Wulfhere’s heavy sarcasm had the desired effect. Men glanced sheepishly at each other. Some looked to the now empty sky. None spoke further of turning back.
When Wulfhere turned around, he saw the Armorican seamen back at work. He didn’t ask how Cormac and Odathi had managed it. Mayhap they had simply convinced the crew that the Danes would slaughter them all, did they falter.
What they had seen, they did not dwell on. The vengeful hunger was in them to rend the guts of Sigebert One-ear, and each sea-mile brought them nearer to Nantes. The wind held. By nightfall they had reached the mouth of the Loire. Another day’s sailing up the wide estuary would bring them to the port.
“We’ll go on by night an ye wish,” Odathi said. “Will be slower, more careful going, but what of it? Thirty-odd Danish seamen there be, to work the ship while mine sleep, and none will spy them from the river-bank in the dark.”
“It’s well!” Wulfhere said eagerly. “That will see us at the city’s docks i’ the forenoon.”
“Let’s be having the smallest noise we may, then,” Cormac advised. “It’s far voices carry across water at night and there just may be someone listening somewhere who knows Danish when he hears it.”
Thus Norn moved up-river through the short summer night, a shadow of vengeance ghosting over the waters.
At last, false dawn lightened the sky.
“Time ye were all getting below,” Odathi said. “I’ll awaken the lads, and we will bring the ship to the docks.”
“Aye,” Cormac said curtly. He disliked this part of the scheme. It had on it too much the smell of placing his fate in another’s hands. “Leave yon hatch open, Odathi. We’d suffocate were it closed and battened.”
Wulfhere descended into Norn’s capacious hold, grumbling. “It likes me not, to skulk down here!”
“Nor I,” Cormac said. “Knud, and yourself, Half-a-man-do off your armour and look as much like common seamen as ye can.”
“What?” Halfdan Half-a-man, so-called by reason of his shortness, did not see the necessity. “To what purpose?”
“So that ye both may keep watch above decks when Odathi goes ashore. Odathi I’m inclined to trust, but he has eight seamen by my count, and… it requires only one traitor savouring reward for our heads to ruin all. Ye’re to take a fighting knife each, and if any Briton save the sailing master and whoe’er chooses to go with him should try to leave the ship-prevent it! No wish is on me to be trapped in this hold by Sigebert’s soldiers.”
“Sound sense,” Wulfhere nodded. “How certain be ye that ye may trust Odathi?”
“I’m not. Naught in this world is certain, but that we must chance. Someone has to go ashore, and it’s too conspicuous we both be. And the rest of us here be too clearly warrior Danes.”
Tensely they waited, in the creaking gloom of the hold.
Not long after dawn, someone called that Norn was approaching the docks of Nantes. Wulfhere sent Halfdan and Knud on deck, and sweated. The business of mooring followed, and after that, more of waiting. And sweating.
At last, Odathi came down the ladder.
“Chieftain,” he said, as one who knows what the answer will be but asks for form’s sake, “this enemy of yours; be he brown of hair, with Romish dress and manners? One who erst was handsome but is no longer?”
“Ye have seen him?” Wulfhere demanded, thrusting his face forward.
“He’s in the custom-house yonder. He is there, now. I spoke to him and answered his questions. There be sword-scars upon his face that he hasn’t had for long; not so long as a year, surely.”
“Sigebert!” Cormac breathed. “Why should it astonish us, after all? Chief customs assessor is the office he holds. Why should he not be there?”
“Within our reach!” Wulfhere shouted joyously. The hold reverberated to his voice. “Here on the waterfront! Cormac, we can slay him now! ’Tis needless to wait for night and attack his manse!”
“The place is aswarm with Frankish soldiers,” Odathi warned.
“The worse for them. It needn’t deter us. So would his mansion be!”
Cormac was thinking quickly. Wulfhere’s impetuosity, oft had much to commend it. Their original plan had been to wait, and seek the Frank’s house after dark, although that left the entire day for some unforeseen little thing to betray them. Now they could strike quickly from Norn, retreat to her as quickly after slaying Sigebert, and make escape.
Against that was to be weighed the seeming madness of an attack in full daylight. Cormac considered it, briefly. He decided it was no real objection. The very audacity of the notion gave it promise. Besides-holding back Wulfhere now were bull-wrestling.
“True for you, Bush-face,” he said with a savage grin. “It’s better Black Thorfinn’s ghost will rest this night. Let’s be at them!”
That morning was spoken of on the Nantes waterfront for years thereafter. Nigh three dozen fighting men appeared as from nowhere, to spill over the decks of an ordinary trader and charge down the gangplank, yelling. Many did not wait, but sprang to the rail off the ship and thence to the dockside, drawing swords as they landed. Steel blades and helms flashed in the sunlight like silver and flame. Their beards and bright helms announced them. Folk scattered before them on the crowded waterfront.
“Saxons! The Saxons are here!”
“Follow me to Sigebert’s heart! Wulfhere roared, striding through the panicked rout. He did not trouble to smite such unarmed folk as inadvertently got in his way. He simply shoved or shouldered them aside or dealt the merest love-taps with the flat of his ax. Cormac, beside him, acted similarly. Behind and about them their men widened the path their leaders had opened, with battering shields and jabbing spears.
“There’s the custom-house!” Cormac snarled, pointing with his sword to a powerful stone building. “Behl and Crom! It might be a little fortress!”
“We will take it!” Wulfhere said.
Even as he spoke, Sigebert’s bodyguard of Franks came arunning from an alley beside the custom-house. Their long oval shields rattled together and they howled like demons. Cormac had time to judge their numbers at thirty, before the two parties met.
They clashed like colliding waves of bone and metal. No civilized fighters these! The Franks in their leather vests, with their deadly long swords and hand-axes, were as ruthlessly fierce as the Danes. If the tough oxhide protecting their torsos was somewhat less strong than the Danish scale-mail shirt, it was also less weighty and allowed greater freedom of movement.
Blood spurted; deep fierce war-shouts drowned the first death-yells.
Cormac glared into a snarling face under a fringe of mouse-coloured hair. The Frank warded a cut with his long shield, then chopped at Cormac’s shoulder. The Gael’s point flickered like lightning to drive into the fellow’s mouth and through the back of his neck. His spine severed, the Frank toppled, emitting a death-gurgle. Cormac trod ruthlessly over the corpse, his blade taking further toll as he went.
Wulfhere was howling like a berserker. His terrible ax made nothing of the Franks’ oxhide vests, splitting leather and ribs alike, while the iron boss and rim of his skillfully handled shield broke limbs as they had been twigs. Aye, for this day he wielded his ax one-handed.
“Sigebert One-ear!” he thundered. “Dog! Cur and torturer of wounded men! Where be ye?”
“Here, you blundering oaf!” Sigebert’s voice answered, mocking and amused. He leaned in the custom-house doorway, sword in hand but as yet unblooded. “Come if you can reach me. You shall be welcome.”
Wulfhere snarled his frustration and his blue eyes blazed. A knot of Frankish soldiery stood betwixt him and Sigebert; he could only fight his way past them. His ax thundered, rose and fell with a racket of breaking shields. Three Danes broke from the melee to aid him. The Franks went down in their welling blood.