"Fins would be the better gear,” choked Helgi Whitehead, shaking the sea-water from his face as he worked hip-deep in a dark flood. Then the sea closed its jaws on its prey. The patch tore away, and as the headland rose gaunt and dimly shining on their starboard bow, the tide flooded in. Another wave broke over her poop and filled her to the oar-ports. Then her stern heaved up wearily. Gleaming rocks lifted their teeth out of the roaring tumult on her starboard side.
"A wet burying for us, and the fishes have it,” commented Helgi Whitehead as the Raven poised herself, and then she struck.
Niall was catapulted straight over the bulwarks by the impact.
Blinded and half-stunned, he was buried and borne down under roaring, solid water. He rasped against the Raven’s hull, his lungs bursting and bright lights flashing across his vision. Automatically he struck out. For a brief moment, in the trough of a wave, his head broke the surface and he gulped spray-filled air; then another breaker crushed him down and the undertow dragged him under, still fighting. Something struck his whole side a violent blow, pain paralysed him, and he sank helplessly into black darkness.
His senses came slowly and painfully back to him. At first he was vaguely aware that he was sprawling face-down on something rough and hard, and an intermittent icy wetness assailed his legs. All round him was a noise of roaring water and rattling stones. He opened aching eyes, raised his head a little and focused them on damp pebbles. He stared at one that was striped grey and white as though it could tell him how he came here. Then he turned his head. A few feet away a gull that had been inspecting him with its evil yellow eye uttered a harsh, derisive yelp and flapped away to seek another meal.
Niall’s right arm was doubled under his body, his left flung wide. With a grim effort that sent pain stabbing through him, he heaved himself up on his elbow, waited with his swimming head hanging down until it felt safe to lift it, and then struggled up, propping himself on his left arm to stare dazedly out over the sea.
It was high morning, and the storm blown out, though a brisk wind was driving frothing breakers slantwise across the little bay, and white clouds were scurrying overhead in a blue sky. The headland with its fangs of rock reached out on his left; some odd freak of the currents had swept him past the point and round into the slack water beyond, to cast him up here. He had lain on this shingle for some time; the receding tide had left only his legs in the water. It was close to a miracle that he lived at all. He looked about him, turning his head with some difficulty. Gulls were screaming and calling, soaring over the tumbled water and dotting the dark low cliffs with their white bodies. A pair of oyster-catchers ran back and forth along the water’s edge, piping plaintively. Nothing else lived. There was no sign of the Raven, nor of his crew. Niall tried to rise, but fierce pain wrenched him and he sank back onto the pebbles, sick and shuddering.
The tide had left his feet when he moved again, and this time managed to sit up. The pain centred itself in his right thigh, and half-stupidly he twisted to examine it. From hip to knee his braies were clotted to his flesh with sticky blood, but he could move the leg, so his first hideous dread of a broken thigh-bone was mistaken. The fear had helped to clear his head, and he fumbled clumsily at the knot of his cross-garters, hard and tight with soaking. Vaguely he remembered a struggle for life in black water, and a stunning blow. He must have been dashed either against the Raven's hull or a rock, but he had no more than grazed it. His leg was scored with shallow slashes, and most of the skin was gone, painful but trivial. He looked out over the roaring breakers and the rocks and drearily wondered how he had passed them alive.
Presently Niall struggled to his feet and staggered a few paces to a boulder that offered him support. He leaned against its rough side spotted with limpets and stared again at the headland. He groaned aloud. From this angle he could see the high prow of his Raven, wedged between the rocks and still thrusting a carved black beak at the blue sky. The waves clawed at her, flinging white fountains of spray over the proud head. All else was lost and broken in the wild green water that sparkled under the sun, and another tide would tear away that last wreckage. Not a man of his crew was in sight. He set his teeth and pushed erect, and limped painfully over the loose shingle to the great rocks lower down under the headland. Gulls screeched and soared, the oyster-catchers opened broad pied wings and flapped away, and the pebbles roared and rattled in one great grinding tumult as the waves crashed upon them.
