The men remaining on her were in no two minds about what to do. As the red cliffs hung over their prow, they jumped and swam: some to be thrown on the rocks of the shore, some towards Thorkel Fóstri’s longship with its low freeboard, so easy to grip and to mount.
It was the end of Thorkel’s vessel. Either he allowed himself to be boarded, or his men abandoned their oars and fought back. For a while, they rowed at half-strength while Thorkel himself and the rest hacked and slashed at the hands and heads and shoulders fringing his gunwales. Then, borne on the tide, the beam of the abandoned Norwegian ship swept past them and with her undertow caught the undermanned longship and bore it, too, faster and faster to the cliff-side. Then there was nothing for it but to jump into the water, alongside the enemy, and fight the sea, and the men in it, for what was left of your life.
The rending crash as the Norwegian ship struck and the lesser one as Thorkel’s longship in its turn broke its back on the rocks were hardly heard by the remnants of each crew as they struggled in the littered, buffeting water.
They had been seen. Thorkel Fóstri did not know until later that when Grágás loomed at his side, ropes trailing, she had arrived there dragging with her the enemy ship whose grappling had caused Thorfinn to return in the first place. He did see, however, the second Norwegian ship that, cutting itself free of the longships assailing it, moved slowly towards him and the other men struggling in the water, and bringing forward its bowmen, began methodically to pick off all those men who were recognisably his and Thorfinn’s. Then they were within range of Grágás, and the direction of the barbs altered.
His hands about another man’s throat, Thorkel Fóstri held on until he felt the enemy slacken, and then, plunging for Thorfinn’s flagship, seized a rope and got himself aboard with his axe safely still at his belt. Then he saw the Norwegian boat already lashed to Thorfinn’s other beam, and the dead lying under his feet, and, snatching somebody’s shield, set himself grimly to weather the curtain of arrows falling from the second enemy ship, and to collect what men he could to repel a second boarding while the red cliffs he had escaped once began to come nearer and nearer.
At his shoulder, someone said, ‘They’re mad. They’ll have to disengage and row, or we’ll all crash.’
It was Arnór Jarlaskáld, white of face but apparently unscathed. ‘In verse,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, panting, as he hefted a newly come casting-spear, aimed, and flung. ‘In verse, mighty Grettir-battler. That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it?’
But of course Arnór was right. He could not understand the enemy’s purpose. That three of the great ships had been able to concentrate on Grágás meant, he knew, that the longships of their own fleet must have suffered desperate losses. The dead on Thorfinn’s ship alone showed what his self-imposed task of monitor must have cost him. It was true, as well, that until the solid flotilla now spanning the sea took care also and began to pull westwards, movement away from the cliffs was almost impossible.
Then, over his shoulder, he saw bare masts moving and realised that part of the fleet at least was disengaging and rowing out of the current. At the same moment, Grágás swung, and an outbreak of hoarse cheering behind him suggested that one attacker, at least, had been repelled and cut loose. He could do no more than guess, for the enemy ship now close on his side had deployed no oars to hold its position or to escape the current, but was allowing the tide to fetch it nearer and nearer while bringing to bear on them, with smooth efficiency, the crushing assault by missile that was the preface to boarding.
And around him, men were dying. He threw back what weapons he got, for by this stage in the long battle it was clear that Thorfinn had no reserves left, of casting-spears or of arrows. For a moment, indeed, the fighting was so hard that he thought he was fainting, for his eyes blurred, and the prow of the enemy ship for a moment seemed wreathed in smoke, as if its dragon had come to life and the golden-haired demon at its neck, laughing, was a thing of white flame and sulphur.
Then he saw the reason for the suicidal attack, and why they need look for no withdrawal. The enemy ship reaching their side was the flagship, and the man in the prow was Earl Rognvald.
Thorfinn’s voice said, ‘I can’t bring any more to help you. We’ve cut loose from the other ship, but she’s still there, and there’s a third coming up on the stern. The mist may just save us.’ A spear, flashing across, glanced off the bright rim of his shield, and he swore under his breath as his hand on the strap took the jolt. There was blood on his neck, and his sword-hand was thick with it.
