King Hereafter (17 page)

Carl Thorbrandsson said, ‘He knew the wind would veer at sunset. And by the time we reach him, the sun will be down. Who is this man Thorfinn?’

‘A man King Canute wouldn’t mind seeing out of the way, my lord,’ said the shipmaster. ‘If you remember.’

He could still make a man shrink if he wanted to. ‘If I die,’ said Carl Thorbrandsson, ‘the ship goes to my sister’s son. It is worth remembering.’

Then the arrows began to fall, shining seeds of a battle-crop, carried thick and fruitful on the enemy wind; while theirs hung spattered and kicking against the cold, moving curtain of air.

The Berwick fleet were well trained. They rowed forward against the wind and the arrows in the pink after-light of the sunset, stringing out, as they had planned, to encircle and smother the enemy. Only the enemy came at them, oars driving like whippets, and clear and distinct there were faces bearded and clean-shaven and moustached under the smooth helmet-cones, and words and syllables among all the shouting, and a stink of sweat on the wind that brought the hair standing raw on the spine. Then, like lampreys, the Caithness longships were there amongst them, their oars vanished as swiftly as they had appeared, and instead the crippling steel claws of the grappling-irons came shooting aboard and held fast to the timbers and tightened, until one by one every Thurso vessel was locked hard to another and the men were boarding, under the stubbed, whickering flight of their throwing-spears. Once aboard, the axes came out.

It may have been five ships against eleven. It was in fact nearly five hundred men against very few more. Five hundred men who knew to a moment how long the after-light was going to last, and when it would no longer be possible to tell friend from enemy in the well of a slim, rocking longship. Five hundred men who knew the tricks of the wind and the swirl and push of the current that very soon would take the locked mesh of ships and drive it straight for the shore.

The first to go was the Northumbrian vessel that had taken the brunt of the landing until, swept along its whole length by the boarders, the crewmen who were left had saved themselves by overrunning the ship next their own.

Now, ill-trimmed by the dead on her gunwales and bearing only her cargo of vanquished, she ran released into the grip of the wind, and the tide trapped and spun her across to the swerve of the current. The next ship rocked, and those who looked over their shoulders were dead men, and those who did not fell embracing the blades they were parrying. The sea washed white up the strakes, first on one side and then on the other, and slipped down again, frothing pink as the sunset; and helmets rolled in the water like quicksilver, until in time they filled and tilted and sank.

On the flagship, Carl Thorbrandsson had the pick of the men and in himself the best brain in the fleet. Under his rule, the first ship that attacked them was thrown off, ramming the sea; the grappling-irons slashed free; the darts and throwing-spears streaming after and landing in a chorus of loud, hollow voices and voices that were thick and timbreless.

A score of her crew were left stranded behind on the flagship. They made no play with their shields, or attempt to bargain for mercy, but, calling to one another, each leaped to a man he had marked and, twisting, hacking, and jabbing, accounted for twice their number before the last man was flung overboard.

Another Berwick ship swayed past, empty. Five at least had been successfully boarded: on three, so far as could be seen, the enemy had been repelled, as on his own, and their bodies bundled into the sea. Carl Thorbrandsson turned to leap to his stance on the stern-deck and so had the first view of the enemy flagship, under oars once again, moving in from her kill and making straight for his own.

There was time to have the warning blown, and then the louvred flanks cracked together and, splitting wood into wood, held the two vessels side by side as one ship.

The first pack of men who thudded over the side contained, in its midst, a fellow who held aloft in both arms the raven banner of Orkney. Then came the second wave, and the third, and the shouting altered as the thronged ship fought for its life and the wind brought slaps of blood and snatches of cut hair and the bottom-boards became spiked and pillowed with weapons and bodies. Within his own circle of housecarls, the Northumbrian commander fought as well as any, for he was a man used to battle, while searching again and again for the golden helmet of the earl he had been paid to defeat. He said aloud, breathlessly, to the shipmaster, ‘If Thorfinn is dead, I will have the retreat blown.’

‘I should blow it anyway,’ said the shipmaster. Except that the shipmaster had exchanged his sharp voice for a rich one of abnormal depths, emanating from a black, crane-like young man in a gold helmet, with a sword at the end of each arm and his shoulder-joints working like a plough-ox’s. Thorfinn said, ‘You’re going to be left. Your men are running on to the next ship.’

