The Warig had a slender lead, no more than a hundred paces. She was well within bowshot. No sooner had the thought occurred than the first shafts sliced down. Maximus snatched up a discarded shield and crouched over Ballista, covering them both.
The Brondings’ aim was wild. They were not shooting in volleys, but men on benches can neither jump aside nor shield themselves. Inevitably, an arrow found its mark. An Olbian screamed. He fell back off his bench. He was not dead. The shaft in his chest quivered obscenely with his breathing. No one went to help him.
Another scream. Another man down, a Roman this time. The oarsmen anxiously watched the sky. It was affecting their timing. With each stroke, one or more missed the surface or caught the bed of the creek, their wake streamed grey with silt.
Maximus peeped around the shield. The scowling Bronding figurehead was only a heavy javelin throw behind; twenty-five paces at most. An arrow came straight at Maximus. He ducked back. It whickered past.
The Warig shivered the length of her hull. The speed dropped off her. There was a slithering, sucking sound. Her keel was grounding.
‘Pull! Pull, like never before!’
Maximus jumped to the nearest bench, added his weight to the next stroke. As they brought the oars back, the Warig was almost stationary, almost held by the mud. The oars fought to keep her momentum. For a moment the opposed forces seemed in balance. Then, with a surge, like wine out of an upended amphora, the Warig was free, rushing ahead.
‘Get back in time.’
Maximus was not listening to Ballista’s orders; none of them were. They were all gazing with wonder over the Angle commander’s shoulders. The Bronding ship had come to a shuddering stop. Her mast swayed – once, twice, a third time – then, ropes cracking, went by the board. Warriors threw themselves clear, splashing into the shallow, muddy water. Not all made it in time; screams came from the inboard.
A ragged, exhausted cheer. The crew of the Warig held their arms aloft in relief. Oars skewed this way and that.
‘Keep rowing. Bend those oars, you lazy bastards. That longship will be here a time, but there are other Brondings out there.’ Despite trying to sound fierce, Ballista was grinning in almost disbelieving delight. They had won free. The Suebian Sea lay before them: the way north was open.
XX
The Island of Varinsey
Oslac looked out over the northern sea. His mind was troubled. He loved his wife, but knew she did not love him. She loved both their children, and so did he. It was a bond. They got on well enough. Oddly, they had got on better since her son Starkad, his stepson, had been taken hostage in Gaul. But Oslac knew she did not love him. When she was young, Kadlin had loved his half-brother, and now Dernhelm was coming home.
Desperate events demanded desperate responses. Yet Oslac was not sure he was doing the right thing. Would Pius Aeneas have done the like? After duty, family had been everything to the Trojan. He had braved the horrors of the underworld to talk with the shade of his father. Surely, if her ghost had not appeared to him of its own volition, Aeneas would have ventured the same for his wife. Oslac steeled himself. The Himlings were descended from Woden, but Aeneas was also in their ancestry.
It was time. Oslac turned away from the sea and walked back to where two of his hearth-companions waited with the horses. They had not wanted to come with him. He did not blame their reluctance; only a desperate concern had urged him to make the journey. In the winter it was the practice of the wicce to travel from one hall to another. She would have come to him. Yet it was better it was springtime, better he had been constrained to go to her. In the hall everyone would have heard what she said, not that he could have asked the questions he needed to ask, not in front of an audience, not with Kadlin there.
The previous evening had gone well enough. It had been a long day’s ride from Gudme to this desolate place on the northern coast of Varinsey. They had brought the things the aged wicce always wanted: the hearts of various animals, freshly slaughtered. Oslac had watched her cook and eat them with a gruel made from goat’s milk. She used a brass spoon, and a knife with a walrus-tusk handle bound with two rings of copper; the blade had a broken point. She had told him to return the next day at sunset. Not wanting to spend the night near her dwelling and the pond with its guardian, Oslac had decided they would ride to the shore and camp there. He had had a vague idea that the clean wind off the sea would dispel any taint.
