The wagon groaned and creaked along, the stocky horse in its traces huffing and snorting, the gentle crunch of gravel beneath the wheels almost hypnotic in its mile-eating repetitiveness. The same noises echoed from other wagons ahead and behind, joining the tapestry of sound, coloured threads added by the murmur of conversation all around.
Ulfr Sveinsson listened with a relaxed smile.
Before he’d left with the Sea Wolf, he’d never been beyond the lands bordering the cold, dark sea of the North, where everyone spoke variations of a tongue, and nothing was alien. Four years of travel with the young jarl, though, had opened his eyes to a wider and much more varied world. Now, he hardly noticed anything odd in the sound of Rus warriors, their accents tinted with Greek from years of service in Miklagarðr, deep in discussion with these new Northmen from the land beyond the Franks, their strange semi-Norse dialect tinged with an Italian fluidity.
The two groups had become closer and closer throughout the journey from Apulia, to the point where Ulfr had to remind himself that they had not always been comrades. The Wolves of Odin, survivors from the Byzantine wars and adventurers in the east, mixing so easily with the twelve-man Norman escort that William Iron Arm had assigned to guard his sister on the way north. Their leader, Thurstan, had become a good friend of the young jarl’s, and the constant peril of their journey had brought them all closer together. It would be almost a shame when they finally reached Eu and the two groups went their separate ways.
Other voices trickled across the surface of that complex weave of accents: women’s voices, and the honeyed tongue of a Rus among them. Ulfr had volunteered to drive the wagon of the women, and Halfdan had readily accepted. It would draw unwanted attention to have the wagon driven by Gunnhild, though she had offered. Leif had taken his turn here and there, but Halfdan had his own tasks leading this strange group, Ketil was too tall for the wagon seat – any attempt to drive was horribly uncomfortable for the Icelandic beanpole – and no one trusted Bjorn near women, of course. Even if he didn’t try for an occasional opportunistic grope, his sense of humour tended to horrify the fairer sex. And, of course, with the oath Halfdan had given Iron Arm to make sure that his sister reached her home, it had to be one of the Wolves who took the responsibility.
Hence: Ulfr.
‘Destiny is a hard mistress,’ Gunnhild was saying.
‘Destiny is of our own making,’ Beatrix de Hauteville replied, her tone harsh, unyielding.
‘Destiny is a road, a path, a journey.’
‘Yet you defied it,’ Cassandra put in.
‘I did,’ Gunnhild admitted, ‘but I can feel the Norns weaving, more than ever, closer than ever. I fear that all journeys lead to the same place in the end. In stepping off the path, I have only found a harder road that will lead me to the same end.’
‘You are a strange one, Gunnhild,’ Beatrix sighed. ‘But I tell you again, I will not be tied in matrimony to any man not of my choosing.’
Gunnhild, again, her voice calm, as though explaining basic logic to a child: ‘Nothing is of our choosing in the end. It is all woven. We make the decisions, yes, but they are the decisions we are bound by fate to make.’
‘Is that why you don’t cast the bones any more?’ Anna said.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘Cast bones?’ Beatrix queried, distaste in her tone.
‘Gunnhild receives visions from the Divine Theotokos,’ Anna explained, ‘the Mother of God.’
‘I have told you before that this is nothing to do with your nailed god,’ the völva replied with a little irritation. ‘Freyja gifts visions to those she deems worthy. And I do not cast for direction when I already know the way. Cease your prattle, Anna.’
‘You should cast your bones,’ Beatrix said with an air of defiance in her tone. ‘You will find that I shall not be married to this man.’
‘I fear you shall be surprised,’ was Gunnhild’s enigmatic answer, which set off a fresh round of discussion.
Ulfr smiled and leaned back, listening to the gentle debate. It had been going on for so many days that it seemed part of the soundtrack of their journey. Beatrix did not understand Gunnhild or their world, and seemed even deliberately ignorant. Anna and Cassandra were as close to the völva as ever, the three women like a coven, despite their insistence that Gunnhild was a tool of their god. They had argued and debated everything over the journey, and for all that this sounded like a new argument, it was merely a new angle on a well-tried one.
