“What about His Nibs?” Thorn called, gesturing to the Sha’shan, a huddled figure at the base of the mast. The man looked pale. He had no real comprehension of what was coming, but he knew it was going to be extremely unpleasant.
And dangerous.
“He can stay where he is,” Hal said. He didn’t want the Sha’shan in the stern with the rest of the crew. If they needed to move, he’d be in the way. “Check his bindings,” he added as an afterthought.
Thorn ran nimbly aft and leaned down to check the thongs that tied the Sha’shan’s wrists to the mast. He signaled to Hal that they were firmly tied, then retraced his steps to the bows.
The ship was moving faster now as the current grew stronger. She began to yaw to one side and Hal had to heave on the steering oar to straighten her up again.
“Ulf! Wulf!” he called. “Faster! We need to keep steerage way!”
It seemed madness to row even faster than they were traveling. But the Heron had to be moving faster than the water flowing around her, or she would become like a twig on the water, carried along by the current and impossible to steer accurately.
The twins bent their backs to their oars and heaved, grunting with the effort. Heron accelerated until she seemed to be moving at breakneck speed.
Then they rounded the final bend, and the rapids lay ahead of them.
chapter thirty-four
The center of the downhill race was smooth and glossy, like a piece of curved, polished metal. On either bank, the water smashed and boiled around the rocks, sending a constant curtain of spray high into the air over the river. Waves bounced back from the shore toward the middle of the river, where the sheer speed of the current smoothed them out once more.
Trusting that there were no rocks in the center of the stream, Hal headed the ship toward it. He was off center, to the left of the smooth-looking passage. As the bow tipped down over the edge, the ship was still not aligned properly.
She shot downward, her bow hanging over the drop for a few heart-stopping seconds, then slamming into the racing water, fanning huge sheets of spray on either side. Hal felt the current taking control of her. The water was moving past them, faster than the ship was traveling, and he lost steerage way.
“Ulf! Wulf! Pull harder!” he yelled.
The twins increased their efforts on the oars, but the stern continued to yaw to the left. Hal might not have steerage way, but he could still use the leverage of the steering oar to drag the ship back onto a straight course. He heaved, but the force of the current was too great and he felt her swinging further, threatening to broach.
If that happened, she would be lying crosswise to the current and they wouldn’t last five seconds. The racing water would roll her over and she would become another piece of flotsam being hurled downriver, spilling her crew out into the water, with no control over her actions.
“Ingvar! Help!” Hal yelled.
Ingvar scrambled to seize the steering oar with him. Together they heaved, hauling the ship’s stern bodily to the right. The oar bent alarmingly under Ingvar’s enormous strength, and Hal felt a moment of panic. If that oar broke, they were finished.
“Ease up a little!” he shouted.
Ingvar reduced the pressure on the oar. The frightening bend in the shaft disappeared and, strangely, their reduced efforts seemed to have a greater effect. Slowly, the stern began to swing back to the right, to starboard, until the ship was centered in the wild current.
But then Stig, in the bow on the port side, sighted a rock a few centimeters below the surface, bearing down on the Heron’s vulnerable planking. He braced his feet, shoved his pole out and set it against the rock, at the same time heaving with all his might to take the bow to the right.
Which caused the opposite reaction in the stern, swinging it back to the left, undoing all the work that Hal and Ingvar had done, placing the ship diagonally across the current once more.
“Heave!” yelled Hal, and their combined effort slowly brought the stern back until she was almost centered in the current. Then Thorn yelled a warning to Stefan and pointed to another fanglike piece of rock, this time just below the surface, on the starboard side. Stefan lunged with the long spar in his hands, got a solid purchase on the rock and heaved. The bow swung, this time to the left, causing a corresponding swing to the right at the stern.
