The Wolf and the Raven Page 5

  For a moment Erik was tempted. He had never forgotten that he was a Norseman but he was now in his early forties and he was sure that his parents must have died years ago. There was nothing left for him in Norway. Besides he had a wife and three children at Bebbanburg and they wouldn’t want to go and eke out an existence in a foreign land.

  ‘I may have been born a Norse pagan but I’m now a Christian. These Northumbrians are my people now.’

  Eafa was getting impatient with the exchange in a language he didn’t understand.

  ‘What are you two discussing?’ he demanded.

  ‘He wanted to know what a Norse speaker was doing here.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him the truth. I also said that I’m a Northumbrian now.’

  Eafa grunted. He hadn’t expected Erik to want to join these barbarians, but they were his people after all. He was pleased by Erik’s response though. They’d been together for too many years for him to want to lose him.

  ‘Tell him I will buy his prisoners off him for a fair price if he swears by his gods that he will leave Northumbria and not return.’

  ‘He says that he wants more than that. You can buy his slaves but he wants fifty pounds of silver as well.’

  ‘I’ve told him I don’t bribe pirates to go away; I’ll only buy his captives in return for his departure from these shores. You can also tell him that more men are on their way. When they get here I will attack if he’s not agreed to my terms.’

  When Erik had translated this Thorkel went back to his men and explained what had happened. Whilst they were arguing - the majority being in favour of fighting – another thirty horsemen arrived to join Eafa.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, Turec,’ Eafa said with a broad smile.

  The Ealdorman of Berwic nodded towards the seventy Norsemen on the beach below.

  ‘There’s another hundred men from my fyrd coming up behind me. They should be here by nightfall.’

  ‘These barbarians will slip away in the dark. We need to resolve this before then.’

  ‘Do you want to attack now then?’

  ‘I told him that I would do so if he didn’t agree to go peaceably; after giving me his oath that he wouldn’t just go and raid elsewhere in Northumbria, of course.’

  ‘And you’d trust his word?’

  ‘If he swears to do something, he’ll do it. Norsemen do not break their oaths, unlike the Danes and the Swedes,’ Erik cut in.

  ‘Aren’t they all the same? All Vikings?’

  ‘All Vikings? Yes. All the same? No.’

  At that moment Thorkel strode out of his men as they formed into a shield wall once again and Eafa, Turec and Erik rode down to meet him.

  ‘Well, have you decided? Another hundred of Lord Turec’s men will be here shortly.’

  ‘We’ll sell you the monks for a hundred pounds of silver and I’ll give you my word not to raid here again this year.’

  ‘For seven monks and a handful of young Picts? That’s an insult.’

  ‘No, that’s just for the monks. If you want the boys as well, it’ll cost you two hundred pounds of silver.’

  ‘Fifty pounds of silver for all of them and that’s my final offer.’

  ‘You’ll lose a lot more men than I will and we’ll slit the throats of the Picts.’

  Eafa shrugged. ‘So? They’re Picts. Go ahead and kill them; at least it won’t be on my conscience, whereas leaving Christians in the hands of pagans would be.’

  Thorkel had been watching the faces of both Eafa and Erik during this exchange but he couldn’t tell whether the ealdorman’s indifference was feigned or not. The other ealdorman’s face was just as impassive.

  ‘What are we waiting for, Thorkel? Are we going to fight or just stand here clacking like a load of old women?’ one of the Norsemen called out.

  ‘One hundred pounds,’ Thorkel said. ‘My men are eager to kill you so make up your mind quickly.’

  ‘Fifty,’ Eafa said obdurately.

  The Viking must have learnt what the word fifty meant by now so, without waiting for Erik to translate, he turned on his heel and re-joined his men. The shield wall waited for the Northumbrians’ charge, which never came.

  Eighty horsemen disappeared behind the dunes whilst the fyrd advanced down onto the beach then stopped. Suddenly the horsemen re-appeared, half with flaming torches in their hands. They galloped around the bewildered Vikings and threw the torches into their longship. The tar soaked cordage caught fire almost immediately and the crew watched helplessly as the flames spread to the mast, then the pitch in the caulking between the strakes of the hull began to smoulder.

