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meaning that Danish and Norse ships had bled the coasts dry of any treasure. ‘All you’ll find in the Sæfern Sea,’ he went on, ‘are our ships bringing men from Ireland.’

      ‘To attack Wessex?’

      ‘No!’ He grinned at me. ‘I’ve a mind to start trading with the Welsh kingdoms.’

      ‘And I have a mind,’ I said, ‘to take my ship to the moon and build a feasting hall there.’

      He laughed. ‘But speaking of Wessex,’ he said, ‘I hear they’re building a church where you killed Ubba?’

      ‘I hear the same.’

      ‘A church with an altar of gold?’

      ‘I’ve heard that too,’ I allowed. I hid my surprise that he knew of Odda the Younger’s plans, but I should not have been surprised. A rumour of gold would spread like couch grass. ‘I’ve heard it,’ I said again, ‘but I don’t believe it.’

      ‘Churches have money,’ he said thoughtfully, then frowned, ‘but that’s a strange place to build a church.’

      ‘Strange, why?’

      ‘So close to the sea? An easy place to attack?’

      ‘Or perhaps they want you to attack,’ I said, ‘and have men ready to defend it?’

      ‘A lure, you mean?’ He thought about that.

      ‘And hasn’t Guthrum given orders that the West Saxons aren’t to be provoked,’ I said.

      ‘Guthrum can order what he wants,’ Svein said harshly, ‘but I am Svein of the White Horse and I don’t take orders from Guthrum.’ He walked on, frowning as he threaded the fishing nets that men now dead had hung to dry. ‘Men say Alfred is not a fool.’

      ‘Nor is he.’

      ‘If he has put valuables beside the sea,’ he said, ‘he will not leave them unguarded.’ He was a warrior, but like the best warriors he was no madman. When folk speak of the Danes these days they have an idea that they were all savage pagans, unthinking in their terrible violence, but most were like Svein and feared losing men. That was always the great Danish fear, and the Danish weakness. Svein’s ship was called the White Horse and had a crew of fifty-three men, and if a dozen of those men were to be killed or gravely wounded, then the White Horse would be fatally weakened. Once in a fight, of course, he was like all Danes, terrifying, but there was always a good deal of thinking before there was any fighting. He scratched at a louse, then gestured towards the slaves his men had taken. ‘Besides, I have these.’

      He meant he would not go to Cynuit. The slaves, once they were sold, would bring him silver and he must have reckoned Cynuit was not worth the casualties.

      Svein needed my help next morning. His own ship was in Callyn’s harbour and he asked me to take him and a score of his men to fetch it. We left the rest of his crew at Peredur’s settlement. They guarded the slaves he would take away, and they also burned the place as we carried Svein east up the coast to Callyn’s settlement. We waited a day there as Svein settled his accounts with Callyn, and we used the time to sell fleeces and tin to Callyn’s traders and, though we received a poor enough price, it was better to travel with silver than with bulky cargo. The Fyrdraca was glittering with silver now and the crewmen, knowing they would receive their proper share, were happy. Haesten wanted to go with Svein, but I refused his request. ‘I saved your life,’ I told him, ‘and you have to serve me longer to pay for that.’ He accepted that and was pleased when I gave him a second arm ring as a reward for the men he had killed at Dreyndynas.

      Svein’s White Horse was smaller than Fyrdraca. Her prow had a carved horse’s head and her stern a wolf’s head, while at her masthead was a wind-vane decorated with a white horse. I asked Svein about the horse and he laughed. ‘When I was sixteen,’ he said, ‘I wagered my father’s stallion against our king’s white horse. I had to beat the king’s champion at wrestling and swordplay. My father beat me for making the wager, but I won! So the white horse is lucky. I ride only white horses.’ And so his ship was the White Horse and I followed her back up the coast to where a thick plume of smoke marked where Peredur had ruled.

      ‘Are we staying with him?’ Leofric asked, puzzled that we were going back west rather than turning towards Defnascir.

      ‘I have a mind to see where Britain ends,’ I said, and I had no wish to return to the Uisc and to Mildrith’s misery.

      Svein put the slaves into the belly of his boat. We spent one last night in the bay, under the thick smoke, and in the morning, as the rising sun flickered across the sea, we rowed away. As we passed the western headland, going into the wide ocean, I saw a man watching us from the cliff’s top and I saw he was robed in black and, though he was a long way off, I thought I recognised Asser. Iseult saw him too and she hissed like a cat, made a fist and threw it at him, opening her fingers at the last moment as if casting a spell at the monk.

      Then I forgot him because Fyrdraca was back in the open sea and we were going to the place where the world ended.

      And I had a shadow queen for company.

       PART TWO

       The Swamp King

       Four

      I love the sea. I grew up beside it, though in my memories the seas off Bebbanburg are grey, usually sullen, and rarely sunlit. They are nothing like the great waters that roll from beyond the Isles of the Dead to thunder and shatter against the rocks at the west of Britain. The sea heaves there, as if the ocean gods flexed their muscles, and the white birds cry endlessly, and the wind rattles the spray against the cliffs and Fyrdraca, running before that bright wind, left a path in the sea and the steering oar fought me, pulsing with the life of the water and the flexing of the ship and the joy of the passage. Iseult stared at me, astonished by my happiness, but then I gave her the oar and watched her thin body heave against the sea’s strength until she understood the power of the oar and could move the ship, and then she laughed. ‘I would live on the sea,’ I told her, though she did not understand me. I had given her an arm ring from Peredur’s hoard and a silver toe ring and a necklace of monster’s teeth, all sharp and long and white, strung on a silver wire.

      I turned and watched Svein’s White Horse cut through the water. Her bows would sometimes break from a wave so that the forepart of her hull, all green and dark with growth, would rear skywards with her horse’s head snarling at the sun, and then she would crash down and the seas would explode white about her timbers. Her oars, like ours, were inboard and the oar-holes plugged, and we both ran under sail and Fyrdraca was the faster ship, which was not because she was more cunningly built, but because her hull was longer.

      There is such joy in a good ship, and a greater joy to have the ship’s belly fat with other men’s silver. It is the Viking joy, driving a dragon-headed hull through a wind-driven sea towards a future full of feasts and laughter. The Danes taught me that and I love them for it, pagan swine though they might be. At that moment, running before Svein’s White Horse, I was as happy as a man could be, free of all the churchmen and laws and duties of Alfred’s Wessex, but then I gave orders that the sail was to be lowered and a dozen men uncleated the lines and the big yard scraped down the mast. We had come to Britain’s ending and I would turn about, and I waved to Svein as the White Horse swept past us. He waved back, watching the Fyrdraca wallow in the long ocean swells.

      ‘Seen enough?’

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