Slaves of Socorro

by John Flanagan

  He peered more closely, confused, not sure what he was seeing. Then he realised it was the square sail of a wolfship filling with the wind.

  ‘Here he comes!’ he yelled, pointing to port.

  Hal heard two dull thuds echo across the water – the sound of the two axes cutting Nightwolf’s light hawsers, although he didn’t know it at the time. Then the dark hull shot away from the wharf, her big square yard braced around to catch the wind at the best angle, the sail already full and powering the wolfship towards them at a prodigious rate. He could see the white beard of a bow wave at her waterline as she continued to gather speed. Tursgud’s tactic, while risky, had achieved his aim. She had gone from a dead stop to almost top speed in a matter of thirty metres. Hal gauged the distance to Nightwolf, then to the wharf she had left. A little over a hundred metres, he thought.

  He hoped.

  ‘How long was that hawser we tied to her?’ he asked Thorn, who was standing beside him. Like everyone on board, Thorn had his eyes glued on the rapidly approaching wolfship.

  Several of the Araluans, seeing Nightwolf bearing down on them, and recognising her as the slaver who had brought them here, cried out in alarm. They looked at Hal, wondering why he was taking no evasive action. Perhaps he thought they could outrun the blue ship. But it was obvious that they wouldn’t.

  ‘About a hundred metres – more or less,’ Thorn replied calmly.

  Hal snatched his eyes from the onrushing wolfship to look at Thorn in alarm. ‘Well, which is it? More or less?’ he asked. ‘That could make one great big difference here!’

  Thorn shrugged fatalistically. ‘Soon find out.’

  Hal nudged the tiller and edged Heron a little further away from the western shore. Nightwolf was terribly close now. Dimly, he registered the twang of Gilan’s bow, heard the whooshing release of Lydia’s atlatl as they began to shoot at the ship bearing down on them.

  Might kill a few of the crew, he thought. But it won’t slow the ship at all.

  A horrified thought struck him. What if, sometime in the past few days, Tursgud had discovered the hawser attached to his sternpost and removed it? He pictured the tall skirl laughing at Hal’s childish stratagem, waiting for his chance to smash Heron into splinters of driftwood.

  Nightwolf continued to bear down on them, moving faster and faster with every metre she travelled. Hal’s grip on the tiller tightened until his knuckles were white. She was only fifteen metres away and he could see the disturbance under her prow where the savage ram was sliding, just below the surface of the harbour.

  His mouth was dry with fear as he realised he’d outsmarted himself. The hawser had been discovered. Or had broken loose somehow. Any minute now the renegade wolfship would –

  There was a terrible CRACK! and Nightwolf’s bow reared up out of the water like a startled horse as she came to a dead stop. The water around her seemed to boil.

  The tall mast whiplashed forward, snapped at its halfway point, and came crashing down over the bow of the ship, bringing the sail and yardarm with it.

  Then they heard a dreadful rending noise that tore at Hal’s shipwright’s heart as Nightwolf’s sternpost was torn clear of her keel. The hawser stood up bar-taut behind it for a second, water squeezing from the weave of the rope, then whiplashed away as the sternpost was ripped clear.

  The sternpost was the anchor point for all the ship’s longitudinal planks. They curved round the carefully shaped frames and were fastened to the thick timber of the sternpost, forming the curved, narrow counter of the ship.

  With the sternpost gone, the planks sprang apart, leaving an enormous gap and opening the entire stern of the ship to the hungry seawater. The stern simply ceased to exist. The water rushed in and the boat filled and sank.

  It all happened in seconds.

  For a short time, a bubble of air trapped under the sail kept it floating on the surface of the harbour. Then the plunging weight of the sinking hull dragged it down after it and there was no sign of Nightwolf on the black water. A few bits and pieces of equipment floated there. Hal saw a bucket and a round shield drifting on the fast-running current towards the narrow channel that led out of the harbour. One or two heads bobbed on the surface and they could hear their desperate cries. Then they fell silent.

  Those on board the Heron were shocked to silence for a few seconds. Stig finally spoke.

  ‘By the gods of the Vallas,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’

  ‘I never want to again,’ said Lydia. The sudden destruction of the other ship was so violent, so fast, it had horrified her. One minute, the ship and its twenty crewmen were plunging towards them.

  The next, they were gone.

  ‘Can Tursgud swim?’ Hal asked of no one in particular.

  Stig, his eyes still riveted on the spot in the harbour where Nightwolf had disappeared, shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Thorn gruffly. ‘He was a pirate and a slaver and a renegade. And he was doing his best to kill us. I say good riddance.’

  Hal shook his head, numbed by what he had just seen. He hadn’t expected Nightwolf’s fate to be so sudden or so brutal.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  Thorn shoved him on the shoulder.

