Corban said, “It’s them. You see, it’s true. Gunnhild, come, have a ship here. You can escape.”
There came a thunderous knock on the door; Corban jumped at the booming sound, his throat closing. Gunnhild jerked, all over, and climbed onto her feet. She pulled at her long gown, as if putting herself back together. Her face smoothed. Eelmouth was already at the door; from the wall beside it he heaved up a great long balk of wood and slammed it down into the brackets on either side, barring the door fast.
“Come on!” He sprang around, heading for the little back door. Gunnhild came spryly around the table, and Corban followed her after him.
“That’s the ship?” Holding the door wide, Eelmouth was peering through the dusk toward the wharf. He stepped back, still propping the door, and Gunnhild went out first and down the ladder, nimble, her hair coming loose.
“Yes.” Corban went after her. The sun had just set, but the air was still pink beneath the darkening sky. From the top of the ladder Corban saw they still had a chance. Whoever was at the door had naturally sent his men to surround the hall, but the sharp steep bank and the marshy ground had held them up. Gunnhild was already halfway down the causeway toward the wharf, and the men chasing them were only just sliding down the bank at the side of the hall.
Corban bounded down onto the causeway; Eelmouth dropped beside him. From their pursuers there rose a harsh greedy outcry. Then their whoops changed to an astonished yell.
Out there on the wooden causeway, running, Gunnhild trailed the scarves and skirts of her clothes behind her, fluttering in the twilight; for one stride more she was a woman, running across the rackety boards, streaming the fringes of her clothes, and then she was rising, her feathery arms beating, her body stretching into the wind, and on wings stretched wide she sailed up into the darkening air.
Eelmouth gave a roar. He bounded off across the wooden pathway; Corban followed him, glancing over his shoulder to see the men rushing after.
Half a dozen on either side, they slipped and wobbled across the muck, but they had a much shorter way to go, and were certainly going to catch him and Eelmouth.
The hawk circled back over them. Its head turned from side to side, and it swung around toward the ship at the wharf. The tide had the little ship in its grasp, drawing it out away from the wharf, the painter stretched out taut, the stern aimed down toward the narrow way out of the lake to the river. The hawk sloped down toward it, her talons outstretched, to land on the high stern.
A step ahead of Corban, Eelmouth strode out onto the wharf and bent to free the ship’s painter. Corban looked back; the men after them were pounding down the causeway, the leaders three strides from the wharf.
“Give me your sword.” Corban turned toward Eelmouth. “Quick.”
Eelmouth was hauling the boat in, hand over hand; he stopped long enough to yank his sword from its sheath and throw it the ten feet to Corban. Corban snatched the sword out of the air by its hilt.
Its weight startled him On the first boards of the wharf, he wheeled as the first two men reached him, and slashed the broad blade in a sweep across their path. He had no gift for this; he swung awkwardly, nearly slinging the sword off into the marsh, but the oncoming men shied away anyway, crowded together onto the causeway, scrambling away from the sticky muck of the marsh. He planted himself on the land end of the wharf. Amazed, he heard himself howl in Irish—“Damn you! Damn your bloody hides! Come and get me if you dare!”
They rushed at him. He lashed out, the sword in both hands, and struck one man down; through the tail of his eye he saw some of them leaping down into the mucky river, circling around him. A man with an axe loomed up before him, and traded blows with him, foot to foot.
“Corban!” Eelmouth shouted. “Come on! Get in here!”
The axe slashed at his head; he flinched, ducking away, and twisted, and the notched blade swished by. He saw the little ship standing away from the dock, its red and white sail filling get with the evening wind, and then the wharf bucked hard under him, and from one side somebody reached up around the side of it and grabbed his ankle.
He fell hard on his knees. He lifted his head; he saw out there the swollen sail, the little ship gliding off onto the breast of the tide, already out of reach, and then they piled onto him, and bore him down onto the boards.
When they dragged him into the hall, the black-haired man Hakon of Lade was there, standing by the table, looking down at the chessboard with its scattered pieces. He lifted his head, watching Corban come toward him, and his face twisted with a cold fury.
