“She’s going to the bottom,” Hagbarth said briefly. “I think one of those boulders broke her back, finally. Look.” He pointed to the water swilling round the open hold.
“Cwicca, Osmod,” shouted Shef. “Get your crews bailing. All right, Hagbarth, see if you can beach her. Over there, on the spit below the catapults.”
The crippled Fearnought crept across the water, while the battle both in the bay and on land moved rapidly away from her, leaving her limping across an empty sea dotted with wreckage and the heads of exhausted swimmers.
Chapter Thirty-three
The Fearnought beached, or sank, but either way touched bottom a few yards from the sandy shore. Dead and wounded men lay stretched out in a scatter not far away. Here and there in the water, hands waved feebly for rescue. Shef pointed them out to Hagbarth. “Get a couple of men into the row-boat and pick up as many as you can. Send some more along the shore to do what they can for the wounded. Hund will direct them.”
Hagbarth nodded. “I’ll get the rest working to shed the plates and lighten the ship. I think we can refloat her in the end.”
“All right.” Shef looked up the slope to where the Ragnarssons had mounted their catapults. No-one there. The battle had moved on, the catapulteers fled, the men from Shef’s small-boat flotilla pursuing them and heading for the loot to be found in the now-undefended Braethraborg itself. Shef felt weariness descending on him with the relief of tension, felt he could bear to make no more decisions. Now that the noise of battle had gone by, a lark was singing, high in the air above the grassy slope, reminding him of days in the Emneth meadows years ago. Maybe those days would come back. Days of peace.
He decided to walk up the gentle slope to look over the other side into the bay, see the end of the battle and what must follow it, the sack of the Braethraborg. As he started off up the slope, lance in hand, Cuthred followed him. Karli followed also, a few paces behind. Hagbarth watched them go, felt a moment’s concern. On any battlefield there were likely to be men who had feigned death, enemies who might suddenly get to their feet again. It was Viking routine to police a battlefield before ceasing precautions, going over it in teams to strip bodies, finish enemy wounded and look for those worth ransom. This time it had not been done. Still, the king had two bodyguards with him, and there was much to be done on shore. Hagbarth put aside his concern, began to detail the others to their tasks.
At the top of the slope Shef saw again the scattering of dead, not many of them—the catapulteers had mostly run as they saw the drilled German line come up the hill at them. From the highest point he looked out over the scene he had seen in his vision, from the other end of the fjord. A long, green, peaceful bay. Clustered together maybe a mile off, the row on row of longhouses, barracks, shipyards, slipways, slave-pens that had been for so long the center of the Ragnarssons’ power, the most feared place in the north. Now the core of that power was sinking in the bay, smashed by King Olaf’s ships now making their stately way towards the main dock. The survivors were being hunted down by the smaller craft following up. Some ships, manned by Sigurth’s reluctant levies, were steering widely round in an attempt to make their escape. At the center of the whole scene, battered into hulks by the Fearnought’s artillery, the twelve great dragon-boats lay holed, awash, their crews clinging to timbers, waiting to be rescued or to drown. All over the bay small boats, makeshift rafts or strong swimmers made for the shore.
“Not much for me to do today,” said Cuthred behind Shef. “I might as well have stayed behind.”
Shef did not reply. His eye had been caught by three bedraggled warriors beaching a small boat below him, on the side of the spit away from the grounded Fearnought. They had seen him too, were walking briskly up the slope.