“Yes, lord. In the prow of the lead ship stood Viga-Brand.”
Sigurth held his gaze for a moment, then slowly stripped a gold bracelet from his own arm, handed it over. “Good news, Hrani. Take this for your sharp eyes. Now tell me one more thing. Why do you think Brand turned away?”
Another gulp as the young man hefted the weight of the bracelet, hardly able to believe his luck. Turn away? Why would anyone turn away? “Lord, he must have recognized the Frani Ormr, and feared to meet us. Feared to meet you,” he corrected hastily.
Sigurth waved a hand in dismissal, turned back to his brothers.
“Well,” he remarked. “You heard what the idiot thinks. Now what do we think?”
Halvdan stared at the waves, felt the wind on his cheek, watched the faint dots of sail on the horizon. “Scouting ahead,” he observed. “Fallen back on reinforcements. Trying to lead us on.”
“Lead us on to what?” asked Ubbi. “There were forty of them. That’s about what we expected, of our own folk known to be—” he spat over the side “—with the Waymen.”
“More Wayfolk might have sailed south,” suggested Halvdan. “Their priests have been stirring them up.”
“We’d have heard, if there’d been any great number of them.”
“So if the reinforcements are there,” concluded the Snake-eye, “they must be from England. Englishmen in ships. A new thing. And where there is a new thing…”
“There you find the Sigvarthsson,” completed Ubbi, his teeth showing in a snarl.
“Up to something,” said Sigurth. “Up to something, or he wouldn’t dare to challenge us, not at sea. Look, the Waymen are tacking, turning in to the land. Well, we’ll take their dare. Let’s see how good their surprise is. And maybe we can surprise them too.”
He turned to Vestmar, standing a careful few paces to the rear. “Vestmar, pass the word. All ships ready for battle. Reef sail, rig the oars. But don’t step the masts. Leave the yards up.”
Vestmar goggled for a moment. He had been at a dozen sea battles round the coasts of Britain and Denmark, Norway and Sweden and Ireland too. Masts and yards were always stepped and stowed, to decrease the top-hamper, give the ships every yard of speed under oars that they could make. In close-quarter battle there were no men free to trim sails, and no wish for anything that would block a man’s sight of arrow or javelin.
He caught himself, nodded, turned back, bellowing orders to his own crew and the ships nearest to him, orders to be passed on along and back to the hundred and twenty longships cruising behind and aside. Quickly, skillfully, the Ragnarsson fleet prepared for action.
Shef leaned over the backboard as Brand’s ship, the Walrus, ranged easily alongside at the end of the long turn that had brought it and the rest of the Wayman fleet back into line with his own ten.
“The Snake-eye?” he shouted.
“Yes. It’s the Frani Ormr in the lead right enough. They outnumber us three to one. Have to fight them now. If you tried to get away they’d sail you down before the sun started to sink.”
“That’s what we came for,” called Shef. “You know the plan?”
Brand nodded, stepped back, pulled from round his neck a long red silken scarf. Stepping to the leeward side he let it stream in the breeze.
Instantly the ships behind him lowered the sails they had half-reefed and began to surge ahead, spreading into line abreast as they did so. A volley of orders from Ordlaf and the Norfolk began to check her already sluggish pace, while her consorts also began to range up on her, not moving abreast, but forming a close line, so close that the prow of each battleship almost overlapped the stern of the one ahead. Steersmen watched with anxious care as the clumsy craft edged up on each other.
At a wave from Cwicca, the catapult-crews lowered their throwing bars to the deck, fixed them with the well-greased sliding bolts, began to throw their weight on to the winding-handles to bring the stout ropes to maximum torsion. “Wind both sides,” called Cwicca, looking at his master. “We might get a shot either way, God be good to us. I mean Thor be good to us.” He pulled his hammer-pendant out to swing free.