When it happened, Hal and Ingvar were still heaving on the steering oar, trying to bring the stern back to the right. The sudden additional force took them by surprise as the stern swung wildly in the direction they were seeking. Ingvar, caught off balance, stumbled and fell to the deck, leaving Hal struggling with the oar, trying to stop this new and unexpected swing to the right.
Ingvar was up again in a second, back beside Hal, adding his strength to the skirl’s.
But they were behind the rhythm of the river, constantly having to react to the wild swings and swoops the Heron was making. They would correct the movement, but then find they had overcorrected and have to work once more to bring the ship under control. Hal felt a grating impact under his feet and his blood ran cold as Heron just managed to scrape over an underwater rock shelf, which had been invisible in the racing water.
The drag threw the ship to the right. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“There’s another drop!” Thorn yelled the warning a second or two before Heron plunged over another shelf in the river, which created a downhill drop of several meters. Heron shot out over the drop, with half her length clear of the water. Then her nose dropped with an alarming crash into the river, and water flooded over her decks.
Amidships, the Sha’shan lost his grip on the mast, although he was still tied securely to it. He was tumbled about by the raging water as it swept over the decks, waist deep. He yelled out in panic, but then the water drained away and he was left lying on the deck at the foot of the mast.
In the stern, Hal and Ingvar clung to the steering oar, wedged against the bulwarks to receive the force of the water smashing over the ship. Hal felt himself sliding away as the water tugged at him. Then Ingvar had a firm grip on the collar of his jerkin and heaved him back to his position once more.
“Thanks,” Hal spluttered. He’d swallowed a mouthful of river water and coughed it up now.
Ingvar nodded. “We’re off center,” he said. “She’s still trying to broach.”
Hal nodded, heaving on the oar and almost getting the ship straight with the current again. For’ard, he could hear Stig, Thorn and Stefan yelling to one another, warning of new hazards flying toward them. The ship heaved and tossed as they shoved her away from the rocks. But Ingvar was right, she was still slightly side on, with her stern trying to sag away to the left.
“We’re nearly through it,” Hal said, peering ahead, blinking the spray out of his eyes and seeing the river leveling out some seventy meters ahead. “Just keep her straight for a few minutes longer.”
At the oars, Ulf and Wulf were still heaving valiantly, trying to gain Hal the steerage way he needed. But the current was too fast for them, and Heron was swept downstream, on the very edge of being out of control. Only Ingvar’s mighty strength was keeping her more or less straight, but with the constant counterswings caused by Stig and Stefan in the bow, even he couldn’t bring her completely under control.
They started to sag off again to the left, heading for a boiling maelstrom where the river’s main current ran through a tumble of rocks, sending spray and white water into the air in a constant mist. Sensing the ship sliding sideways, Ulf and Wulf rowed even harder, and the bow began to swing back.
The river ran down another meter-high step here. There was a narrow path through the rocks, just wide enough to let the Heron pass through. Hal pointed to it and shouted above the roar of the wild water.
“Head for the center of the gap! Ulf! Wulf! Pull for your lives!”
With the twins
rowing frantically and Hal and Ingvar heaving on the steering oar, they managed to line the ship up with the narrow gap between the rocks. She shot into it, bows high as the remaining crew members huddled as far aft as they could get. Then, as the bows started to come down, Hal saw the rock that had been hidden by the drop in the river.
There was nothing he could do to avoid it. They were committed to their course, and there was no way they could check or turn the ship.
Heron smashed down onto the rock with a horrible cracking sound and an impact that Hal could feel through the deck under his feet. His heart wept. He could tell his beautiful ship was badly hurt.
Fortunately, the rock was flat, with no projecting spurs to bite into the hull’s planks. But the terrible impact had done massive damage. The current plucked her clear and swept her away downriver, sagging sideways, but slowly recovering as they reached calmer water.
“Is she all right?” Ingvar asked. He’d heard the cracking noise and felt the stunning impact under his feet as well.
Hal shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” But there was no time now to think about it. He yelled at the crew members huddled in the stern.