  ‘I know so! Now pull yourself together!’ he snapped. ‘We’ve still got to get out of this hellhole.’

  They were bearing down fast on the narrow exit channel. They’d keep the wind on their starboard side as they turned up into the first leg of the channel, then turn left for the final leg – the part that was guarded by the fort.

  And its battery of catapults.

  Hal swung the bow to starboard as they entered the first part of the channel, Ulf and Wulf hauling in the sail as he did so to keep it taut and powering them along.

  The moon was in the final stage of its movement across the heavens, enormous and orange as it sat just above the horizon, flooding the harbour with a soft light that was almost as bright as an overcast day. Hal could see the bristling line of beams that marked the trebuchets and catapults. They were hauled back, fully cocked, ready to throw the massive boulders loaded into their buckets.

  ‘The fort’s signalling,’ Stig said.

  Hal saw he was right. Just below the flagpole on the squat turret beside the channel, a signal hoist had been raised – three yellow lanterns, arranged in the form of an inverted triangle. He had no idea what that meant and he glanced at Thorn for an explanation.

  ‘It means lower your sail and bring your ship alongside the wharf,’ Thorn told him. ‘In other words, surrender or we’ll start shooting.’

  ‘How accurate are those things?’ Hal asked. He had no experience with the massive weapons the Socorrans were about to use.

  Thorn shrugged. ‘Not terribly,’ he said. ‘If I were in charge of them, I’d –’

  He was interrupted by a thundering, rolling crash of timber on timber, and the five machines all launched their huge missiles at once. A few seconds later, a ragged line of enormous splashes erupted across the channel, each one about ten metres from the next.

  ‘Ah,’ continued Thorn. ‘That’s what I was going to say. I’d pre-range them on the channel and shoot them in salvoes. Getting the range is the most difficult part with those throwing machines. They can swivel them on their bases as you go past, but ranging takes time. So they’ll shoot all five at once, and just blanket the channel.’

  ‘There’s a gap of ten metres between each one,’ Hal pointed out. ‘We could slip through that.’

  Stig grunted agreement, but Thorn shook his head.

  ‘You might. But that assumes that every shot will fall in exactly the same spot. Depending on the different weights of the rocks they’re throwing, the shots could vary by four or five metres either way.’

  Hal thought furiously. They were speeding down to the point where he’d have to turn left into the final channel – which was swept by the catapults. He could see the a
rms being hauled down again as their crews heaved them back, raising the counterweights that would hurl the rocks at them.

  ‘Gilan, Lydia. Ready to shoot,’ he said. ‘Stig and Ingvar, get for’ard to the Mangler.’

  ‘What are you planning?’ Thorn asked.

  Hal glanced quickly at him. ‘We’re going to make the gap wider,’ he said.

  Mahmel stood by the trebuchet in the centre of the line of siege weapons. He was screaming orders at the crew, striking out with the flat of his scimitar at those he thought weren’t obeying quickly enough.

  In his rage and haste, he sometimes allowed the edge to strike a glancing blow at the soldiers labouring at the windlasses that loaded the massive machines. Several of them had blood running freely down their arms. All of them looked darkly at him, hating him for his arrogance and cruelty.

  ‘Sink that ship!’ he raged. ‘Then get boats ready to drag her crew and passengers ashore. I’m going to roast those cursed escaped slaves in a fire – I’ll start with their feet, and then feed them slowly into the flames until they’re burned to a crisp!’

  One of the soldiers, heaving on the winch that drew up the counterweight for a catapult, scowled at the green-turbaned figure.

  ‘Yes, you son of a pig,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I’ll bet you will.’

  Mahmel strode over to the battery commander. He was crouched over a sighting device that let him measure the ship’s speed, and the angle at which he would have to fire the five throwers to have the best chance of hitting her. Mahmel flailed at him with his sword.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he screamed. ‘They’re escaping! Sink them! Sink them, curse you!’

  The commander looked up from his sights, angered by the distraction, and Mahmel’s stupidity.

  ‘Lord, the projectiles are in flight for twelve to fifteen seconds. I have to estimate where the ship will be in that time when I shoot.’

  ‘Don’t argue with me!’ Mahmel’s voice cracked in fury. He pointed his scimitar at the ship as she turned left into the final channel. ‘There’s your target! Sink her now!’

  ‘But –’

  Mahmel’s voice went into an even higher pitch. ‘Do as I order!’

  The battery commander hesitated, then turned to his waiting crews.

  ‘Release!’ he shouted, and the crews pulled on the trigger levers.

  On board Heron, Hal swung the bow into the second half of the channel. The wind was now over their starboard quarter, coming from astern. Automatically, Ulf and Wulf began to haul in on the sheets, but he called to stop them.

