Nobody spoke for a moment. On the midthwart of the dragonfly, Conn lifted his head and grinned at Raef.
Eelmouth said, “Well, we will attack him from behind. But we have ten ships, here, and he’s got fifty, at least.”
Sweyn said, “I know this place. The shape of the bay here won’t let him hit us all at once. You strike hard and quick from this channel, he’ll reel back. He’ll have to, to regroup. Then the rest of us will close with you, make a line, and we’ll take him on in pieces. If he gets too much, we sail on into the channel and hold him off easily from there.”
Thorkel grunted. “You’ve got a big mind, boy.”
“Are you with me?” Sweyn said.
Eelmouth said, “Let’s get moving.”
Their feet shuffled. Raef drew in a deep ragged breath. He saw what lay before them as if he stood above it, looking down, the ships, the blood; he wiped his hand across his forehead, his skin tingling all over, his insides jumpy.
For a moment, in a sudden clear calm of mind, he thought he saw the reasons, the purposes, lying in sweet order over the wild bits and pieces of what was to come, something glorious taking shape. Then Sweyn jumped down into the dragonfly. Everything collapsed again into right now. Raef’s guts tightened up again, his ears ringing with alarms. He fended them off from the bigger ship; Conn was already running out his oars. Sweyn settled down to use the other set. Raef took hold of the steerboard bar and settled down to get them on course.
Corban came awake in the gray fuzz of the dawn light, hearing horns blasting, and men shouting, and the trampling of feet. He got up from the straw where he had been sleeping, stiff and cramped; his upper arms hurt from Skull-Grim’s grip. The barn was full of horses, tethered in long lines, standing dozing in heaps of dirty straw. He went down to the door and out into the daylight.
From all over the village men streamed across the common toward the beach. Horns blasted from the church door, from the hall door, from the center of the common. As the men ran they shouted to each other.
“Attack! Attack!”
“Who?”
“Down by the—”
“To the ships! Everybody—”
“Who?”
Corban ran along beside them, staying out of the main stream of the onrush of men, to where the village ended against the rising side of the headland. There he stopped in his tracks.
Before him stretched the beach, running away under the lee of the headland. More dragons than he had ever seen before were hauled out there, a row of the high coiled heads that went on and on out of the reach of his eyes, looming like monsters in the dawn fog.
Men scrambled and shouted around them, taking down awnings and gathering crews. Right in front of him a bunch of men heaved one great beast-ship back off the beach into the deeper water. Several others already floated in the shallows, oars running out their sides like slatted wooden wings. The others were fighting to get off the beach, jammed together in their haste, their crews shouting and cursing, struggling for rowing room, but swiftly they untangled themselves, and as he watched the whole fleet except one ship stroked away out onto the bay, spreading out as they went, most of them going toward the east.
The wind was freshening, bright and cold, strong out of the west. The fog was burning rapidly off; Corban could see rags of blue sky through it already, and out there on the broad surface of the bay the water began to glint and sparkle. He stayed where he was a moment longer, watching a little knot of men stride down the beach past him.
Looming up among them was Skull-Grim, looking no worse. They were headed for the last of the dragons, where a crew already waited, a big ship with metal trim over its coiled serpent head and high carved gunwales. After them four slaves struggled along, carrying what looked at first like a great open wooden box.
Bluetooth’s high seat, Corban thought. He turned his gaze back to the men now climbing onto the last dragon. While they bundled the high seat on board he looked among them for Bluetooth and picked out a tall, gaunt figure wrapped tightly in a dark cloak. The dragon pushed off into the little waves and rowed away.
Corban lifted his eyes. Out there ships spread out across the broad water, striding on banks of oars lifting and falling, bright in the steady new sun. Horns blew, summoning them. Corban stretched his sight, trying to make out what was happening. The fleet had all scattered; under the horns’ command they were turning. He could not tell at first which way they were turning, only that they began to line up, but Hakon had said this place could only be attacked from the east.