It amused Ulfr to see the reactions people had to Gunnhild, even Halfdan’s. Those who followed the nailed god were almost universally shocked or repulsed when they learned of her gifts, while some became fascinated, and even accepting. Others, like the young jarl, or Ketil, brought up in widely Christian Iceland, treated her with a sense of baffled awe. Not so, Ulfr. He had been raised in the old way, and there had been a völva in the village, until the priests of the White Christ had come and burned her. She was mysterious, yes, and magical even, but no more beyond comprehension than a rock, or a tree. She just simply was.
‘Hush. Travellers,’ he called back into the wagon, and the women fell silent in an instant.
Indeed, most of the column went silent, barring the men under Thurstan’s command, who began to chant slowly, their leader stepping his horse slightly in front of Halfdan’s, taking point.
The travellers were only a man and his wife leading a cow on a leather rein, heading the other way, perhaps to their farm, perhaps to market. Nothing greatly alarming, but the Wolves had learned time and again on this journey to be wary.
Ulfr pulled at the itchy, brown woollen robe he wore, drawing the hood down a little. The Normans with them kept up their murmured litany. Whether they were doing it right, Ulfr could not say, but they certainly sounded like the monks of the nailed god that he’d heard in their journeys, and they seemed adequate to fool the general public. The couple with the cow crossed themselves and offered their respect to the ‘monks’ as they passed.
Was it normal to see a score of priests, some on horseback, escorting five heavy wagons? It must be, for they had encountered little difficulty since they’d assumed the guise. It had been Leif’s idea, of course, the clever little bastard.
The journey had been long and painfully slow, the pace set by the carts, and they had moved north through Iron Arm’s lands under his protection until they reached the coast. There, they had travelled along the shore from city to city in the lands of the nailed god’s highest priest, called ‘pope’, and then began to angle in a more westerly direction after the first sixteen days.
The first real trouble had come once they turned inland. Once pope’s flag stopped flying over the cities they passed, there was less control. The roads became more dangerous and the population more suspicious. They had passed through the lands called Tuscany and there had been forced to fight or flee on several occasions, sometimes from opportunistic brigands, sometimes from the authorities of the lord of that region. As they moved into the lands of the Lombards, who were rumoured to be even less controlled, they passed a local priest on his travels and noted how even the soldiers simply bowed their heads to him respectfully as he passed, and that had set Leif the Teeth thinking. Within a few days they had spent a little of their mountain of hidden gold and acquired a number of very nailed-god-looking brown cassocks, some simple staffs, a number of wooden crosses on leather thongs, and had assumed the guise of a column of monks.
All trouble had stopped then. No one accosted them any more. Once, even, as they climbed into a mountainous region where deep, shadowed passes led them from the Italian lands into those of the Franks, they had even encountered a gang of vicious thieves who had leapt out, realised they were monks, crossed themselves, and even donated a few coins to the passing priests. That had been a source of endless amusement to the Wolves – once they were long out of earshot, anyway. The mountains had been difficult even in the autumn, and the going had slowed. They had been on the road something around fifty days by the time they left this high land of lakes and mountains and began to move slowly down once more to lowlands.
Ulfr had assumed that the Franks were similar to the Normans, being northern, but it seemed he was wrong. In fact, the King of the Franks apparently hated the Normans, and the two peoples were as comfortable together as Svears and Danes, which was to say: not at all.
‘I am itching to get out of this cloak,’ Bjorn said as they reached the hills and rivers of the Frank-land. ‘And I’m itching in this cloak, too. I just itch. I’d rather drop the disguise and fight my way north.’
Halfdan shook his head. ‘We are still forty days or more from Iron Arm’s lands. We cannot fight for forty days.’
‘I can fight for forty days,’ Bjorn insisted. ‘But I’m not sure how many more days I can wear this rotten Christ-robe without madness claiming me.’
Ulfr, taciturn, and not given to argument, laughed then. ‘Any madness coming to claim you, my big friend, will be disappointed that he is late, for his friends took you years ago.’
They all laughed. All except Bjorn, who made a number of incoherent threats, and then went on to tell some tall tale about how he’d once spent the night with a Valkyrja and had had to fight her off when she wanted to take him to the Hall of the Slain while he was still alive. Some of the details of their night of passion were eye-watering, extremely unlikely, and made their guest, Beatrix, pale with shock.
Still, they had maintained the robes, moving on through these lands, which their Norman companions referred to as Burgundy and then France, two separate lands that seemed more or less identical to Ulfr.
