Ulfr approached the gates of Pirou with men at each shoulder. It had been eight days since he’d last visited, and he would have liked nothing more than to have stayed well clear of the castle for good, but the presence of the wounded Geoffroi, and of imprisoned Beatrix, had preyed on his mind sufficiently that he’d girded his loins for another visit. Beatrix was in some ways his responsibility, and Geoffroi was an ally of the Wolves, and both languished under control of an enemy. Had the lord of Pirou’s army been just a little smaller, Ulfr might have been tempted to go in with axe in hand and break them out, though he also acknowledged that this was a very Ketil plan – which was to say, insane.
It had been a tense week. There had been no contact between the castle and the beach shipyard, no exchange even of words between Hauteville’s men and those within the newly defended beach stockade. With just the one day’s interruption to construct the palisade, they had doubled their efforts on the ship, which was truly taking shape.
It would most certainly be the fastest-built ship he had ever begun, and possibly the fastest ship anyone had ever built, but then he had more manpower than most shipwrights could hope for, ready-cut timbers, all the equipment in advance and unlimited funds. The dwarves, shipbuilding for Loki, could not have done better.
Even as he rode, whenever he closed his eyes he could see it there on the beach, already almost a ship. The shell was near complete, barring the last few strakes on each side, and already the ribbing was going in to support the hull. Everyone involved was exhausted, for sure, but that did not seem to be hampering their work, and Ulfr did not think that was just a case of the money, although their pay was impressive. It was also the sheer joy and satisfaction of watching their construction take shape, something only a craftsman could ever understand. These men had spent their lives mostly repairing old ships or building small fishing boats. Only a precious few, including the shipwright from Fulquerville, had ever helped build a ship of war, and even then it had been as part of a large shipyard, just one piece of the machine. This was a work of craft in which they could all take pride. It was a proper longship, worthy of Freyja’s attention.
It was a dragon boat.
And he’d named it, in his heart. She was the Sea Dragon. There was no other choice. At times this week he’d found himself walking around it at night, when the work had ended, muttering the name as he looked at her sleek lines and imagining the decoration he would eventually carve into her delicate timbers.
If things went on at the pace they had been, then the main construction would be done within another week, that being a complete hull with all the internals. She would be essentially seaworthy, and there would be just the ancillary work to take care of. Then would be mast, oars, sail, steering oar and so on, but probably not the figurehead and sternpost. Clearly, they were important to any ship’s identity, but equally clearly a ship could sail without them, and time was becoming more pressing with every passing day. There would be one more week of hull work, and then a couple of days of pulling everything together. They already had a timber selected for the mast.
The gates of Pirou castle were closed. This was the first time Ulfr had approached them without their standing open and his being waved in without a challenge. He felt a tightening of his chest. Tension was building, and everyone could feel it. The one time this week they almost had interaction with Hauteville had been when the Norman had taken it upon himself to ride to the beach with a small party of guards. He’d only come as far as the high dunes, where he had reined in and looked down at the work on the beach, surrounded by its defensive palisade, a fortress of foreigners within his domain. He’d said nothing before turning and riding away, but the clear impression was ‘hurry up and finish and get off my beach.’ Closed gates spoke volumes.
‘I seek admittance,’ Ulfr shouted up at the wall.
‘For what purpose?’
That was new. Pirou had always been welcoming, even if that welcome had been strained of late. That was not the Northern way. Even enemies could be gracious hosts, as fabled Audun had found when he visited the King of Norway with his bear. It seemed that the rules of hospitality had been diluted with the generations these people had spent away from the North.
‘To speak to friends,’ he answered the guard. ‘To Sir Geoffroi and the lady Beatrix.’
‘Wait there.’ Short. Curt. Unfriendly.
There was a long pause as discussions took place inside the castle, and finally the man returned to his place above the gate. ‘Permission is granted to speak to Sir Geoffroi.’
Not Beatrix.
Ulfr’s eyes narrowed as the gate opened. He rode forth to the castle, with a Wolf at each shoulder, across the bridge and into the great wide oval bailey of the fortress. Something cold touched his nose and he looked up, expecting rain. He did not want rain. Rain was the bane of anyone working with wood and canvas. But autumn had begun the slide into winter, and it was becoming less clement all the time. They’d had two showers already that week, and the temperature was plummeting to the extent that they’d all bought extra blankets and burned fires late into the night.