One of his hearth-companions, the tall one, held his bridle, the other gave him a leg-up. They did not speak. He waited while they swung up on to their own mounts. His horse tossed its head and sidled. Calming the animal made him feel better. He knew he was a good horseman. The creak of leather and the jingle of the bit were part of his world. He was a warrior, an atheling of the Himling dynasty. He would not let this ritual unman him.
They set off at a walk. The day was overcast. Oslac could not have kept this journey quiet. The cook had butchered the animals. Why else would she have thought that he had wanted the hearts? She was a good-natured woman, but talkative; the news would have spread from his hall to the others: soon all Gudme would have known what he was about. This in mind, Oslac had announced he was going to consult the wicce about Unferth. It might have seemed unusual, but not out of all expectation. The situation was grave, the future uncertain. Already since the thaw, longships full of Brondings, Wylfings and Geats had harried the lands of Himling vassals on Latris. Worse, there had been warriors from the Dauciones among the raiders. The rumours had proved true: they, too, had cast off their allegiance to the Angles. Things were so bad his father had even talked of opening the tomb of Himling and bringing out the great terrible-forged sword Bile-Himling. It was said that in the direst times Bile-Himling would save the Himlings from certain defeat. Perhaps, Oslac thought, his brother, Morcar, was right. What the Himlings needed now was strong leadership, not supernatural aid. Their father was old. Perhaps it was time Isangrim stepped aside.
They came to the pond. It was fringed with black poplars. The hut of the wicce stood in their shade. They dismounted. The sun was not yet touching the horizon. They waited.
Oslac felt badly about himself. Aeneas had loved the Carthaginian Dido, but he had deserted her for the destiny of his people. Much as he groaned and felt shaken at heart by the great force of love’s power, nonetheless Aeneas followed the gods’ commands. Oslac was not as pious or as dutiful. Long before, he had taken the opposite, less worthy course. When Dernhelm had gone to be a hostage, Oslac had sent his young wife back to her people, the Wylfings; all in the hope of marrying Kadlin. His father had been furious. Kadlin had been married off instead to Holen of Wrosns, to secure the allegiance of the islands of Latris. Only when Holen was killed, and she was a widow, had Isangrim relented, and let Oslac wed Kadlin. All these years later, Oslac again could not help but put love over duty. It was not about Unferth and the fate of the Woden-born Himlings he was here to ask.
As the sun began to go down, the wicce emerged, very old and crooked, leaning on a brass-bound staff. She beckoned Oslac. Before he followed, he told his men to retire out of earshot. They looked both relieved and suspicious as they led the horses away.
Inside was warm and surprisingly well-lit, with a brazier and two gleaming lamps of Roman manufacture. Despite the warmth, the wicce was dressed as he had seen her before: in a blue mantle adorned with stones to the hem. Her face was half hidden by a black lambskin hood lined with the fur of white cats. On her feet were hairy calfskin shoes, and more white cats had been killed to make her gloves.
She seated herself on a low stool, not the high seat of prophecy he would have provided in his hall. Oslac remained standing.
‘War-father picked for her rings and circlets:
He had back wise tidings and wands of prophecy;
She saw widely and widely beyond, over every world.’
Oslac acknowledged her words by passing over a brooch unfastened from his cloak. She turned it over in her gloved hands. The garnets were
like blood in the lamplight.
‘My half-brother, Dernhelm, the one the Romans call Ballista, returns home. I would know his fate.’ Oslac stopped. It was hard to force the rest out. ‘Will my wife leave me for him? Will she betray me?’ There, it was said.
The old woman snorted, as if once again confronted with damning evidence of the vain pride of men. She took some powder from the purse at her belt, sprinkled it on to the brazier. Leaning over, she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. While she crooned softly, her gloved hands fondled the staff obscenely.
It was close in the room. Oslac wished he was somewhere else.
When the crone opened her eyes, they were bleared. ‘The guardian of the pool is present. Many things stand revealed to me which before were hidden both from me and from others.’
