Kings and Pawns

by James L. Nelson

  Through the noise of the fires and the shouting, and the whir and thud of arrows, Thorgrim heard Godi’s voice calling out an order. Blood Hawk’s oars bit into the water and the walrus hide rope lifted and drew straight. Somewhere at Blood Hawk’s stern Thorgrim imagined every man not on an oar was hauling on the dripping anchor line, helping the rowers to move two ships at once.

  Then Sea Hammer began to move. Her bow, pressed by the current against the sunken ship, began to swing free. Thorgrim moved aft, pushing his way down the centerline of the ship, running his eyes over the sail bound to the yard as he did. Nothing, no flames, no charred holes. Harald’s wetting and the vigilance of the others standing ready with buckets had kept the precious cloth safe. He hoped the same was true on Blood Hawk, and on Long Serpent, which had also become a target of the archers ashore.

  Thorgrim reached the afterdeck, stepped up and pulled the rudder amidships. The bow was still swinging, the north shore of the channel sweeping past. Thorgrim could see the rough walls of the English defenses, the archers standing on top, the banners snapping in the breeze. Arrows were still flying in at an astounding rate and he was looking right into the storm.

  “Starboard side, stroke!” Thorgrim shouted and the rowers all along the starboard side leaned forward, lifted the grips of their oars, and then leaned back, putting their considerable strength of arm, leg and back into the effort. Sea Hammer reacted to the force of the drive, turning faster to larboard, making things a bit easier for the men aboard Blood Hawk.

  “Larboard and starboard, pull together!” Thorgrim shouted next and now both sides leaned aft and pulled forward, ignoring the fires burning around the ship, the chaos of men trying to put them out, the smoke that carried on it the smell of burning flesh, dead men with clothes still in flames.

  “Pull!”

  Again the men heaved on the oars. Thorgrim tried to see through the confusion on deck, see how the tow rope was fairing. Hanging slack he guessed, but he could not be sure. Still, with Sea Hammer rowing ahead, the proper way, she would have considerably more drive than Blood Hawk, rowing astern. It would not take them long to pass Blood Hawk by, and then they would switch around, with Sea Hammer taking Godi’s ship in tow.

  Fewer arrows seemed to find their mark. Thorgrim glanced over the starboard side, then the larboard. They were already drawing clear of the fortifications and the line of archers who stood on top of the walls. He heard a thudding sound nearby, felt a tremor in the tiller under his hands. He looked to starboard. A flaming arrow had embedded itself in the head of the rudder, just above the point where the tiller met it at a right angle.

  I’ll see that you pay for this, Thorgrim thought as he held the tiller with his left hand and reached out with his right, though he wasn’t sure who exactly he was threatening. Not that whore’s son Oswin. No reason for Oswin to have set this trap. So who was it? The other army that Oswin had mentioned? He cursed the sunken ship that was keeping him from getting free of the land. He longed to get to sea and be done with all the horse manure in which men ashore loved to wallow.

  He could feel the flames on his hand as he grabbed the shaft of the arrow stuck in the rudder. The fire lapped onto his sleeve as he wiggled the arrow and pulled it free. He tossed it overboard and beat his flaming cuff against his chest. Small bits of burning cloth rained down on the deck by his feet, but they were not enough to set Sea Hammer on fire.

  He looked forward. The flames burning Sea Hammer’s deck and the shields and the dead were nearly under control, men beating at them with blankets and furs. Others hauled water up over the side in buckets and dowsed the flames and kept the sail well soaked. Blood Hawk was considerably closer now, Sea Hammer quickly overhauling her. He looked past Blood Hawk, up the channel toward the harbor from which they had just come. His stomach lurched and a curse came unbidden from his throat.

  Long Serpent, Jorund’s command, was sideways in the channel, just a few hundred feet from Blood Hawk’s stern, and the current was sweeping her down on Blood Hawk. Jorund must have seen what was happening and tried to turn his ship around. Something had gone wrong—Long Serpent might have run up on a mud flat, might have gotten caught in an eddy or found the current too fast to turn in—but whatever it was, she seemed unable to swing her bow up into the ebbing tide.

