by H A CULLEY
‘To avenge his brother and take back what he’ll see as his family’s land. Don’t forget he has two sons whilst Froh has only had daughters. One of Kjarten’s brood will see Agder as his inheritance.’
Olaf had to agree that Ragnar had a point, though he couldn’t shake the suspicion that his friend had ambitions to rule rather more than his father’s old kingdom.
-℣-
It took Ragnar another year of ship building and recruiting men before he was ready for the invasion of Alfheim. He had raided Frisia again in the summer of 829 but the Frisians had learned their lesson and had fled with their valuables before the Vikings could land. He vowed that next time he went raiding along that coast he would try Frankia instead.
He had sunk all the silver and gold he had accumulated into the campaign and he was reliant on gaining significant plunder from Alfheim to meet some of his obligations to both his ship builders and his warriors. Nevertheless, he was confident and buoyant as he set out with his fleet of four drekars, six snekkjur and three knarrs to attack his enemy. In total he had over six hundred warriors as well as several dozen sailors and ships’ boys. Only half of the former were his hirdmen and bondis; the rest were adventurers and mercenaries.
He might have sufficient ships but he didn’t have enough experienced ship captains or steersmen. Many of his warriors had served as ship’s boys and knew something about seamanship but too few had the necessary skill or had the right temperament to take charge of a ship.
Leofstan had stopped being a ship’s boy when he reached sixteen, the age at which Vikings became warriors. Since then he had helmed Ragnar’s own drekar.
‘I’m going to make Leofstan captain of one of the new drekars,’ he told Olaf one day, ‘and I’d like you to take over another.’
If he’d expected Olaf to be pleased he was mistaken.
‘So you put me, your oldest friend, on the same level as someone who is little more than a thrall, a Northumbrian to boot.’
Ragnar had anticipated that Olaf might prefer to stay with Ragnar on the latter’s drekar but he hadn’t expected him to be jealous of Leofstan.
‘I’m making a gift of the drekar to you,’ he said stiffly. ‘You might at least thank me.’
‘You expect me to be grateful? Well, I’m not.’
With that he stormed off leaving a puzzled Ragnar standing open mouthed. At first the jarl wondered how he could make amends but, as time passed, he began to find Olaf’s attitude unacceptable. He didn’t repeat the offer and he found someone else to captain the new longship. He hid his resentment well but the rift between the two old friends took a long time to heal.
Leofstan, on the other hand, was delighted at his promotion, but he insisted on finding a suitable replacement as Ragnar’s body servant before he took over his ship. His choice fell on a young Swedish thrall called Lodvik. If Ragnar was surprised by this, when he could have perfectly well found his own servant, he said nothing. It was an indication of Leofstan’s personal loyalty to him that he’d taken so much care to find the right boy to replace him.
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The coast near the King of Alfheim’s hall was pockmarked by small inlets and fjords bounded by low hills covered in pine trees. Ragnar had landed in a deserted cove a few miles south of Bohus, where the hall was located. Leaving his small army to make camp he took Olaf and two of his best warriors called Lars and Bjarke with him and set off to reconnoitre Bohus.
They made their way through the densely packed trees heading parallel to the coast. At that time of the year tiny biting insects swarmed in the shade of the trees and the four men cursed and swore at them, slapping at bare bits of skin and they hurried to reach the fjord they were looking for.
Ragnar had learned that the hall itself stood on a rocky promontory at the end of the southern branch of one of the longer fjords. Two hours later they crested a hill and stood at the edge of the trees looking at a hall standing a hundred feet above the surrounding settlement. Compared to the main settlement in Agder this place was small and insignificant and Ragnar could see why Froh had deserted it for Arendal. However, the hall – although undefended by a palisade – looked impregnable to assault.
On two sides cliffs dropped sheer to the water. The hall was located twenty yards back from the edge but they couldn’t see the other two sides. They cautiously worked their way around the settlement until they could see the two landward sides. They were also protected by cliffs with a narrow path winding its way up one of them. This appeared to be the only access and it was scarcely wide enough for a man on a horse or two people on foot walking abreast to traverse it.
