The dragon-boats cruised down the shallow, muddy stream of the Great Ouse river, the western frontier of the Wayland jarldom they had come to destroy, forty in line ahead. Some of the crews were keeping up a song as they wound through the green, summer countryside, the masts and furled sails marking their passage over the flat levels. Ivar’s men did not bother. They knew the time without a song or a shanty-man to mark it. Besides, wherever Ivar Ragnarsson stood there was now a cloud of strain and tension, even for veteran pirates who would boast and believe that they feared no man.

Not far ahead the helmsmen—the rower-reliefs and the cowed slaves who manned Ivar’s machines, one to each of the front six vessels—could see a wooden bridge across the river: not much of a bridge, not part of a town, just the place where the road happened to cross the stream. Chance of ambush from it, none. Just the same, veteran pirates grew to be veterans by taking no unnecessary risks at all. Even Ivar, totally careless of his own safety as he was, did things the way his men expected. A furlong short of the bridge, the figure in the prow, resplendent in scarlet cloak and grass-green trousers, turned and gave one harsh call.

The rowers finished their stroke, recovered oars, and then dropped them in the water, blades reversed. Slowly the ship drifted to a stop, the rest of the fleet easing into close line behind. Ivar waved to the two clumps of riders on both banks, here easily visible in the flat meadowland round the city. They moved forward at a trot, to check the bridge. Behind them the crews began with the ease of long practice to unstep their masts.

No resistance. Not a man in view. Yet as the horsemen slid from their ponies and moved to meet each other on the wooden cart-bridge, they saw that men had been there. A box. Left clear in the middle of the track, where no one could fail to spot it.