Thorkel said, ‘Mist?’
‘Rognvald will drive his ship on the rocks if he has to, but the rest won’t. When it gets to mast-height, they’ll disengage and start rowing. Otherwise, the tide-race through the firth will simply swallow them. Look. It’s catching us now. Whether we row or not, we’re setting to the south of Hoy.’
‘White Christ, protect us,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Tor Ness is down there. All right. The rest will make westwards. But Rognvald won’t. Rognvald will follow you.’
They spoke in gasps. It was as much as he could do to risk a tearing glance over his shoulder. But Thorfinn was right. It was mist, and coming down fast, with swathes already lying between ship and ship, and a strange white light on all their faces. Behind, a sudden brightening told that the enemy ship lying there had veered off. A moment later, the vessel astern had begun to move also, oars glancing with light.
Thorfinn’s voice rolled over Grágás. For a moment, on Thorkel Fóstri’s side, there were no defenders at all. Then, on every second or third two-man thwart there was an oar thrust through its slot, and the hazed golden prow was swinging slowly and cleanly away from the white-swaddled red of the cliffs and into the shadowed white curtain that had stolen the place of the sky and the sea.
Behind, on Rognvald’s white ship, there was a glint of gold and a glint of silver and a voice calling, cutting in contempt and in anger. This time, Rognvald was not laughing.
Then the mist came fully down, and he and his ship hung on its wall for a moment and then disappeared.
Thorkel Fóstri sat down.
The roll of the ship roused him. That, and Thorfinn’s grip on his arm, and Thorfinn’s fist with a horn full of strong liquor in it. The golden helm set aside, his foster-son’s face was smeared with blood and dirt, the black brows a single bar under the disordered black hair.
‘Drink,’ said Thorfinn. ‘We’re rounding Tor Ness, or so Otkel swears. I’m trying for Aith.’
The bay of Aith, a notch in the south coast of Hoy, was past the next headland, and the next headland at flood-tide was a killer. Thorkel Fóstri lifted the horn from his mouth and said, ‘You’re rowing blind into Aith on the flood? You’re crazy!’ and meant it, for round them the whiteness was absolute: even the horns of the prow and the stern had vanished into the mist, and rowers three benches off were barely visible.
A good man in a calm sea might circumnavigate Tor and Brims Ness by the kick of the eddy and the hiss of the breakers. Roaring down on the tide, lurching, juddering through the cross-currents, hammering into the fall-back, and squealing and grinding as her timbers and rigging complained, Grágás deadened the ear with her clamour, so that the screams of her wounded hardly registered, and the voices of helmsman and look-out, crying to one another, had to be carried repeating like elixir from prow to stern and back again.
Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘And you’ve lost your freeboard. You’re shipping water. What’s pulling you down?’
‘We’re carrying seventy dead,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Only half of them mine.’ He shouted something to someone, and they replied: he turned back, holding on with both hands. ‘But still not enough to fight Rognvald with. He thought I was escaping him.’
‘And, my God, aren’t you?’ Thorkel Fóstri said. Aith Hope, bad as it was, offered some prospect of shelter until the mist lifted, by which time the easterly flow would have weakened. There was an eddy, if you knew how to catch it, that ran from mid
-firth doubling back into the shore this side of Easter Head. Take that, and they might find themselves safe back in Thurso before Rognvald came hunting. Or run through the firth and turn southwards for Moray. With more dead than living to crew him, Thorfinn could expect nothing at Rognvald’s hands but the vilest of deaths.
On the other hand, out there to the west were the remains of sixty longships, interleaved with the great ships of Rognvald’s command and rowing blind in the mist to hold their own against the sweep of the flood and avoid being sucked through the neck of the firth to destruction. Those who were fully manned still might just manage it. The rest would end, dead men and timbers, in the rocky jaws of the passage. Then the mist would rise, and, baulked of his principal victim, Rognvald and his ships would turn on the longships amongst them and make sure that before they died, their crews cursed their King who had left them.
