Once, fighting Carl Thorbrandsson, the Orkney fleet had been able to put to good use the tricks of current and tide. Now, as one Earl of Orkney set sail against another, the sea was the ally of neither and the potential enemy of both.
Thorfinn said, ‘He’s in Westray. He can’t come down the east coast to attack: that way he’ll enter the eastern neck of the firth and either be swept into the tidal race through the passage or be swept out of it with my fleet pursuing him. So he will come down the west side of Orkney, with open sea on his right and the Caithness coast ahead, across the western neck of the firth. Are we agreed?’
There was no dispute. Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘He will know you are here. In Thurso Bay.’
Below them, side by side on two miles of white sand, lay the longships, gold-tipped, embracing the foam like a necklet. As their spies had reported, so would Rognvald’s. As he sailed south from Westray to Hrossey to Hoy, his prows would point straight towards Thurso, and each fleet, whatever it did, would be in fullest view of the other.
‘So we sail out to meet him,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Which he will expect. If we’re lucky, we get warning from the beacon on Hoy. If we’re undeservedly lucky, the wind will change and allow us to meet him under sail high up on the west coast and out of the firth. If neither of these things happens, we shan’t see much of him till he’s off Rora Head, and we might have to row part or all of the way to meet him, which puts us all in the thick of the tide-race.
‘If we engage there and the tide is making, we all get swept eastwards and into deep trouble. If it’s on the ebb, Rognvald may well find himself pushed westwards before we meet up with him, and we should then bear down on him with the tide, plus the wind, which would be most enjoyable from our point of view but not from Rognvald’s.
‘Therefore, if the wind doesn’t change, Rognvald is likely to time his arrival off south-west Hoy at slack water. Or just before. That means a lot of lurching but no real punishing current for an hour anyway, and even then only a mild one, with the wind to cancel it.’
‘If the wind stays easterly,’ Thorkel Fóstri said.
‘If, of course,’ the King said. ‘Who’s the expert on winds? Otkel?’
Everyone looked at Otkel, Thorkel’s nephew, who had once taken a longship round Duncansby, gale-force wind against tide, and lived to tell of it. Otkel said, ‘Variable. But it looks set for twenty-four hours at the moment. You can take it that the Earl will aim for slack water, no matter what the wind, and a quick kill before the flood starts.’
One of the Salmundarsons said, ‘No matter what the wind? He won’t row down against a southerly, surely, even if he has to keep his men starving till it changes.’
‘No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘But winds have been known to alter. And although he knows the currents as well as we do, his ships are full of Norwegians.’
‘As ours are full of Irishmen,’ the King said tranquilly. ‘But Earl Rognvald will spread his hird through the fleet, as I shall spread mine. Don’t underestimate their seamanship. Everything I have said, Rognvald will have said also. It is the wind, in the end, that will have the last say. The wind, and those with the quickest wits to deal with it. So. The next slack water is when? Five in the morning?’
‘It would mean sailing all through the night from Westray,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘He won’t ask them to do that so soon after crossing from Norway. But tomorrow afternoon. That is possible. Before the wind changes.’
‘I think you are right,’ the King said. ‘Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we shall keep them all active but not too busy. By mid-afternoon or before, we should know if the fleet is coming. Meanwhile—Otkel?—I am to be told of any change in the quality of the wind. And if it changes, this is what we must do.…’
Later, looking back on it, it seemed to Thorkel Fóstri that nothing had been left undone that could be done beforehand: nothing had been left unsaid that should have been said before that battle came that was to decide the fate of Orkney, and that was to decide the fate, for all time to come, of the far greater country called Alba. Only, they were men. And wind, they said, was the breath of the gods.
It was the beacon on Hoy, after all, that gave them their first warning, followed very soon after by the smoke from Easter Head and from Hoi born as the flash of gold, far to the north, told of the Norwegian fleet rounding the west point of Hoy with Rognvald’s banner flying above it. It was three hours after midday, with a steady easterly breeze, and a fitful sun white behind cloud-haze.
Before the smoke had dispelled, the sixty ships of Thorfinn of Orkney and Alba were in the water, borne out by a black, living carpet of men, the steel on them glinting like sand-flies.
