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Updated: June 24, 2025
"This is the worse of the two ships," Bertric said. "The other is Heidrek's own. He is not here. Asbiorn yonder commanded this." "Asbiorn is in luck today," Earl Osric said, nodding toward those terrible decks. But Asbiorn stood on the foredeck with his back to that which he had looked on, biting the ends of his long moustache, and pale with rage. I did not wonder thereat.
"I ask you to do so, and I think you will not refuse." Now I saw in the face of Dalfin that he thought it right that I should take the mail, and so I did. We went with the three suits and the helms back to Bertric, and so put them on, Gerda helping us, and I taking the tiller when it was Bertric's turn. Even in this little while one could see that Heidrek's leading ship had gained on us.
Bertric nodded, and I went forward and called her accordingly, rousing Dalfin, who slumbered in the sun under the lee of the boats amidships, as I passed him. Gerda came quickly from her awning as she heard me, and saw the two ships at once. They were then some eight miles astern of us, and she looked at me with an unspoken question. "They are Heidrek's ships," I said.
And all the while she spoke, Bertric was glancing eastward across the still water for the first sign of the breeze we longed for. I know now that on him was a dread lest it should bring with it the brown sails of Heidrek's two ships; but he did not show it.
They know how to befriend a woman who needs help. These men whom you fear and who seek the wreck can only be the men of our enemy." Then Bertric said: "I cannot mistake the boat which I have helped to pull so many a weary time. It is Heidrek's. He has followed us, and has somewhere heard of the fate of the ship.
I can leave no one to say that I am collecting goods from this shore." "Kill me, then," said Dalfin, while I made no answer. Two of our men cried that they would join him, and their bonds were cut by Heidrek's followers. One of them set himself by my side and spoke to me at once. "There are worse things than going on the Viking path, Malcolm, son of my jarl," he said earnestly. "Blame me not."
It was said to be a deep reach with a bar at its head, beyond which no ship might pass until high water. Suddenly there came a shout from the men forward, and the pilot cried to the oarsmen to cease rowing. Heidrek's second ship had gone aground. We could see her crew trying to pole her off, and Hakon asked if we could reach her.
Heidrek's ships were swift when before the wind, and these great vessels might not overhaul them until they had reached some shallow waters in the river mouth which Heidrek had already entered. But there waited Dalfin and the Irish levies, who would be gathered by this time in force. Mayhap Heidrek would not chance being pent between two foes.
"Two brown-sailed ships," said I. "They mind one too much of Heidrek to be pleasant, else one might welcome the coming of any honest Norsemen who would help us to do the right." "Wait, and I will tell you," answered Bertric somewhat grimly. "I cannot mistake Heidrek's ships once I get a fair sight of them." In half an hour or so he did tell me.
Now the river took a sharp bend, and I heard the pilot say to his mate that Heidrek had better have a care at this stage of tide, while Asbiorn, forward, was watching intently. The tide was almost at its lowest by this time, and Heidrek's hindmost ship was about half a mile ahead of us. Hakon meant to pen them in some stretch of the river which the pilot knew, and there deal with them.
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