He waited, then, for Thorfinn’s rebuttal, which meant his death as well as Thorfinn’s, and was confused when instead Thorfinn said, ‘Temporarily, there is no doubt. But have you forgotten the six ships at Longhope?’
‘Longhope?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. It became impossible to sit any longer with dignity, and so, slowly, he stood, legs spread, one hand on the rigging. Then he said, ‘Kalv Arnason?’ The longship rolled, and righted herself.
‘As you say,’ Thorfinn said.
‘But he’s on Rognvald’s side. He crossed to Rognvald.’
‘Did you see him fighting for Rognvald just now?’ Thorfinn said.
Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘He doesn’t need to. He’s been promised his farm back in Norway. He has only to stay out of the fighting. He’ll lose Egge if he helps you. He won’t.’
‘Maybe he won’t,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But it would only be civil to give him the chance. He owes me something.’
‘He owes you his skin,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘But then, so does Rognvald. That night in the haugr. You had only to walk away.’
‘On my broken leg?’ said Thorfinn.
‘Don’t be a fool. He would have killed you.’
‘Perhaps,’ Thorfinn said.
‘Well?’ said his foster-father. Now that he felt stronger, the full force of his anger was rising.
‘Well,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I don’t think Kalv would care, personally, to drive the knife in my back. But even if he did, there is the matter, isn’t there, of Uncle Harald’s forthcoming arrival? Magnús may well present Kalv with Egge, but Harald may not be pleased to let him keep it.’
Thorkel Fóstri stared at him. ‘You are relying on that?’
‘Partly,’ said Thorfinn placatingly. ‘For the rest, we must depend on Kalv’s strong sense of family. Remember? You used to complain of it again and again.’
‘O Body of God,’ said Thorkel Fóstri, and gripped the rigging as the timbers heaved and jolted under him and the whiteness hid what was ahead.
To six dragon-ships, fog-bound in a harbour, the ghost of another approaching is a matter for drumbeating and horns, and also for standing to arms, since the newcomer might be an enemy or, even worse, in the hands of a cousin.
To Kalv Arnason, alert on the prow of his longship, it was therefore a matter of relief that the newcomer, far from approaching, merely slid to the side of the little anchorage and there let down her anchor, following this trusting action by lowering two of her skiffs. Watching these, as they passed and repassed to the shore, it appeared to Kalv Arnason that they were unloading something, in quantity, but the mist was too thick to see what.
He sent a man to his furthermost ship to see what a swimmer could make of it, and the swimmer came back, sullen and dripping, inside one of the skiffs he was observing, with two men rowing and a third man, tall as a tree, in the bows.
He knew who it was even before the skiff arrived, bumping gently, and the tall man stood up and said, ‘We have been unloading dead men, eighty of them. And twenty wounded. How are you, Kalv? My wife your niece sends her greetings, and so does your cousin Thorkel Fóstri, who is with me, there on Grágás. Are you going to ask me on board?’
‘Thorfinn,’ said Kalv Arnason, with the least flatness in the ebullient voice, and the least pallor in the healthy face. He said, ‘I have not the slightest objection, of course. And I am glad to see that you yourself have taken no harm. But is it wise? With Rognvald behind you, it would be prudent to prepare to make over the firth at the first lifting of the mist. It disappears, as you know, often as fast as it comes.’
‘Then,’ said Thorfinn, ‘since good advice is always worth listening to, and you have not the least objection to my boarding, will you let down your ladder before your fenders take harm, and give me more of it?’
And so, despite himself, he was sitting presently beside Earl Thorfinn drinking ale under his own stern shelter, with the horn cracking under his finger-bones as he gathered the strength to look into that tranquil, battle-marked face and defy it.
‘Did it seem to you,’ Thorfinn said, ‘when you swung the axe that killed King Olaf, that his half-brother Harald was pleased or otherwise? Naturally, you will have given this problem much thought, since if Rognvald wins, the King of Norway may still have to deny you that dear homeland of Egge that your wife brought you when you killed her first husband. But then, even so, no doubt you have discussed with Rognvald what part of Orkney he will give you to farm under his rule when he is vassal for all the islands to Norway?’