“Back on the oars! We need to get to where the river narrows.”
Jesper scrambled to the rowing benches. Stefan came from the bows to join him. Then Ingvar and Stig, realizing the need for speed, joined the rowing team as well.
Hal had no time to remount the tiller. He remained on the steering oar as the ship picked up speed again. But she felt strange, responding awkwardly to his movements of the steering oar, seeming to fishtail when he tried to turn her.
“Edvin!” he snapped. “See if she’s taking on water.”
He’d be surprised if she weren’t, he thought. That impact could have sprung loose half a dozen planks, if it didn’t cause any more serious damage.
Edvin hurried forward to the hatch that led down into the hull where they could check water intake and, if necessary, pump it overside. He was back in a few minutes.
“She looks all right, Hal,” he said. “There’s a bit of water. Maybe a seam or two has opened. But nothing we can’t handle.”
Hal grunted, twitching the steering oar again and feeling the sluggish, broken response from the ship. There was something wrong, he knew. Something more serious than a few strained seams in the hull.
Edvin noticed the movement. “How’s she steering?”
Hal hesitated before he answered. “Badly. She’s sagging and twisting when I try to turn her.” He paused, then added, “Maybe it’s the steering oar.”
Edvin nodded hopefully. “Maybe. She’s bound to feel different without the tiller.”
Hal said nothing. In his heart, he knew the problem didn’t lie with the steering oar. But he had no more time to think about it. They were coming to the spot he’d mentally chosen to stop the Temujai’s attack. The river ran through a canyon and the banks narrowed. The eastern bank had barely two meters of flat ground before the rocks soared away above it. On the western side, the side where the Temujai would appear, it was a little wider. But still defensible, with only twelve meters of clear space between the water and the surrounding cliffs.
“We’re going in!” he called. “Stig, Jesper, get ready to moor up. The rest of you, easy on the oars now.”
Gingerly, under the reduced thrust of the oars, he felt his way to the bank, letting the bow slide onto the mud as gently as he could manage. Heron came to rest, heeling over to the right as she nosed into the muddy shore. Stig and Jesper rigged mooring ropes. Hal stood in the bows with Thorn, pointing to the narrowest part of the bank.
“I need you to hold them here,” he said. “I’m heading for Hallasholm with the Sha’shan. I’ll send help back, but you need to stop them. We can’t let a couple of thousand Temujai break out onto the coastal plain. We’d never hold them.”
Thorn nodded. “We’ll build a rampart and a shield wall here,” he said. “So far, there are only a couple of hundred of them and they can only come at us on a narrow front. As I’ve said before, they’re not the best close-in fighters in the world. We are.” He clapped his young friend on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. They won’t get past us here. Just don’t be too long about coming back.”
Stig climbed back aboard and joined them. “How’s the ship?”
Hal bit his lip. There was no point in hiding the truth, he realized. “She’s in a bad way,” he said. “I think the keel is cracked.”
Stig’s face went a paler shade. “Broken?”
Hal shook his head. “If it were broken, she wouldn’t stay afloat. It’s cracked. I can feel her twisting and flexing when the current hits her or when I try to turn her.”
“So how will you get to Hallasholm?” Thorn asked.
“I’ll take Edvin with me and we’ll sail. Two of us can handle her in a pinch. She should hold up. It’s only a half day’s sailing and I’ll treat her gently. Just as long as the weather stays clear.”
They all glanced at the sky. There were the usual errant clouds drifting across the blue. The wind was offshore.
Thorn sniffed the air experimentally. “Doesn’t feel like a change,” he said. Then he turned and yelled at the crew.
