The Lords of the North (21 page)

Finan and I could no longer shirk, for Sverri could see how much work we were doing, and
he lashed at us with a stick and so we destroyed the profits of a year's trading. Even the
sword-blades went, and all the time the red ship crept closer, coming up the channel, and
she was only a quarter-mile behind us when the last ingots splashed over the side and
Trader gave a slight lurch. The tide was flooding now, swirling past and around the
jettisoned ingots.

'Row!' Sverri shouted. The islanders were watching us. They had not dared approach for
fear of the armed men on the red ship, and now they watched as we slid away northwards, and we
fought the incoming tide and our oars pulled on mud as often as they bit water, but Sverri
screamed at us to row harder. He would risk a further grounding to get clear, and the gods
were with him, for we shot out of the passage's mouth and Trader reared to the incoming
waves and suddenly we were at sea again with the water breaking white on our bows and
Sverri hoisted the sail and we ran northwards and the red ship seemed to have grounded
where we had been stranded. She had run onto the pile of ingots and, because her hull was
deeper than Trader's, it took her a long time to escape and by the time she was free of the
channel we were already hidden by rain squalls that crashed from the west and pounded the
ship as they passed. Sverri kissed his hammer amulet. He had lost a fortune, but he was a
wealthy man and could afford it. Yet he had to stay wealthy and he knew that the red ship was
pursuing him and that it would stay on the coast until it found us and so, as dark fell, he
dropped the sail and ordered us to the oars. We went northwards. The red ship was still
behind us, but far behind, and the rain squalls hid us from time to time and when a

bigger squall came Sverri dropped the sail, turned the ship westwards into the wind and
his men whipped us to work. Two of his men even took oars themselves so that we could escape
across the darkening horizon before the red ship saw that we had changed course. It was
brutally hard work. We were thumping into the wind and seas, and every stroke burned the
muscles until I thought I would drop from exhaustion. Deep night ended the work. Sverri
could no longer see the big waves hissing from the west and so he let us ship the oars and
plug the oar-holes and we lay like dead men as the ship heaved and wallowed in the dark and
churning sea.

Dawn found us alone. Wind and rain whipped from the south, and that meant we did not have to
row, but instead could hoist the sail and let the wind carry us across the grey waters. I
looked aft, searching for the red ship and she was not to be seen. There were only the waves
and the clouds and the squalls hurtling across our wake and the wild birds flying like white
scraps in the bitter wind, and Trader bent to that wind so that the water rushed past us and
Sverri leaned on the steering oar and sang to celebrate his escape from the mysterious
enemy. I could have wept again. I did not know what the red ship was, or who sailed her, but I
knew she was Sverri's enemy and that any enemy of Sverri was my friend. But she was gone.
We had escaped her. And so we came back to Britain. Sverri had not intended to go there,
and he had no cargo to sell though he did have coins hidden aboard to buy goods, but the
coins would also have to be expended in survival. He had evaded the red ship, but he knew
that if he went home he would find her lurking off Jutland and I do not doubt he was
thinking of some other place he might spend the winter in safety. That meant discovering
a lord who would shelter him while Trader was hauled ashore, cleaned, repaired and
re-caulked, and that lord would require silver. We oarsmen heard snatches of
conversation and gathered that Sverri reckoned he should pick up one last cargo, take it
to Denmark, sell it, then find some port where he could shelter and from where he could
travel overland to his home to collect more silver to fund the next year's trading.

we were off the British coast. I did not recognise where we ere I knew it was not East
Anglia for there were bluffs and hills. -Nothing to buy here,' Sverri complained.

'Fleeces?' Hakka suggested.

'What price will they fetch at this time of year?' Sverri demanded angrily.

'All we'll get is whatever they couldn't sell in the spring. Nothing but rubbish matted
with sheep shit. I'd rather carry charcoal.'