They left the bay under oar, with Grágás in the lead under the rippling black-and-white flag of the raven, and her flock of long, slender goslings combing the white sea behind her.
Today of all days, Thorfinn had made sure that he would stand in every man’s eye. Standing high in the stern by his steersman, he wore a tunic of scarlet under his ring-mail to match the scarlet, Thor’s red, of the flagship; and fingers of bright scarlet ribbon quivered and blew from the crest of Canute’s golden helmet. Only his profile looked unfamiliar, rendered Greek by the tongue of the nose-guard and the metal curve at either jaw. So far as could be seen, he looked un worried; and certainly, as he scanned the boats of his fleet and saw the fierce, lusty faces and heard the shouts and the snatches of chanting and the wild, bronchial belling of war-horns, he must have known that he had performed his task well and his crop was ripe and ready for cutting.
The sail was not yet up when the look-out called down from the masthead. ‘My lord? The smoke on Hoy. It’s changed direction.’
‘I see,’ said Thorfinn. The smoke had changed. Overhead, the fretted weathervane glinted and swung. The pattern on the water ahead, pale grey on dark, blurred and brightened and blurred again as gusts of random air passed across. Then, lifting its voice, the wind walked from the east to the south-east, to the south, and as sail upon sail, rattling up, opened its throat to receive it, began to impel Thorfinn’s fleet through the last of the ebb towards Hoy.
David, the priest from Deerness, said, ‘Did I not know you tongueless in prayer as an Irishman’s bell, I would say you had made God an offer. Or are we sinking after all?’
‘That’s the headland east-going current,’ said Thorfinn blandly. ‘We hit the west-going ebb in a moment. But if it’s any comfort, at the rate we are going, we’ll meet the other fleet somewhere off Hoy, and not in the tide-rip at all. If, that’s to say, the wind stays in the south.’
‘Tell me what to pray for,’ said David, ‘and I’ll do my best. Do you know Arnór’s on board?’
Two weeks before, on the last of the ferries from Orphir, Arnór Jarlaskáld had appeared, silently, at the great camp at Thurso and had made his way, silently, to Thorfinn’s hall.
For the hird, and for the landed-men and the mercenary leaders from the Western Isles and from Ireland who were then with Thorfinn, roistering, it was a joyous moment, pregnant with disaster. Everyone there had tried his hand at one version or another of Arnór’s verses in praise of Thorfinn’s enemy Rognvald and his other verses in praise of Rognvald’s foster-brother King Magnús. If Thorfinn did not appear to have heard either the originals or their parodies, it still did not mean that he would take kindly to the return of his promiscuous bard. Especially since everyone there knew precisely why Arnór had left Rognvald for Thorfinn.
It was, therefore, a great disappointment when Thorfinn neither had his skald hanged nor his harp-fingers cut off, but merely greeted him mildly with a remark or two that seemed harmless enough till you thought about it, by which time Arnór’s neck had turned red and he looked fit to weep. But that was all, and afterwards Thorfinn’s manner had been to him just as it was before Rognvald had wooed the silly man to himself, and before Kalv Arnason, changing sides for reasons much less romantic, had come to take all Rognvald’s attention.
You would thi
nk, knowing Kalv’s record, that his friends would hardly be astonished to find that Kalv had abandoned Thorfinn for Rognvald, once King Magnús entered the feud on Rognvald’s side. Certainly, considering the words he and Kalv had already exchanged, Thorfinn could not have been much surprised, although he said little when the news first arrived.
It was through Arnór that Kalv’s former host learned that Kalv’s six ships were now in Orkney, with the two hundred fighting-men Kalv had quartered so neatly on Thorfinn in Caithness. It was further through Arnór that it was discovered that Kalv and his ships were not at Hfn with the rest of Rognvald’s fleet, but had sailed south to Longhope, on the south-east of Hoy, for reasons unknown but easy to guess at. My lord, the armies are even, Copsige had said. And so they had been until Kalv’s men joined Rognvald.
