Our rowers were weakening, our pursuers were nearer, and once we turned into the Ligan we would be rowing against the current. ‘Pull!’ I shouted. ‘Pull! Your lives depend on it! You can rest soon, but pull now!’ I could see that the freed slave girls, crouched in the bows with the children, were crying. They knew just what they could expect if the bigger ship caught us.

We were close to the end of the northern reach, but Waormund’s ship was now only a hundred paces behind. I prayed he had no bowmen on board. I watched the river’s northern bank appear as we began the eastwards turn. Trees grew in the marshes and the Ligan’s channels threaded those trees. ‘Poplars,’ I said.

‘Poplars?’

‘Just hope the mast doesn’t catch on a branch.’

‘Mary, mother of God,’ Finan said, and touched his cross.

‘Pull! Pull! Pull!’ I shouted and heaved the steering-oar over, and the Brimwisa turned across the river’s current and headed for the Ligan. She slowed immediately, no longer helped by tide or river, and I bellowed at the oarsmen again. The big ship was following us, close enough now for a man to try throwing a spear that fell into our feeble wake just a few paces short. ‘Pull!’ I bellowed. ‘Pull!’

And we slid out of the Temes into the clearer water of the Ligan and the oarsmen were grimacing, hauling on the looms, and still I bellowed at them as we turned into the widest of the Ligan’s channels. To the left, driven deep into the river’s margin, were four giant stakes. I wondered if they were markers, or perhaps the remnants of a wharf, then forgot them as the steerboard side oars touched bottom and I hauled the steering-oar towards me and shouted at the oarsmen to keep rowing. There was a small island of reeds ahead. Did I go to the left of it or to the right? I felt panic. It would be so easy to go aground, but just then a small ship nosed into view behind a screen of poplars. The ship was little more than a barge, loaded with hay, and she was aiming towards the easternmost channel. I touched my hammer again and thanked the gods for sending a sign. ‘Row!’ I shouted. ‘Row!’

The helmsman of the barge would know the river, and know just which channels had enough depth to float his heavily laden barge. He was using the ebbing tide to carry his cargo down the Ligan and, once at the river’s mouth he would wait for the flood tide to float him and carry him up the Temes to Lundene. He had four oars, scarce enough to move the vast load, but the tides would do most of his work.

Our rowers could clearly see Waormund’s ship, and see the mailed and helmeted men crowded into her prow. The oarsmen were bone-weary, but they pulled hard and we slid up the easternmost channel, passing the hay barge, and again our steerboard oars struck the river bed and I screamed at those rowers to keep pulling. Another spear was thrown and hammered into our stern post. Finan plucked it loose. The men on the hay barge watched us open mouthed. The barge’s four oarsmen were so astonished at our sudden appearance that they had stopped rowing to stare at us, while the steersman just gaped and his ship slewed across the river. There was a bellow of anger from behind as Waormund’s ship slammed into the barge and veered into the eastern bank. Men lurched forward as the big hull grounded.