“Let’s get the ship unloaded. Ulf, Wulf, Stefan, start digging a ditch between that split tree and the riverbank. The rest of you get busy unloading weapons and supplies. We’re going to hold off the entire Temujai nation here, so make that ditch as deep as you can.”
chapter thirty-five
When the defensive position was finished to Thorn’s satisfaction, Edvin prepared a meal for the crew. So far there was no sign of the pursuing Temujai. It was one good thing about their wild ride down the rapids, Hal thought gloomily. They had moved so quickly that they far outstripped the riders making their way through the thick trees.
Thorn finished his meal, wiped his plate with a piece of flatbread and licked his fingers. He nodded his thanks to Edvin.
“You make a good meal, even when you’re working with dried or salted food,” he said. Then he turned a mock scowl on Hal. “And you’re taking him with you—leaving us to Jesper’s tender mercies.” Jesper was the second-choice cook when Edvin wasn’t available. His skills were limited, to put it kindly.
“Oh, thank you very much,” Jesper said now. “There’s no need for you to eat what I serve up.”
“I’ll have whatever he doesn’t eat,” Stig offered cheerfully.
Jesper sniffed disdainfully. “That’s hardly a compliment to my cooking. You’d eat a warmed-over dead badger.”
Stig beamed at him. “Dead badger? Is that what we’re having for supper? Oh, yum.”
There was a general chuckle of amusement from the rest of the crew, and Hal looked around them warmly. These were the people who, several years ago, had been deemed not fit to be picked for any of the other brotherbands—the rejects. Yet here they were, cheerfully preparing to hold off hundreds of Temujai warriors in defense of their homeland.
“I wish I could stay with you,” he said softly to Thorn, who shrugged the sentiment aside.
“Better for you to get back to Hallasholm and raise the alarm as soon as possible,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “How’re you going to handle the ship, with just two of you?”
Hal had been thinking of this. Now he replied without hesitation. “I’ll set the port sail before we leave. Once we’re at sea, the wind will be from our starboard side so we can sail on a long reach back to Hallasholm.”
“Once you’re at sea,” Thorn repeated. “But what about going downriver?”
“I’ll use the port sail and yardarm when we’re on a starboard tack,” Hal answered. “When we tack to port, I’ll keep her on a foul tack.”
A foul tack was when the wind came from the same side as the hoisted sail, flattening a third of it against the mast. It reduced the sail’s
power by more than fifty percent. But it would keep them moving.
Stig frowned as he heard this. “That’ll slow you down.”
Hal nodded. “True. But we’ll have the river current with us and that’s still flowing pretty quickly down here.” He glanced around, looking up at the sun to gauge the time, studying the clouds to make sure the wind hadn’t shifted. “Well,” he said, “we’d better be going. Edvin? Let’s get aboard.” He grinned. “Jesper can look after the washing up.”
“Oh, thank you as well,” Jesper said, with a put-upon expression on his face. Edvin grinned. He’d been collecting the dirty plates and spoons from the rest of the crew. With a flourish, he handed them to Jesper.
“Be my guest,” he said, and followed Hal to the bank, where Heron stirred restlessly against her bow and stern lines, as if anxious to be on her way. The Sha’shan was already on board, tied once more to the mast.
Stig clambered lithely aboard with them, reached down to haul Kloof on board, then hoisted the port-side yardarm and sail. The sail flapped loosely in the breeze, without the sheets being tightened to hold it in place. Edvin moved to take hold of the sheets, ready to harness the wind’s power into the large triangular sail. Hal cast off the stern line, and Stig did the same at the bow. Then he ran lightly back and shook Hal’s hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “We’ll stop those pony-people here.”
“I know you will,” Hal replied.
“Just don’t be too long coming back with some help,” Stig said cheerfully. Then he dropped lightly over the rail and shoved the ship out into the current. Several of the other Herons joined him, pushing the ship out at an angle. There was a chorus of goodbyes and good wishes from those remaining behind as Edvin hauled in the sheet and tightened the sail into its usual smooth curve. Hal had refitted the normal tiller, and now he felt it bite as the ship started to glide through the water, angling out into the river.
Return of the Temujai Page 23