Sorely troubled was Goldberga when she heard this answer, but it was all
that the rest of us looked for. And the next question was how best to
meet the false king.
In the end we did a thing that may seem to some to have been rash
altogether, but it was our wish to compel Alsi to fight before his force
was great enough to crush us. It might be long before Ragnar could raise
a host and join us, for there was always a chance that he might have
trouble in getting the Norfolk thanes to come to his standard for a
march on Lindsey. If we had gone to Norfolk at once there would have
been no fear of that kind, but the fighting might have been more bitter
and longer drawn out.
We sent the fleet southward into the Wash, that it might wait for us at
the port of the Fossdyke, on what men call the Frieston shore; and then
we left Saltfleet and marched across country to the wolds, and southward
and westward along them, that we might draw Alsi from Lincoln. And all
the way men joined us for the sake of Curan, whom they knew, and of
Goldberga, of whom they had heard, so that in numbers at least our host
was a great one. Ragged it might be, as one may say, with the wild
marshmen, who had no sort of training and no chiefs to keep them in
hand; but I knew that no host Alsi could get together had any such
trained force in it as we had in the fifteen hundred Vikings, for they
had seen many fights, and the ways of the sea teach men to hold together
and to obey orders at once and without hesitating.
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