It was true. He could see, as his war-band and the Earl’s fought and clattered around him, that the stern of the ship was already clear except for the dead and the dying, and that the men of both sides, in an unsteady, struggling mass, were closing up to the bucketing prow, where another of his ships dodged and wallowed in the throes of the same prostitution. Thorfinn said, ‘Blow the retreat. I have no quarrel with you.’

Carl Thorbrandsson said, ‘Tell your men to stand back. We can settle this matter between us.’ An axe came towards him, and he knocked the haft to one side, seeing Thorfinn duck on his own account and then slash, each foot taking the weight as the ship rocked. A man started to screech, both palms open.

Thorfinn said, ‘It
is
settled. I’ve won.’

He looked surprised, and even impatient. Carl considered a worthy reply,
Not until you’ve killed me
, came to his mind. But that was Gillacomghain’s privilege, not his. He wondered what had happened to Gillacomghain.

The young man opposite shoved a thumb below the rim of his helmet and, pushing it up from his eyes, said, ‘Don’t worry about crossing to help Gillacomghain. If he got to the north coast at all, every other man of battle-age in both Caithness and Orkney is lying there waiting for him. Tell my lord Crinan when you go south. And anyone else who might be interested.’

The ship was empty but for the men standing round himself, silent now,
and Thorfinn’s band, who had dropped back also. Carl Thorbrandsson said, ‘A Northumbrian always knows—not when he is beaten, but when to take the sensible course. No doubt we shall meet again.’ His trumpeter, responding to his upraised hand, was already blowing the retreat. Amid the confusion ahead, faces turned. He hesitated.

Thorfinn said, ‘I think, by right of conquest, this vessel is probably mine. The longship ahead has not yet disengaged, if you want to join her.’

Carl Thorbrandsson made a kind of a bow and, guarded by his men, made what dignified progress he could down the empty boat, and up to the prow, and over to the next boat that belonged to him. Very soon after that, scrambling and fighting still, the men of both sides resorted to their own ships, and the vessels began slowly to part, the oars thrusting out in threes and fours until finally every ship still remaining was under way.

Eight turned south, into the night, and their sails, which they ran up directly, bloomed and dissolved on the black sea like foam. Two drove ashore and were later redeemed by David of Deerness and his family, who buried what they contained: the Northumbrian bodies in the turf and the brooches and arm-bands and finger-rings in the chapel, for the glory of God. The weapons and the ship-hulls and timbers they allowed the Earl Thorfinn to have, later, for a consideration.

The five ships of Earl Thorfinn and the flagship of Carl Thorbrandsson, from which he struck the banner, thereupon moved round to Sandwick, there to unload the dead and the injured, and to apportion what booty there might be. They lit fires on the shore and ate and rested while the longships were being set to rights, with Thorfinn moving about them, his long shadow roving over the shore, and their faces, and the turfy slopes up to the hall of Thorkel’s father and all the booth-shapes round the big steading.

The women, come out of hiding, brought them bread in baskets, and new-slaughtered beef, and lard and cheeses, but only one cask of ale, for there was work still to be done. And although his cousins and friends shouted to their chieftain Thorfinn, and congratulated him and themselves, and made colourful boasts, it might have been seen that the Earl had come quite a long way from the ungainly boy who ran down the oarshafts at Chester and got an affectionate blow on the ear for it, mixed with insults.

To Arnór Thordarson, watching with the bright skaldic eye, it seemed that Thorfinn stood outside the camaraderie of common success, untouched, as he was untouched in the flesh. From fourteen, he had sailed and watched men kill and be killed: gathering taxes was no sinecure, and some said no legitimate business either. Boys travelled on all the longships and often women as well. You watched a youngster change from his first callow fears to the time when he strode into battle as a man should, tasting danger like salt, exulting in his own skills; ready if need be to find his grave in a place of courage and honour, knowing his fame would be sung by the skalds, and his sons would do no less after him.

Of the boy Thorfinn, he knew only what others had told him: of a silent, withdrawn child of few bodily gifts, but those worked upon like the dwarves
working metal, until he could hold his own in any of the half-homes or half-wars he might find himself in.