There was a strange apparatus hanging over the water which puzzled Ragnar until Lars suggested that it might be for lowering a barrel to collect fresh water.
‘Won’t it be saline?’ Olaf asked but Lars shook his head.
‘Not this far from the sea. That stream over there is bringing fresh water into the fjord all the time.’
Ragnar narrowed his eyes, lost in thought for a moment, before deciding that they’d seen enough.
-℣-
They had come out of the trees at dawn. The few hundred men in the settlement of Bohus had been caught unawares and, disorganised as they were, proved no match for Ragnar’s warriors. It was a massacre; a few people escaped but the majority of the men were killed and the women and children captured.
To everyone’s surprise Ragnar let the old women go.
‘Won’t they spread the word about our invasion?’ Olaf asked.
‘That’s the idea,’ the enigmatic Ragnar replied with a grin.
However, that still left Kjarten and his hirdmen bottled up in his hall. Ragnar had no intention of wasting his men’s lives trying to assault the place up such a narrow path and sat down to besiege it instead. The first time that the Swedes tried to lower their barrel to collect water they found a longship waiting underneath. The crew grabbed the barrel and cut through the rope it was suspended from. The same thing would happen every time they lowered a barrel – assuming they had spare barrels.
It was evident that Kjarten hadn’t taken the simple precaution of storing some water on top of the plateau and, after three days, he asked to negotiate. Ragnar decided to let him stew a little, but that was a mistake. The weather for the past week had been fine but, by the time that he had agreed to meet Kjarten half way up the path that led to the top of the plateau, dark clouds had begun to gather. Ragnar waited at the bottom of the path but Kjarten didn’t appear. When the first fat drops of rain hit his face he knew that he’d left it too long. That night several inches of rain fell and Ragnar realised that, unless he was a complete idiot, Kjarten would have gathered enough rainwater to last for days, if not weeks.
His men started to worry. The longer they remained at Bohus the more chance there was of a relief force from the rest of Alfheim trapping them there. It was even possible that Froh had now heard of his brother’s predicament and was on his way as well. Morale in Ragnar’s camp deteriorated rapidly, but Ragnar himself didn’t seem at all concerned.
-℣-
Øfden cast his net again as another fishing boat rowed past them heading from Arendal into the Skagerrak.
‘You won’t catch much there, my friend. You want to head further out,’ a man in the other boat called across the water.
Øfden waved his thanks and he, his brother and their two sons started to pull in their net. They made a pretence at moving but as soon as the other boat was out of sight, they cast their net into the water near their original spot at the entrance to the fjord. From there they could see up it to the jetties of Arendal. It was the second day they had fished in these waters and Øfden was becoming concerned that someone would soon get suspicious.
As the afternoon drew to a close they were about to haul in their nets for the day and head for one of the small coves to camp for the night when three longships rounded the point to the west of them.
‘Jarl Dagfinnr,’ Øfden said quietly to the othe
rs, though the ships were too far away to hear him even if he’d shouted.
‘Dagfinnr? Who’s he?’ one of the boys asked.
‘He’s the Jarl of Rørvik on the island of Vikna, though he controls much of the west coast of Agder. The symbol of a serpent on his sails is his. Presumably Froh has now got wind of Jarl Ragnar’s attack on Bohus and is mustering his men. I wonder why Dagfinnr has only brought three drekar though.’
‘Perhaps he’s an unwilling adherent of Froh’s and has brought as few as he thought he could get away with,’ Øfden’s brother suggested.
‘In which case I wonder whether it’s worth taking a gamble?’
‘Do you know Dagfinnr? Is he likely to side with Ragnar against Froh?’
‘I don’t know. He used to be a close friend of Ragnar’s father, so I can’t imagine that he would have given his allegiance to Froh unless he had no other option.’
In the event the decision was taken out of Øfden’s hands. The leading drekar passed quite close to the fishermen and Dagfinnr’s steersman glanced their way and then suddenly stiffened. He pushed the steering oar away from him so that the longship came up into the wind and glided to a stop.
