‘Perhaps he got lost,’ said another with a snigger as they stood over me. Their faces were in shadow and through half-closed eyes I could not make out their features. ‘Should we do something?’
‘If we leave him, he’s only likely to wander into the river and end up drowned,’ the first one said. ‘Here, Wulf, help me lift him.’
I let my body go as limp as possible, so that it took two of them, one on each side of me, to raise me so that I sat upright.
‘Christ, but he’s heavy,’ said the one called Wulf, who was heavyset with powerful forearms. ‘How are we going to get him all the way back to the camp?’
While they pondered this, I decided the time was right for another swig from my ale-flask. Even as I made to upend it, though, Wulf tried to prise it from my fingers. Grunting a warning, I snatched it away so suddenly that his feet slipped on the mud and he lost his balance, tumbling down the bank into the same stream I had fallen in, to the jeers of his friends.
God was with us, for that distraction meant their backs were turned at the very moment when the burning timbers were being drawn from the fire and carried on to the five ships, whereupon Eudo and Wace and the others would take them below decks into the bilges where the oars and spare sailcloth were often stored. If they were lucky they might also find stores of oakum, the unravelled rope fibres that, mixed with pitch, were used to caulk the joints between a ship’s timbers, which would help the flames to take hold more quickly. Either way, it would not be long now.
Indeed it happened even more quickly than I expected. As Wulf, sodden and covered in bits of reed, was raising himself from the ditch, I spied the first tendrils of smoke begin to rise quietly into the night sky, so faint that they were probably invisible to anyone who did not know to watch for them, but with every heartbeat growing thicker and blacker, coiling around each other to form five distinct plumes.
It was then that one of the Englishmen, a stout fellow with eyes that seemed too close together, said: ‘Is that smoke?’
As his companions turned to look, I rose, in the same movement drawing both my sword and knife, slashing across the back of one man’s calves, cleaving through sinew and muscle, bringing him to the ground, then up into the groin of another. So surprised were the other three that they had hardly the chance to make a sound, let alone draw their seaxes, before I’d buried my shorter blade into one’s belly and beaten a second across the brow with the flat of the steel, sending him sprawling into the water. That just left Wulf, who lacked the courage to match his stature. A look of desperation upon his face, he tried to flee, but tripped over his own feet as he turned, and was unable to get up in time before I brought the full weight of my weapon crashing into the back of his head.
The first one I had brought down was clutching at his injured leg, shouting out in agony. Standing over him, I briefly met his eyes and saw the fear within them, before driving the point of my blade down upon his neck and through his throat, at once silencing his screams.
All was still again, save for the indignant calling of a pair of moorhens that had been disturbed from their sleep by the commotion. I waited, trying not to breathe too heavily as I listened for any sound from the men on watch upon the town walls, hoping that the shouts of the boat guards had gone unheard. Thankfully there was nothing. In any case they would shortly have more important things to worry about, for as the fires within the ships began to spread, I spied the first glimmers of light emanating from within their hulls.
This was the moment upon which everything depended. I rubbed a palm across my brow; it came away dry and free of sweat. Yet I knew this was only the start, and that much more blood would need to be shed before this night was through.
Twenty-eight
AS INTENDED, IT wasn’t long before the fruits of Eudo and Wace’s labours were spotted and the alarm was raised. Of course the five ships by themselves weren’t important, but the Danes were known to be as fond of their boats as we Normans were of our destriers, and for this plan to work I was counting on what they would do next.