A night’s sleep on Skio, the misty isle, restored the men’s good humour. Stomachs full, they’d stretched out for sleep by a cookfire on the beach. A handful of stalwarts had kept watch on each ship and Skarfr thanked the gods he wasn’t one of them. As he stretched to wake up, he could feel his legs and arms lengthening, his spine straightening, as his body recovered from the cramped position of ‘rest’ on board.
Sweyn and Thorbjorn had camped with their men, not needing to speak to each other so not overtly avoiding contact. But the sullen resentment of the former and the glittering triumph of the latter were reflected in the moods of their respective crews. The other three captains and crews shared cookfires and sailors’ tales before rolling up in their blankets and leaving this world for the sea of dreams. Whether they had smooth sailing or rode rough mares, all woke up with one thought. Tiree. This day, they would show Holbodi what Orkneymen did to allies turned traitors.
Running the Surf-rider into the water, Skarfr’s blood was pumping more in anticipation than in the heat of a training bout. His first battle. All his work with dagger, shield and axe would be tested in the field, where courage and cowardice could both lead to death. What mattered was not death but honour. Skarfr swore that Hlif would hear only great things of his deeds this day. He would be saga-worthy, as his cormorant spirit had foretold.
Early mists lifted and the five ships rode the waves proudly, in a wedge like migrating geese, behind Sweyn, the leader. Thorbjorn’s orders were relaxed, with no attempt to draw level. If anything, he let the Surf-rider lag behind as if he was saying, ‘I can take you any time I like and you know it.’ Even when displaying subservience, he conveyed a mocking superiority.
The island of Tiree did not offer the easiest entry, protected by reefs and drying rocks that showed in low seas but ripped apart unwary ships during high tides. But the weather gods stayed with the Orkneymen and Sweyn knew the way to his former friend’s stronghold as well as he knew the course home to Gareksey.
Swift as sharks, the ships entered the bay, skimmed the surface with their shallow keels until the first drag of sand underneath slowed them and the men jumped out to complete the beaching. They grabbed shields, axes, daggers and donned whatever protective outerwear they’d brought. Most wore leather jerkins like Skarfr’s but he noted with envy that some were padded. The captains all boasted chain-mail byrnies, better protection than leather but stiff from salt spray and in need of oiling. Only Thorbjorn and Sweyn wore helms, which made them easy to spot as they tore up the white sands and headed across the marram grass dunes towards the nearby village.
The bay looked perfect for landing, waves breaking on a long beach. But a misjudgement in poor visibility could easily take a ship too far east where the run into the beach was between two rocky spurs. A sounding with stone and line would deceive, showing depth even while the stone vice crushed the hull. Tiree was not an island to approach without a waymaster who knew the hidden dangers. That made the islanders complacent and they did not expect outsiders.
Even if a lookout had spied the square sails and recognised the threat, the Orkneymen were upon the villagers in Balevullin before they had time to run. Then, run they did, like rabbits.
Taken unawares, flight was the only sensible option but some of the younger men made a stand with whatever tools came to hand: ploughshare, pitchfork or even an iron kettle.
Skarfr had not expected such pathetic opponents, nor the confusion, mess and uproar: buildings and bodies battered and set on fire, smoke masking friend and foe alike. Had they really practised shield-walls in training? The disciplined overlap of shields, shoulder to shoulder, as they marched against equals, was as impossible in this brawl as any form of honour.
Reluctant to kill farm boys, Skarfr fended off any feeble attacks with his shield as he advanced with the others into the village, towards Holbodi’s Bu. Only when some unseen foe came at him yelling, then feinted and nearly stuck a dagger in his thigh, did Skarfr instinctively respond. There could be no pause to muse on killing a man for the first time and all he could do was continue, obeying his orders.
The two helms of Sweyn and Thorbjorn were clearly visible in the lead, as the two avenging angels left death and flames in their wake.
Shouts of ‘We’re coming for you Holbodi!’ scattered what was left of resistance and any villagers not dead or held prisoner fled for their lives, pursued inland by the Orkneyman to Holbodi’s stronghold.
Leaving a trail of devastation, Sweyn and Thorbjorn arrived at the biggest longhouse in Tiree. Whatever was yelled through the Bu entrance resulted in a speedy exit by pot-boys, thralls and menials but no warriors came out.
‘They’re all gone, Lord Holbodi and his men. They heard you were coming for them and sailed yesterday,’ insisted one of the servants, a towheaded youth who smelled of the smokehouse, too young to know he should hold his peace.
Sweyn didn’t believe any of them. He cursed and swung his axe, ensuring that the young man would never speak out of turn again. His head rolled in blood and dust, a last moment of shock in eyes that dimmed already.
The deed had no connection with those casual words, ‘hacking off heads’. Skarfr could only stay upright by shutting off compassion as he had once shut off the pain Botolf inflicted. There is a place in every man’s spirit that can stay separate from blood and gore, while enduring, watching or carrying out acts of violence.