The last of the fog was vanishing into the windblown sun. The bright water of the bay broke into a galloping fret, waves leaping like horses with manes of foam, leaping into the east. The great mass of ships began to move, began to fight against the wind, against the strong chop of the water.
Heading west. Hakon was wrong. The attack had come from the west. Corban turned and ran back toward the barn where he had slept the night, to get a horse.
Conn leapt across the narrow strip of water between the dragonfly and the beached ship, landed crouching in the hull, and wheeled to meet the huge bearded man careening down toward him from the stern. As he ran, the bearded man drew a sword out of a loose scabbard. Raef bounded into the ship just behind him. Two other Vikings were running up to meet him, but they seemed the whole crew here. Conn cocked his sword back and met the bearded man’s charge straight on.
With a contemptuous swipe the Viking struck his blade aside, and lunged. Conn felt the ship shift under him, rolling, and braced himself against it. The sword whizzed past his thigh and slammed into a bench, and he brought his sword up in the counterstroke and chopped it into the other man’s upper arm.
The bearded man screamed, and fell, and Conn threw him overboard. He ran to help Raef with the other two. This ship was still mostly aground, but he could feel it moving, as somebody shoved it out into the water. With Raef he battered at the two men remaining until abruptly one turned and dove back into the fjord, and the other went down swinging and they pitched his body over the side.
Now Sweyn’s men were piling into the ship, grabbing the oars, getting it moving. Conn leapt up onto the gunwale, balancing there crouched on the narrow strip of ashwood, and yelled, “This way! This way!”
The rowers’ heads turned. The oars on one side dipped, and the ship pivoted a little, so that its stern swung to cross the stern of the next of the ships hauled out on this beach. Conn could hear the horns blasting now, up there in the distance. The fog was burning off, the sun coming out. On the ship in front of him a few men sleeping on board were scrambling awake, and now somebody on the ship beyond this one was waking, and shouting.
As the two dragons slipped past each other, Conn sprang across the gap of water. One of the crewmen reared up, hoisting a wooden shield up to block him, and Conn slammed feet first into the shield and knocked the man flat under it. With a bellow he charged up toward the bow.
Raef followed him, and then a steady stream of Sweyn’s men; well outnumbered, the few men on this ship leapt off immediately. Conn jumped over the side, into the water, thigh deep, the stony bottom slippery with moss, and helped float the ship, while Sweyn’s men swarmed over it, running out oars.
He stayed in the water, wheeling toward the next ship in the line. Behind him the second captured dragon swept rapidly away. The wind was picking up, hard against his back. Raef was beside him; he shouted, “Let’s go!” and they rushed at the dragon lying broadside before them, half in and half out of the water.
This was full of men, ready and waiting for them. For a moment Conn was fighting upward, fending off blows and giving none. Some others of Sweyn’s men rushed up behind him Conn edged sideways, got the Viking on the ship above him a little crooked, and chopped him through the waist.
The man careened away. Conn gave a screech and vaulted up over the gunwale into the gap he had cut in the line. Raef bounded up after him The Vikings on the ship wheeled toward them, howling, but in the narrow shi
p they could attack only a few at a time. Conn braced his feet apart on the hull; two men rushed him, getting in each other’s way, and he hacked them both down with one swing. Then Sweyn’s men swarmed in and crushed them from the side.
Conn stood, breathing hard; his arms throbbed from the sword work. Sweyn leapt up beside him, gripping him by the shirt. His nose was broken and bleeding. His eyes blazed. “This is the last one we’ll get so easily—look!”
Conn wheeled. The fog was gone. Under the wind the blue water of the Limfjord fluttered with white feathers of waves. Through the blaze of sunlight on water, a great fleet of ships was moving steadily toward them. The prows of the ships at the front blazed golden. The high coiled heads of the dragons seemed alive. Men crowded them so thick they lay down in the water like great swans. They were fighting the wind, struggling against the uneasy currents, and they spread out across the bay, until Conn gave up trying to count them.
Sweyn said, “I told you the wind would come up and slow them. Get ready.”