‘You drive a wagon well,’ Cassandra noted one morning as they rumbled along, leaving the other women in an argument about gods, yet again.
‘A wagon is easy. You should see me with a good dragon ship.’ He smiled.
‘Dragon ship?’
‘The ships of the North. Not like the fat-bellied traders or the massive galleys of the south,’ he explained. ‘A good longship should be like an arrow, made to carve a speedy path through the waves. Whether for trade or for war, it is better to be fast than strong, for if Ran seeks to pull you down into her halls in the deep, no amount of heavy timbers will save you, but while you ride the whale road, there is much to be gained from speed.’
‘You sound like a true sailor,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘A sailor, a shipwright, an artist. I have made the best ships in the world. You never saw the Sea Wolf, did you? She was taken by Harðráði when we left the great city. It still hurts, for she was a part of me, that ship. My best work.’
She left him, then, returning to the wagon and the argument, which was no longer about Freyja and Christ, but about the differences between Beatrix’s and Anna’s versions of the same nailed god. She left him feeling thoughtful, and slightly sad. Halfdan had been insistent, any time the subject came up, that they would find the Sea Wolf again, along with its glorious thief, and Gunnhild was of the same opinion, though finding herself with Harðráði again was a less than welcome proposition. Still, she insisted they would find the ship and its thief. But then they had also been insistent that they would find the treacherous priest Hjalmvigi, too, and that promise was no closer, even four years on.
He sighed. They would sail again. Halfdan had said so. The jarl had told them all that once Beatrix was safely with her kin, they would buy a new ship and take to the whale road as was in their blood, back into the North.
That would be good. He would like to feel the cold spray from the bow of a ship again. In a perfect world, it would be the Sea Wolf. He would be less pleased with the work of another shipwright, but even a slow scow would be better than these land ships he had piloted for so many days. Some mornings, he wondered whether he should be more outspoken and insistent, should perhaps demand of the jarl that he take them to find the Sea Wolf rather than these wide wanderings.
But it was not in Ulfr’s nature. He was a quiet man. Solid, determined, but quiet and faithful. And whatever troubles they had met in their time, he could not deny that they had more gold in their wagons than any man could hope for, and that when he was a true greybeard he would never lack for a heroic tale to tell in a mead hall.
In the great scheme, he was content.
He would just be more content in a ship.
They passed around the edge of a city by the name of Orléans that afternoon, an ancient place with high walls of great antiquity. They kept their distance, though, despite their disguises, for the Normans among their number warned with low voices that this city was one of the Frankish king’s most important and valued properties, and so it would be well guarded. One sniff of the Normans and they would bring down upon them the might of France.
And so they returned to the main road on the far side of the city and, as the light of their seventy-fourth day began to fade, they left the metalled highway and moved off into the woodland south of the road to make camp for the night.
An old foresters’ trail – from the looks of it unused for some time – led them into the woodland as the light glimmered here and there between the canopy, still bearing its summer greenery. They finally pulled up a good mile from the road, by a lake of shining blue-green, formed in the shape of a half-moon and with a wide grassy clearing at the curved side. They drew the five wagons into a circle, tethering the other horses as they had done so many times. As some began to prepare for the night, feeding the animals, extricating the bedding from the wagons and fishing out the food they had purchased from a village market the previous day, a group of men scoured the bone-dry woods and gathered armfuls of logs and brush, heaping them together at the centre of their little camp and bringing forth flames, the fire bursting into warm, golden life, fighting back the growing darkness.
‘We are about three days from leaving French lands,’ Thurstan said with a relieved voice as he sank to a tree stump and rubbed his knee.
‘And then we’re safe?’ Leif asked.
Ulfr simply nodded, listening as he helped the ladies from the wagon.
‘Safe is a relative term,’ the Norman said with a humourless laugh. ‘There is considerably less likelihood of meeting angry soldiers of the French king, but there are plenty of lords in our own lands who like nothing more than to kick the snot out of one another. For fun, sometimes.’
Bjorn roared with laughter. ‘I knew these Normans had not lost all the North from their blood. No one likes a good fight like a son of rock and ice.’
Thurstan rolled his eyes. After so many days on the road, even the Normans had become used to the great albino. And after the first couple of fights, they’d stopped accepting his challenges, too.