He came past the rocks, and exclaimed sharply. A few yards away a dark body tumbled in the surf, grounding as the waves receded and floating as every creamy crest surged up the shingle. Niall stumbled down the slope. Pale hair streamed like strange tow-coloured weed, and he splashed into the sea croaking, “Helgi! Helgi” The first wave almost washed his trembling legs from under him, but he braced himself, staggered in with its backwash over ankle-deep, and grabbed at a clinging sodden tunic. He heaved at Helgi’s shoulder, and fell to one knee in his weakness.
The next wave broke over him and tried to roll him over and drag him away, but he shook the water blindly from his face and got to his feet, still gripping Helgi’s tunic. He dragged him, inert and heavy, over the turning pebbles and beyond the sea’s clutch. In the shallow water the body grounded firmly, and he could pull no further. He rolled Helgi onto his back, and then cried out and flung up his arm before his eyes. He turned and staggered back up the drying shingle, tripped and fell full-length. There was no mistaking Helgi’s flax-white mane, but of his impudent face there was nothing left, after the rocks had had their way with him.
The gulls were yelping and gliding round the body when Niall moved again, and the bolder ones were already ringed about it. As he lifted his head, one hopped upon its breast, and the hooked yellow beak lunged at the raw skull turned to the sky. Niall gasped and feebly snatched up a stone to throw. The bird soared up and swung in circles, shrieking malevolently. Niall shuddered, crossed himself and muttered a prayer for the dead, and then grimly turned away. For the first time it came to him that he might be the only man who had reached the shore alive, but he thrust that hideous thought from his mind. The other survivors must have landed on the other side of the point; it was an unlikely trick of the eddy that had swept him round it. As soon as he was steady on his feet he must climb it and find them.
He turned his back resolutely on the sea and looked to the land. The shingle yielded to coarse pebbly sand, and beyond that rough tussocks of sea-thrift and wiry grass climbed the slopes and topped the headland, where the gulls were nesting. Behind them tall dark woods lifted to the sunny sky along the steep banks of a narrowing cleft. Niall stumbled painfully up the shingle and floundered through the pebbly sand, where empty shells crunched under his rawhide shoes.
He heard a ripple of water, and suddenly realized that he was desperately thirsty. He struggled slantwise along the slope, tripping among the tussocks, and came at last upon a tiny brook hurrying over its stony bed to the sea. The water was brown and turbid from heavy rain, but he dropped heavily to his knees, cupped his hands and scooped it up, gulping avidly. Then pain knotted his belly, and he doubled up in a spasm of nausea, vomiting the sea-water he had swallowed. He sprawled on the wet grass for unreckoned time, limp with exhaustion. At last he roused, drank again, rolled onto his back and rested for a little while.
Niall no longer felt hunger, only a numb emptiness at his middle and a trembling weakness in all his muscles. He was equally numb to cold, though there was scarcely any warmth in the spring sunshine and the sharp wind bit through his sodden, sticky clothing. It would have been very easy to lie where he was until sleep drifted him uncaring into death’s hold, but thought of his men drove him. He lifted his head and looked at the headland he must climb to seek the wreck’s other survivors. Then he heaved himself to his knees and to his feet.
He reeled and steadied himself with difficulty, a very tall, powerful young man in a scarlet tunic that had been splendid. His black hair hung dulled and tangled over his shoulders,
but his beard was trimmed close. Broad gold rings clasped both arms, a heavy chain of silver and amber hung about his neck, and a circular brooch of intricately-entwined golden dragons with garnet eyes was pinned at his throat. The oddly-curved knife at his right hip had haft and sheath of bright bronze patterned with silver inlay, his sword-belt was of linked silver plates, and the pommel of his sword-hilt was also silver. His lips twisted in a grim smile as he reflected that his gear made him well worth murdering.
He was looking for the easiest way up the slope when he heard a yell that was no gull’s cry, and turned his head. Higher up the headland on his left stood a man, sharp and dark against the sky. He brandished a spear and hallooed, legs braced apart as he twisted to summon his comrades. Heads and shoulders bobbed up along the crest, half a dozen or more; then someone shouted high and clear, and three of them diverged along the edge of the woods to cut him off from escape that way.