  It was not for want of trying. Long Serpent’s oars, at least those that Thorgrim could see, were moving fast, the men clearly pulling hard, trying to bring the ship’s head around. But they were failing.

  Set your anchor, Thorgrim thought. An anchor over the bow would turn the ship into the current. Or stream something astern. Anything, a board, a couple of buckets, tied to a rope and run over the stern would likely do the same. But it did no good for Thorgrim to think it, and Long Serpent was too far for him to shout the words across the water. He did not know if Jorund was a good seaman or not. He had kept his ship alive during the horrendous gale that had blown them to Engla-land, and that was something, but it could have been luck.

  “We’ll see,” Thorgrim said grimly.

  Others on Sea Hammer’s crew saw what was happening, and met it with considerable shouting, waving and pointing. The rowers twisted at their places, trying to see what the excitement was about. They were working harder now as the ebb tide grew in force, and that same tide was driving Long Serpent quickly down onto Blood Hawk’s stern.

  Thorgrim pulled the tiller toward him. If he could skirt around Blood Hawk, avoid being caught up in the collision, he might be able to get both ships on a tow line, pull both free. Sea Hammer’s bow began to swing and Thorgrim called forward for Harald to cast off the tow line that connected Sea Hammer to Blood Hawk.

  And then Long Serpent and Blood Hawk hit. Long Serpent had managed to get halfway through her turn when she slammed into Blood Hawk’s stern, her starboard quarter coming hard against Blood Hawk’s sternpost. Thorgrim could hear men shouting on the two ships, and his own men shouting as well.

  “Pull, you bastards! Double man the oars!” Thorgrim shouted. Sea Hammer’s men tossed buckets aside and scrambled to find seats at the oars. There was little danger from fire now; it was the disaster up ahead that was the greatest threat.

  Thorgrim looked out past the bow. Blood Hawk and Long Serpent were entangled and the current was sweeping them down onto Sea Hammer. Thorgrim pulled the tiller a bit more, turned his ship’s bow another degree, but he did not dare turn too far or the current would grab the bow and turn Sea Hammer broadside as it did Long Serpent.

  Then, to Thorgrim’s surprise, both Blood Hawk and Long Serpent stopped where they were, motionless in the middle of the channel. Had they run aground? Hit another submerged obstacle? Thorgrim could make no sense of it.

  Then he remembered. The anchor! Blood Hawk had set an anchor. Thorgrim thought they had hauled it up by then, but apparently not, and now both ships were hanging on that single, tenuous wood and stone hook.

  Hold on, hold on…Thorgrim thought. If Blood Hawk and Long Serpent could both hang on the anchor long enough for Sea Hammer to get clear and up-current of them, then there might be a chance to tow them both off. He wanted to tell his men to row harder still, but he could see in a glance that they could not. They were rowing as hard as they conceivably could. Sea Hammer could go no faster than she was.

  He looked at the open water ahead. He looked over at the ships just in time to see Blood Hawk’s anchor line part. One moment the ships were motionless and then suddenly they were moving again, turning in the current and sweeping down on Sea Hammer. They were going to hit him; there was no way to avoid it now, and Thorgrim’s only choice was where they would strike his ship—on the bow or amidships or somewhere in between.

  “Get your oars in! Get them in!” Thorgrim shouted, and surprising as that order was the men obeyed, and quickly, sliding the long shafts inboard through the row ports.

  He pushed the tiller away and turned Sea Hammer’s bow toward the drifting vessels. If they hit bow-on it would likely do less damage. H
e grit his teeth and braced for the collision.

  Blood Hawk was spinning from the force of Long Serpent’s impact, turning broadside to Sea Hammer. Sea Hammer’s bow hit her just about amidships with a shudder that ran through the ship’s fabric and the terrible sound of grinding and cracking wood. And they continued to spin, the three ships locked together, turning as the current pushed them down the channel.

  Not done yet, Thorgrim thought. There was one more collision yet to come, and it came at almost the same instant that Thorgrim thought those words. Sea Hammer once again ran up on the dead ship sunk in the channel. She leaned a bit to starboard as her momentum came to a sudden stop, and she groaned, pinned between the wreck below and Blood Hawk and Long Serpent up-current of her.