“Who told you?” He tramped three steps up to meet Corban and shouted into his face. For once his eyes looked straight ahead. “Somebody betrayed me! Who was it?”
Corban was still, although the men on either side of him let go of him, and let him stand alone. He said, “No one. I made it out of what I saw:’ He knew he was about to die. He felt Benna wrapped around and around him; soon he would be with her. He said, enjoying this, “Shouldn’t you be going? By now, Gold- Harald or Grayfur has won that fight. You should catch the winner quickly, while he’s still recovering, and you can beat him easily.”
Hakon jerked his head back. His teeth showed and his hand went to the sword in his belt. “Damn you. Who else did you tell?” He slid the sword partway out of the scabbard, and then thrust it back into the sheath. The rage was ebbing, sinking back into the hard calculation of his wit. He paced off a few steps and came back. “Who else did you warn? Palnatoki. I should have listened to him when he told me about you.”
Corban smiled at him, saying nothing. Hakon paced back and forth in front of him, grinding his teeth together.
“You think I’m going to kill you, don’t you.”
Corban made no answer. He waited, patient, knowing what would come. Hakon’s eyes widened, shining with rage, and his fingers played over the hilt of his sword.
“Well,” he said, “I am. But not quickly. We’ll see what kind of wizard you really are. Eyvind. Thorleif. Take him over to that watchtower, lock him into the top chamber of it. Throw the key in the lake. Let’s see how long you can live on air and sunlight, wizard.” His arm jerked, as if casting away the key. “Take him.”
C H A P T E R F I F T E E N
As soon as they reached Hollandstadt, just before dawn, Raef huddled into the bow of a ship and went to sleep, but Conn was too excited to sleep. In the deep gloom of the moments before daybreak he helped Sweyn check quickly over the ship, counting oars and shields, and looking for leaks. The prince said almost nothing but went swiftly and surely about the work. Conn did whatever he bade him, glad of the business. He marked how Sweyn stopped now and then and looked away intently, up and down the river’s shore, and to the east.
The sail locker was full, and the ship, one of a long line of dragons drawn up on the river bar, seemed fit to go. They were short some oars, and Sweyn with no hesitation took them from the neighboring hull. As they worked, the sun’s first thin blue light slipped over the horizon, casting long shadows away westward. Inland a cock crowed, and over by the scattered buildings of the little town someone began to chop wood.
Sweyn straightened, rubbing his hands together, and looked keenly toward the east again. “I’d thought more of our bunch got out of the hall with us,” he said.
Conn said, although he knew better, “Maybe they went with Palnatoki.”
Sweyn shook his head. “Anyhow, we’re short a lot of men. I’ll have to see if I can find some.”
Conn said, “I’ll go with you.”
“No—stay here, keep an eye on the ship. We can’t lose the ship.” Sweyn reached out and gripped Conn’s shoulder. “Thanks, Conn. That’s all I can say, now. Someday, a lot more. Thanks.” His hand squeezed tight on Conn’s shoulder, and he turned and walked away up the shore.
Conn climbed back inside the ship, where Raef still slept burrowed into the hollow of the prow, and lay down beside him. He was aching with exhaustion, but he still could not sleep at once
. Everything was going along very well. For years he had thought all this happened only in his mother’s stories, but now he had come into his own story, and he was giddy with the joy of it. He had a sword, and a cause, a true and noble cause, to make the world right again; he had a great prince to follow, who would surely lead him to victories.
The god thing was a little confusing—Corban’s ideas about god belonged back on the island, with his mother, in that place outside of story; Sweyn’s gods seemed no more than stories. Anyhow, the Thor and Odin of it was incidental, compared to the glory of following Sweyn, of winning the battles to come. He laid his hand on the hilt of his new sword, and thought to himself he would never dishonor it, or his prince.
He slept. Almost at once, it seemed, he was jarred awake by the heavy stamp of footsteps just outside the hull of the ship.