Kalv Arnason took a quick drink, and his jaw set in the obstinate line that his cousin Thorkel would have recognised. ‘Under you, my dear nephew,’ he said, ‘I had a pittance in Caithness.’
‘Naturally,’ Thorfinn said. ‘With one-third of Orkney in my hands and my nephew Rognvald to battle against, I had nothing to spare. With all Orkney behind me, it would be different. I should owe Norway nothing. And especially I should need a strong man I could trust in the Western Isles.’
‘The Western Isles?’ said Groa’s uncle.
‘To gather the tribute and see it well guarded. The man I have at present is worthless. There are plenty of pickings in the islands,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And good land. As good as Egge, I believe. It might,’ said Thorfinn, ‘be worth considering, if a quiet life appeals to you. Because if an accident were to befall me, I don’t know who would worry you most: King Olaf’s kinsfolk or Thore Hund’s son, your nephew Siward of Northumbria …?’
Grágás had finished unloading by the time the skiff came back from Kalv’s ship, and the mist was thin enough to see that Thorfinn was in it. Infuriatingly, he neither signalled nor said anything of significance until he was fully aboard and standing beside his foster-father, with the fifty men he had left crowding about him.
‘Well?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘Is he for you or against you?’
‘Why, for us,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Did you ever doubt it? And if you will give him time, there are thirty men crossing over to fill up our row-benches so that we shall have no trouble in catching up with Earl Rognvald, once we see him. And by the look of the mist, we may not have so long to wait.… Have you drunk all the ale?’
Of the ninety ships who had met in conflict that afternoon off the west coast of Hoy, perhaps half survived the fight and the mist to be revealed one to another when, five hours later, the south-east wind lifted again and began to blow the vapour away.
They lay broached- to on the waves, scattered over the seas to the west, with the wreckage of those in collision and those overturned floating abandoned between them. The battle had cost them lives. But the exhaustion laid on them all by the sea hung over every ship like a shroud, so that, even when vision returned, the oars barely moved more than was required of them, and men looked about them sluggishly, with their hands empty of weapons.
Then, from the smallest ships, the cheering began, ragged and scattered, but enough to make Earl Rognvald pause from where he strode from bench to bench on the white flagship, joking, laughing, insulting, encouraging: stirring his hird to collect their fleet and prepare for battle again. He leaped to the prow
and looked at the longships and where they were pointing.
Then he saw, as they had done, the six clean, striped sails skimming taut-bellied round Hoy towards him, led by a sail he saw in his dreams, sewn with patterns of silk in gold and scarlet and white, with before it a high golden prow he knew as well, above the flash of red strakes at each curtsey.
The cheer, from Thorfinn’s men, was for Thorfinn, who had not deserted them. The silence he felt all around him was the silence of recognition and fear; for all his men knew the Arnmødling colours.
Kalv, the turncoat, had turned again, or been made to turn, by the disarming tongue, the schooled face, the unschooled eyes that had been his own downfall, or nearly.
Seven fresh ships against his weary ones, which were still more than twice that number. Odds good enough, surely, to make certain that, out of all those seven ships, one man at least should not live out the day.
Rognvald gave the order to row, and, signalling, drew his flock again under his command: some to join him, and the rest to move quickly against the lesser ships, and the weaker, before they could unite.
It was eight hours after midday, and the east-going tide, feeble now, squabbled under the wind, so that the oars dug into the waves and men lost their footing, a minor nuisance. Battle had begun. And there were two hours of daylight left, to see it finished.
All Rognvald’s men knew the Arnmødling colours. It was by no accident, then, that the six ships led by Kalv made straight for the longships that held Rognvald’s men and, with their strong bows and bright casting-spears, began to beat them into surrender.
From where they were occupied in their slaughter among the small ships of Thorfinn’s scattered flotilla, the big vessels from Norway noticed, and began to signal uneasily, one to the other.
Grágás, the King’s flagship, paid no attention to any other ship on the sea, but, sail down, rowed on a ramming-course straight for the white dragon of Rognvald.
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