This was not rain, though. As he looked up, another flake drifted down, lazily, to land on his arm.
Snow.
Damn it.
But at least it would be a light shower, and brief. A man brought up where Ulfr had been, in the icy North, knew snow well, like a childhood friend, and he could take one sniff, one look, and say with reasonable confidence that it would snow for perhaps an hour, and light enough not to lie. But it was a worrying warning sign that more was to come, and that the weather was truly on the turn. And if ever there was a bad time for even a veteran ship’s pilot to take a new and untested vessel out to sea in a hurry, it would be in winter storms. The time was coming for sacrifices and gifts to the gods.
He bit down on his worry. Such concerns were for when the ship was finished; there were other worries to concentrate on before then. He felt sharply the absence of the others. Halfdan would be able to make the critical decisions that would see them steer through all this with little trouble, especially with his Loki-born luck. Gunnhild would know what was happening, and would be able to see their course ahead and help guide the jarl. Leif would be full of useful knowledge and titbits, even here where he was a stranger, so clever was he. And Bjorn and Ketil were a great comfort to have around when there was the ongoing threat of violence, which it very much felt there was.
As they came to a halt, he turned to the men with him: Erik, a Varangian who’d been with them since the sands on the south coast of Italy, and Richold, one of Thurstan’s Normans from Apulia.
‘Erik, stay with the horses. Don’t let the guards take them away and stable them. Stay out in the open, and keep your eyes wide for any trouble. If anything happens I want to be able to get on this horse and be gone in heartbeats, all right?’
Erik nodded, and as the other two dismounted he took the reins and kept their horses together without ever himself leaving the saddle. All around, Pirou’s guards were watching them with barely disguised malice.
On foot, with Richold – a man who had once served another Hauteville a world away – at his side, he reached toward a passing servant.
‘You. Thrall. Where is the knight Geoffroi to be found?’
The bow-backed man pointed to one of the low wooden buildings at the far side of the compound, and again Ulfr’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as he nodded his thanks and turned, making for that place. Geoffroi was a nobleman himself, a jarl of his own land, albeit a small one compared with Serlo de Hauteville. When Halfdan, and then William, had come to Pirou, space for them had been made in the keep. It had to mean something that Geoffroi was being kept in a separate building far away. Was it a lack of trust? Was it more a form of imprisonment than hospitality? The rules of the host were truly lost in this place.
Approaching the building, Ulfr noted no guards on the door, so they were not prisoners per se. He rapped on the timbers, and someone bade him enter. He did so to find that the place was little more than a cottage, too homely to be intentional guest quarters. To Ulfr’s eye, it looked to be the residence of one of the free karls who worked in the castle, a man of position, but not a noble – perhaps a craftsman, or even a priest. Whoever it was had been turfed out to make room for Geoffroi and his companion.
Geoffroi sat by a fireplace that roared with golden life, painstakingly painting a design on one of those Norman teardrop shields. His brush made neat lines down the edge; he did not look up from his work. The other man who’d arrived with him lay in a cot to one side. He was awake, but sallow and unwell-looking, as though the weapon that had wounded him had borne elf poison.
‘Master Ulfr of the Wolves,’ Geoffroi said, still concentrating on his work.
‘You are doing an excellent job,’ Ulfr said, noting the neatness of the work.
‘Thank you. At home, someone would have done this for me. But while I languish here, I have made use of my time repairing our armour and building and painting replacement shields. I have the feeling I will need them soon enough.’
Clearly the unease was getting to Geoffroi, too, then. Ulfr wondered for a moment what to say. This was when Gunnhild, or Halfdan, or even Leif would be in their element. Ulfr had sensed that he needed to visit the man, but now that he was there, he couldn’t quite say why. Except that the man was a good, honourable one, and that he was clearly as uncomfortable in the current circumstances as the Wolves, and that made them kin of a sort. He chewed his lip for a moment, wondering how best to start.
‘There is trouble brewing in Pirou,’ Ulfr said.
Geoffroi stopped his painting and looked up, finally. ‘Oh?’