‘What are you doing man? Are you mad?’
A Norsemen with a grey beard and dressed in a fine tunic strode aft to confront the steersman, but the latter was busy studying the crew of the fishing boat.
‘Øfden, if that you? And your brother? I thought that you were both lost with Thorkel.’
‘Thorkel wasn’t lost at sea. He was killed by Froh’s hirdmen. We escaped in his drekar to Denmark.’
‘Who do you serve now then?
‘Jarl Ragnar, King Sigvard’s son.’
‘What’s going on?’ Dagfinnr demanded when he reached the steersman, his eyes swivelling between him and the crew in the small boat.
‘Jarl, I’m Øfden. I used to be one of Thorkel’s crew. May I come aboard and speak to you privately?’
-℣-
Half an hour after Øfden’s fishing boat had sailed into Bohus, Ragnar gave the order to fire the settlement and get the longships under way. However, instead of sailing out to sea, they turned at the junction of the two branches of the fjord, lowered their sails and the crews started to row up the left hand branch.
The steersman put the oar over and the sail came swiftly down to be lashed to the yardarm on deck. After that it was swung through ninety degrees so that it could be secured fore and aft. At the same time the men unblocked the holes in the hull and pushed their oars through them so that they could start to row at the same time as the sail was being secured. It required skill and coordination if the ship’s momentum was to be maintained, but Vikings had to be accomplished sailors as well as warriors.
Once out of sight of the junction between the two branches of the fjord the longships dropped their stone anchors and waited. Meanwhile Øfden and his crew started to fish in the shallows just south-west of the point where the two branches of the fjord met. From there they could see the fjord’s outlet into the Skagerrak as well as Ragnar’s fleet at anchor.
Whilst they waited the wind dropped and veered until it was blowing up the fjord. As soon as Froh’s fleet hove into view Øfden’s boat scuttled off to the western shore of the fjord; a not unnatural reaction to the sight of twenty longships heading towards them.
‘By Odin’s beard,’ Olaf muttered to Ragnar when he saw the size of the enemy fleet. ‘We don’t stand a chance against that lot!’
‘Have faith my friend. All is not as it seems,’ he replied. ‘At least, I bloody well hope that’s the case,’ he added quietly under his breath.
After the last of the enemy fleet had disappeared towards the smouldering ruins of what had been Bohus, Ragnar gave the order to hoist in the stone anchors and his crews started to row their ships back to the junction. Once there, they turned into the other branch of the fjord and the ships boys, helped this time by some of the warriors, hauled on the halyards to raise the mainsails as quickly as possible.
In such a light wind they were barely making two knots through the water, so Ragnar gave the order for the rowers to help propel his drekar and the rest of his captains did the same. Up ahead Froh, still oblivious to Ragnar’s presence, also gave the order to start rowing. However, only the longships manned by his hirdmen and those of two of his jarls followed his example. The rest continued under sail only.
Then Olaf noticed something strange. The eleven longships nearest to them seemed to have dropped a sea anchor – a sort of sock with a wide mouth and a small heel - over the stern to slow them even further. It was obvious that Ragnar’s fleet would soon catch them up. Standing beside Olaf at the prow of his drekar, Ragnar gave a sigh of relief and smiled at his friend.
‘Now we shall have some fun. Twenty one longships against nine seems good odds to me,’ he said with a broad grin.
‘You knew that half of Froh’s fleet would desert him and join you?’ Olaf asked in amazement. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Two reasons; firstly I wasn’t sure that Øfden had actually been able to persuade any of the jarls to join me and, secondly, you have a loose tongue when you are drunk, which is most nights. In the event Øfden talked to Jarl Dagfinnr but he needn’t have bothered. It seems that they were already involved in a conspiracy with the jarls in northern Adger.’
