Brand shrugged massive shoulders. “We have comrades to avenge. None of us are Christians—your pardon, Father. But the rest of us are not Christians to forgive our enemies. I say march.”

“But I am the jarl. It is my decision.”

Slowly, heads nodded.

“What I think is this. When we sent the missionaries we stirred up the wasps’ nest. And now we are stung. We should have foreseen it.”

You did foresee it, thought Brand to himself.

“And I stirred up another when I took the Church’s land. I have not been stung for that yet, but I expect it. I foresee it. I say let us see where our enemies are before we strike. Let them come to us.”

“And let our comrades lie unavenged?” growled Brand.

“We will miss our chance of a kingdom, a kingdom for the Way,” cried Farman.

“What of your ally Alfred?” demanded Thorvin.

Slowly Shef wore them down. Repeated his conviction. Countered their arguments. Persuaded them, in the end, to wait a week, for further news.

“I only hope,” said Brand in the end, “that good living has not made you soft. Made us all soft. You should spend more time with the army, and less with the muttonheads in your doom-court.”

That at least is good advice, thought Shef. In order to cool feelings, he turned to Father Boniface, who had taken no part, waiting only to record decisions or write down orders.

“Father, send out for wine, will you? Our throats are dry. At least we can drink the memorial for our dead comrades in something better than ale.”

The priest, still stubbornly black-gowned, paused on his way to the door.

“There is no wine, lord jarl. The men said they were looking for a cargo from the Rhine, but it has not come. There have been no ships from the South for four weeks, not even into London. I will broach a barrel of the finest hydromel instead. Maybe the wind is wrong.”

Quietly Brand rose from the table, stalked to the open window, stared at the clouds and the horizon. Why, he thought, I could sail from Rhinemouth to the Yare in my mother’s old washtub in weather like this. And he says the wind is wrong! Something is wrong, but it is not the wind.

That dawn, the crews and captains of a hundred impounded trading vessels—naif-decked single-masters, round-bellied cogs, English, Frankish and Frisian longships—all rolled unhappily from their blankets to stare at the sky above the port of Dunkerque, as they had done every day for a month and more. To see if the conditions were right. To wonder whether their masters would deign to make a move.