He straightened; Sweyn was standing there, with a dozen strange men, some in rags and tatters, and many still half asleep, yawning. Sweyn nodded at Conn. “Don’t say anything. This is our crew. Come on, men, let’s get to work here—Conn, help me. You men, get yourselves a bench and stow your gear. Let’s go!”
Sluggishly the new men climbed up over the gunwales into the ship and set themselves around. Conn stepped down onto the mud of the shore. Sweyn said, under his breath, “They’re all I could find, they’ll have to do. Come help me.” They loaded some casks and baskets full of food onto the ship. Raef woke up, blinking and yawning, and came to help them with the last of it. Before the sun was a fist above the horizon, Sweyn’s dragon was sliding down the slow salty water of the river toward the sea.
Conn rowed a while, with Sweyn at the steerboard. The new men sorted out their strokes and rhythm, and the ship glided along the channel through the boggy lowland between Hollandstadt and the sea. When the rowing was going well, Sweyn called Conn back to him in the stern.
“You steer. I need to sleep. Do you know where to go?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Conn said. “These men seem all right.”
Sweyn shook his head. “I don’t know half their names. Some of them could be Bluetooth’s men. Who knows what they’ll do if we’re set on—” His lips twisted with distaste, and he went forward a little, lay down in the hull, and slept.
The mists were still rising from the water, the sun a silver dot in a thickness of sky. Conn steered the ship along in a line of other ships making their way down the boggy river to the sea. The river’s sluggish tidal current wound between islands of mud prickly with rushes, their feathery tops blown to wild white fluff. He followed a big-bellied ship like a waddling duck down a channel to the sea.
When he put the ship to the line of breakers at the edge of the sea, Sweyn woke up. He cast a look into the sky and another over their crew, and turned to look along the coast. “So far nothing,” he said.
Conn thought that in the clutter of other hulls coming out of the river here no one would notice them. He let the ship work its way through the breakers and into the deeper, rolling water offshore. Sweyn came back and got the steerboard grip and turned to run southerly. The wind was better for this and they put the sail up. Quickly the ship outran the slow traders and shore ships that had come down the river with them, and they sailed along just within sight of a low flat coast.
Conn went down to the bench next to Raef’s; they broke out some of the food, and everybody sat around eating. “Is this all?” one of the strangers said, and the others whined along with him; Sweyn ignored them, and they fell to bickering back and forth among themselves. Conn sat getting a feel of these men and decided quickly he didn’t much like them. Then he saw Raef lift his head and look hard away over their stern.
“What is it?” Conn said.
Raef mumbled around a mouthful of bread. Conn stood up, looking north; the empty sea rumpled away from him into the misty indefinite distance.
One of the new men, a shaggy, scrawny man named Leif, said, “What’s the matter? What are you three running away from, anyway?” Someone else laughed.
Sweyn came up from the stem and stood among them, up above most of them. He said, “That’s fair enough. What I’m running away from is the King of Denmark. Does that scare you?”
They gawked up at him, wordless, all but Leif, who said slowly, as if he thought he was being fooled with, “Well, then, who would you be?”
“I am Sweyn Haraldsson, the King’s son, and at the end of this, I mean to be King of Denmark myself. If you come along with me, you’ll rise with me, I swear it.”
None of them moved. One muttered, “Sure, and I’m the Emperor Odd.” Leif grunted and put his head to one side.
“Does this mean you don’t really have the money to pay us when we get to Jorvik?”
Sweyn said, “I have money in Jorvik. I told you that.”
Raef muttered something; Conn glanced backward, over the stern, but he had no far sight and he could make nothing out. The sail was luffing. They were losing the wind, and he said. “We should get to the oars.”
Leif stood up suddenly, putting his hands on his hips. He said, “Or maybe we would get more money if we took hold of you now, and gave you to that ship coming there?” He nodded toward the north.
Sweyn wheeled around. Conn stepped up face to face with Leif. “Get to your oar. All of you. Now.”
Leif’s lip curled. “Or what?”
