“Enough.” Howel’s voice was grim. “And only fifty of us. Well, at least we’ll have the advantage of them as they try to beach and get ashore. What can they be planning to do, so far from their own borders? A quick raid, and then away? That wouldn’t avail them much here. There’s only that village half a league up the coomb, poor fisherfolk hardly worth their spears, one would think.”

“True enough,” said Baudouin, “but armed as they are, I doubt if they mean us well. I don’t think they’ll have come so far from their own Shore territories just for what pickings they can find in the villages along this coast. And I doubt if these are outlaws from the Shore. There are other possibilities. You must have heard the rumours?”

“Aye. Stories of landless men putting across from Germany and the far north, and perhaps not finding enough of a welcome on the Shore, and being driven to look for a footing elsewhere? You think that could be true, then?”

“God knows, but it looks as if we’re going to find out.”

“Well, but how to stop them?”

“We can try, with God’s help. And His help on these coasts tends to be very practical.” Baudouin laughed shortly. “They may have been hoping to come in with the tide, but by my reckoning it’s just about on the turn, and you know what that means in Dead Men’s Bay.”

“Yes, by God!” Howel, who had lived all his life on that coast, spoke with fierce satisfaction. “They won’t know those currents. Even our own fishermen won’t try the bay when the tide’s this way.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Baudouin, cheerfully, but before Howel could ask what he meant, they had reached the edge of the coomb, and pulled up their horses.

The bay was small, where a narrow river, little more than a stream, ran steeply down to meet the sea. As it widened out at the mouth it ran shallowly through pebbled sand, but with the tide high, as it was now, the sand was covered, waves washing right up to the turf. Out in the bay fangs of rock jutted up, each in its swirl of white water.

“Ah.” It was a note of satisfaction from Baudouin. He was leaning forward in the saddle, peering down at the rough jetty of piled stones which served the fisherfolk for a landing-stage. Beached high and dry in its shelter lay four small boats. “As you say, all safe at home.”

He turned to give swift orders. Three of the troopers wheeled their horses, and galloped off inland towards the village that lay higher up the coomb. The rest sent their horses slipping and scrambling down the steep bank to gain the narrow strip of turf above the tide.

The tide being just on the turn, and the breeze light and fitful, the Cornishmen knew that no sails would suffice to bring the longships in. But their oars could; they were powerful ships, and powerfully manned.