LITMIR.BIZ

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the boats. I learned to split oak trunks with wedge and mallet, cleaving out the long pale planks that patched the rotted hulls. Spring brought more ships, more men, and with them was Halfdan, youngest brother of Ivar and Ubba. He came ashore roaring with energy, a tall man with a big beard and scowling eyes. He embraced Ragnar, thumped me on the shoulder, punched Rorik in the head, swore he would kill every Christian in England, then went to see his brothers. The three of them planned the new war which, they promised, would strip East Anglia of its treasures and, as the days warmed, we readied for it.

      Half the army would march by land, while the other half, which included Ragnar’s men, would go by sea and so I anticipated my first proper voyage, but before we left Kjartan came to see Ragnar, and trailing him was his son Sven, his missing eye a red hole in his angry face. Kjartan knelt to Ragnar and bowed his head. ‘I would come with you, lord,’ he said.

      Kjartan had made a mistake by letting Sven follow him, for Ragnar, usually so generous, gave the boy a sour look. I call him a boy, but in truth Sven was almost a man now and promised to be a big one, broad in the chest, tall and strong. ‘You would come with me,’ Ragnar echoed flatly.

      ‘I beg you, lord,’ Kjartan said, and it must have taken a great effort to say those words, for Kjartan was a proud man, but in Eoferwic he had found no plunder, earned no arm rings, and made no reputation for himself.

      ‘My ships are full,’ Ragnar said coldly, and turned away. I saw the look of hatred on Kjartan’s face.

      ‘Why doesn’t he sail with someone else?’ I asked Ravn.

      ‘Because everyone knows he offended Ragnar, so to give him a place at the oars is to risk my son’s dislike.’ Ravn shrugged. ‘Kjartan should go back to Denmark. If a man loses his lord’s trust then he has lost everything.’

      But Kjartan and his one-eyed son stayed in Eoferwic instead of going back to Denmark, and we sailed, first flowing with the current back down the Ouse and so into the Humber where we spent the night. Next morning we took the shields off the ships’ sides, then waited till the tide lifted their hulls and we could row eastwards into the first great seas.

      I had been offshore at Bebbanburg, going with fishermen to cast nets about the Farne Islands, but this was a different sensation. The Wind-Viper rode those waves like a bird instead of thrashing through like a swimmer. We rowed out of the river, then took advantage of a north-west wind to hoist the great sail and the oars were fiddled out of their holes, the holes were covered with wooden plugs and the great sweeps stored inboard as the sail cracked, bellied, trapped the wind and drove us southwards. There were eighty-nine ships altogether, a fleet of dragon-headed killers, and they raced each other, calling insults whenever they travelled faster than some other boat. Ragnar leaned on the steering oar, his hair flying in the wind and a smile as broad as the ocean on his face. Seal-hide ropes creaked, the boat seemed to leap up the seas, seethe through their tops and slide in flying spray down their faces. I was frightened at first, for the Wind-Viper bent to that wind, almost dropping her leeward side beneath the great green sea, but then I saw no fear on the other men’s faces and I learned to enjoy the wild ride, whooping with delight when the bow smashed into a heavy sea and the green water flew like an arrow shower down the deck.

      ‘I love this!’ Ragnar called to me. ‘In Valhalla I hope to find a ship, a sea and a wind!’

      The shore was ever in sight, a low green line to our right, sometimes broken by dunes, but never by trees or hills, and as the sun sank we turned towards that land and Ragnar ordered the sail furled and the oars out.

      We rowed into a water land, a place of marsh and reed, of bird cries and long-legged herons, of eel traps and ditches, of shallow channels and long meres, and I remembered my father saying the East Anglians were frogs. We were on the edge of their country now, at the place where Mercia ended and East Anglia began in a tangle of water, mud and salt flats. ‘They call it the Gewæsc,’ Ragnar said.

      ‘You’ve been here?’

      ‘Two years ago,’ he said. ‘Good country to raid, Uhtred, but treacherous water. Too shallow.’

      The Gewæsc was very shallow and Weland was in the Wind-Viper’s bow, weighing the depth with a lump of iron tied to a rope. The oars only dipped if Weland said there was sufficient water and so we crept westwards into the dying light followed by the rest of the fleet. The shadows were long now, the red sun slicing into the open jaws of the dragon, serpent and eagle heads on the ships’ prows. The oars worked slowly, their blades dripping water as they swept forward for the next stroke, and our wake spread in long slow ripples touched red by dying sun-fire.

      We anchored that night and slept aboard the ships and in the dawn Ragnar made Rorik and me climb his mast. Ubba’s ship was nearby and he too had men clambering up towards the painted wind-vane at the masthead.

      ‘What can you see?’ Ragnar called up to us.

      ‘Three men on horseback,’ Rorik answered, pointing south, ‘watching us.’

      ‘And a village,’ I added, also pointing south.

      To the men on shore we were something from their darkest fears. All they could see was a thicket of masts and the savage carved beasts at the high prows and sterns of our ships. We were an army, brought here by our dragon boats, and they knew what would follow and, as I watched, the three horsemen turned and galloped south.

      We went on. Ubba’s ship led the way now, following a twisting shallow channel and I could see Ubba’s sorcerer, Storri, standing in the bows and I guessed he had cast the runes and predicted success. ‘Today,’ Ragnar told me wolfishly, ‘you will learn the Viking way.’

      To be a Viking was to be a raider, and Ragnar had not conducted a shipborne raid in many years. He had become an invader instead, a settler, but Ubba’s fleet had come to ravage the coastline and draw the East Anglian army towards the sea while his brother, Ivar, led the land army south from Mercia, and so that early summer I learned the Viking ways. We took the ships to the mainland where Ubba found a stretch of land with a thin neck that could easily be defended and, once our ships were safely drawn onto the beach, we dug an earthwork across the neck as a rampart. Then large parties of men disappeared into the countryside, returning next morning with captured horses and the horses were used to mount another war-band that rode inland as Ragnar led his men on foot along the tangled shoreline.

      We came to a village, I never did learn its name, and we burned it to the ground. There was no one there. We burned farmsteads, a church, and marched on, following a road that angled away from the shore, and at dusk we saw a larger village and we hid in a wood, lit no fires, and attacked at dawn.

      We came shrieking from the half-light. We were a nightmare in the dawn; men in leather with iron helmets, men with round painted shields, men with axes, swords and spears. The folk in that place had no weapons and no armour, and perhaps they had not even known there were Danes in their countryside for they were not ready for us. They died. A few brave men tried to make a stand by their church, but Ragnar led a charge against them and they were slaughtered where they stood, and Ragnar pushed open the church door to find the small building filled with women and children. The priest was in front of the altar and he cursed Ragnar in Latin as the Dane stalked up the small nave, and the priest was still cursing when Ragnar disembowelled him.

      We took a bronze crucifix, a dented silver plate and some coins from the church. We found a dozen good cooking pots in the houses and some shears, sickles and iron spits. We captured cattle, goats, sheep, oxen, eight horses, and sixteen young women. One woman screamed that she could not leave her child and I watched Weland spit the small boy on a spear, then thrust the bloodied corpse into the woman’s arms. Ragnar sent her away, not because he pitied her, but because one person was always spared to carry news of the horror to other places. Folk must fear the Danes, Ragnar said, and then they would be ready to surrender. He gave me a piece of burning wood he had taken from a fire. ‘Burn the thatch, Uhtred,’ he ordered, so I went from house to house, putting fire to the reed thatch. I burned the church and then, just as I approached the last house, a man burst from the door with a three-pronged eel spear that he lunged at me. I twisted aside, avoiding

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