Conn lunged at him. For an instant Leif stood against him, long arms kinked against Conn’s hold, but he buckled, and Conn heaved him up bodily and flung him over the side of the ship.
“Or that!” he roared at the rest of them.
They never hesitated. In a rush they scrambled onto their benches and grabbed their oars; before he had filled his lungs again they were bent to the first long stroke. In the stern, Sweyn shouted, “Come on, men—there’s a handful of silver in Jorvik for every one of you, when we get there. Now, pull!”
Conn slid onto his bench and ran his oar out. Raef was already pulling. Conn joined him, driving the ship strongly away over the sea. During the backstroke he looked over his shoulder. Leif’s head was bobbing up the next wave, moving toward the distant shore. The sea was turning glassy calm, no wind at all.
There was wind up to the north, because there, against the mist, a sail showed. Hastily he turned back straight to his oar and set himself to the work of getting the ship out of its way.
Around nightfall, they ran into a little sandy beach, made a fire, and got out more of the food. While everybody was eating, Conn went back to the ship, which Sweyn was settling for the night. Conn helped him lash up the steerboard and drag the awnings down to the gunwales. Sweyn wedged the anchor into a piece of driftwood buried high above the tide line, then came back and went around the ship again, checking it with his hands. Conn could see he loved this work.
“Do you have any money in Jorvik?” he said, thinking of the promise to the crew.
Sweyn straightened to laugh at him. “No.” He thumped Conn on the chest. “But I’ll do something, when I have to. As you did.” He laid both hands on the ship’s carved stempost. “She’s a good ship. And these will be good men, too, when they’ve got to know us.”
“We’ll need a lot more than them. More ships.”
“Yes. That’s why we’re going to Jorvik. Jorvik is full of Vikings.”
Conn leaned against the ship; up there, they were laughing, and tossing twigs on the fire to make flares. “My mother was from Jorvik. She always told me it’s a great city.”
“It is. Not as great as Hedeby, but older. Danes have been living there for a long time, and they like to have a Danish King. Since they threw out Eric Bloodaxe, back years ago, they’ve had the English King on their necks.”
“Jorvik is in England, then.” He struggled to get this straight in his mind, where everything was. The only real place seemed the sea around them, that connected it all; everything else floated at the edges, half lost in the mist.
“Yes. And here’s something—the English King is ailing now, I’ve heard,
which means nobody will care much what goes on in Jorvik, way off in the corner of his realm.” Sweyn took a chunk of stale bread from his shirt, broke it in half, and handed one piece to Conn. “When did you leave there?”
“I have never been there.” He felt some halt in his mind, some warning not to speak too much about where he had been, He had to say something, and as usual talking got him in trouble. He said, “Raef was born in Hedeby.”
Sweyn’s eyes glinted with the firelight. “You have different mothers, maybe? He seems so unlike you.”
“Yes,” Conn said, glad to be able to tell the truth, and then told too much of it. “His mother is a witch.” He clapped his hand over his mouth.
Sweyn laughed at him. “Family secrets? I can see that, there is something eldritch in him. Such men are often luckier for others than for themselves. May he be lucky for me. What of your father, though? Where is he?”
Conn lowered his hand to his lap. He felt a pang of guilt; be had not thought about his father much. “He said he would find us.” He glanced toward Raef, already curled up asleep on the far side of the fire, Raef who had seen Corban last—who had said where he was going, a name Conn had forgotten instantly. “My father can do anything,” he said, startling himself.
“I believe that,” Sweyn said. “Tell me about where you come from.”
Conn wrestled with the will to tell him everything, about the island, about the attack, and how Corban had decided to come back and find help; but something curbed his tongue. He was silent so long that Sweyn laughed, and said, “I ask too much. So be it. Now, go to sleep; we have to row a lot tomorrow, I think.”
“Is Jorvik far?”
“A few more days’ rowing. The wind won’t be fair this time of year. Then up a couple of rivers. I can get us there.”
“What do we do then?” Conn asked.
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