The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell [Cornwell, Bernard]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780060888749
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2010-01-18T13:00:00+00:00

FOUR

I had told Finan to play the madman, a thing he could do well. Not mad as in moon-touched, but dangerously mad as though one wrong word could send him into a welter of killing. Finan, if you did not know him well, was frightening. He was small and wiry, his strength tensed in a thin frame, while his face was all bone and scar. To look at Finan was to see a man who had endured battle and slavery and extreme hardship, a man who might have nothing to lose, and I counted on that to persuade Skirnir to treat Seolferwulf ’s crew with caution. There was very little to stop Skirnir simply taking Seolferwulf and slaughtering its men, except the possibility that he might lose his own men in the capture. True, he would not lose many, but even twenty or thirty casualties would hurt him. Besides, Osferth and Finan brought him a gift and, as far as Skirnir knew, they were ready to help deliver that gift. I did not doubt that Skirnir would want to take Seolferwulf for his own, but guessed he would wait until he had gained Skade and my death before he made that attempt. So I told Finan to frighten him.

Osferth and Finan, once they left the creek, took Seolferwulf up the coast and then, as if they did not know what to do, rowed to the center of the inner sea and there let the ship roll on the small waves. “We saw the fishing boats racing over the water,” Finan told me later, “and knew they were going to Zegge.”

Skirnir, of course, heard about the fight in the creek and how the Viking ship was now wallowing aimlessly, and curiosity made him send one of his two large ships to investigate, though he did not go himself. His youngest brother talked with Finan and Osferth, and heard how they had mutinied against Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and heard too that Uhtred had Skade, and that now Uhtred, Skade, and a small group of men were stranded among the tangle of islands and creeks. “I let the brother come aboard,” Finan told me later, “and I showed him the heap of mail and weapons. I said they were all yours.”

“So he thought we were weaponless?”

“I told him you had a wee sword,” Finan said, “but just a wee one.” Grageld, Skirnir’s brother, did not count the heaped coats, nor even the tangle of swords, spears, and axes. If he had, he might have suspected Finan’s lies, because there were only enough mail coats and weapons to equip Finan’s shrunken crew. Instead he simply believed what the Irishman told him. “So then,” Finan went on, “we spun him our tale.”

That tale began with truth. Finan told Grageld that we had sailed to the Frisian Islands in an attempt to rob Skirnir, but then he decorated the truth with fantasy. “I said we learned the gold was too well guarded, so we insisted you sold Skade back to her husband.

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