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jugglers and entertainers, another as evangelizing Christians, which kept most people away, and had travelled different ways. One group with Grimr had bought horses and made their way to Forum Hadriani, where they had located Cenhud the shipmaster, others had scouted the Meuse and Scheldt to locate the warehouse facilities we needed.
    Cenhud was waiting and prepared. He sold the horses, closed his shipyard and brought two of his galleys upriver, transporting Grimr’s men. In short order, all the force had rejoined, and was waiting, unsuspected at the wharves and warehouses that they had rented.
    The journey for our two cargo galleys had been easier. They had slipped into Belgica at dawn, been generous with the two sleepy customs collectors they encountered and had sailed unnoticed to the warehouse rendezvous. There, the whole force was under orders to stay inside in daylight hours at least, and construction was almost finished on the ballistae and other catapults.
    I ordered the rest of the raiding party to be ready to sail in 36 hours’ time and prayed that Grimr had located a military galley he could steal. We left Chester and went into the Hibernian Sea and set off on our long journey to Gaul, timing our pass through the narrowest strait of the Narrow Sea after dark to avoid observation from either shore.
    At dawn, we hauled our solitary ship onto an isolated stretch of the great sweep of shingle around Britain’s forefoot, out of sight of the watch towers of the Saxon Shore, rested for the day, and sailed away from my kingdom for Gaul as dusk fell. I was taking no chances on being recognized, so could not boldly sail in as our ‘trading’ galleys had done. Instead, I used my local knowledge from years of patrolling these waters, and was able to bring us quietly ashore west of the mouth of the Meuse on a deserted beach among sand dunes.
    We unloaded, dismasted and sank the galley in a small creek, filling her hull with rocks before we marched inland in three separated groups. Four days later, after a cross-country trek made mostly in the dark, we arrived at our rendezvous with Grimr’s outlying sentries, who took us to his headquarters and his hungry, bored force. He gave me a swift tour of the two warehouses.
    Inside were our four ships, ready on rollers to be launched into the river. Carefully separated from them was an assortment of amphorae, ceramic pots, sacks and bundles. Three ballistae were concealed under straw bales and Grimr showed me the wooden pegs and mounting points at the galleys’ bows where the catapults would be fitted. The one galley which would not have a catapult in its teeth had a curious tilting ramp arrangement there instead, and sacks of pumice stone neatly arrayed and ready behind it.
    The Romans, Grimr told me, had a customs post about a mile and a half upriver of the shipyards, and kept a war galley there with the bow-mounted ram I hoped to hear about. About 15 personnel were stationed there, including a contubium – tent unit – of eight legionaries and some non-combatant customs inspectors and tax gatherers, a cook and a smith.
    With a lantern lighting the charts, he showed me details of the river, the shipyards, the locks, the barracks and the harbour fortifications. Here, he said, were the finished invasion barges; there, he pointed, were the timber stores, the ropewalks and the sailmakers’ lofts.
    He showed me a list of times and tides, detailed the speeds of the inflow and of the outgoing tide when it was pushed by the backed-up river and provided answers to questions I posed to him that were crucial to my plans. There were gaps in the information, as he had not wanted to jeopardise the secrecy of the mission by having a spy caught. It might, just might, work, I concluded. Either way, I was going to try.

 
    Chapter X - Firestorm
     
    We rolled our loaded galleys into the smooth, dark flow of the river long before wolf light. We had to catch the outgoing tide 11 miles