His guts lurched but Skarfr remained standing. He thought of Hlif’s father, commanded to carry out this act against Jarl Magnus. He did not ask himself what he would have done. He watched Thorbjorn and Sweyn, bloody-handed, raging at the stubborn residents of the Bu.
Even after watching their fellow dispatched so brutally, the remainder stuck by their story.
‘Go and check the hall,’ ordered Sweyn.
‘Why don’t you just fire the Bu?’ jeered Thorbjorn. ‘That’s what you usually do. Or is that only what you do with old women?’
Like two fighting cocks strutting and pecking at each other before being untied.
Scarlet-faced and brittle, Sweyn said curtly, ‘I want that dung beetle to see what’s coming to him, not just die.’
But it was true. The Bu was empty of people and probably of valuables too, judging by empty kitchen and caches. The bird had flown the nest and they’d missed him by only a day. If they hadn’t rested on Skio, if some messenger hadn’t spotted their ships and arrived here first…
Unable to resist another jibe, Thorbjorn pointed out, ‘That’s two of your sworn enemies playing catch-me-if-you can from ships faster than yours.’
No man loves the one who spells out his failures. First Frakork’s grandson Olvir Rosta had eluded Sweyn’s revenge and now Holbodi. Maybe it was the reference to his father’s murderer that broke through Sweyn’s limited self-restraint but Skarfr could have sworn he heard the sea-rover mutter, ‘Three,’ beneath his breath and his expression set like stone.
‘Plunder!’ roared Sweyn. ‘Take all you can carry and pile it on the beach. Let’s go home covered in gold, silver and glory.’
Holbodi had taken all the personal wealth he and his men could carry but he’d omitted to warn the villagers or his priest of the coming raid so there were lucrative pickings in the obvious prime location, the chapel. Then servants and prisoners were pressed into action, revealing hidey-holes and chests in buildings all the way from the inland settlement back to Balevullin beach.
As soon as he’d witnessed the pillaging of the chapel and sent the treasures to the beach, Sweyn rushed back to Balevullin with his men, sweeping together through the buildings like a plague of locusts on a wheatfield. Canny as Loki, the trickiest god, Sweyn had reverted to his piratical habits. With less distance to carry the goods, he’d collect more, and also be in place to receive all the loot sent by the other captains.
Only with hindsight did Skarfr – and the gulled captains – realise how the trickster had pulled off his revenge on the one tormentor who was within reach. While Thorbjorn methodically sacked Tiree and sent all he found to Balevullin, Sweyn coolly assessed the heaps of metal, weapons and even some jewellery. He chose the best pieces and his men carried them aboard. And he kept choosing until half of the haul was on his ship.
The two captains witnessed their spoils disappear. They didn’t dare intervene but they later gave Thorbjorn and the fifth captain an impassioned account when these two arrived on the beach to see Sweyn’s sail diminishing in the distance.
‘He said he’d taken the leader’s share, as was his right,’ finished a captain, breathless at the injustice.
As white with rage as Sweyn had been red, Thorbjorn shielded his eyes as he watched the last trace of the sea-rover vanish over the horizon.
‘We’ll take this matter to the Jarl.’ His every word came out like a knife jab in the ribs. ‘Let each man take his fourth of what is left.’ There were no arguments between them as they picked through Sweyn’s leavings and saw them loaded onto their ships, but the atmosphere was thunderous.
As Skarfr took his allotted burden of pewter cups and gewgaws, he thought he heard Thorbjorn say something between gritted teeth. Only the expression on Thorbjorn’s face helped Skarfr jump at the meaning of those half-heard words. He’d seen that same expression outside the Jarl’s Bu, against a wall, on the night of the wedding dinner.
‘Sweyn’s sister shall pay,’ Thorbjorn had vowed to himself.
The voyage back to Orphir was easier sailing than the route out, with favourable tide and wind, but heavier in heart. An invisible cloud hung over the ships and jokes were few. Thorbjorn stared at the pile of loot as if a magic quern would grind it bigger but there it stayed, disappointing, Sweyn’s leavings.
In his rest time, Skarfr relived every anticlimax of the voyage, wondering how sagas could be made from stuff like this. Men had blackened their grooved teeth for nothing. He enumerated his experiences as if they’d turn heroic. His dream come true. He’d sailed in the finest of dragon ships with an exceptional captain. He’d fought and killed at the side of the two most revered warriors in the world. He was sailing home on a ship full of treasure.
The words didn’t change what he felt.
He opened his eyes, saw the row of nails hammered along each wooden strafe to attach the plank to its overlapping fellow. That’s how he felt. The poem shaped itself in his head and he knew what he had to do the moment he set foot on Orkneyjar soil again.
One hundred hammer-strokes clinked his heart iron-hard, manly,
fit for stormy passage and rough seas, for reddening the raven’s claw,
an overlap of brothers’ wooden shields sealing out
the heady drink of women’s wiles and words
that capsized unwary warriors.