As Ragnar caught up with Dagfinnr and his fellow jarls they pulled in the sea anchors and unshipped their oars. Now Ragnar led a fleet of twelve drekar and nine snekkjur against Froh’s five drekar and four snekkjur. It wasn’t long before someone in the latter’s fleet spotted that there were ten more longships to their rear. The raven emblazoned on the red sails of ten of the following ships left little doubt as to whom they belonged.
Froh’s leading drekar was now nearing Bohus. His brother and his hirdmen, waiting on the waterfront to greet their saviours, watched in bewilderment as Froh’s ships now turned to face back the way they’d come. As the two fleets closed on one another Ragnar gave the order to lower sails. They would only be a liability in a sea battle. Two of his warriors sheathed their swords and picked up a grappling iron each and prepared to hook an enemy ship as they came alongside it. Ragnar’s crew shipped their oars at the last minute, without bothering to block up the holes, and grabbed spears, axes, swords and shields ready to board the enemy vessel.
It was Froh’s ship that they came alongside, but his men weren’t quite so quick to unship their oars. Five were smashed by the impact and their rowers suffered broken arms and smashed ribs in consequence. Ragnar was the first over the side and he landed on the other ship’s deck with Olaf and two of his hirdmen right behind him. He faced a ring of Swedes, who thrust spears and swords at him, and for a moment he was hard pressed to counter their attack with his shield and sword.
He felt several blows and a spear point strike his body but his goatskin jerkin and his chain mail byrnie protected him and he suffered nothing worse than some severe bruising, though the chainmail would doubtless need repair work later. He managed to chop off the hand of one assailant at the wrist just as a spear point slid off the fixed steel visor protecting his upper face and slashed open his exposed cheek. He was so full of adrenaline that he didn’t even feel the wound and he proceeded to hack halfway through the spearman’s neck.
As more and more of his crew piled in to the fight, the Swedes were forced back a few inches at a time until there was nowhere for them to go. The drekar belonging to Leofstan had latched onto the far side of the hull and its crew now attacked Froh’s men from the rear.
At one point Olaf saw Leofstan fighting nearby with his back to him. All his old resentment at the bond between Ragnar and his former servant came flooding back and for a moment he was tempted to stab him in the back, then he saw a Swede about to strike Leofstan down from the side and Olaf stepped in to save him. Olaf couldn’t have said why he’d protected the other man but he felt better for what he’d done afterwards. He still didn’t like Leofstan, but from
that moment on he was no longer jealous of the friendship between Ragnar and the former Northumbrian fisher boy.
The Swedes fought bravely but they were outnumbered and gradually Ragnar’s men slaughtered them until the last dozen, including a wounded Froh, were forced back to the small aft deck.
‘Surrender, Froh, and I will spare the lives of your men,’ Ragnar called up to him.
‘What happens to us if I do?’
‘You will hang for the murder of my parents and your men will become thralls, what else do you expect?’ Ragnar shrugged.
‘We’d rather die,’ one of the other Swedes spat at him.
‘So be it.’
Ragnar had no intention of wasting his men’s lives and it would be difficult to fight one’s way up onto the small aft deck where the steersman normally stood. Instead his archers came forward. The Swedes had been taken unawares and didn’t have time to put on mail byrnies or leather armour. Despite their shields, it didn’t take long to wound or kill most of the remaining men with a few volleys of arrows.
Ragnar led the assault on the aft deck, running along the narrow gunwale and leaping down onto the deck. He slew the man who tried to protect Froh and then, at last, he was facing the man who’d killed his parents. Froh had an arrow protruding from his shoulder and another in his thigh, but he still stood tall and proud. Ragnar feinted towards his other leg and Froh dropped his shield down to protect it.
It was the move that Ragnar had anticipated and, instead of bringing his sword up as Froh had expected, he threw his weight behind his shield, smashing the boss into Froh’s nose. The nasal on the king’s helmet did nothing to protect it and it was squashed to a red pulp. The blow brought intense and crippling pain in its wake and for a moment Froh was unable to see. Ragnar brought his sword around as hard as he could and the sharp blade cut through the flesh, bones and sinews of Froh’s neck. The head flew sideways and over the gunwale to land in the sea a few feet from the longship.