate us.’ She had a daughter, my first grandchild, and she had called the daughter Gisela after her own mother. ‘Gisela is beautiful,’ she wrote, ‘and the Irish priests curse us. At night they scream their curses and sound like wild birds dying. I love this place. My husband sends you greetings.’
Men had always reckoned that Sigtryggr was the more dangerous of the two brothers. He was said to be cleverer than Ragnall and his skill with a sword was legendary, but the loss of his eye or perhaps his marriage to Stiorra had calmed him. Rumour said that Sigtryggr was content to farm his fields, fish his seas, and defend his lands, but would he stay content if his older brother was capturing Britain? That was why I had told Beadwulf to look for the red axe. I wanted to know if my daughter’s husband had become my enemy.
Prince Æthelstan found me as the last of the enemy ships vanished from sight. He came with a half-dozen companions, all of them mounted on big stallions. ‘Lord,’ he called, ‘I’m sorry!’
I waved him to silence, my attention with Finan again. He was chanting in fury at the man who lay wounded at his feet, and the wounded man was shouting back, and I did not need to speak any of the strange Irish tongue to know that they exchanged curses. I had rarely seen Finan so angry. He was spitting, ranting, chanting, his rhythmic words heavy as hammer blows. Those words beat down his opponent who, already wounded, seemed to weaken under the assault of insults. Men stared at the two, awed by their anger, then Finan turned and snatched up the spear he had thrown aside. He stalked back to his victim, spoke more words, and touched the crucifix about his neck. Then, as if he were a priest raising the host, he lifted the spear in both hands, the blade pointing downwards, and held it high. He paused, then spoke in English.
‘May God forgive me,’ he said.
Then he rammed the spear down hard, screaming with the effort to thrust the blade through mail and bone to the heart within, and the man leaped under the spear’s blow and blood welled from his mouth, and his arms and legs flailed for a few dying heartbeats, and then there were no more heartbeats and he was dead, open-mouthed, pinned to the shore’s edge with a spear that had gone clean through his heart into the soil beneath.
Finan was weeping.
I urged my horse near him and stooped to touch his shoulder. He was my friend, my