It might be thought, then, that Thorfinn would have no objection to his fickle Arnór’s presence on board to share whatever fate held in store and, if he survived, to sing of it. That Arnór had been ordered to stay ashore had been a surprise to them all: that Arnór had disobeyed the order was a greater one. And now here was Thorfinn, clearly angry, summoning the poet before him and lashing him, briefly, with his tongue before consigning him to the lower reaches of the longship, under someone’s spare shield. It was true Arnór would do little good in a battle, and was as likely to behead you on the backswing as he was to cut down the enemy. But at least, if he was there, he could be thinking up verses.
The wind held, and the sixty ships of Thorfinn’s fleet, jolting, began to cross the open firth from Caithness towards Hoy in Orkney.
From the thwarts of the longship, nothing of Rognvald’s fleet could be seen. From the masthead, the last sighting had shown that, facing into the wind, the enemy fleet had downed sail and were now moving south under oar: a slow business with the drag of Hoy Sound to pull against. Nor would they pull hard, for Rognvald needed fresh men to fight with and would be better pleased the further north Thorfinn came. It looked as if western Hoy, after all, would see the encounter, with the firth and its race far behind them. The wind sang, the ropes creaked, and Thorfinn walked down the mid-passage of his twenty-roomed ship, with laughter breaking out where he spoke, and joined his voice, on one beam and then on the other, to that of Thorkel Fóstri, of Bardi, of Starkad and Steingrim and all the other shipmasters whose eye he could catch: to collect their attention, to remind them, to prepare them. In ten minutes, or fifteen, they would be within arrow range, and then casting-spear range.
And after that the oars would come in and they would board and fight with sword and axe, as if their feet were on land, for the sea would be rafted over with ships, and blood-greedy.
Although prepared for great ships, no man in that Caithness flotilla took lightly the first sight of Rognvald’s fleet at close quarters with its snarling jaws ringing the sky, while the wind drove the longships like leaves towards the big vessels and under their bellies. Then, according to plan, the sixty sails thundered down and from each galley the oars swung out on their grommets and began to spoon through the waves. Tumbling sea came into view in widening lanes between every ten longships until instead of one fleet there were six, flying shallow and spume-misted over the slack, aiming each for its prey. And behind the moving backs of the oarsmen gleamed the helmeted heads of the fighting-men, standing balanced in ranks, with spearpoint and arrowhead glinting.
Then they were within range, and the grey of the sky was meshed with shimmering steel, upborne on the roar of men’s voices.
Rognvald’s men threw against the wind, and Thorfinn’s men with it. And above the roar then came the screams, with the hiss and whicker and whine of arrow and spear arching above it like harp-music. Then, with dead and dying on every ship, the two fleets crashed together and the low vessels, cutting through, sought to segregate the high vessels of Rognvald’s fleet and, having done so, to mob them like starlings.
Long before, planning it all, Thorkel Fóstri had said to his foster-son, ‘Of course you will make straight for Rognvald. Grágás is the best ship we have to match his, and, man for man, there is no doubt that yours will fight better. Get rid of Rognvald, and the attack will collapse.’
‘So Rognvald will reason,’ Thorfinn had said.
For some reason, it had made Thorkel angry. ‘You know him,’ he had said. ‘All right. What will he do?’
And Thorfinn had been silent for a while, and then had said, ‘Ship to ship while both of us are fresh: that would be too risky for him. Besides, he wants to kill. He would like to see the hird destroyed as well, and all the men who follow me. It must ruin my reputation as well as end my life, this battle. Grágás will become the main target, that is certain. But not of Rognvald alone. In his place, I should assign two ships, or perhaps even three, to stand off and do what damage may be done with the bow and the spear while the rest of the fleet make sure that no one can come to the rescue. Then, with all the smaller ships crippled, he should grapple Grágás and board her from each side, with other ships standing by to put more men where they are needed. That should be his plan.’
‘And yours?’ Thorkel had said.
‘Split his fleet. Confine each group with a ring of small ships, including the group with Rognvald’s ship in it. We should coax them to throw what they can before we get to close quarters. We have as many men as they have. While they are leaning over, dealing with one ship, the crew of another will be climbing to board at their backs. And I shall be there to give them cover.’