Ulfr frowned. There was no surprise in the man’s tone. More of a question, perhaps, as to how Ulfr knew of such things, away on his secluded beach.
‘The lord Serlo tolerates our presence at best,’ the shipwright explained. ‘He wants us gone. I wonder how long we have before his tolerance drains away and he decides to make us gone.’ They were not the honeyed words of a jarl or a skald – but then, he was a plain man.
Geoffroi nodded. ‘Despite our differences, Ulfr of the Wolves, I suspect we sail in the same boat, there. But we are both stuck. You have an unfinished ship, and cannot leave until you complete it. I have a wounded friend here, who deserves all my care, and I cannot leave until he is well enough to travel.’ The man sagged a little. ‘Then there is the question of to where I would travel. My home is within the domain of the rebel Cotentin, and I cannot say for certain whether they remain loyal to me or whether it now hosts a rebel garrison. Perhaps the only place I will find aid is in Falaise with the duke.’
Ulfr nodded, thinking far ahead. ‘Is Falaise on a river?’
Geoffroi gave him a knowing smile. ‘Not one large enough for a ship to navigate. The nearest navigable river would be the Orne, through somewhere like Clécy, if your ship had a shallow enough beam.’
‘How far is that from Falaise?’
‘Ten miles or so, I reckon.’
Ulfr nodded. That would do.
‘But the journey there along the coast would take you past many ports held by rebel lords. It will not be an easy journey.’
Ulfr shrugged. ‘My jarl is in Falaise, your duke is in Falaise. Your friend cannot ride, but I’d wager he could lie in a ship.’
‘You offer me a way out?’ Geoffroi said, brows raised.
‘I do. And you will be valuable, for you know the coast where I do not.’
‘I’m not sure Serlo will be so happy to let me go. We have been moved here to keep us out of the way, I think, but also safe and contained. I have seen new men arriving in Pirou for days now. The garrison here has almost doubled, and some of the new men are not wearing Hauteville colours – are not wearing any colours, in fact.’
‘Mercenaries?’ Ulfr asked.
‘Or men of another faction who wish to keep their identity hidden. I fear Serlo de Hauteville is playing a dangerous game. He may not be a rebel lord himself, but I wonder whether he teeters. Allegiance to William is not looking very favourable at the moment, with the duke trapped in Falaise. Unless he can gather a huge amount of support, the rebellion looks too strong to oppose.’
Ulfr thought about this. Was that why Beatrix remained at Pirou? She was betrothed to the lord of Eu, who was, from what Ulfr remembered, a staunch supporter of the duke. If Serlo was having second thoughts about his alliances, it would make sense not to send his sister to her betrothed, but to keep her as a valuable piece in the game of politics.
‘We need to leave Pirou before Serlo turns on the duke,’ he said, flatly. ‘The moment he joins the rebels openly, we become the enemy, rather than merely an inconvenience. You should join us at the beach.’
Geoffroi shook his head. ‘Not yet. Thank you for the offer, but for now we are better here. Joining you at the beach would put Hauteville on the alert, I think. And every day we wait, Brenier here gets a little stronger, and your ship is a little closer to ready.’
Ulfr nodded. ‘I have to see Beatrix.’
‘You will not be permitted.’
‘I’m going to do it anyway. Get well. Get prepared. Watch Hauteville and his men, and be ready.’
As Geoffroi nodded his agreement and returned to his painting, Ulfr left the building. Richold, at his shoulder, coughed lightly. ‘Can we trust him?’
‘Insofar as I trust anyone in the land, I trust him. Out in the land of the Georgians they have a saying that “my enemy’s enemy must be my friend”.’
Now that Geoffroi had mentioned it, as Ulfr looked about Pirou castle the increased number of men was indeed apparent, and many were in plain hauberks with unpainted shields. It seemed likely Serlo de Hauteville was preparing to make his move, for he was building his strength ready. If, as seemed inevitable, he declared his support for the rebellion, he would have sufficient power to claim a leading role in it, alongside men like Cotentin and Bessin. Time was running out. Ulfr could almost see the sand draining through the hourglass, counting down to the time when anyone who had a connection to the duke became the enemy.