‘And how far to Eu?’
‘Fifteen days, I would say.’
Ulfr, on some instinct, turned to look at Beatrix de Hauteville at this news, and noted her distaste fold into solid resolve, which was then swiftly replaced with innocence the moment she realised she was being observed. Trouble lay ahead there, and he made a note to keep a close eye on things.
In truth, he was surprised they’d had so little trouble. From what Iron Arm had said back in Apulia, they had anticipated having to keep the woman bound with ropes and locked in a wagon to prevent her escaping. But perhaps even she had realised that escape would only land her on her own in hostile lands, and so she had chosen the lesser evil of the Wolves’ ongoing company. She had been extremely outspoken, challenging, and even hostile in the early days of the journey, but seemed to have found something of the kindred spirit in Gunnhild, Cassandra and Anna, and had settled in with them.
Still, Ulfr felt sure there was trouble brewing once more, as they neared her homeland and the point at which she would be forced to accept a fate against which she had railed many times.
‘I shall miss this company,’ Thurstan said. ‘I have grown accustomed to your presence, our ancient cousins from the North.’
Halfdan laughed. It was mutual, all had become content. That the Normans – mercenaries by breeding – had known from the start that the wagons held a fortune in gold and had never yet made an attempt to claim any of it had come as a pleasant surprise.
‘Tell us a little more of what awaits us?’ the jarl asked of Thurstan.
They had not really discussed the land of the Normans a great deal thus far, concentrating more on the Hauteville family, their noble cargo, and the journey.
‘In some ways it will remind you of Apulia.’ The Norman shrugged. ‘Every little lord wants to be a bigger lord, and every big lord wants to be the only one. The natural state for our people is to be at war with one another. It is only ever the presence of a mutual enemy that brings us together. Such was the case in Apulia, and the reason that a council was put together under Iron Arm, the most powerful of them all.’
Ulfr smiled at that. He’d liked Iron Arm. The man might sound like a southerner, but his very core had been iron and rock, like a Northman of old.
‘And the same is true here?’ Halfdan probed.
That made Ulfr smile again. The wily, Loki-born jarl had solid plans to finish this job and then sail away, finding adventure away from the twists and turns of these southern peoples, yet he knew they would have to pass through the lands of the Normans and perhaps spend a little time among them yet, and so he wanted to know all he could.
‘After a fashion,’ Thurstan said, ‘or at least it was the last time I was here, a few years ago. The barons are all gathered under one duke, who keeps everything together. Duke Robert was a strong man, and under him most of the warring stopped. But he went east on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and I hear he died there. He had no legitimate sons, and so I’m not at all sure what the situation is now. He had a bastard, but the lad will be quite young, and being a bastard, I’m not sure whether he could inherit such power unopposed. Still, heading to Eu we will be on the very periphery of Nordmandi, and should be able to stay clear of any trouble. Iron Arm’s older brother is stronger even than he, and will navigate the currents of court well, I am sure.’
Ulfr was less sure. After seeing what the Normans were like down in Italy, he couldn’t imagine them being any more straightforward up here.
‘What took you away from here and down to Apulia?’ he asked the man suddenly, as he helped Cassandra alight.
Thurstan turned to him, frowning. ‘What?’
‘You left your own home and went south. I wondered why.’
‘Fame and fortune,’ the man said with a shrug.
‘Here’s to that,’ Bjorn bellowed, raising his jug of beer and tipping most of it into his mouth, only a little down his front.
‘And not to be away from the dangers of your countrymen?’ Halfdan said with a sly smile.
Thurstan coughed quietly. ‘There may have been additional reasons,’ he admitted.
The conversation went on in such a manner as they gathered around the fire, preparing dinner in a huge cauldron, Thurstan telling them what little he knew of current Norman lands, Halfdan asking questions, Bjorn making off-colour jokes and outrageous boasts, while Gunnhild threw acidic remarks at him. Ketil was off at the far side of the camp with one of the Normans, each with a bow, practising again and again. With his missing eye, it had taken the rangy Icelander a long time to become reasonably proficient once more, even with the help of another accomplished archer. He would probably never be the sure shot he had once been, but he was at least improving all the time.