Conn nodded; he lifted his sword, and kissed the blade. He could smell the blood on it. He said, “This will be a good fight, Sweyn.” Beside him, Raef, long-faced as usual, was staring away at the oncoming fleet. He turned and his eyes met Conn’s and held a moment. A leather sack full of some fiery liquor came by, and they both drank deep of it. Conn slapped Raef on the arm. “We’ll take them. Keep your head up.” Sweyn hung his arm around Conn’s shoulder. They waited, smiling.
In the barn where he had spent the night Corban found a horse that would stand still for him to mount and rode up onto the sloping back edge of the headland. A thread of a path ran up through the windblown grass to the top. He followed the path up into the blast of the wind and kicked the horse along the top.
From here he could see everything. On his left the great watery expanse of the Limfjord glittered and thrashed, its surface torn into whitecaps. Bluetooth’s fleet was scattered across the center of it like something thrown down from heaven. Below him just off the western edge of the beach, where it fell off into a marshy cove, four dragons waited, drawn up side by side.
There had already been fighting here. This was where the first attack had come. Bodies sprawled in the shallows behind the waiting dragons, and higher on the gravelly shore a few men sat huddled together, watching what was going on.
Beyond, at the point of the beach, lay a ship he knew, his dragonfly.
He could not make out Conn and Raef in the ships waiting down there. He lifted his eyes, wondering how they had gotten here. The cove that spread away from the end of this beach, tending south, shallow and reedy, seemed to have no other way out. He moved his gaze along the shore beyond it, toward the west.
There, below another high-cropping headland, some water gleamed. There was a watercourse over there.
Stretching his gaze, patient, letting his eyes work, he thought he saw some masts of ships waiting, in that far gleam of water. But he wasn’t sure: maybe just trees on the shore.
Far off across the water, thin as a gull’s cry, a horn blew. He turned his gaze back toward Bluetooth’s fleet. For a moment, the dozens of ships were still scattered everywhere. Then they turned, and as if drawn up by a magic string they gathered into a curving line, aimed into the west, at the four dragons waiting for them by the beach below.
He stopped the horse. He had come to the end of the headland anyway, where the outcrop fell off into a stand of trees, and beyond that some plowed fields. He looked back the way he had come, wondering if he should circle back. Far down there, on his track, someone else rode along.
Horns sounded, far down there. His heart began to pound. He swung forward again, looking out at the water. Bluetooth’s ships were thrashing their way along, mighty-oared, brimming with men. The strongest were pulling out ahead of the others, but the bay was narrowing here anyway. This tip of Bluetooth’s fleet, some dozen ships, swung around to attack the four dragons waiting for them.
Who did not wait. Those four ships suddenly burst forward, striding up on flashing oars, attacking first.
Even on the headland Corban heard the yell from Bluetooth’s whole fleet. The main body of ships flailed on, struggling to get into the narrowing neck of the bay. The vanguard swung around to meet the attack, spreading out, and Conn’s four dragons drove straight at the center of this line.
Then from behind Bluetooth’s vanguard, from the dim gleam of water there, more ships were swarming into the fight. These had the wind behind them. Corban could hear screams from them, and shields banging. Bluetooth’s vanguard staggered, struck from the front and the side at once. Corban saw men wheeling around in their ships, and one or two of the dragons began to row eastward, out of the fighting, back into the main body of Bluetooth’s fleet.
Down in the cove the oncoming ships closed hard, ships running in beside ships, oars raised up, and men leaping from one dragon to another. He heard the tinny clash of swords. The ships were grappling together, making a rocking wooden field to fight on, and the mass of men surged back and forth along it. Corban could see nothing of what was happening, only a great tangle of wooden ships and men scrambling around on them, and faintly, screams and thuds, and the clank of iron.
He paced up and down on the edge of the headland, trying to see who was winning. Most of Bluetooth’s fleet was still struggling in the narrows of the bay, but they would break through finally. The invaders—Conn, Raef, Sweyn, down there, somewhere—could escape back into the inlet, or they could fight this battle; he didn’t see how they could do both. They showed no signs of running. On the clamped rocking ships below the men struggled up and down. He sat down on the headland to watch.