  The Vikings prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible. However, the Northumbrians still didn’t attack. Instead dozens of archers walked forward and, once they were within range, they sent three volleys of arrows into the Norsemen, who were now hunkered down behind their shields. Most arrows hit the latter or else pinged off helmets but a few found chinks in the linked shields and half a dozen Vikings were wounded.

  Meanwhile the monks and the captive Picts had been freed by the horsemen. They ran around the Norsemen and into the safety of the massed fyrd, blessing their saviours as they went. There were two priests with the small Northumbrian army and they took the rescued captives to the camp in the sand dunes to give them food and water. Thankfully they were uninjured apart from a few bruises, minor cuts and abrasions from the ropes with which they’d been tied up.

  The horsemen now lined up and charged the rear of the Norse shield wall, throwing their spears into their foes’ unprotected backs. Over twenty men were killed or wounded before the Vikings managed to change their formation into a circle. Thorkel was in despair. He knew that his men would die bravely in the expectation of spending that night feasting and drinking in Valhalla, but he feared that, having lost his ship and crew, Odin’s skálds would mock and deride him, making the afterlife a misery for him.

  He therefore stepped out of the circle of shields and, throwing down his weapons, he walked towards where the two ealdormen were sitting on their horses.

  ‘Very well, Saxon. You can have your precious monks back for fifty pounds of silver.’

  Erik roared with laughter at the hersir’s impudence, as did Eafa and Turec when he translated the offer.

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t notice, Viking. I already have the monks safe and sound. You no longer have a seaworthy ship and you can’t really expect me to allow the rest of you to roam the countryside raping and pillaging, now can you?’

  ‘Then it seems as if we will have to die, but I promise you, Saxon, that we will take many of you with us.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ Eafa said. ‘You are traders as well as pirates, I think?’

  ‘When it suits us.’

  ‘Well, I too am a trader, a merchant. I trade with Frankia and other lands across the German Ocean. However, it is getting more dangerous as the cursed Danes attack my knarrs. I send my birlinns to protect them, but they are smaller than their ships. I need to build longships like yours to protect my trading vessels.’

  ‘That’s your problem. What has it got to do with me?’

  ‘If you help me to build two longships I will let you repair yours so that you can sail home.’

  Thorkel took a little time to think the offer over. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. At first he thought it might be a trick to disarm and enslave his men, but the explanation had the ring of truth to it.

  ‘I’ll need to talk to my men,’ he said abruptly and returned to them.

  Ragnar had watched the meeting with narrowed eyes. He was determined not to become a thrall of the cursed Northumbrians and he’d managed to acquire a better sword and a shield from one of the fallen Viking warriors. If necessary he would charge the enemy and die with a sword in his hand.

  Beside him Olaf was also carrying a shield. It was the one which, unbeknownst to him, had already saved Ragnar’s life. Ketil had pulled the spear f
rom the back of one of the Vikings slain by the Northumbrian horsemen and, in the confusion when they had reformed the shield wall as a circle, he’d thrown it at Ragnar. Only Olaf’s quick thinking had saved the boy’s life. The spear pierced the shield and Olaf had used a small axe lying on the ground to chop the haft from the spear point. Then, without pausing, he’d sent the axe spinning towards Ketil.

  The sharp blade had struck Ketil’s forehead and lodged in his skull. Only Torstein the godi had seen what had happened and he smiled to himself. He had dreamt that Ragnar was destined for great things and he knew that Odin himself had guided Olaf’s actions. He would say nothing about the incident, but he would keep a closer eye on Ragnar and Olaf from now on.

  When Thorkel outlined Eafa’s proposal to his men the majority, including Ragnar, were in favour of fighting on. However, Torstein spoke for the first time.

  ‘I see the hand of both Odin the All-Father and Loki in this. There is one amongst us who is destined to become a great Viking hero, perhaps even greater than Bēowulf. He must live to fulfil his destiny.’

