The Pale Horseman

‘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 (#ulink_bcbc140b-d051-54e7-a988-65f8b82b7f0f)

The Swamp King (#ulink_bcbc140b-d051-54e7-a988-65f8b82b7f0f)

Four (#ulink_41cc4422-0eca-5c84-9733-e9d240cf0198)

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?’ Leofric asked me.

I was staring at the end of Britain where the rocks endured the sea’s assault. ‘Penwith,’ Iseult said, giving me the British name for the headland.

‘You want to go home?’ I asked Leofric.

He shrugged. The crew was turning the yard, lining it fore and aft so it could be stowed on its crutches while other men were binding the sail so it did not flap. The oars were being readied to take us eastwards and the White Horse was getting smaller as it swept up into the Sæfern Sea.

I stared after Svein, envying him. ‘I need to be rich,’ I said to Leofric.

He laughed at that.

‘I have a path to follow,’ I said, ‘and it goes north. North back to Bebbanburg. And Bebbanburg has never been captured, so I need many men to take it. Many good men and many sharp swords.’

‘We have silver,’ he said, gesturing into the boat’s bilge.

‘Not enough,’ I answered sourly. My enemies had money and Alfred claimed that I owed the church money, and the courts of Defnascir would be chasing me for wergild. I could only go home if I had enough silver to pay off the church, to bribe the courts and to attract men to my banner. I stared at the White Horse, which was now little more than a sail above the wind-fretted sea and I felt the old temptation to go with the Danes. Wait till Ragnar was free and give him my sword arm, but then I would be fighting against Leofric and I would still need to make money, raise men, go north and fight for my birthright. I touched Thor’s hammer and prayed for a sign.

Iseult spat. That was not quite true. She said a word which sounded like someone clearing their throat, spitting and choking all at the same time, and she was pointing over the ship’s side and I saw a strange fish arching out of the water. The fish was as big as a deerhound and had a triangular fin. ‘Porpoise,’ Leofric said.

‘Llamhydydd,’ Iseult said again, giving the fish its British name.

‘They bring sailors luck,’ Leofric said.

I had never seen a porpoise before, but suddenly there were a dozen of the creatures. They were grey and their backs glistened in the sun and they were all going north.

‘Put the sail back up,’ I told Leofric.

He stared at me. The crew was unlashing the oars and taking the plugs from the oar-holes. ‘You want the sail up?’ Leofric asked.

‘We’re going north.’ I had prayed for a sign and Thor had sent me the porpoise.

‘There’s nothing in the Sæfern Sea,’ Leofric said. ‘Svein told you that.’

‘Svein told me there was no plunder in the Sæfern Sea,’ I said, ‘because the Danes have taken it all, so that means the Danes have the plunder.’ I felt a surge of happiness so intense that I punched Leofric’s shoulder and gave Iseult a hug. ‘And he told me that their ships are coming from Ireland.’

‘So?’ Leofric rubbed his shoulder.

‘Men from Ireland!’ I told Leofric. ‘Danes coming from Ireland to attack Wessex. And if you brought a ship’s crew from Ireland, what would you bring with you?’

‘Everything you possess,’ Leofric said flatly.

‘And they don’t know we’re here! They’re sheep, and we are a fire-dragon.’

He grinned. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

‘Of course I’m right! I’m a lord! I’m right and I’m going to be rich! We’re all going to be rich! We shall eat off gold plates, piss down our enemies’ throats and make their wives into our whores.’ I was shouting this nonsense as I walked down the boat’s centre, casting off the sail’s lashings. ‘We’ll all be rich with silver shoes and golden bonnets. We’ll be richer than kings! We’ll wallow in silver, shower our whores with gold and shit lumps of amber! Tie those oars up! Plug the holes, we’re going north, we’re going to be rich as bishops, every man of us!’ The men were grinning, pleased because I was roaring my enthusiasm, and men like to be led.

They did have qualms about going north, for that would take us out of sight of land, and I had never been that far from the shore, and I was frightened too, for Ragnar the Elder had often told me tales of Norsemen who had been tempted out into the sea-wastes, to sail ever farther westwards, and he said there were lands out there, lands beyond the Isles of the Dead, lands where ghosts walked, but I am not sure if he told the truth. I am sure, though, that he told me that many of those ships never returned. They voyage into the dying sun and they go onwards because they cannot bear to turn back and so they sail to where the lost ships die at the world’s dark ending.