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pick it up on the return and take it to Orm.’
    To Orm? Crowbone closed one thoughtful eye. ‘And you delivered it?’
    Hoskuld nodded.
    ‘You know what this message spoke?’ he asked and watched Hoskuld closely.
    The trader shook his head, more sullen than afraid now.
    ‘I was to tell you of it,’ he replied bitterly, ‘when you asked why we were headed for Mann at all.’
    Crowbone did not show his annoyance in his face. It was a hard truth he did not care to dwell on, that he had simply thought Mann was where Hoskuld wanted to go with his strange cargo. Either he was paid more after that, or Crowbone found a ship of his own was what the young Prince of Norway had assumed.
    Now he knew – a message had been left by this Drostan, in Latin which Hoskuld did not read – he knew runes and tallied on a notched stick well enough, so he could carry it to Orm and not know the content.
    And the thought slid into him like a grue of ice – there was a trap to lure him to Mann.
    He said so and saw Hoskuld’s scorn.
    ‘Why would Orm set you at a trap?’ he scathed. ‘He knows the way of monks. They would not have written this message to Orm only once.’
    That was a truth Crowbone had to admit – monks, he knew, would copy it into their own annals and if he went to Mann he would find it simply by saying Orm’s name and asking with a silver offering attached. For all that, he wanted to bury the blade in the gape-mouthed face of the trader, but the surge of it, which raised his arm, was damped by a thought of what Orm might have to say. He had fretted Orm enough this year, he decided – yet the effort not to strike burst sweat on him. In the end, the lowering of his arm came more from the nagging to know what this writing held than any desire to appease Orm.
    ‘Get me to Mann, trader,’ he managed to harsh out. ‘I may yet feed you to the fish if it takes too long a sailing – or if I find this message or you plays me false.’
    ‘We are sailing nowhere,’ Onund interrupted with an annoyed grunt, bent over the steering oar so that his hunched shoulder reared up like an island. ‘We are drifting until this is lashed. Fetch what line you have – I can get us to land safely and then we will need to find decent leather.’
    ‘I would hurry, hunchback,’ said Halk the Orkneyman, staring out towards the distant land. ‘It would seem the sharks have found their cod.’
    He pointed, leading everyone’s eyes to the faint line, marked with little white splashes where oars dug, which grew steadily larger.
    ‘It is all of us who are doomed,’ Gorm hissed, his eyes wide, then jumped as Kaetilmund clapped him on the back.
    ‘Ach, you fret too much,’ he said.
    Gorm saw the Oathsworn moving more swiftly than he had seen them shift since they had come aboard. Sea-chests were opened, ringmail unrolled from sheepskins, domed helmets brought out, oiled against the sea-rot and plumed with splendid horsehair.
    ‘Our turn to do the work,’ Murrough macMael grunted and hefted his long axe, grinning. ‘You can join in if you like, or just watch.’
    Gorm licked his lips and looked at the rest of the Swift-Gliding crew, who all had the same stare on them.
    Not fear. Relief, that they were not Frisians.
    Hrodfolc was smiling, though his teeth hurt. He did not have many left, yet the few he had hurt all the time these days – but even the nagging pain of them could not keep the smile from his face, laid there when the watchers brought word to the
terp
that a fat cargo ship was wallowing like a sick cow just off the coast.
    It had been a time since such a prize had come their way. Ships sped past this stretch of coast like arrows, Hrodfolc thought, half-muttering to himself, for they know the red-murder fame of the folk living along it.
    He turned to where his twenty men pulled and sweated, grunting with the effort, slicing the long snake-boat through the slow, rolling black swell. No mast and no sail on his boat, which is how