Shef thought to add, “and see you return,” but curbed the words. If Cuthred wanted to desert, he would. All that held him now was pride, and that was not to be insulted.
Cuthred stood unspeaking in the prow of the Fearnought next morning, in full mail, with sword, shield, spear and helmet. He looked like a king’s champion again, except for his eyes, weary, red-rimmed.
The ship was crowded with men, and women too. Only half a dozen had been left at the mining station. Priests, apprentices, Englishmen, Englishwomen and Finns were all crowded in together, fifty and more. They could never have managed to do so if the ship had needed to be rowed or sailed. But the snow-melt whirled her away without human effort, fast as a racing horse. Hagbarth at the tiller had only a lookout on the yard for ice, and men at the prow with oars to boom off floating debris.
All the way down the stream they saw the signs of devastation, burnt farms, burnt villages. Men called from the banks as they saw the standard flying, were hailed, told to rig their boats and follow. By the time the Fearnought reached the sea, a small armada of four- and six-oared boats trailed in her wake. At the sea itself, the fishing villages of Finnmark yielded larger craft. Shef reorganized, commandeering the largest boats, filling them with men from the smallest.
“You can’t take them very far like this,” protested Hagbarth. “They can’t carry enough water for one thing. No, don’t tell me, I know. Obey orders. You have a plan.”
As the Fearnought and her tail of small craft nosed down the Finnish Bight, as the Swedes called the deep gulf between Swedish Finnmark and the land opposite, they sighted a cluster of small islands. Piruusi, hitherto silent, came to Shef and pointed.
“Finns on those islands,” he said. “I cross sometimes, on ice. Sea-Finns.”
Shef motioned to Ottar, put him, Piruusi and a clutch of his Finnish followers into a boat, told them to bring on every boat and man they could. They pressed on under light sail, waiting for the challenge that must come from King Kjallak’s coastguards.
Ali the Red, skipper of the Sea-bear, patrolling the seas towards the Finnish Aland Isles, saw the strange sail bearing down on him, and approached cautiously. He had heard tales of strange and strangely-armed vessels, and had no mind to take needless risks. The rag-tag of sails behind, he scanned and dismissed. Fishing boats of the broken men, scavengers only. In any case, as they saw his striped sail and that of his consort, he saw them veer in unison and scud away. But what were they doing on the strange ship? The knorr miscegenated with a Frankish cog? Trying to flee as well?
“She’s in range for a long shot,” snarled Osmod. The former captain of halberdiers was in a state of barely-controlled rage, had been ever since he realized his longtime friend and comrade Cwicca was facing a Swedish noose, as sacrifice to Frey and Othin.
“Stand away from the mule,” Shef ordered. “Get down in the hold, all of you. Hagbarth, you too. Now, Osmod, you’re in charge. Turn this ship around and sail away, in flight.”
Osmod gaped. “But I can’t sail a ship.”
“Yes you can, you’ve seen them do it often enough. Now you do it. Karli, Wilfi, and me, we’re your sail-crew. Cuthred, take the steering oar.”
“Well,” said Osmod uncertainly. “Which way’s the wind. Cuthred, turn the front bit away from the wind, um, to the left. Karli, you take that end of the yard, and Wilfi, that end, and turn it round so the wind is behind it. Christ, Thor, I mean, what happens next?”
While Hagbarth held his hands over his eyes, the Fearnought lumbered into flight, the very image of an undermanned trader on a maiden voyage. Watching, Ali grinned into his red beard and brought his two ships slanting expertly across to intercept.
“Get your heads down,” ordered Shef. “Forget the mules. One crossbow each and another to hand.”
He waited till the Sea-bear was almost alongside, her gunwales lined with fierce bearded faces, spears poised to board, before he gave the word to rise. Anyone can wind a crossbow, as Udd had said two years before. Even easier when they had only to be cocked. At ten yards’ range even the most inexpert could not miss, and at ten yards’ range the stout iron quarrels went through wood and mail, flesh and bone as if they were so much canvas. As Shef’s archers dropped their first crossbows and reached for the second, it was already clear there would be no need for another volley.