  From either bank the arrows continued to come, their ends burning, their numbers swelling. And with the arrows came something worse, something that made Thorgrim even more furious still: a cheer of victory, English victory, loud and long.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hear a great wonder,

  hear of peace broken,

  hear of a great matter,

  hear of a death

  — one man’s or more.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  The room at the western end of Halfdan the Black’s great hall served as a throne room of sorts. It was the domain of Halfdan alone, separated from the rest of the hall by a doorway, and entered only at the king’s bidding. It was small compared to the rest of the hall, but still bigger than the houses in which most of Halfdan’s subjects lived.

  There were benches built against the walls on either side of the room, and a raised platform at the far end on which sat a large and elaborately carved oak chair. The roof, fifteen feet overhead, was partially supported by a half dozen posts which also bore intricate carvings, serpents and vines winding their way around bas relief images of Halfdan’s heroic deeds. There was a hearth in the middle of the floor, and a fire was burning with the intensity of Halfdan’s anger.

  “Say again who was there,” he said, his voice a low growl. He had been staring into the flames for some time now without speaking at all. It made the others in attendance—Einar and his captains and other men of import in Halfdan’s court—shift and squirm with trepidation. They all knew him well enough to know that the quieter he became, the angrier he was. And that day he was very quiet indeed.

  “Odd, of course, was there,” Einar said. “His family, the people on his farm…”

  “I know that, you idiot,” Halfdan said.

  “Amundi Thorsteinsson, Ragi Oleifsson, Ulfkel Ospaksson, all of them who came with Odd to see you,” Einar continued on quickly. “They each of them had their hirdsmen, or whoever they took as guards. They must have. Odd could not have that many men, at least not that many he could put under arms.”

  Halfdan wanted to call Einar an idiot once again. Odd might well have that many men under arms. How could Einar know? Halfdan had thought Odd to be no more than a farmer, a man who would not push back against the ambitions of his king, who could not find it in himself to push back. A man not worthy of being called Thorgrimson. But so far Odd had proved Halfdan wrong every time. He had challenged Halfdan. And the only thing Halfdan hated more than to be proved wrong was to be challenged.

  “And they all stood with Odd? They came with him to fight you?” Halfdan said.

  “Yes, Lord,” Einar said. They had covered all this, but Einar knew better than to let any note of exasperation creep into his voice. “We waited until they were in the hills, and then we attacked the farm. Those who were left, they fought. More than I would have guessed. Odd’s wife, whatever she’s called, she rallied what few there were there and they put up a good fight. But not that good. We had captured the lot of them and we were ready to return here when Odd and the rest came back from the hills. They must have guessed what we were up to. Or we were betrayed, somehow.”

  “Hmm,” Halfdan said. He was silent. More squirming, more trepidation. “I guess your trick of luring them up to the shielding was not so much of a trick after all,” he said, finally.

  “Lord, we would have had the whole household if…” Einar stopped talking.

  “If what?”

  “Ah…nothing, Lord,” Einar said. “I forget what I was thinking.”

  You were thinking that if I had let you take more men you could have attacked the shielding and the farm at once, isn’t that what you were going to say? Halfdan thought. Einar nearly slipped up by speaking his mind, a mistake men did not make twice in Halfdan’s company. But Halfdan let it go, because Einar was right. He had made a mistake not giving Einar and the raiders enough warriors, though he was not about to admit to that.

  Halfdan looked around at the faces of the other men. The platform on which Halfdan’s throne sat was at the same height as the benches, but the throne itself put Halfdan about three feet higher than the rest, which forced them to look up at him. Not an accident.

  “Anyone else?” Halfdan said. So far Einar was the only one who had spoken. He had been in charge of the raid, it had been his failure, and the rest were happy to let him do the talking. But in Halfdan’s mind they had all failed, and he would not let the others off so easily.

  “The raid on the shielding, that went just as we wanted,” said Onund Jonsson. Onund was the captain of Halfdan’s hird, a fearless and skilled warrior, but for all that he was obsequious, eager to please his king. Those were both qualities that Halfdan liked. He kept Onund close because he knew that a king such as himself had many enemies, but Onund was not one of them. It was why he had not, until that last raid, sent Onund and the hird to accompany Einar. He preferred to keep his trusted guard close.

