But now they were not all there: Lulla, Fritha and Edwi of the catapult crew, all missing. Had they been cut off somehow? Were they being hidden somewhere in the Thing area, destined for slavery or revenge, or even sacrifice? At the thought of his men being strung up on the temple trees of some backwoods town, Shef’s patience snapped.
“Get all the men off,” he shouted to Brand. “You too Guthmund. We can muster a hundred men between us. We’ll go through this place and turn every tent over till they hand our men over. Anyone doesn’t like it, he’ll get a bolt in his belly.”
Shef became aware that Cwicca and the others were not reacting with the enthusiasm he would have expected. They had donned their glassy expressions, always a sign they knew something they did not dare to reveal.
“All right,” Shef said. “What’s up with those three?”
Osmod, usually the spokesman on difficult occasions, spoke up. “It’s like this,” he volunteered. “We’ve been walking round, some of us, looking at things. And all they’re talking about here is catapults and crossbows and that. They’ve heard a lot about them, don’t know how they work. So we said, naturally, that we knew all about catapults, and as for crossbows, well Udd here practically invented them. So they say—by this time they’d stood us all a drink or two—they say, ‘very interesting, do you men know what’s happening down south?’ ‘No,’ says we, naturally enough, since we don’t. So then they say…”
“Get on with it!” Shef bellowed.
“They’re paying big money for experienced catapult men, men who know how to build and shoot them. Big money. We think Lulla and Edwi and Fritha have decided to go in for that.”
Shef stared for a moment, uncertain how to react. He had freed those men. They were landholders back in England already. How could they go off and take service with anyone, leaving their lord? But then they were free men, because he had freed them…
“All right,” he said. “Forget it, Brand. Osmod, the rest of you, thank you anyway for staying. I hope you won’t lose by it. Let’s get on board and get going. Back in England in two weeks, if Thor sends us a wind.”
He did not, or not immediately. All the way down the long fjord from where the Gula met the Sogn to the open sea, the two boats pulled steadily into the teeth of a fresh breeze, low in the water from their weight of passengers and stores. Brand spelled the rowers, rotating the male passengers with his own men.
“Get round the ness,” he remarked. “Wind’ll be on our beam then, we can stop rowing and sail south. What’s that ahead?”
Round the point of the promontory that guarded the Gula-fjord, little more than half a mile away, came a ship. A strange ship, not like the traders and fishing-boats they had passed half a dozen times already. Her blue and white striped sail bellied in the breeze behind her, a pennant flew from her mast, blowing towards them so they could see it only fitfully as a gust took it wide. Something wrong with her sail. Something wrong with her size.
“Thor aid us,” said Brand at the steering-oar. “It’s one of Halfdan’s coastguard ships. But she’s got two sails. She’s even got two masts. I never saw such a thing in all my born days. What have they done all that for?”
Shef’s one sharp eye caught sight of the banner, the Gripping Beast design on it.
“Turn,” he said. “Get us out of here. It’s Queen Ragnhild. And she means us no good.”
“It’s a big ship, but we’re two to one, we can fight her…”
“Turn,” shouted Shef, recognizing something about the motions of the men on deck.
Brand caught on in the same moment and sent the Walrus heeling round in a turn so violent that the rowers were sent skidding along their benches. “Back starboard,” he shouted. “Pull backboard. Now pull together. Pull hard, get the stroke up. And drop the sail and sheet home, you in the waist there, help him, Narr, Ansgeir. Guthmund…” His voice carried over the water to their companion lagging a furlong behind. The Walrus, wind now behind her, began to scud back the way she had come.