“He don’t talk like a Viking,” called another. “More like a Frisian, only without the cold in his head.”
“Did you hear the bit about sharing out?” called a third.
Shef spat on his palm and waited. Slowly, with hate in his eyes, the burly Nikko spat too. They slapped palms perfunctorily. As the tension slackened, Shef turned and walked back to Karli.
“I want you to come to Hedeby too,” he said. “See the world. But we both have much to learn before we get there.”
Forty miles out to sea, within sight of the Holy Island, the English fleet rocked on the waves, sails furled, like a flock of giant sea-birds. At the center four ships were lashed together for conference: the Norfolk, escaped from the muddy channels of the Elber Gat, the Suffolk, commanded by the senior English skipper Hardred, Brand’s Walrus and the Seamew of Guthmund the Greedy, to represent the Viking Waymen. Feelings were running high, and strong voices carried over the water to the listening fleet.
“I can’t believe you just left him on the Thor-forsaken sandbank,” said Brand at a pitch just short of a bellow.
Ordlaf’s face remained mulish. “Nothing else to do. He’d vanished out of sight, tide coming in, night coming on, no knowing if Sigurth and his picked champions weren’t going to appear from the next sandbank. We had to get out of there.”
“Do you think he lived?” asked Thorvin, flanked on either side by fellow-priests of the Way called from their ships.
“I saw four men go after him. Three came back. They didn’t look pleased. That’s all I can say.”
“So the chances are he’s stuck in the Ditmarsh somewhere,” concluded Brand. “All those bastards have webbed feet.”
“They tell me he’s a fenman too,” said Ordlaf. “If he’s there, he’s probably all right. Why don’t we just go after him? It’s daylight now, and we can pick our tide.”
This time it was Brand’s turn to look mulish. “Not a good idea. First off, no-one lands in the Ditmarsh, not even for water or an evening’s strandhögg. Too many crews have vanished. Second, like I told you weeks ago, all this is pilot water. And you said you could find your way with lead and lookout! You got stranded, and you could again, maybe in a worse place next time.
“Third thing, though, is we still have the Ragnarssons around. They started off with a long hundred of ships, a hundred and twenty, the way you count. How many do you think we sank or captured?”
Hardred replied. “We captured six. The catapults sank at least a dozen more.”
“Which leaves them a hundred, to our fifty. Less than fifty, since they boarded the Buckinghamshire and cut a hole in her bottom, and I have half a dozen ships too weakly manned now to be useful. And we won’t take them by surprise again.”
“So what do we do?” asked Ordlaf.
There was a long silence. Finally Hardred broke it, his careful Anglo-Saxon contrasting oddly with the camp-patois brewed from Norse and English of the others.
“If we are unable to rescue the king,” he said, “as I am told we are, then I see it as my duty to return the rest of the fleet to English waters, to take instructions from King Alfred. He is my master, but the agreement between himself and King Shef”—he hesitated before coming out with the words—”was that one should succeed to all the rights of the other, if the other should pre-decease him. As may now be the case.”
He waited for the storm of protests to die down, then went on, his voice gaining firmness. “After all, this fleet is now the main shield and protection of English shores. We know we can sink the pirates if they appear, and we will. That was the main aim and goal of King Shef, as of King Alfred: to have a peaceful coastline and a peaceful land behind it. If he were here he would tell us to do what I suggest.”
“You can go,” shouted Cwicca, the freed slave. “Go back to your master. Our master is the one who took the collars from our necks, and we won’t leave him to have some webfoot half-breed put one on his.”