“This is keeping the lads busy,” said the grizzled Ubbi, nodding at the smoke-columns. “Good beef, good mutton, women to run down. No casualties to speak of.”
“No money,” completed Halvdan. “No glory either.”
Sigurth the Snake-eye knew his brothers were just setting the problem up for him to deal with, not offering a criticism. The brothers never fought, hardly ever disagreed. Their relationship had survived even the psychotic Ivar. The other two waited for him to respond.
“If we go south again,” he said, “we run into those rock-throwers again. We can sail rings round them, we know that. But they have the advantage now. They know we’re up here in Scotland, because they kept us out of the Channel. All they have to do is harbor somewhere on the coast near their northern border, wherever they choose to draw it. If we sail down-coast, they hit us. If we go round them—and we don’t know where they are—they get to hear about it, come down after us, and hit us in harbor, wherever we are. The risk is either meeting them at sea, or getting our ships battered to bits while we’re on land. We might end up having to cut our way from coast to coast. And I don’t think any of the lads, however big they talk, fancies meeting the rock-throwers at sea again. You can’t fight standing on a bundle of planks.”
“So we’re beat,” nudged Ubbi. All three men laughed.
“Maybe what we need is some rock-throwers of our own,” suggested Halvdan. “That’s what Ivar thought. He made that little black-robed bastard, what was his name? Erkinbjart? He made him make some. Pity the little bastard got away.”
“That’s for next year,” said Sigurth. “Can’t change horses in mid-stream, and for this year we have to go with what we have. This year we’ll pass the word in the slave-markets that we pay high prices for men who can shoot these throwers. Someone will bring one in. And if they can shoot them they can build them. Put someone like that together with a real ship-builder, and we’ll have something that can outsail those clumsy English tubs and outfight them too.
“But right now we need something to put heart into our lot and silver into their pouches. Or the hope of silver in their heads, anyway.”
“Ireland,” suggested Halvdan.
“We’d have to go north about round the tip of Scotland now, the place will be aswarm with Norwegians before we get there.”
“Frisia?” offered Ubbi doubtfully.
“Poor as Scotland, only flatter.”
“That’s the islands. How about the mainland? Or we could try Hamburg again. Or Bremen.”
“That hasn’t been lucky water for us this year,” said Sigurth. His brothers nodded, both of them showing their teeth in involuntary snarl. They remembered the humiliation on the sandbank, coming back from a fruitless hunt with no quarry and a man missing. The humiliation of being outmaneuvered, so that they had to stand back from a challenge from a single man.
“But I think that’s the right idea,” said Sigurth. “Or nearly the right idea. We’ll keep the lads busy over here for a few weeks yet, give this whole country a complete shaking. Let them know they just have to enjoy themselves, there’s something bigger coming. Then we’ll go back across the North Sea, direct crossing, head for the granite isles.”
His brothers nodded, knowing he meant the islands of the North Frisians, facing the Ditmarsh, Fohr and Amrum and Sylt, three islands of rock amid a waste of shifting sands.
“Then we go down the Eider and hit Hedeby.”
Halvdan and Ubbi stared at each other, considered. “They’re our own people,” said Halvdan. “Sort of. Anyway, they’re Danes.”
“So what? Have they done us any favors? That fat trader-king Hrorik wouldn’t even sell the man we want to Skuli. He let the Way-priests take him off to their bolt-hole.”
“Maybe we ought to hit them instead.”
“Right. What I’m thinking,” said Sigurth, “is if England is ruled out for us right now, we’ll find better returns in our own countries than foraging round these poor places. Riskier, I know. But if we take Hedeby and Hrorik’s gold, then there’ll be all the more to support us if we go for Halvdan and his idiot brother Olaf. Sure, there’ll always be some who’ll drop out, got a brother in Kaupang or a father in Hedeby. Plenty left. And the ones we beat in one place will join us for the next place.”