Beatrix remained in the wagon, claiming a headache, and because no one was willing to leave their guest entirely out of sight for any length of time, Leif stayed with her. As Ulfr unloaded the last gear from the wagon for the night, the jarl called across to Gunnhild. ‘Will you walk with the goddess and sing your songs for me, völva? We are close to our destination now, and I would know what lies beyond.’
Gunnhild looked as though she might argue for a moment, but Cassandra and Anna murmured something to her, and she nodded, tersely. Ulfr placed the pile of blankets nearby and sat, watching. As the völva began her song and her rites, he sensed that something had changed, something was new, and it took a while for him to realise what it was. Cassandra and Anna were singing with her, their gentle voices adding harmonies that had never been there before. When had they learned her song?
The melody rose and fell several times, before carrying Gunnhild to sufficient a height to see far, and when she cast her bones and beads and feathers and bent to interpret their shape, her two companions leaned close, still humming gently.
‘There is much to see,’ she said, ‘but perhaps we are not close enough for detail. I see wolves and lions, a dragon swallowing men, Loki freed of his chains, and my jarl at the prow of a great ship.’
The Christians around the clearing crossed themselves, the followers of the true gods shivering at her words. Loki unbound was the opening of Ragnarok, the last battle between gods and giants, and the remaking of the world. That shock was enough that it took Ulfr moments to notice the last comment: the jarl on a ship. He tried not to focus on the worrying part, and found himself dreaming of ships once more as he rose to go about his work.
Ulfr moved around the edge of the camp, checking the wagons’ wheels and traces, as he did every night. On his first pass, he nodded to one of Thurstan’s men, who sat facing into the darkening woodlands, watching for trouble. His second pass revealed a cracked running board he’d not noted the first time, which he committed to memory as a job he would carry out before they hit the road in the morning.
The third pass turned up nothing, yet for some reason the hairs rose on the back of his neck. He turned. The man on watch wasn’t there. His searching gaze scoured the area around him. There was no body in a heap, so it was highly likely the Norman had simply gone into the nearest trees for a piss.
But that shiver and itch of something wrong was still there, nagging at him.
He stopped, alert now, looking around.
The rear canvas flap of the next wagon was loose.
It should not be.
He’d checked them all, and on two passes he could not reasonably have missed that. He frowned. He almost put out a cry of alert, but bit down on it. Better he didn’t alert anyone to trouble until he had more of an idea of what was going on. Could that missing guard have climbed into the wagon? Maybe the proximity of so much ready gold had finally got the better of him.
Like the others, Ulfr had removed his monk’s robe once they had settled into camp, and he carried only the sharp sax at his belt, his axe remaining hidden in the wagon, for it could hardly be concealed beneath the robe. His fingers closed on the cold hilt of the long fighting knife, and he drew it slowly, a steely whisper in the night, lost even beneath the faint sound of his light footsteps on the grass as he closed on the wagon.
His hand went slowly up to the flap, but instead of pulling it open, he paused, listening. Ulfr had learned long ago that sometimes patience and care were far more important than simply gaining the initiative. Any ship’s pilot could tell you that.
He could hear rummaging. Whoever it was was rooting around in the wagon, and that meant someone who was not supposed to be there. The alarm needed to be given, then. He stepped to the side and drew breath.
‘To arms,’ he bellowed, and then enjoyed the benefit of his careful approach as a sword slammed out beneath the loose flap, right where he had just been. His free hand slammed down, grabbing hold of the sword’s guard, preventing its owner from pulling the weapon back inside. Indeed, Ulfr yanked and the arm and the hand gripping the hilt were suddenly jerked out into the open. His sax came down then, the sharp tip plunging into the man’s forearm so hard it came out of the other side.
The owner screamed and tried to pull back the arm, which only worsened the wound. The sword fell from the hand, and Ulfr pulled his blade free, drawing another shriek from his unseen victim. With his free arm, he thrust his hand under the canvas, grabbed a handful of woollen tunic, and heaved. He may not be as broad as Bjorn, nor as tall as Ketil, but Ulfr Sveinsson was barrel-chested and as strong as an ox, and the wounded man was jerked from the wagon with a panicked cry, where he fell in a heap, clutching his arm.
He was unarmoured, and Ulfr decided in that moment the man was probably just yet another forest-dwelling thief of the sort they had met so many times. The villain was going to be no threat, but Ulfr gave him a good kick in the head, just to be sure, as he pulled open the wagon flap and looked inside. Sure enough, the contents had been pulled aside, and the boxes containing the Byzantine gold coins they had brought all the way from southern Apulia were visible.