  “We killed all but one of Odd’s people there,” Onund continued. “Took a dozen women, near a hundred head of cattle, sheep… It’s all yours now, Lord.”

  Halfdan looked back into the fire. He did not reply. He was in no mood to admit being pleased about any of this. And the women and the cattle were nothing compared to what he really wanted. He wanted Odd’s wife. He wanted Odd’s children. He wanted to make Odd suffer as payment for his audacity. And even more than that, he wanted everyone to see the price that a man would pay for standing between Halfdan the Black and that which Halfdan desired.

  “Cattle, yes,” Halfdan said. “Women.” He said the words dismissively because he felt they warranted dismissal. He turned his attention back to Einar. “Why, pray tell, were all of the hauldar gathered at Odd’s farm? Were they meeting? Plotting?”

  “All I know is what one of Odd’s slaves told me, lord, one we carried off. She works as a servant in the long hall, so she would be in the place to overhear. She told me that the hauldar were angry with Odd, furious that he should set the trap he did, and give them no warning that he meant to do so. They were angry that Odd had incurred your wrath, lord.”

  Really? Halfdan thought. That was interesting, if true. He had thought—feared—that the hauldar were united in this. They had come to see him as one, had fought Einar as one. But maybe they were not so united. Maybe Odd was more on his own than he had thought.

  And that would be a good thing, because for all of the warriors that Halfdan had under his command, the hauldar, collectively, had more. They represented a lot of potential power in that country.

  For a long time Halfdan was silent. Quite a long time. But his mind was not quiet at all. His thoughts were getting away from him, free-ranging through the past.

  That family, that bastard family he thought.

  They had never made trouble for him, but he knew they would, one day. They were poised to do it, like a boulder teetering on a cliff edge, ready to roll down with the barest nudge and crush everything in its path. He, Halfdan, had been young, and years away from being king, when Ulf of the Battle Song had died. But Ulf was legend enough to carve the family’s good name in stone. His deeds were still praised by the skalds.

  And Ornolf the Restless. He and Ulf had been friends, had gone raiding togeth
er. Ornolf was no warrior like Ulf was, but he had outlived Ulf by half a lifetime, and he had a quality that was probably more dangerous than any that Ulf possessed. He was liked.

  Fat, loud, drunken, still Ornolf the Restless had a touch that made men enjoy his company. He was generous, welcoming, and could even be wise and quick-witted at times. He had seemed pleased when Halfdan became king, and he had never done anything to undermine his rule. He had hosted Halfdan and his company at his great hall many times.

  But he had never been obsequious, either. He had treated Halfdan more as an equal than as a sovereign. He had never done anything to explicitly give offence, but still Halfdan had his suspicions. If Ornolf had wanted to start trouble, had wanted to turn the king’s subjects against him, then he would have been in a good position to do so. Buffoon though he was, men listened to Ornolf, and followed him.

  And from them, Ulf and Ornolf, came Thorgrim Night Wolf, son of one, son-in-law of the other. Thorgrim, too, was liked, but not in the way Ornolf was. Thorgrim was also generous and welcoming, but there was nothing jovial or open about him. There was instead a menacing quality, a sense that you did not want to be an enemy to that man. And of course there were the rumors of what he was. A shape-shifter. Kveldulf. There was more to be feared from Thorgrim than from Ornolf.

  Thorgrim and Halfdan were near the same age. Halfdan had known Thorgrim, though not well, for as long as he could recall, and he saw how that feeling of menace Thorgrim exuded only grew more pronounced as he won fame and wealth raiding with Ornolf the Restless. Then, when he married into Ornolf’s family, when those two lines joined, he became more of a threat still.

  Halfdan the Black had kept his eyes on Thorgrim all through the years, watched for any sign of betrayal, any indication that Thorgrim was plotting against him, but his suspicions were never confirmed. Thorgrim grew prosperous, and had children, and expanded his holdings, and Halfdan never had any reason to think the man’s ambitions went beyond that.