‘Stay in the open,’ he said to his companion as they crossed the short stretch of open ground between the buildings where Geoffroi and Beatrix were being housed. ‘If anyone comes, delay as best you can.’
‘You’re pushing this, Ulfr,’ the man warned.
He knew he was. He’d been given permission to visit Geoffroi, but not Beatrix. He had to hope she was in the same room in which he’d found her last time. There was no guard, of course, for the house was locked from the outside, and so Ulfr could not enter. Instead, he walked around the far side and approached the shuttered window to her solar, the room in which he’d spoken to her a couple of weeks earlier.
‘Lady Beatrix?’ he hissed through the closed shutters.
There was no reply, and so he rapped lightly on the timbers and repeated his call, slightly louder, lips pressed to the gap between timbers. He stood there for a moment, the light snow continuing to settle in his hair, gradually soaking him, and finally a voice called in reply.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me, Ulfr. How are you faring?’
‘I’m a comfortable prisoner,’ came the reply.
‘Your brother wavers in his allegiance to the duke.’
‘I’m sure. He will always do what looks best for him and the family at any time. The duke is young, unstable, and not popular.’
‘My people are with the duke, and the time is coming when we will have to leave in a hurry. Our ship will be ready in a little over a week, I think, unless disaster strikes.’
‘Good luck to you, then, Ulfr the Swede.’
‘Come with us.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve run away from your family more than once. Why not again?’
‘Ulfr, I am a prisoner.’
‘We will come for you. When the time is right. When we can.’
He could almost feel the resigned sag through the shutters. ‘I will not escape again, Ulfr. And if you attempt to take me, you will then fail in your own escape. I am done now. I am but Serlo’s token to use in his game.’
‘You could—’
‘Go,’ she interrupted.
‘We cannot leave you here,’ Ulfr said to the shutters, but as he listened for a reply that did not come, he was somehow sure she had gone, leaving the room. He sighed. She did not deserve this. As he rounded the corner, back to where Richold waited, he clenched his teeth. He was determined. He felt sure that if Gunnhild were here, she would see their threads woven together – Ulfr and the Wolves, Beatrix and Geoffroi. That they would leave Pirou and the increasingly untrustworthy Serlo de Hauteville behind.
Four men in chain hauberks with the colours of Hauteville were approaching across the grass. As they reached the two visitors, one of them threw out an accusatory finger.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Going for a piss,’ Ulfr replied, lip wrinkling. He was angry, and when he got angry, which was not often, he tended toward the confrontational.
The man glared at him, but apparently had no argument against this. After an irritated pause, the guard grunted. ‘There are latrines for that, Northerner.’
‘I was desperate,’ Ulfr replied, and then turned and walked past them, being sure to bump into the man’s shoulder insolently on the way.
As Richold fell in beside Ulfr, he hissed, ‘You’re spoiling for a fight.’
‘The man pissed me off.’
‘Spoiling for a fight when you’re surrounded in an enemy castle with odds of a hundred to one is stupid.’
Ulfr knew that. He was irritated, but he also knew that. The pair hurried across the open grass and to where Erik waited with their horses. The four guards were following them across the open bailey, keeping their distance, but the air of menace was palpable. Reaching Erik, they grasped their reins and pulled themselves up into the saddle.
‘Let’s go,’ Ulfr said to the others, and led them through the gatehouse, fearing that at any moment those timber gates might shut, closing them in. They did not, and it was with a great sense of relief that Ulfr crossed the moat and returned to the open countryside.
‘This way,’ he said, turning left toward the north.
The others frowned, but followed, this being a longer route back to the beach. A short ride brought them to the village of Pirou, where there was ancillary work being done for the ship. Like all good longships, this new vessel had no need of iron, for the whole ship was formed from split timbers, pegged with treenails and sealed with caulk, but he’d retained the village blacksmith anyway, for other reasons. As they approached, to the echo of hammer on anvil and the column of black smoke belching from the forge roof, Ulfr smiled. Three axes hung on timber pegs outside, freshly made though yet to be sharpened, and a number of iron plates the size of a man’s palm were stacked on a table. He’d thought to check with the smith on his progress, but progress was clear from just a glance outside.
