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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Rather I have heard that he is not," I said. "Moreover, if Emma of Normandy suffers aught at his hands he will have the duke to deal with very shortly." "Now are we in the Lord's hands," said Elfric, for a hoarse hail came from the leading ship, which was to windward of us. She was a splendid dragonship, bright with gold and colour. "What will you have me do, master?" Bertric cried to me.
The dragonship which Rand had commanded now became King Olaf's property, for it was the most beautiful vessel in all Norway, and very much larger than the Crane, which Olaf had had built for himself. Forward at the prow there was a very tall dragon's head, overlaid with thick gold, and at the stern was a long dragon's tail, also of gold.
"Not exactly, but I have seen a beast rather like one," laughed the knight, and he drew a very fair picture of a crocodile, adding wings and a fiery breath and fearsome talons by way of establishing its dragonship. "I have seen the place where they say the monster was killed.
Olaf steered her out into the blue waters of Thrandheim Fiord, and then as the wind caught her sails the oars were shipped and she sped onward with such even speed that all were astonished. Not far had she gone when she came in sight of Olaf's other dragonship the Short Serpent, as she was now called which had been sent out an hour in advance.
As his men were, so were his ships they were chosen with the main view to their fitness for encountering the battle and the breeze. His own dragonship, which had stood the brunt of many a fierce fight, was named the Iron Ram. It was very large, and the hull timbers at both bow and stern were plated with thick staves of iron from the gunwales down to the waterline.
As Thorkel had fought, so fought his men desperately, furiously, but yet weakly, and at last both the Crane and the Short Serpent were cleared; their lashings were unfastened, they were withdrawn to the rear, and King Olaf's great dragonship stood alone among her foes. The sun was sinking lower and lower to the sea; light clouds were gathering in the western sky.
And to hasten Olaf's departure he gave him great gifts of well wrought weapons a splendid sword inlaid with gold on the blade and set in the hilt with dear bought gems, and a shield of embossed brass. Also he furnished him with a dragonship and four longships, ready manned and equipped for the sea, and bade him go a-roving wheresoever he willed in search of adventure and worldly furtherance.
But he had no intention to abide by his compact. In the general confusion he contrived to get on board his own disabled dragonship. There he exchanged his tattered armour for a good suit of seaman's clothes, with a large cloak, a sword, and a bag of gold.
For a time they had not been certain whether Olaf Triggvison was at the stem or on the poop of his great dragonship, for it was seen that at each of these important points there was a tall chief whose prowess and whose attire alike distinguished him from all other men; and these two champions so resembled one the other that it was not easy to tell which was Kolbiorn Stallare and which King Olaf.
A fleet of fishing boats was putting out with the flood tide, and some merchant vessels lay at anchor under shelter of the green headland. Nearer to the strand a long dragonship, with a tall gilded prow rising high above the deck tent, was moored against a bank of hewn rock that served as a wharf.
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