  ‘You are certain of this? Who is he?’ Thorkel asked sceptically.

  ‘To name him would displease the Norns. He must create his own fame.’

  ‘So he is young yet?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Bēowulf was a warrior long before he sailed to Zealand to kill the giant Grendel and his monstrous mother.’

  ‘Why is Loki interested in us?’ Leif asked, already composing a saga in his head.

  ‘Because to provide this Saxon lord with two drekars would discomfit the Danes. There is nothing Loki likes more than a bit of mischief making.’

  Most of the men were convinced by the godi’s reasoning but Ragnar was not. His mother was a Dane and her brother was a jarl in Jutland. However, he was a boy and had no say, even if he was their king’s son.

  Thorkel walked back to where Eafa was waiting.

  ‘Very well, Saxon. We will build you two drekars – though they should properly be called skeids as I don’t suppose you’ll want the figurehead that gives our drekars their name - but you must swear on one of your holy books that you will allow us to repair our ship and allow us to return home as soon as we have fulfilled our part of the agreement. Furthermore you must treat us as free men, as artisans, not thralls.’

  ‘I will so swear on our most holy of books, the Lindisfarne Gospels, which tells of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s time on Earth before he ascended into Heaven.’

  ‘Very well. Now get your men to help us put out the smouldering remains of the fire on board our ship.’

  Chapter Three – The Return Home

  822 to 823

  Ragnar had sulked for some time after their arrival at Bebbanburg. The Vikings weren’t housed inside the fortress itself but were allowed to build a timber hall some miles away beside the stream that fed into Budle Bay. Some of Eafa’s warriors took it in turns to live in a separate hall beside the Norse one. Originally the two communities distrusted one another and there were some fist fights. However, as time went on they became friendlier. When Eafa sent his shipwright and a few carpenters to learn how to build a drekar some of the Northumbrian warriors got interested and started to help.

  Ragnar held himself aloof from all this at first but he too became intrigued with the construction process and made himself useful. In return he, Gorm and Olaf were allowed to make themselves practice wooden swords, blunt spears and shields and were trained by the men. In time he even became happy, but only because a return to Agder was getting closer.

  Although Thorkel didn’t have a master shipwright amongst his crew he had two apprentice shipwrights and a master carpenter. The two new drekars were built side by side. The first problem was sourcing the right wood. The initial item to be laid down was the oak keel, made up of several sections spliced together and fastened with treenails to give it weight and strength. There was no problem finding the oak but the other woods used for the hull and mast in Scandinavia, such as pine, didn’t grow in Northumbria and the shipwright in charge had to experiment with other timbers.

  Eafa was a frequent visitor and took a keen interest in the design and construction process. After the keel the stems, based on segments of circles of varying sizes, were added to the keel. The next step was the interior frame and cross beams. The frames were placed close together to stiffen the ship, but far enough apart to allow the rowers to place their sea chests between them. There were no rowing benches - the rowers sat on their chests.

  Once the frame was complete the next stage was the strakes – the lines of overlapping planks joined endwise from stem to stern. Unlike the birlinns, where the strakes abutted one another and the joints were caulked, the strakes on a longship were clinker built with the bottom of the upper strake slightly overlapping the top of the next strake down. In section the strakes tapered from top to bottom and so it was a laborious task to trim each one to the desired shape.

  As the strakes reached the desired height, the deck was added; planks being nailed to the cross bracing of the frames. Once finished, the hull and deck was waterproofed with animal hair, wool, hemp or moss drenched in pine tar and forced into every gap. The holes cut between the deck and the gunwale to take the oars were kept closed when sailing by plugs.

  Once the two hulls were finished the masts were lifted into place and the side, fore and aft stays were rigged. The two mainsails proved to be something of a problem as they were woven in one piece and there was no loom big enough at Bebbanburg. Eafa therefore bought the sails needed from the Danes via a merchant in Frisia. He dyed his own sails yellow and Breguswid and her slaves sewed his device of a black wolf’s head onto it. He also bought a sail for the Vikings’ ship to replace the one lost to the flames. However, this was left plain as Eafa refused to pay for dyes or to get his women to make the pagan raven emblem.