His years with King Canute had broken that sequence. What his men saw now was what they had to lead them, and they thought it adequate, Arnór judged. But hardly the joyous, furious rogue, the rip-roaring Earl, the wild, self-seeking, irresistible figure his father Sigurd had been.

In the middle of the night, when they were ready, Thorfinn sent round all his men with word to go to the ships, and this time, when Arnór asked, he was allowed to go with him.

The wind still blew in the right way for Thorfinn’s purpose, and they all knew the dark waters too well to miss the way, or mistake the currents, or be swept into the Swelchie whirlpool, as they said had been Earl Hakon’s fate. They were making down past the islands of Orkney and across the firth to the island of Stroma, where a beacon would be lit as they passed.

So Arnór knew. But still it was strange as they passed the low, black shape of the island and saw, soft orange, the fire bloom on its slope and then, as they left it behind, spooning its light in the wave-troughs, another smudge of colour far ahead on the mainland. Thorfinn said, ‘Gillacomghain is there in Thurso. And Thorkel and his men are round them, hidden, waiting for us.’

‘Prince,’ said Arnór. ‘I have made a verse.’

The youth Thorfinn did not look at him, or thank him, or express any of those things due from an earl to his personal skald. ‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘until we have won more than half the battle. If we win it.’

‘Lord, how could you fail?’ said Arnór dutifully; and sent a curse through the air to his foster-mother.

If it reached its destination at all, it was unlikely to disturb Fridgerd Gamli’s daughter, who in a long life had survived a good deal more than her foster-son’s petulance. In any case, her attention at present was on something much more compelling: on a boy of twenty-one who had found his way, some would say by her arts, some would say by no very great coincidence, to the cluster of huts where the young and old of Thorfinn’s household had taken refuge until this day’s work should be over.

To Sulien, nothing seemed out of the way. He had watched Thorfinn’s ships cross in the sunset to Orkney, and then had come here to find a spring he had noticed, for he was thirsty and had no wish for the ale-horn. Then, as he stooped to drink, a voice spoke. ‘And good evening to you, Soulinus son of Gingomarus,
y doethaf or Brytanyeit
. As it is a good evening, I hope, for your friends.’

Wisest of the Bretons
, she had called him: an old woman’s mockery; except that the little he knew of the wise-woman Fridgerd, sitting now, he dimly saw, at the spring-side, had not led him to think her malicious. He said, ‘I hope it is a good evening for us all,’ and bent to take his drink. When he had done, she said, ‘Sit, if you are in no haste. You are not needed yet.’

He was not sure what she meant. He said, feeling his way, ‘It is not my battle. Nor, I suppose, is it yours.’

‘The blood of this land runs in Iceland,’ she said. He saw she was smiling. She said, ‘I have no quarrel with you, or your church.’

He was aware, then, of his youth, and of all that he had laid himself open to by his headstrong flight to the north when he might have sailed safely to Ireland. He said quietly, ‘Did you cast the runes for him?’

She sat very still, her smile gone, her face kindly and serious. ‘For the Earl Thorfinn? No. For myself, yes. They tell me that he will win half this battle.’

Sulien said, ‘Did you tell him?’

‘He did not need to be told,’ Fridgerd Gamli’s daughter said. ‘Nor do you. There is no magic, either black or white, about that. I shall be here only a short time, but another like me will come. And when you have gone, there will be others to follow you. It is for you to remember that he finds himself in a land where people speak with two tongues and worship in different ways.’

‘But he cannot follow two creeds,’ Sulien said.

‘At present,’ said Arnór’s foster-mother, ‘he believes only one thing and thinks of one thing. But one day he is going to stand and look about him and wonder why he was born into two worlds. A small thing for a serf. A perilous thing for a clever man and the families he holds in his hand.’

She was wise. She had put into words his reason for coming. He said, ‘There are monasteries here. I could find work to do for a while.’

Her hands relaxed, smoothing her skirts, dim in the dark as she made to get up. She was smiling again. ‘Five years would be enough,’ she said. ‘Four, perhaps. You have seen your successor.’

He was still staring up at her as she rose and left him.