Her voice trailed off, her eyelids drooped. Her body twitched.
Oslac wanted to leave, but did not dare. He had to hear the prophecy. He dreaded what might be revealed.
She wrenched open her jaws and yawned deeply.
‘She saw there wading through heavy currents,
Men false-sworn and murderous men,
And those who gull another’s faithfullest girl;
There spite-striker sucks the bodies of the dead
– a wolf tore men – do you know yet, or what?’
She stopped, head lolling.
Oslac stood; rooted, sweating.
Her mouth gaped wide, her breathing harsh as torn sailcloth.
‘Brothers will struggle and slaughter each other,
And sisters’ sons spoil kinship’s bonds.
It’s hard on earth: great whoredom;
Axe-age, blade-age, shields are split;
Wind-age, wolf-age, before the world crumbles:
No one shall spare another.’
The wicce shivered, and came back. The lamps guttered. Now all Oslac could hear was his own breathing.
‘Do you want him cursed?’ Her voice was near normal.
Oslac was sweating. Dernhelm was his half-brother. He did not love him, but he did not hate him. It was not Dernhelm’s fault. Oslac could not curse his brother, but he could not lose Kadlin. Fleeing from Troy, Aeneas had failed to look back. He had lost his wife. Aeneas had left Carthage, and Dido had killed herself. Oslac would not lose his wife.
‘Curse him.’
The wicce nodded, as if she had already known his answer, and it saddened her.
‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, you will receive only ill fortune from me. You have become famous through your deeds, but now you will fall into outlawry and killings. Most of what you do will now turn against you, bringing bad luck and no joy. You will be made an outlaw, forced always to live in the wilds and to live alone.’
XXI
The Suebian Sea
The gods had been capricious, Ballista thought as they ran the boat out from the desolate shore. At first, they had smiled. When they had won clear of the islands off the Vistula, there had been no Bronding longships bearing down. In fact, there had been no vessels of any sort in sight. But the Rugian pilot had been wrong: as the morning went on the wind had not moved into the east. Now and then it had shifted to the north-east, but it had soon backed. Most of the day it had gusted from the north.
Wada the Short had retaken the helm. ‘Only a slave takes vengeance immediately, but a coward never,’ he had announced, as he settled to his task.
They had had to tack, mainly on an easterly heading. It was frustrating when their course and safety lay to the west, but they knew they had to clear a long spit which stretched down south-eastward from the westerly tip of the gulf. On each tack Wada had the yard braced round until it ran from bow to quarter, bringing the windward sheet forward of the mast. Late morning, when the wind picked up, and the bow had begun to dig into the waves, he had them lower the yard about a third of the way down the mast. Not only had it made the boat plane the water better, it had had the advantage of making their sail harder to see from a distance. Unlike the gaudy spread of the Brondings, it was a plain, tan, weather-stained thing; which was all to the good in trying to avoid pursuit. In the afternoon the wind had risen again. Wada had ordered the canvas abaft the mast brailed up and the weather sheet tightened. With the sail almost triangular and the forward yardarm dragged down, the Warig had sailed as well into the wind as any ship could.
Ballista had much admired Wada’s seamanship. He would have done the same himself. But it was many years since he had sailed these northern waters, and he was happy to let the Harii take charge. Except when tacking, and apart from a few men bailing intermittently, there had been no task demanded of the crew. The majority had attempted to sleep, huddled and damp beneath their benches. Ballista had gone from bow to stern, always scanning the sky and sea; trying to judge their progress, guess the turn of the weather, and ever, ever looking for the sight of a sail. Twice he glimpsed a smudge of white far to the north. Otherwise, the grey sea remained empty, nothing but gulls soaring above.