‘All of them?’ Thorkel had said.
‘Grágás has eighty oarsmen and height. I can see where I am needed, and I can get there. And, with luck, keep away from Rognvald’s grappling-irons.’
‘With luck,’ Thorkel Fóstri had said.
And luck was what, at first, it seemed they would have. From Thorfinn’s flagship, all the crew could see how the enemy fleet had been herded into five groups, the taller mast-poles rocking and scything within the lesser pole-ring of the longships. Confined with them was Rognvald’s flagship, painted white as Thorfinn’s was red, and with Rognvald himself, small and clear and distinct in the prow, in a tunic of hide studded with glittering metal.
With the bravado for which his men loved him, he wore no helmet, but could be picked out by friend or by enemy by the bright silken hair, braided clear of his face and bound over his brows by a hlā. He stood looking across the water to where Thorfinn stood, and seemed to be laughing. Then he moved down and back, and was hidden.
It was clear, by then, which of Thorfinn’s boats were receiving the worst of the battle, and, to his orders, the oars of Grágás dipped and she cut through the sea to the rescue. Then, for all of them, the fighting began, and went on for longer than it seemed human endurance would last.
Later, in such a fight, you found the wounds you had no recollection of. Later, with your ears deadened and aching, you recalled dimly the violence of the noise: the thunderous sound of timber crashing on timber; the searing din of metal on metal and the hollow drumming made by the shields, and the stamping of feet in the boat-shells; and the soft thud of axe and of sword-edge as they sank into cloth, into hide, into flesh. And always, at sea, the swinging shadows of gulls, so that the cries from above and below were as one.
It was the change in sound that first warned Thorkel Fóstri. At that moment, he and Thorfinn were on the same Norwegian ship, having overwhelmed it from two sides and cut the cable that bound it to its fellows so that none could cross to its rescue.
He saw, across the uneven axe-fighting that was all that was left, that Thorfinn had looked suddenly up; and a moment later he, too, was free to look about him. Distinct as writing, the sounds of the battle came to him, clear in every element; and hard upon that another change: a change in the motion of the stained timbers under him. He said aloud, ‘The wind has dropped,’ and saw that Thorfinn, too, had called something to those men fighting nearest him, and that he was returning to the attack, quickly, to clear the boat of the last of the enemy.
/> Swinging his sword to do the same, Thorkel Fóstri glimpsed men running: Thorfinn’s men, sent to cross back to their own ship. A moment later, between strokes, he saw the oars swing out on Grágás and realised why. Already, the red cliffs of Hoy were closer than they had been: the little stream that had surfed in blown spray from the turf at the top was now falling straight to the sea in a film of silver, and the boulders at the cliff-foot were vanishing under slow-breaking waves.
The wind had dropped, and the flood-tide was under way, driving them all south and east, against the cliff-face of Hoy and, ultimately, round and into the east-running race. And the ship they were on and Thorfinn’s ship, lashed to it, and his own longship, grappled also below, were on the easterly fringe of the battle and all three about to drive on the rocks unless the oars on Grágás could hold them.
Then Thorfinn was beside him, shoulder to shoulder, with his shield up, saying breathlessly, ‘Enough! said Ferdiaidh, and be fell dead at the ford. Could you man this boat?’
‘No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. A man came at him, fighting left-handed, and he drove at him with his sword.
‘Then call your men back to the longship and cut free. Have you time?’
The cliffs were very close. ‘I think so,’ said Thorkel Fóstri and, ducking, lifted his horn. As he blew, he saw that Thorfinn was already fighting his way back to Grágás, the rest of his men with him. And that, on the way, they were slashing and flinging overboard all the Norwegians’ oars. Then he himself was back in his longship with the last of his crew, and the grapple freed not a moment too soon, as his own oars came out and began to pull against the drag of the tide and away from the cliff.
By then, he had less than twenty-five men, many wounded, so that, although he took an oar himself, the longship hung without responding for long beats of time. It must have been then, on the other side, that Thorfinn cut Grágás free of the Norwegian ship on his beam, and, oarless, the foreign ship lurched and swung and began to drive cliffwards.
King Hereafter Page 49