  The two new drekars took until the autumn of 822 to complete. As soon as work on the new ships was underway Eafa had agreed to Thorkel’s request that the Vikings’ drekar should be made seaworthy and towed back to Budle Bay. Left where it was it would slowly be broken up by high tides and people looking for an easy supply of timber.

  However, it was kept covered and guarded until after the sea trials of the two new skieds were completed. As soon as they were ready, he sent them up to Berwic to remove the temptation for the Vikings to steal one of them. By the spring of 823 the work to repair and refit their drekar was finished and its crew took it out to sea to test it, but without the stores needed for a long voyage.

  Eafa threw a feast for the Norsemen before they left. As usual everyone got drunk but, surprisingly, there were no serious fights. Eafa sat at the high table and invited Thorkel to sit with him, Breguswid, the local thegn and his wife. However, Breguswid was pregnant with Eafa’s second child and once she and the other woman started to talk about babies the hersir got up and went to join his own men. If Eafa was affronted by his rudeness he hid it well.

  By this time Ragnar and Olaf had turned fifteen and Gorm was sixteen. All three were accepted as warriors and took their places at the oars, though they still had to act as ship’s boys and do all the menial work. The sky was overcast and the wind was blowing strongly onshore as they left the next morning. Eafa had brought his young son, Ilfrid, down to see the Norsemen depart and he watched them go with mixed feelings. In one way he was glad to see the back of a load of pagans, whose overt adherence to gods he knew were false continued to upset him; on the other hand he knew what doughty fighters they were and he would have employed them to guard his trading knarrs if he could. He’d mooted the idea to Thorkel but the man had laughed, telling him that they were men, not nursemaids.

  With only three quarters of a full crew they had struggled against wind and tide to clear the bay and round the point at the eastern end of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Once there they could hoist the sail.

  Once he had finished securing the halyard Ragnar went to talk to Thorkel.

  ‘We’re short of r
owers as it is and you need us to play a full part at the oars. We need to find some ship’s boys.’

  ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that? I tried to get Eafa to let me recruit some of the poor orphan boys from the vill. They would have a better life with us instead of living by begging and thievery, but he refused to let Christians live with pagans.’

  ‘We could raid the next settlement and take a few as thralls?’ Ragnar suggested.

  But Thorkel shook his head. ‘No man of honour uses thralls to crew his ship. However, if we captured a few boys I could offer them the choice of becoming thralls or staying free and working the ship.’

  He had given his word not to raid Northumbria on his way home and so he waited until they were north of the wide fjord that Eata had called the Firth of Forth. As the sun headed towards the western horizon Sitric looked for a bay with a beach where they could spend the night. The first one they saw was at the mouth of a small river with a fishing settlement on the north bank. Above it stood a small monastery built of timber with a palisade around it. Thorkel licked his lips. He calculated that they had a couple of hours before dark; time enough for what he intended.

  Before they beached the ship on the sand Ragnar and the others pulled on their byrnies or leather jerkins ready to fight ashore. Ragnar had used what little money he had to pay the armourer at Bebbanburg to put back the rings taken out when he was smaller. Now the byrnie was a little large for him but it would fit him for a few years yet. He grabbed his sword, shield, bow and quiver and stood waiting with Olaf and the rest for the keel to run aground.

  As soon as it did, he jumped from the side of the ship into the shallow water and splashed ashore. Then he was racing with the others towards the settlement as the local inhabitants ran about in panic, gathering up small children and grabbing a few precious possessions before heading up the path towards the supposed safety of the monastery.

  A few men tried to oppose the Vikings with spears, hunting bows and axes but they were soon cut down. Ignoring the crude huts and the livestock for now, Thorkel led his men up the path to the monastery on the clifftop. They overtook a few Picts on the way, mainly the old and infirm and a few young children who had been abandoned by their mothers as they fled. These the Norsemen cut down without a second thought as they rushed past them.