Sword of Kings. Bernard Cornwell

of heaven and the ice beneath, the void in which the world was made. We sailed in a blue-grey emptiness in which my thoughts wandered slow as the ship. Finan was sleeping. Every now and then the sail would sag as the wind dropped, then belly out again with a dull thud as the small breeze returned. The only real evidence that we were moving was the gentle ripple of Spearhafoc’s wake.

      And in the void I thought of kings and of death, because Edward still lived. Edward, who styled himself Anglorum Saxonum Rex, King of the Angles and the Saxons. He was King of Wessex and of Mercia and of East Anglia, and he still lived. He had been ill, he had recovered, he had fallen sick again, then rumour said he was dying, yet still Edward lived. And I had taken an oath to kill two men when Edward died. I had made that promise, and I had no idea how I was to keep it.

      Because to keep it I would have to leave Northumbria and go deep into Wessex. And in Wessex I was Uhtred the Pagan, Uhtred the Godless, Uhtred the Treacherous, Uhtred Ealdordeofol, which means Chief of the Devils, and, most commonly, I was called Uhtredærwe, which simply means Uhtred the Wicked. In Wessex I had powerful enemies and few friends. Which gave me three choices. I could invade with a small army, which would inevitably be beaten, I could go with a few men and risk discovery, or I could break the oath. The first two choices would lead to my death, the third would lead to the shame of a man who had failed to keep his word, the shame of being an oathbreaker.

      Eadith, my wife, had no doubts about what I should do. ‘Break the oath,’ she had told me tartly. We had been lying in our chamber behind Bebbanburg’s great hall and I was gazing into the shadowed rafters, blackened by smoke and by night, and I had said nothing. ‘Let them kill each other,’ she had urged me. ‘It’s a quarrel for the southerners, not us. We’re safe here.’ And she was right, we were safe in Bebbanburg, but still her demand had angered me. The gods mark our promises, and to break an oath is to risk their wrath. ‘You would die for a stupid oath?’ Eadith had been angry too. ‘Is that what you want?’ I wanted to live, but I wanted to live without the stain of dishonour that marked an oathbreaker.

      Spearhafoc took my mind from the quandary by quickening to a freshening wind and I grasped the steering-oar again and felt the quiver of the water coming through the long ash shaft. At least this choice was simple. Strangers had slaughtered my men, and we sailed to seek revenge across a wind-rippled sea that reflected a myriad flashes of sunlight. ‘Are we home yet?’ Finan asked.

      ‘I thought you were asleep.’

      ‘Dozing,’ Finan grunted, then heaved himself upright and stared around. ‘There’s a ship out there.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘There,’ he pointed north. Finan had the sharpest eyesight of any man I’ve ever known. He might be getting older, like me, yet his sight was as keen as ever. ‘Just a mast,’ he said, ‘no sail.’

      I stared into the haze, seeing nothing. Then I thought I saw a flicker against the pale sky, a line as tremulous as a charcoal scratch. A mast? I lost it, looked, found it again, and turned the ship northwards. The sail protested until we hauled in the steerboard sheet and Spearhafoc leaned again to the breeze and the water seethed louder down her flanks. My men stirred, woken by Spearhafoc’s sudden liveliness, and turned to look at the far ship.

      ‘No sail on her,’ Finan said.

      ‘She’s going into the wind,’ I said, ‘so they’re rowing. Probably a trader.’ No sooner had I spoken than the tiny scratch mark on the hazed horizon disappeared, replaced by a newly dropped sail. I watched her, the blur of the big square sail much easier to distinguish than the mast. ‘She’s turning towards us,’ I said.

      ‘It’s Banamaðr,’ Finan said.

      I laughed at that. ‘You’re guessing!’

      ‘No guess,’ Finan said, ‘she has an eagle on her sail, it’s Egil.’

      ‘You can see that!’

      ‘You can’t?’

      Our two ships were sailing towards each other now, and within moments I could clearly see a distinctive lime-washed upper strake that showed clearly against the lower hull’s darker planks. I could also see the big black outline of a spread-winged eagle on the sail and the eagle’s head on her high prow. Finan was right, it was Banamaðr, a name that meant ‘killer’. It was Egil’s ship.

      As the Banamaðr drew closer I dropped my sail and let Spearhafoc wallow in the livening waves. It was a sign to Egil that he could come alongside, and I watched as his ship curved towards us. She was smaller than Spearhafoc, but just as sleek, a Frisian-built raider that was Egil’s joy because, like almost all Norsemen, he was happiest when he was at sea. I watched the sea break white at Banamaðr’s cutwater, she kept turning, the great yard dropped and men hauled the sail inboard, turned the long yard with its furled sail fore and aft, and then, sweet as any seaman could desire, she slewed alongside our steerboard flank. A man in Banamaðr’s bows threw a line, a second line sailed towards me from her stern, and Egil was shouting at his crew to drape sailcloth or cloaks over the pale upper strake so our timbers did not crash and grind together. He grinned at me. ‘Are you doing what I think you’re doing?’

      ‘Wasting my time,’ I called back.

      ‘Maybe not.’

      ‘And you?’

      ‘Looking for the bastards who took your ships, of course. Can I come aboard?’

      ‘Come!’

      Egil waited to judge the waves, then leaped across. He was a Norseman, a pagan, a poet, a seaman, and a warrior. He was tall, like me, and wore his fair hair long and wild. He was clean-shaven with a chin as sharp as a dragon-boat’s prow, he had deep eyes, an axe-blade of a nose and a mouth that smiled often. Men followed him eagerly, women even more eagerly. I had only known him for a year, but in that year I had come to like and trust him. He was young enough to be my son and he had brought seventy Norse warriors who had sworn their allegiance to me in return for the land I had given them along the Tuede’s southern bank.

      ‘We should go south,’ Egil said briskly.

      ‘South?’ I asked.

      Egil nodded at Finan, ‘Good morning, lord,’ he always called Finan ‘lord’ to their shared amusement. He looked back to me. ‘You’re not wasting your time. We met a Scottish trader sailing northwards, and he told us there were four ships down there.’ He nodded southwards. ‘Way out to sea,’ he said, ‘out of sight of land. Four Saxon ships, just waiting. One of them stopped him, they demanded three shillings duty, and when he couldn’t pay, they stole his whole cargo.’

      ‘They wanted to charge him duty!’

      ‘In your name.’

      ‘In my name,’ I said softly, angrily.

      ‘I was on my way back to tell you.’ Egil looked into Banamaðr where around forty men waited. ‘I don’t have enough men to take on four ships, but the two of us could do some damage?’

      ‘How many men in the ships?’ Finan had scrambled to his feet and was looking eager.

      ‘The one that stopped the Scotsman had forty, he said two of the others were about the same size, and the last one smaller.’

      ‘We could do some damage,’ I said vengefully.

      Finan, while he listened to us, had been watching Egil’s crew. Three men were struggling to take the eagle’s head from the prow. They laid the heavy piece of wood on the brief foredeck, then helped the others who were unlacing the sail. ‘What are they doing?’ Finan asked.

      Egil turned to Banamaðr. ‘If the scum see a ship with an eagle on the sail,’ he said, ‘they’ll know we’re a fighting ship. If they see my eagle they’ll know it’s me. So I’m turning the sail around.’ He grinned. ‘We’re a small ship, they’ll think we’re easy prey.’

      I understood