Northgar. The northern spear. No doubt the name had been chosen to appeal to the Northumbrian families, upon whose support he was greatly reliant.
Hopefully those ships and the men upon them were too far off to make any difference to the plan that was forming in my mind. Upon dry land near to the five wide-bellied boats was a large fire, around which the same number of men were warming their hands; obviously they were the unlucky ones who had been burdened with guard duty this chilly night. Indeed we were fortunate that there weren’t more of them, but then what reason did the enemy have to expect an attack from across the marshes?
‘Hand me that,’ I said to Serlo, pointing to the leather flask he carried: the only drink we had between us.
He frowned but handed it over. ‘It’s only ale, lord,’ he said, perhaps thinking that I wanted something stronger to prepare myself for what was to come. I rarely drank before battle; although it lent courage, it also dulled a man’s wits, made him slower and unsteadier on his feet and less deft in his swordplay and spearwork.
What I was thinking of was somewhat different, as I explained to them. I chose Serlo and Pons to watch over our prisoner and sent Wace and Eudo together with their knights to find their way across the muddy ground between the beached ships and the river, and there to wait for my signal.
As soon as they had vanished into the darkness, I began counting under my breath up to one hundred and then back down to nought, before I myself set off in the direction of the ship guards. From so far away I couldn’t tell whether they were the?theling’s men or King Sweyn’s, but either way I hoped I could fool them. With my straggling and untidy hair there was every chance they would mistake me for an Englishman, while the silver rings upon my arms might suggest to the Danes that I was one of them, from a distance at least. Admittedly it was not much of a disguise, especially since the moment I opened my mouth the entire pretence would be shattered. I knew nothing of the Danish speech, and while I had come to learn many English words and phrases, they did not always come readily to my tongue. And if my hesitation did not betray me then my accent surely would. Still, it was the best I could manage: enough, probably, to confuse the guards for as long as this would take.
Soon I was close enough to hear their voices, though they were too low for me to make out any words. I did not try to hide but ventured openly, trudging heavily through the mud, clutching the ale-flask in one hand and singing a wordless nonsense tune, all the time hoping and praying silently that this ruse would work, or else I was a dead man.
It was not long before one of the guards stepped away from the fire and called out a challenge, his words breaking through the stillness of the night: ‘Hw?t eart thu?’
Who are you? That I could understand, which meant these were Englishmen. With any luck that would make this a little easier.
I did not answer, but, my heart pounding in my chest, I began to sing more loudly, affecting what I hoped looked like a drunken stagger. So intent was I on keeping up the ruse, however, that I didn’t notice where I was treading, nor see the ground ahead falling away into one of the many streams and channels that crossed those marshes. Losing my footing, I slid with limbs flailing and a great splash into the icy water.
Gasping for breath and inwardly cursing, I managed to right myself and drag myself out on to firmer ground, only to find the Englishmen laughing at me. I had their attention now, at least. Soaked to my skin, my tunic and trews dripping and my jerkin caked in mud, I raised a fist to the heavens as if in appreciation of their cheers; as if their entertainment was my sole purpose. Taking the bottle, I unstoppered it and raised it to my lips, letting the ale cascade into my mouth and down my chin, until I found myself choking. I bent over double, making retching noises and pretending to vomit.
At last their concern got the better of their mirth. Exactly as I’d planned, they left their posts to come to my aid, calling as they did so, asking what I was doing out there, so far from the town and the camp. That was the signal to Wace and Eudo and their knights. I hoped I could keep these men distracted for long enough to allow them to do their work. There were barely one hundred paces between where I stood and the five ships; if they made too much noise and one of the guards happened to notice what was happening, our plan would be finished even before it had begun.
As the Englishmen approached, I fell to my knees, feigning a hacking cough, drawing forth phlegm and spitting it out in gobs on to the ground in front of me. Save for the seaxes at their belts I saw that they were unarmed, with only their tunics and animal-skin cloaks for protection. They were all of them young, about the same age as Runstan, eager for adventure and lacking in wits. Certainly they weren’t seasoned warriors, or else they would have had more sense than to abandon their duty and leave their ships unguarded.
‘Are you all right, lord?’ one of them asked, clearly recognising me by my arm-rings and the weapons on my belt as someone of importance. ‘What are you doing out here?’
I pretended not to hear him, but coughed some more for good measure and collapsed on to my side, groaning and clutching my stomach with one hand as if sick, while with the other I held on to the bottle. Of the whole performance, only the shivering was real.
‘Perhaps he got lost,’ said another with a snigger as they stood over me. Their faces were in shadow and through half-closed eyes I could not make out their features. ‘Should we do something?’
‘If we leave him, he’s only likely to wander into the river and end up drowned,’ the first one said. ‘Here, Wulf, help me lift him.’
I let my body go as limp as possible, so that it took two of them, one on each side of me, to raise me so that I sat upright.
‘Christ, but he’s heavy,’ said the one called Wulf, who was heavyset with powerful forearms. ‘How are we going to get him all the way back to the camp?’
While they pondered this, I decided the time was right for another swig from my ale-flask. Even as I made to upend it, though, Wulf tried to prise it from my fingers. Grunting a warning, I snatched it away so suddenly that his feet slipped on the mud and he lost his balance, tumbling down the bank into the same stream I had fallen in, to the jeers of his friends.
God was with us, for that distraction meant their backs were turned at the very moment when the burning timbers were being drawn from the fire and carried on to the five ships, whereupon Eudo and Wace and the others would take them below decks into the bilges where the oars and spare sailcloth were often stored. If they were lucky they might also find stores of oakum, the unravelled rope fibres that, mixed with pitch, were used to caulk the joints between a ship’s timbers, which would help the flames to take hold more quickly. Either way, it would not be long now.
Indeed it happened even more quickly than I expected. As Wulf, sodden and covered in bits of reed, was raising himself from the ditch, I spied the first tendrils of smoke begin to rise quietly into the night sky, so faint that they were probably invisible to anyone who did not know to watch for them, but with every heartbeat growing thicker and blacker, coiling around each other to form five distinct plumes.
It was then that one of the Englishmen, a stout fellow with eyes that seemed too close together, said: ‘Is that smoke?’
As his companions turned to look, I rose, in the same movement drawing both my sword and knife, slashing across the back of one man’s calves, cleaving through sinew and muscle, bringing him to the ground, then up into the groin of another. So surprised were the other three that they had hardly the chance to make a sound, let alone draw their seaxes, before I’d buried my shorter blade into one’s belly and beaten a second across the brow with the flat of the steel, sending him sprawling into the water. That just left Wulf, who lacked the courage to match his stature. A look of desperation upon his face, he tried to flee, but tripped over his own feet as he turned, and was unable to get up in time before I brought the full weight of my weapon crashing into the back of his head.