‘Prisoners,’ I said curtly.

‘Kill the Dane,’ she said.

‘He has to answer questions first,’ I told her, then reached down and took one of the babies from Benedetta’s grasp.

‘Bastards are coming!’ Finan warned me from Spearhafoc’s stern.

The two small fishing boats crammed with Æthelhelm’s men were rowing towards us, though they were still a long way off. They were rowing hard, but their boats were clumsy, heavy and sluggish. We pulled the last woman and child aboard, then poled Spearhafoc off the bank and out into deeper water. ‘Oarsmen! Pull!’ I shouted. ‘Finan! Put the bird on the prow!’

That made my men cheer. They liked it when our sleek sparrowhawk carving crested the prow, though in truth she looked more like an eagle than a sparrowhawk because her beak was far too long, but she had savage eyes and a menacing presence. Finan and two other men slotted her into place and hammered home the two pegs that held her firm. The crews of the two fishing boats, seeing us coming eastwards towards them, had stopped rowing and were now standing with spears in their hands. But either the sudden appearance of the sparrowhawk’s feral head or the sight of the small waves beginning to break white and quick at Spearhafoc’s cutwater persuaded them to sit and pull desperately for the southern shore. They feared a ramming. ‘Pull!’ I bellowed at the oarsmen.

The rowers dragged on the oars’ looms, thrusting Spearhafoc still faster. Gerbruht and two other men hauled on the main halliard to hoist the sail. The fishing boats were still trying to escape us and I heard a man scream at his oarsmen to pull harder. I was steering towards them, and, as the sail caught the wind, our ship seemed to leap ahead, but then, just before we reached spear-range, I hauled the steering-oar towards me, and Spearhafoc turned to slide past them on the creek’s further side. We could easily have sunk both fishing boats, but instead I would avoid them. Not because I feared them, but in the closing moments before we rammed the first boat we were likely to be assailed by spears, and I had no wish for a single man of Spearhafoc’s crew to be wounded or worse. We had escaped and that was victory enough.

A dozen spears were hurled as we passed, but all fell far short, and then we were coursing eastwards towards the open sea. We brought the oars inboard and lashed them down. Gerbruht had tied down the sail’s last sheet and so I gave him the steering-oar. ‘Just follow the creek,’ I told him, ‘then steer north. We’re going home.’

‘God be praised,’ he said.

I jumped down from the steering platform. Our two prisoners, the tall, well-dressed Dane and the smaller priest, were under guard by the mainmast. Awyrgan, his clothes soaked, had been joined by the two men who had escaped pursuit with him, and was standing over the prisoners with a drawn sword. He was taunting them. ‘Leave us,’ I told him.