The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell Page A

bread, cheeses, kegs of smoked mackerel and flitches of bacon.

I told Mildrith the same story, that we would be sailing back and forth along the shores of

Defnascir and Thomsaeta.
    'Which is what we should be doing anyway,' Leofric said, 'just in case a Dane

arrives.'
    'The Danes are lying low,' I said.
    Leofric nodded. 'And when a Dane lies low you know there's trouble coming.'
    I believed he was right. Guthrum was not far from Wessex, and Svein, if he existed, was

just a day's voyage from her north coast. Alfred might believe his truce would hold and that

the hostages would secure it, but I knew from my childhood how land-hungry the Danes were,

and how they lusted after the lush fields and rich pastures of Wessex. They would come, and

if Guthrum did not lead them then another Danish chieftain would gather ships and men and

bring his swords and axes to Alfred's kingdom. The Danes, after all, ruled the other three

English kingdoms. They held my own Northumbria, they were bringing settlers to East Anglia

and their language was spreading southwards through Mercia, and they would not want the last

English kingdom flourishing to their south. They were like wolves, shadow-skulking for the

moment, but watching a flock of sheep fatten.
    I recruited eleven young men from my land and took them on board Eftwyrd, and brought

Haesten too, and he was useful for he had spent much of his young life at the oars. Then, one

misty morning, as the strong tide ebbed westwards, we slid Eftwyrd away from the river's bank,

rowed her past the low sandspit that guards the Use and so out to the long swells of the sea.

The oars creaked in their leatherlined holes, the bow's breast split the waves to shatter

water white along the hull, and the steering oar fought against my touch and I felt my spirits

rise to the small wind and I looked up into the pearly sky and said a prayer of thanks to Thor,

Odin, Njord and Hoder.
    A few small fishing boats dotted the inshore waters, but as we went south and west, away

from the land, the sea emptied. I looked back at the low dun hills. slashed brighter green where

rivers pierced the coast, and then the green faded to grey, the land became a shadow and we

were alone with the white birds crying and it was then we heaved the serpent's head and the

fyrdraca from the bilge and slotted them over the posts at stem and stern, pegged them into

place and turned our bows westwards.
    The Eftwyrd was no more. Now the Fyrdraca sailed, and she was hunting trouble.

Chapter Three
    The crew of the Eftwyrd turned Fyrdraca had been at Cynuit with me. They were fighting

men and they were offended that Odda the Younger had taken credit for a battle they had

won. They had also been bored since the battle. Once in a while, Leofric told me, Burgweard

exercised his fleet by taking it to sea, but most of the time they waited in Hamtun.
    'We did go fishing once, though,' Leofric admitted.
    'Fishing?'
    'Father Willibald preached a sermon about feeding five thousand folk with two scraps of

bread and a basket of herring,' he said, 'so Burgweard said we should take nets out and fish.

He wanted to feed the town, see? Lots of hungry folk.'
    'Did you catch anything?'
    'Mackerel. Lots of mackerel.’
    'But no Danes?'
    'No Danes,' Leofric said, 'and no herring, only mackerel. The bastard Danes have

vanished.'
    We learned later that Guthrum had given orders that no Danish ships were to raid the

Wessex coast and so break the truce. Alfred was to be lulled into a conviction that peace

had come, and that meant there were no pirates roaming the seas between Kent and Cornwalum

and their absence encouraged traders to come from the lands to the south to sell wine or to

buy fleeces. The Fyrdraca took two such ships in the first four days. They were both Frankish

ships, tubby in their hulls, and neither with more than six oars a side, and both believed the

Fyrdraca was a Viking ship for they