He’d needed nothing metal for the ship. The crew, on the other hand, was a different matter. He had plenty of men, and each of them would need equipping. At first he’d thought to source chain shirts and good swords, but it seemed, with a little prying, that in this time of unrest, with all the lords of this land busy consolidating their forces, arms and armour were as hard to acquire as warships.
He’d then spoken to the smith. The man was no sword worker or armourer, of course – those were different, specialised skills – and the man simply did not have the time to manufacture steel rings to work into shirts anyway. But his skills were sufficient for certain things. He had built a career out of making tools and utensils for the locals and patching old metalwork. As such, his ability to make an axe was unquestioned, and so Ulfr had set the man to making axes – good, large, solid axes such as a man could wield in war. In addition, the man had admitted that armour was beyond his skill, but many a poor man gone to war had found good protection by simply sewing metal plates to a leather tunic, enough to turn a sword. So, Ulfr had also set him to work making such plates. Additionally, the man had told Ulfr that though he had no experience with constructing shields, a shield boss should be easy enough, and so he would work on a number of them, to which Ulfr could add the timbers in time. Clearly, the smith was progressing well, just from what was on display at the front, and so Ulfr decided not to disturb him, and instead rode on to find the carpenter at his shop on the edge of the village. There, he dismounted with his companions, tying their horses to a rail and entering the workshop.
The carpenter had been put to work making certain things that needed the skill of a craftsman. The steering oar was one such item, and the man had been given that task at the very beginning, as well as the curved and reinforced block for the strake, where the steering oar would be attached. The mast-step, too, and the rakke, and other parts that took a carpenter’s skill to get right.
Ulfr was pleased, as he stepped inside, to see the progress on display. The steering oar was complete, standing against a side wall, perfectly formed. The mast-step, too, was ready, sitting on a bench. Other parts he could see around the place in various stages of completion. All was going well.
The carpenter was at work in a back room, but as he paused in some noisy task he clearly heard the three men in the outer room and emerged through the door, blinking away sawdust and wiping his hands on his smock, dust settling all around him. The man smiled with recognition, and nodded a greeting.
‘Come to check on progress?’
Ulfr nodded. ‘That, and another question. A thought occurs to me.’
‘Oh?’
‘In a good old longship, the rowers sit on their sea chests. It has always been this way. In the Sea Wolf we did precisely that, but since we lost the ship in Miklagarðr we have been sailing in Byzantine ships. Their galleys do not leave room for sea chests. They have oar benches. It only occurred to me last night that few among our new crew will have their own sea chest, and so it might be advantageous for us to adopt the Byzantine idea and fit out the new ship with oar benches. They would only have to be simple plank benches, but the idea is new to me, and so I’m not sure how they would be fitted to the hull. We have plenty of suitable timbers at the beach, and I can set men to cutting them and constructing them, but it would be useful if you could have a look at the ship, tell us how to fit them, and then walk us through the first one. Do you think you could find time?’
The carpenter sucked air through his teeth and nodded, tucking his thumbs in his belt. ‘It’s an easy enough job. I think I can see how they would be fitted, but I’ll come and have a look. I’m just working on a project for someone else for the afternoon, but when I stop in an hour or so and get back to your steerboard fittings, I’ll come to the beach. I wanted to have a look at your sheer strake anyway, to see how my work will fit.’
Ulfr nodded, thanked the man, and they left the shop once more, noting that the light snow shower seemed to have ended, much to everyone’s relief. He was mostly satisfied; he was a little irked that the man was devoting time to other projects, considering how much Ulfr was paying him, but at least he was concentrating on their work and making good progress. As they mounted up, Richold frowned.
‘What’s a sea chest?’
‘Comes from the days of raiding and trading.’ Ulfr smiled as they turned their mounts and moved out into the countryside once more. ‘Each man has his own share of all booty, and each man keeps it in his own chest. That way there is never any argument about who owns what. But we lost our sea chests with the Sea Wolf. In fact, we lost most of the crew, too. I think that perhaps in these days of change, the time of the sea chest is past.’
That was a bleak thought. Another part of the old world slipping away…
The man nodded, and the trio began the three-quarter-mile ride to the beach. The conversation varied as they rode, until suddenly Erik hissed for them to hush, throwing out a finger.
‘Look.’