We sheltered one night in a river mouth and armed horsemen rode to the shore to stare at
us, but they did not use any of the small fishing craft which were hauled on the beach to come
out to us, suggesting that if we left them alone then they would leave us alone. Just as dark
fell another trading boat came into the river and anchored near us, and its Danish
shipmaster used a small craft to row across to us and he and Sverri squatted in the space
beneath the steering platform and exchanged news. We heard none of it. We just saw the two
men drinking ale and talking. The stranger left before darkness hid his ship and Sverri
seemed pleased with the conversation, for in the morning he shouted his thanks to the
other boat and ordered us to haul the anchor and take the oars. It was a windless day, the
sea was calm, and we rowed northwards beside the shore. I stared inland and saw smoke
rising from settlements and thought that freedom lay there. I dreamed of freedom, but now
I did not think it would ever come. I thought I would die at that oar as so many others had
died under Sverri's lash. Of the eleven oarsmen who had been aboard when I was given to
Sverri only four still lived, of whom Finan was one. We now had fourteen oarsmen, for
Sverri had replaced the dead and, ever since the red ship had come to haunt his existence,
he had paid for more slaves to man his oars. Some shipmasters used free men to row their
boats, reckoning they worked more willingly, but such men expected a share in the silver
and Sverri was a miserly man. Late that morning we came to a river's mouth and I gazed up
the headland on the southern bank and saw a high beacon waiting to be lit to warn the
inland folk that raiders came, and I

had seen that beacon before. It was like a hundred others, yet I recognised it, and I
knew it stood in the ruins of the Roman fort at the place where my slavery had begun. We
had come back to the River Tine.

'Slaves!' Sverri announced to us. That's what we're buying. Slaves, just like you
bastards. Except they're not like you, because they're women and children. Scots. Anyone
here speak their bastard language?' None of us answered. Not that we needed to speak the
Scottish language, for Sverri had whips that spoke loudly enough.

He disliked carrying slaves as cargo for they needed constant watching and feeding,
but the other trader had told him of women and children newly captured in one of the
endless border raids between Northumbria and Scotland, and those slaves offered the best
prospect of any profit. If any of the women and children were pretty then they would sell
high in Jutland's slave markets, and Sverri needed to make a good trade, and so we rowed
into the Time on a rising tide. We were going to Gyruum, and Sverri waited until the
water had almost reached the high-tide mark of sea-wrack and flotsam, and then he beached
Trader. He did not often beach her, but he wanted us to scrape her hull before going back
to Denmark, and a beached ship made it easier to load human cargo, and so we ran her ashore
and I saw that the slave pens had been rebuilt and that the ruined monastery had a thatched
roof again. All was as it was.

Sverri made us wear slave collars that were chained together so we could not escape and
then, while he crossed the salt-marsh and climbed to the monastery, we scraped the exposed
hull with stones. Finan sang in his native Irish as he worked, but sometimes he would throw
me a crooked grin. 'Tear the caulking out, Osbert.' he suggested.

'So we sink?'

'Aye, but Sverri sinks with us.'

'Let him live so we can kill him,' I said.

'And we will kill him,' Finan said.

'Never give up hope, eh?'

'I dreamed it,' Finan said. 'I've dreamed it three times since the red ship came.'

'But the red ship's gone,' I said.

'We'll kill him. I promise you. I'll dance in his guts, I will.'

The tide had been at its height at midday so all afternoon it fell until Trader was
stranded high above the fretting waves, and she could not be refloated until long after
dark. Sverri was always uneasy when his ship was ashore and I knew he would want to load his
cargo that same day and then refloat the ship on the night's tide. He had an anchor ready so
that, in the dark, we could push off from the beach and moor in the river's centre and be
ready to leave the river at first light.

He purchased thirty-three slaves. The youngest were five or six years old, the oldest
were perhaps seventeen or eighteen, and they were all women and children, not a man among
them. We had finished cleaning the hull and were squatting on the beach when they arrived,
and we stared at the women with the hungry eyes of men denied partners. The slaves were
weeping, so it was hard to tell if any were pretty. They were weeping because they were
slaves, and because they had been stolen from their own land, and because they feared the
sea, and because they feared us. A dozen armed men rode behind them. I recognised none of
them. Sverri walked down the manacled line, examining the children's teeth and pulling
down the women's dresses to examine their breasts. 'The red-haired one will fetch a good
price,' one of the armed men called to Sverri.

'So will they all.'