Niall was in no state either to run or fight, but he was not a sheep for easy butchery and he would not fare forth alone. He backed down the beach to set the tall rocks behind him. Men were slithering and scrambling down the headland and over the tussocks and crunching sands, shouting to each other as they came. They were not warriors, but peasants in rough homespun and sheepskins; there was no helmet, shield or byrnie among them, and they were armed with knives and clubs and a wolf-spear or two. His end would do him no honour; in normal vigour he would have laughed and run at such a rabble. Now he clambered painfully over a ridge of rock, floundering on the slippery seaweed that draped it, and then over another, to set his back against an up-jutting mass of stone patterned with grey-white limpets.
The first of his pursuers, fleet and slight and crowned with flame, reached the rocks as he faced them, and without further ado hurled his spear. He twisted aside, and it rang angrily, rebounded and rattled at his feet. He looked down into a furious beardless face, livid with hatred, and a curious shock assailed his entrails at the realization that a child would slay him. The daring lad leaped up onto the slippery weed and sidled crabwise to his left, and two more spears levelled for a throw beyond him. Niall crossed himself stiffly, drew his sword and lifted the cross of its hilt briefly to his lips, and commended his soul to Christ and the holy Saints. Under his breath he began to repeat the prayers for the dying, ducking under the second spear as his dazed brain fumbled the words. A stone beat into his midriff and doubled him up, gasping feebly. The next spear would finish him. But the lad had flung up a hand, shouting an imperious command, and the spear did not fly. The men below stood fast, gaping at him. Niall straightened up and stared dizzily into the level grey eyes in a lean freckled face. Fire-red hair blazed in the sun and dazzled his weary eyes.
“Are you Christian?” the lad demanded sharply, in speech differently accented but much like his own.
Another shock smote him; this was no lad, but a girl with her gown hitched almost to her knees and two thick ropes of red hair swinging past slight breasts. He stared witlessly at her, and her brows came together. She stooped and snatched up one of the fallen spears to menace him.
“You crossed yourself! Are you Christian or heathen?”
Niall's sight was blurring, so that the sunny shore vanished in a mist through which only the red head and grey eyes shone like a winter sun, but he caught at his failing wits and croaked, “Christian.” His sword drooped, intolerably heavy, from his weak hand, and he clutched at the limpet-studded rock to hold himself upright.
The girl came closer, staring keenly and suspiciously up at him. “Only pirates have come from the sea before you,” she said grimly. “But if you are truly a Christian you need not fear us. Come down.”
Niall leaned against the rock to brace his melting legs and mutely shook his head. If he moved from its support he would fall, and it was swaying like the gunwale of a ship at sea. The red-haired girl, whose bright eyes were now the only reality in the darkening mist, saw how matters went with him and started forward, calling to the men to help. Her voice faded thinly in his ears. Before any could reach him the last strength ran out of him. His knees buckled, the mist whirled and fell upon his head, and he subsided ignominiously full-length on the slippery weeds at the girl’s feet.
2
Niall woke to darkness and quiet. He sighed and stirred drowsily, and for a moment, feeling no hard planking beneath him shifting to the lift of the waves, he thought himself in some port of the Middle Sea, waking in a soft shore bed, and everything that pressed vaguely at his memory a nightmare. But he lay alone, which was not his custom when he lay ashore; there was no stir in the darkness but his own breathing. He moved more purposefully, and tried to put out a hand. He was so swaddled that it was impossible. Straw creaked and rustled under and about him, and dull pains assailed him. He lay rigid, memory spearing sharply into him with keener anguish; the Raven’s end, the dark water, Helgi dead on the shingle, the red-haired girl. He stared up into the darkness, his face contracting with bitter grief. But the straw was soft, the bed warm, his exhaustion still heavy. His eyes fell shut, he rolled onto his side and burrowed deeper into the softness, and slept again.
When some sound roused him for the second time, he woke alert and in one piece, lifting his head to look about him. Streaks of sunlight golden with dancing dust-motes slanted round the frame and through the chinks of a ramshackle door of warped boards, lighting the windowless gloom of a small shed. He was bedded in a heap of straw that nearly filled it, and he was warm and dry and comfortable for the first time in many days. He peered into the dark corners, but no one was with him, and he let his head sink back and relaxed in the quiet with a little sigh.
