And the god had said he must take every advantage. Something told Shef that was wrong too. That was it, there was something that had been bothering him. He sat up, called to his attendant. “Pass the word for the Englishman Udd.”
By the time Shef had his shoes on, Udd was there. Shef looked at him critically. He was trying to hold himself together, but his face was white and strained. He had been looking like that for days. No wonder. He had spent weeks waiting for a painful death, and been rescued only at the last moment. Before that he had gone through more danger and hardship than he would have done in six lifetimes as a smith’s helper, which is what he had been once. He had been overtaxed. Yet he would not wish to desert now.
“Udd,” Shef said, “I have a special assignment for you.” Udd’s lower lip quivered, the look of fear became more pronounced. “I want you to leave the Fearnought and stay with the rearguard.”
“Why, lord?”
Shef thought quickly. “So you can pass a message for me, if—if the day goes badly. Here, take this money. It will buy you a passage back to England one day, if that is what it comes to. If that happens, you are to greet King Alfred for me, and say I am sorry we could not work together for longer. And greet his queen from me as well.”
Udd was looking surprised, relieved, slightly ashamed. “And what is the message for her, lord?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Just greetings, and the memory of old times. And listen, Udd. I wouldn’t trust anyone to do this for me. I’m relying on you. Don’t let me down.”
The little man went out, still looking relieved. But less ashamed. Pointless, thought Shef. And directly against what the god said. We might need Udd during the day. But I could not bear to see those terrified eyes any more. Taking Udd out of the battle was an act of kindness. Also of defiance against the cynic-god Rig, his father and mentor.
Shef came out of the tent whistling, startling the sentries, who were used at least to reflective silence on mornings like this one. He hailed Cwicca, listening to Udd’s explanation a few feet away. “Have you got that bagpipe you made over the winter, Cwicca? Well, play it today. If that doesn’t scare the Ragnarssons, nothing will.”
Hours later, on a calm sea, the fleet crawled towards the bay behind which lay the long-inviolate Braethraborg. To the left of it, as the fleet approached from the north, a spit of land jutted out. On it, just visible, the hulks of the Ragnarssons’ four-mule catapult battery, flanked by the twist-shooters or torsion dart-throwers, and flanked again by the cheap, simple, inaccurate stone-lobbers. Out from the spit, almost blocking the entrance to the bay, lay the dozen shapes of the Ragnarssons’ largest warships, the coastal patrol that never put out to sea. Behind them clustered the mass of conventional longships, the main body of their fleet, headed by Shef’s old enemy, the Frani Ormr.
In the Fearnought Shef could hear the rowers grunting as they heaved on the oars—less oars now than sweeps. They were twice the size of ordinary oars and manned by two men each, the strongest in the fleet, carefully selected by Brand and Hagbarth. They had made their approach under sail, to save the rowers’ strength, but now the time had come to strike the mast and yard. Close by, on the same course as the Fearnought, King Olaf’s four large craft, each the size of the wrecked Crane, kept pace. Kept pace easily, at a paddling stroke, the rowers looking sideways at the strange ship they convoyed.
Shef had finally given orders to fit the plates of case-hardened steel. The two fighting platforms with the rotating mules on them were armored up to waist height, the plates slanting outwards. It would have been impossible to armor the rest of the ship and still have her float and move, but Shef had rigged a frame that bolted onto each gunwale. On this plates were fitted, overlapping like the shingles on a roof, or like dragon-scales. They too sloped from bottom to top, beginning just above the height of the oarsmen’s heads and running up till they almost met six feet above.