‘Because I don’t know where Ragnall’s going,’ I said, ‘but from Liccelfeld we can go north or south easily.’
‘North or south,’ he repeated dully.
‘The bastard needs land,’ I said, ‘and he’ll either try to take it in northern Mercia or from southern Northumbria. We have to stop him fast.’
‘He’ll go north,’ Finan said, though he still spoke carelessly. He shrugged, ‘Why would he pick a fight with Mercia?’
I suspected he was right. Mercia had become powerful, its frontiers protected by burhs, fortified towns, while to the north were the troubled lands of Northumbria. That was Danish land, but the Danish lords were squabbling and fighting amongst themselves. A strong man like Ragnall could unite them. I had repeatedly told Æthelflaed that we should march north and take land from the fractious Danes, but she would not invade Northumbria until her brother Edward brought his West Saxon army to help. ‘Whether Ragnall goes north or comes south,’ I said, ‘now’s the time to fight him. He’s just arrived here. He doesn’t know the land. Haesten does, of course, but how far does Ragnall trust that piece of weasel-shit? And from what the prisoners said, Ragnall’s army has never fought together, so we hit him hard now, before he has a chance to find a refuge and before he feels safe. We do to him what the Irish did, we make him feel unwanted.’
Silence again. I watched the geese, looking for an omen in their numbers, but there were too many birds to count. Yet the goose was Æthelflaed’s symbol, so their presence was surely a good sign? I touched the hammer that hung at my neck. Finan saw the gesture and frowned. Then he grasped the crucifix that hung at his neck, and, with a sudden grimace, tugged it hard enough to break the leather cord. He looked at the silver bauble for a moment, then flung it into the water. ‘I’m going to hell,’ he said.
For a moment I did not know what to say. ‘At least we’ll still be together,’ I finally spoke.
‘Aye,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘A man who kills his own blood is doomed.’
‘The Christian priests tell you that?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know?’
‘I just know. That was why my brother didn’t kill me so long ago. He sold me to that bastard slaver instead.’
That was how Finan and I had first met, chained as slaves to a bench and pulling on long oars. We still carried the slaver’s brand on our skin, though the slaver himself was long dead, slaughtered by Finan in an orgy of revenge.
‘Why would your brother want to kill you?’ I asked, knowing I trod on dangerous ground. In all the long years of our friendship I had never discovered why Finan was an exile from his native Ireland.
He grimaced. ‘A woman.’
‘Surprise me,’ I said wryly.
‘I was married,’ he went on as though I had not spoken. ‘A good woman, she was, a royal daughter of the Uí Néill, and I was a prince of my people. My brother was too. Prince Conall.’
‘Conall,’ I said after a few heartbeats of silence.
‘They’re small kingdoms in Ireland,’ he said bleakly, staring across the water. ‘Small kingdoms and great kings, and we fight. Christ, how we love to fight! The Uí Néill, of course, are the great ones, at least in the north. We were their clients. We gave them tribute. We fought for them when they demanded it, we drank with them and we married their good women.’
‘And you married a Uí Néill woman?’ I prompted him.
‘Conall is younger than me,’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘I should have been the next king, but Conall met a maid from the Ó Domhnaill. God, lord, but she was beautiful! She was nothing by birth! She was no chieftain’s daughter, but a dairy girl. And she was lovely,’ he spoke wistfully, his eyes gleaming wet. ‘She had hair dark as night and eyes like stars and a body as graceful as an angel in flight.’
‘And she was called?’ I asked.
He shook his head abruptly, rejecting the question. ‘And God help us we fell in love. We ran away. We took horses and we rode south. Just Conall’s wife and me. We thought we’d ride, we’d hide, and we’d never be found.’
‘And Conall pursued you?’ I guessed.
‘The Uí Néill pursued us. God knows it was a hunt. Every Christian in Ireland knew of us, knew of the gold they would make if they found us, and yes, Conall rode with the men of the Uí Néill.’
I said nothing. I waited.
‘Nothing is hidden in Ireland,’ Finan went on. ‘You can’t hide. The little people see you. Folk see you. Find an island in a lake and they know you’re there. Go to a mountain top and they’ll find you, hide in a cave and they’ll hunt you down. We should have taken ship, but we were young. We didn’t know.’
‘They found you.’
‘They found us, and Conall promised he would make my life worse than death.’
‘By selling you to Sverri?’ Sverri was the slaver who had branded us.
He nodded. ‘I was stripped of my gold, whipped, made to crawl through Uí Néill shit, and then sold to Sverri. I am the king that never was.’
‘And the girl?’
‘And Conall took my Uí Néill wife as his own. The priests allowed it, they encouraged it, and he raised my sons as his own. They cursed me, lord. My own sons cursed me. That one,’ he nodded at the corpse, ‘cursed me just now. I am the betrayer, the cursed.’
‘And he’s your son?’ I asked gently.
‘He wouldn’t say. He could be. Or Conall’s boy. He’s my blood, anyway.’
I walked to the dead man, put my right foot on his belly, and tugged the spear free. It was a struggle and the corpse made an obscene sucking noise as I wrenched the wide blade out. A bloody cross lay on the dead man’s chest. ‘The priests will bury him,’ I said, ‘they’ll say prayers over him.’ I hurled the spear into the shallows and turned back to Finan. ‘What happened to the girl?’
He stared empty-eyed across the river that was smeared dark with the ash of our ships. ‘For one day,’ he said, ‘they let the warriors of the Uí Néill do as they wished with her. They made me watch. And then they were merciful, lord. They killed her.’
‘And your brother,’ I said, ‘has sent men to help Ragnall?’
‘The Uí Néill sent men to help Ragnall. And yes, my brother leads them.’
‘And why would they do that?’ I asked.
‘Because the Uí Néill would be kings of all the north. Of Ireland and of Scotland too, of all the north. Ragnall can have the Saxon lands. That’s the agreement. He helps them, they help him.’
‘And he begins with Northumbria?’
‘Or Mercia,’ Finan suggested with a shrug. ‘But