He had been kindly used. He was closely wrapped in a soft woollen blanket and heaped over with sheepskins. His skin felt fresh and smooth to his exploring hands, no longer crusted with salt, and his thigh had been bandaged. Even his hair had been washed clean of the sticky sea-water, and when he wriggled his arms free of the blanket and linked his hands under his head, it curled over them in its usual disorder. Some faint recollection came to him of being carried into a crowded room, of a hot fire, many hands stripping him, the blessed comfort of hot water. The red-haired girl had indeed dealt well by him, and when anxiety gripped him again for his men from the Raven he thrust it away. Few of them were Christians, but surely his faith must be their shield too?
Anxiety would not be dismissed. He frowned at the dancing dust-motes, and all at once realized what was amiss. Gorm and Ari and Einar and all his comrades would never leave him senseless in strangers’ hands, alone and unguarded; if they were in this place, if they so much as knew where he lay, they would not be kept from his side. Yet he lay alone. He sat up, suppressing a groan. He was as stiff as a wooden dragon-head, and every muscle in his body twanged protest. He struggled out of his coverings, glanced impatiently about him for his clothing, and then caught up the blanket and swung it round his shoulders to cover his battered nakedness. Clutching it with one hand, he thrust open the crazy door.
A shaggy man squatting against the outside wall came to his feet in one lunge and presented a spear-point at his belly.
“Stand!” he growled.
Niall stared at him. Bitter blue eyes under a thatch of greying brown hair surveyed him malevolently, and the hands that gripped the spear-shaft were white-knuckled with fierce intent. His seamed and leathery face was alive with passionate hatred that desired nothing better than to drive the spear-point through to his backbone, and Niall did not stir a muscle. He knew he was too stiff and slow to evade the blow, and he waited impassively.
The man spat aside. “Wakened for judgment, heathen murderer? Thought you would sleep for ever!”
“What of my men? What have you done with my friends?” Niall demanded, cold fear clutching him.
“Get ready your own neck; you will burn in Hell wi’ ’em soon enough, never fret!” the man savagely recommended him.
“They are dead? Murdered?” His breath caught in his throat, and he shuddered violentl
y. The other man grinned at him in bitter delight at the success of that blow, and Niall saw, understood, and snatched at a faint hope. He might be lying to torment him. He straightened to his imposing height. “Take me instantly to your lord!” he commanded imperatively.
“And who bade you give orders here, heathen?” the man snarled, thrusting so that the spear-point jabbed into the blanket. A couple of young boys, also armed with spears, had drifted up behind him until their shadows touched Niall’s bare feet. Without turning his head or shifting his fierce eyes from Niall's face, the man said curtly, “Tell the master,” and one lad instantly turned and ran.
"Stick him through the guts, Eglaf,” said the second boy, regarding Niall with the same grim hatred.
“A rope and a tall tree will serve him better,” the man answered.
The two eyed him like wolves closing in on a deer at bay, wary and ready but sure of their meat. That sureness chilled Niall with it's implication that he was judged and doomed before he could speak to defend himself, but he paid no apparent attention. One self-betrayal was enough. The first boy was pelting back across the trampled garth, jumping the shining puddles as he ran. “Fetch him to the hall!” he called.
“Foward, you!” ordered Eglaf, jabbing emphatically at Niall’s ribs. “Keep out o’reach, Wilfric!”
Niall stalked impatiently forward, anger and anxiety lending illusory steadiness to his legs. He had no eyes for his surroundings, or for anything except Wilfric leading the way. His heart was thumping, his belly weighted with icy dread for what he must learn. One and thirty men had sailed with him into the storm, friends and comrades who had proved their love and loyalty over and over, and he clutched one hope to him; surely folk who had used him decently would not have murdered shipwrecked seamen. He did not notice the mud and dung through which his bare feet passed, nor the bitter eyes that watched from the doorways of surrounding huts.
The Price of Blood Page 2