'I humped her last night,' the man said, 'so perhaps she's carrying my baby, eh? You'll
get two slaves for the price of one, you lucky bastard.'

The slaves were already shackled and Sverri had been forced to pay for those manacles
and chains, just as he had to buy food and ale to keep the thirty-three Scots alive on their
voyage to Jutland. We had to fetch those provisions from the monastery and so Sverri led
us back across the salt-marsh, over the stream and up to the fallen stone cross where a
wagon and six mounted men

waited. The wagon had barrels of ale, tubs of salt herring and smoked eels, and a sack
of apples. Sverri bit into an apple, made a wry face and spat out the mouthful.
'Worm-ridden,' he complained and tossed the remnants to us, and I managed to snatch it out
of the air despite everyone else reaching for it. I broke it in half and gave one portion
to Finan. 'They'll fight over a wormy apple,' Sverri jeered, then spilled a bag of coins
onto the wagon bed. 'Kneel, you bastards.' he snarled at us as a seventh horseman rode
towards the wagon. We knelt in obeisance to the newcomer. 'We must test the coins.' the
newcomer said and I recognised the voice and looked up and saw Sven the One-Eyed. And he
looked at me.

I dropped my gaze and bit into the apple.

'Frankish deniers.' Sverri said proudly, offering some of the silver coins to
Sven.

Sven did not take them. He was staring at me. 'Who is that?' he demanded. Sverri looked
at me. 'Osbert.' he said. He selected some more coins. 'These are Alfred's pennies.' he
said, holding them out to Sven.

'Osbert?' Sven said. He still gazed at me. I did not look like Uhtred of Bebbanburg. My
face had new scars, my nose was broken, my uncombed hair was a great tangled thatch, my
beard was ragged and my skin was as dark as pickled wood, but still he stared at me. 'Come
here, Osbert.' he said. I could not go far, because the neck chain held me close to the
other oarsmen, but I stood and shuffled towards him and knelt again because I was a slave
and he was a lord.

'Look at me.' he snarled.

I obeyed, staring into his one eye, and I saw he was dressed in fine mail and had a fine
cloak and was mounted on a fine horse. I made my right cheek quiver and I dribbled as if I
were halfway mad and I grinned as though I were pleased to see him and I bobbed my head
compulsively and he must have decided I was just another ruined half-mad slave and he
waved me away and took the coins from Sverri. They haggled, but at last enough coins were
accepted as good silver, and we oarsmen were ordered to carry the barrels and tubs down
to the ship.

Sverri clouted me over the shoulders as we walked. 'What were you doing?'

'Doing, master?'

'Shaking like an idiot. Dribbling.'

'I think I'm falling ill, master.'

'Did you know that man?'

'No, lord.'

Sverri was suspicious of me, but he could learn nothing, and he left me alone as we
heaved the barrels onto Trader that was still half stranded on the beach. But I did not
shake or dribble as we stowed the provisions, and Sverri knew something was amiss and he
thought about it further and then hit me again as the answer came to him. 'You came from
here, didn't you?'

'Did I, lord?'

He hit me again, harder, and the other slaves watched. They knew a wounded animal when
they saw one and only Finan had any sympathy for me, but he was helpless. 'You came from
here.' Sverri said. 'How could I have forgotten that? This is where you were given to me.'
He pointed towards Sven who was across the marsh on the ruin-crowned hill. 'What's Sven the
One-Eyed to you?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'I've never seen him before.'

'You lying turd.' he said. He had a merchant's instinct for profit and so he ordered me
released from the other oarsmen though he made sure my ankles were still shackled and that
I still wore the neck chain. Sverri took its end, meaning to lead me back to the monastery,
but we got no further than the shingle bank because Sven had also been having second
thoughts. My face haunted his bad dreams and, in the twitching idiot visage of Osbert, he
had seen his nightmares and now he was galloping towards us, followed by six
horsemen.

Kneel.' Sverri ordered me.

I knelt.

Sven's horse skidded to a halt on the shingle bank. 'Look at me,' he ordered a second
time, and I looked up and spittle hung from my mouth into my beard. I twitched, and Sverri
struck me hard. 'Who is he?' Sven demanded.