He turned. There were the sounds of combat across the clearing. Grunts, curses, cries, thuds and wooden clonks, metallic rasping, and odd, recognisable voices among them.
‘I’m going to tear off your head and fuck the stump,’ Bjorn yelled at some unseen enemy.
Halfdan was bellowing orders. An arrow thrummed through the darkness between the wagons, not a long way from where Ulfr stood, and buried itself in a tree trunk.
He heard a feminine voice cry out in surprise and, alert, Ulfr leapt around the side of the next wagon, into the circle of firelight. Here and there, men were struggling with assailants, but even Ulfr, no great leader of men, could see that the Wolves would be the easy victors. The thieves were fewer than they, and unarmoured, and were already trying to get away. Bjorn had some poor bandit by the leg, upside down, and was bashing his head on the ground, repeatedly, while telling the man what he intended to do to him.
A glance to the right showed that Beatrix was in trouble, and for a moment Ulfr wondered whether the attack had actually been a failed attempt to get to her, but then he reasoned that no one other than those in the column knew the noblewoman was there, so he quickly abandoned that notion. They were thieves and opportunists, and that was all.
One of them, though, had hold of Beatrix’s wrist and was trying to pull her from the wagon. Even as Ulfr watched, Leif came running to help. Beatrix’s free hand managed to fall upon a hammer somewhere inside the wagon, and came out into the open, swinging. Unfortunately, her assailant saw it coming and ducked, and the heavy flattened end connected with Leif’s forehead even as he lunged to help. The little Rus went down in a heap instantly, as Beatrix yelled something furious and very unladylike. She had clearly been in Gunnhild’s company too long. Or possibly even Bjorn’s, given what it was that she said.
Her assailant cried out in triumph and gave a heavy tug at her arm, and Beatrix fell from the wagon, collapsing on the ground. Even as the man lowered the tip of his sword to the woman’s chest, demanding that she lie still, she swung the hammer again. It struck the thief’s ankle with an audible crack, and he fell with a scream, collapsing on his shattered joint. Still gripping his sax, Ulfr paused only to kick out twice, once into the man’s head, and then a second time to kick his blade away out of reach. He grasped Beatrix’s free hand, which was red raw from the thief’s tight grip, and pulled her to her feet. She was so surprised she almost swung the hammer again, but Ulfr was already bending out of the way, unwilling to share Leif’s fate.
As she recovered, Ulfr turned and took in the scene. The fight was over. It had only been a light scuffle, really, with a vastly inferior foe. Ketil was walking around the fallen thieves and finishing them off with a swift stab to the throat, while Bjorn was pulverising his latest victim, who, if he was still alive, was at least far from able to feel the agony any more.
The barrel-chested shipwright bent to Leif’s immobile form. He checked the man’s neck and mouth and nose, and was relieved to feel both pulse and breath, though there was a perfectly circular red mark in the centre of the little man’s forehead. Ulfr gave a light chuckle. When he awoke, that mark would give Bjorn endless amusement in poking fun at his little friend. And probably poking the injury, too.
Satisfied that the danger was past, Ulfr dipped back between the wagons again and off to the edge of the clearing, where the darkness was becoming oppressive, only dancing golden beams periodically illuminating the world from between and beneath the circle of wagons. It did not take him long to find the unfortunate man they’d left on watch. His throat had been cut and the body dumped behind a tree.
Ulfr gave a huff of disappointment, not at the man’s death, but at the fact that a man supposedly on watch had allowed himself to be jumped and murdered without issuing a sound. That damned the man as either a coward, an idiot, or asleep on watch, all of which were unlikely to elicit any sympathy. Odin would not save room in his hall for such a man. Still, for general tidiness – Ulfr was by nature a tidy person – he dragged the body back to the campfire circle, landing the blame for this squarely with the dead man.
A head count in his absence had turned up two injuries, neither of which were debilitating, and one other death: another of Thurstan’s Normans, though this one had died more heroically, fighting off the biggest of the attackers.
In all, it could have been so much worse.
Ulfr heaved a sigh of relief and accepted a skin of wine from someone.
Three days until Norman lands…