After a time, Maximus had stopped shadowing Ballista and had curled up like a dog and gone to sleep at the helmsman’s feet. But Tarchon had not left Ballista’s side. Sometimes the Suanian had muttered things in his native language. Mostly inaudible, the few words Ballista both caught and understood were dark, involving gods, honour and bloody revenge. After Ballista and Calgacus had saved Tarchon from drowning, the Suanian had sworn to protect them with his life. Out on the Steppe he had failed Calgacus. It sat heavily on Tarchon. Ballista knew its weight.
The sun was getting low when they had finally won the searoom to clear the spit. As they turned, as if to mock their previous progress, the gods had set the wind to blow steadily from the east. Ballista had been tempted to stand out well from any sandbanks and sail through the night. But the men were cold, wet and cramped. Despite having taken what rest they could, they had still been exhausted. They had needed hot food, the chance to stretch and sleep ashore. They were not as far as he would like from the Vistula delta and the Brondings, but Ballista had asked Wada to take them in.
The spit was a low beach of white sand, backed by timber. It was an exposed anchorage in anything other than a southerly wind. With nearly their last reserves of strength, they hauled the ship half out of the water. They had unshipped only what was absolutely necessary, and made the Warig ready for a hasty departure. In the glooming they had gone to gather wood. The trees formed a narrow belt, with open water on the far side. Their lower trunks were bare. As there were not many fallen branches, the crew had gathered driftwood as well. It was all damp, but with perseverance they had got the campfire burning. As the flames sawed in the wind, they had warmed themselves, and cooked a stew of disparate contents. Ballista had been one of those who had taken first watch. After an hour, another had taken his place, and he had rolled himself in his cloak by the embers of the fire and fallen straight into a deep sleep.
The morning was overcast. The wind was still in the east, but it had fallen. Sky and sea were united in sullen grey.
The Warig came alive as her keel ran free. The men launching her clambered over the stern, and went to their places, their boots slapping wet and noisy on the deck. The bow oarsmen were already pulling her out. Maximus touched Ballista’s arm. The Hibernian flicked his eyes to the east. Ballista looked but could see nothing. He gripped the prow and swung his boots up on to the gunwale. Swaying with the rise and fall, he peered out into the greyness. His eyes smarted with tiredness and the salt. He thought he saw something. It was gone before he could tell what. He wiped his streaming eyes. There it was again. A patch of solidity in the shifting air and water, a hint of colour.
‘Two sails,’ Maximus said quietly.
‘The same two?’
‘I have good eyesight, I am not a fucking magician.’
Wada pointed the prow-idol to the west. The men got the oars inboard, squared the yard and shook out the sail so the following breeze fell on both sheets simultaneously. Ballista and Maximus moved to the stern. There was no p
oint in sharing their fears until they were certain.
The rising sun struggled to make its presence felt from behind the leaden clouds. Yet it was enough. Distance was hard to judge in the monochrome world, but perhaps two miles astern were two sails. They were black in the dim light. They could be any colour, belonging to any two ships. Many vessels plied the Suebian Sea. But Ballista had no doubt as to their identity.
Wada the Short received the news calmly. He turned the Warig to starboard to get the wind on her quarter. Then, as she heeled and forged out into the open sea, he had Ballista take the steering oar. Wada moved purposefully through the ship. He felt the tautness of the lines, slackened off those towards the prow and took in those towards the stern. Taking the steering oar again, he brought the wind first a little more abeam, then a bit astern, feeling the run of the ship. Announcing he needed to bring her head up a fraction, he shouted for some of those to the fore to move back down the boat.
Ballista managed not to grin as he watched a bedraggled Zeno and Amantius shuffling towards him. There was something pleasing in those one-time inhabitants of the imperial court being used as ballast in an open boat in a northern sea.
The rearrangement complete, Wada grunted his satisfaction. The improvement seemed small, but it might be significant. Despite the light airs, the water lapped white down the larboard side.
Ballista looked back to the east. In the gathering light, any lingering uncertainties were resolved. The two ships had altered course in pursuit. Their sails were red- and blue-striped. At least they seemed no closer.
‘Persistent fuckers,’ Maximus said. ‘Given the other one in the delta, there may be more following.’
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