Ahead, five men sat on horses directly in their path. Even from this distance, Ulfr could see the glittering of chain shirts and steel helmets in the winter light. He had been in Pirou long enough to know that there was no garrison to be found in the area, the nearest places that normally sported warriors being the castle or the harbour at Fulquerville. For men to be here, on the road, boded ill.
They could only be here for Ulfr, and the chances of this being a friendly visit were very small. He looked first to Erik, and then to Richold. With tremendous lack of foresight, the three men had ridden for the castle and their meetings in just tunics and trousers, with cloaks thrown over the top for warmth. They had their weapons with them, but they were unarmoured, while the five men waiting for them on the road were clad from knee to crown in steel and wielding long swords. Trained warriors, well armoured, and outnumbering the Wolves five to three.
‘What now?’ Richold muttered, his right hand reaching to the sword at his side.
That was a good question. Again, had the others been here, they would probably have thought differently. Halfdan would have some wily plan that would see them either past without a fight, or victorious with one. Gunnhild would find a way. Bjorn and Ketil would probably laugh that five men, no matter how armoured, were hardly even worth the contest. Ulfr was less heroic, more pragmatic. They were three men, unarmoured. The enemy were five, prepared for war. The contest would be trouble. There was a chance they could manage a win, but it would be costly if they did. If they survived it, there would probably be only one or two left to ride back to the beach, and even that much was uncertain.
‘We need to avoid a fight.’
‘You’re sure?’ Erik asked, gripping his axe.
‘We need every man now at the ship. I don’t want to lose another body, and we’re outnumbered and out-armed. Be ready to ride hard when I say.’
The two men nodded. They didn’t like the idea of flight, but Ulfr was right. There was a good chance at least one of them would die if they fought. Instead, they continued along the road at their leisurely pace, with low, murmured conversation.
Ulfr could see the farm track leading off, perhaps twenty paces this side of the five men who blocked the road. He knew every farm in the area, from his negotiations with them over supplies, and he could picture in his mind every field and gate between here and the beach. The farmers might be irritated with him, but they’d get over it, knowing how much he was paying them for all their supplies.
‘Good morning,’ Ulfr called to the five men in his best Norman dialect.
There was no reply, which further signalled ill intent, yet Ulfr rode casually. He kept his voice low as he addressed the other two.
‘The farm road off to the left. Ready?’
As he neared the riders, who readied their swords with malice, Ulfr suddenly shouted ‘Now,’ and kicked his horse into speed, veering off the road and onto the farm track. Behind him, Erik and Richold reacted instantly, and in moments the three men were galloping as fast as they could away from the main road. Behind them there were shouts of anger and surprise as the five men fumbled to get their horses moving before turning onto the road in their wake.
The surprise had been enough to buy Ulfr and his friends plenty of time, and they were way ahead of the five Norman warriors, who were only just on the track as Ulfr led the others between two barns, jumping a low gate into a field of sheep, who scattered at the high-speed intrusion.
‘Who were they?’ Erik asked as they rode.
‘Mercenaries, I think, but in the pay of Hauteville. We are fast outstaying our welcome. Come on.’
And they rode across fields and between hedges, as though Hel herself was grasping at their horses’ tails. It was a massive relief to Ulfr when he saw the dunes hove into view, and beyond them the palisade around the beach site.
‘To arms,’ he bellowed as they crested the dunes and raced toward the gate, which stood open when ordinary work was going on. At his call, men all across the camp stopped whatever they were working on and ran to the encircling palisade, lifting either swords or axes or makeshift weapons or tools. In heartbeats, Ulfr and the others were racing through the gate, and heavy, stocky workers were pushing them closed and dropping the bar.
Shaking with the effort, Ulfr dropped from his horse and ran, clambering up the slope, to the walkway at the gate. The armoured riders had stopped at the dunes and were looking down at the beach. They stayed there for a short time, and then turned and disappeared.
‘Our time is almost up,’ Ulfr gasped. ‘No one leaves the compound unarmoured now, and never less than half a dozen men at a time. Got that?’
There was a chorus of affirmative murmurs, and the men began to drift back to work.
Ulfr watched the empty crest of the dunes for some time. Pirou was becoming more perilous by the day.