Raef gasped for breath. For once nobody was trying to kill him He swiped at the blood dripping down into his eyes and passed his sword from hand to hand, flexing his stiff bruised fingers.
Then beside him Conn shouted, “Help me! Pull!”
Raef laid his sword down and seized the dripping inch-thick rope just behind Conn’s hands. The grappling hook on the rope’s other end was caught on the gunwale of the next ship; wrenching and tugging hand over hand, they dragged the ship they were on over toward the one at the end of the rope, their ship’s hull rolling up over the other’s sagging bank of oars, tipping steeply upward. Conn yelled, “Jump!”
Raef grabbed for his sword and followed him up, over the gunwale of their ship, and as that footing crashed down under him sprang off into the next.
A sword met him. This ship was crammed full of men, fighting, crashing together as they tried to swing, clawing at each other for room. The hot stink of their bodies met him like a wave. Everything dissolved into a wild swirl of colors. He could see nothing but pieces, an arm, heads, shoulders, the leap of blood. Everything had fallen into pieces swirling around him, drawing him in.
He chopped frantically at it, keeping it away, to stay out of it, to stay whole. Pieces roared at him, an arm, a blade rippling with eerie light, two eyes, full of sadness and recognition, looking into his. His arms were numb from the shock of blows. Conn—where was Conn—gripping the sword with both hands, he struck back and forth against an axe for a moment, and then the axe disappeared, swept down from behind.
Conn screamed, “Come on!”
Raef plunged after him, the sword gripped two-handed, cutting his way through the packed ravening mass around him, the sweet beautiful fabric of the world coming apart here into nothing, a whirlwind of chaos sucking everything in. Something struck him hard, and he staggered, and a body slid under his feet. He walked on trembling, shrieking flesh.
He staggered along after Conn’s black head, came up with a crash against the hard edge of a rowing bench, and then Conn was beside him. They got back to back again, which always worked. Hacking at the men struggling at them they had a better chance, on more solid ground, and were milling down all corners until the ship suddenly lurched and went over sideways.
Raef screeched; he clung desperately to his sword even in the air, and hit the water
on his face. He went down, down. The cold was silent around him, blessed cold silence. He kicked out and swam up, dragging the sword after him, and burst up into the air almost under a ship. In front of him, going up the side of the ship, was Conn. The air was warm on his face. He struggled after his cousin through the lapping water, reaching the next ship just below Conn’s feet disappearing over the side, and scrambled up.
He toppled over the gunwale and landed almost on top of a man struggling to get to his feet; Raef struck him down before his knees straightened. He wheeled around, trying to find Conn, and ducked a flying sword and chopped out without looking where and blood sprayed all over him, and something fell on him but it was a body, not a sword. He flailed it off, standing up, dazed.
Conn gripped his arm. “Look—we got behind them somehow.”
Raef looked around him, amazed. This ship was empty, except for the two men they had just killed; all the men from this ship had gone on, past them, onto the front row of ships where the fighting was. He gaped across the stretch of open water between him and those ships, where men crowded together so tightly Raef could not make out each from each, could distinguish only their hacking arms, and their surging back and forth, and the bodies pitching off the ship into the water, and the screech and howl of one great mad voice coming from them.
He turned around, to look the other way, and saw the inlet, opening below the headland, the water glistening in the sun, and the sunlight yellow on the grassy top of the headland, the world there all still woven together, all whole.
Conn said, “Come on.”
Raef turned toward him, thinking, We could get away. He knew they would have no other chance. He could see already that Bluetooth’s ships held the inlet. Sweyn and his ships would not escape. He stared into his cousin’s face, but Conn did not even look back at him. Conn was turning back toward the battle; he saw nothing but the fighting over there, that confusion, that coming apart. And now he was running back along the ship, to go back into it, not for Sweyn, Raef knew, not for victory or glory, even, but for the unraveling itself.
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