  ‘That’s enough!’ he said. ‘Ease them a little.’

  As the twins obeyed, Heron’s speed slackened perceptibly. Hal waited, watching the shore and the line of war machines. Then he heard that rolling, rending crack once more as they all released at once.

  ‘Now! Sheet home!’ he yelled and Heron surged forward as the sail came hard onto the wind. They all heard the rush of jagged boulders in the air as they passed over the ship to erupt in ragged explosions of white water once more. But the volley fell behind them, the aim thrown off by Heron’s sudden change of speed.

  ‘Nice move,’ Thorn said. ‘But it won’t work twice.’

  ‘It won’t have to,’ Hal replied. ‘They’ve got time for one more volley. Let’s make a hole we can slip through.’ He studied the massive weapons. Four of them were simple catapults, consisting of a long beam with a counterweight at one end and a bucket at the other to hold the projectile. The other was a trebuchet: a similar design, but with the addition of a rope sling at the end of the throwing arm that would whip over the top like a flail, adding impetus, power and range to the shot. Raising his voice, he called to Lydia and Gilan. ‘Concentrate your shots on the trebuchet in the centre of the line,’ he said. ‘Cut down her crew before they can reload.’

  The two were standing amidships, on the port side, weapons ready. They both nodded in unison, then, with breathtaking speed, Gilan loosed five arrows at the trebuchet crew. Lydia wasn’t far behind him, with three darts hissing away from her atlatl.

  Around the trebuchet, men began to fall. The hail of arrows and darts struck home, seemingly out of nowhere. Four men went down before anyone was aware of what was happening. The others turned and ran, crouching to hide from the deadly storm of missiles arcing down among them. The other machines were ready to shoot but the trebuchet remained uncocked, with its counterweight only halfway through its vertical rise.

  ‘Release!’ the commander shouted. But there was no one to trip the trigger lever on the machine in the centre of the line. And when other soldiers tried to get close, the hail of arrows and darts recommenced and drove them back.

  The rolling crash rang out once more as the other four machines hurled their rocks high into the night sky. But Hal had steered Heron for the gap in the line of missiles – a twenty-metre gap now that the centre trebuchet hadn’t released. Heron slid smoothly through the disturbed water, although the inner catapult, throwing a lighter rock than before, came perilously close, hurling up a fountain of spray barely three metres from the ship.

  He glanced at Thorn, his heart in his mouth at the near miss. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said.

  At the half-cocked trebuchet, Mahmel was screaming insults and orders, driving men back to their posts, ordering them to recommence winding the massive windlass that would raise the counterweight.

  On board Heron as she slipped past, Stig saw the green-turbaned figure, barely fifty metres away, and recognised him.

  ‘Ingvar! Load one of those scatter bolts!’ he called. The Mangler was already cocked and Ingvar dropped one of the pottery-headed bolts into the loading slot. Then as Stig began to walk the massive crossbow around so that it was trained out to port, Ingvar seized the training lever and helped him.

  ‘Left. Left. Left . . . steady there!’ Stig called. He was winding the elevation wheel as he spoke, centering the sights on the green-cloaked, green-turbaned figure of the slave master.

  SLAM!

  The Mangler bucked wildly against its leather restraints as he pulled the trigger lanyard, and the bolt swooped away towards the shore.

  Stig’s aim was slightly off. The bolt hissed past Mahmel, staggering him as he felt the wind of its passage, and smashed against the wooden frame of the trebuchet. The pottery head shattered, releasing a storm of whirling shards that flew wildly among the crew.

  One of them took a jagged, five-centimetre piece in the forehead. It tore a huge flap of skin from his head. Blood gushed out, blinding him, and he threw both hands to his face in pain. He staggered and reached out blindly for something to support him. His hand closed on the trigger lever and he released the half-cocked trebuchet.

  But the massive weapon, with its counterweight only half raised, didn’t have the force to hurl the sling up and over. It was propelled upwards for a few metres, then, defeated by gravity, it dropped back. The jagged boulder that had been loaded into it lurched a few metres into the air, then fell free. It struck the frame of the trebuchet a glancing blow as it came down and was deflected to one side.

  Mahmel never saw it coming. He was still hurling curses at the little ship as it slid past, barely fifty metres away, heading for the open sea, when the huge, crushing weight landed on him.

  He screamed once, then he was silent.

  One of the trebuchet crew, nursing an arrow wound in his left arm, curled his lip in disdain at the slave master. Mahmel was lying on his back, pinned beneath the heavy boulder. His eyes were wide open, but they saw nothing. An ominous dark stain was spreading across the flagstones beneath him.

  ‘Good riddance,’ the soldier said softly. Then he looked up at the slim little ship as she left the channel and slipped into the open sea. The first large roller slid under her keel. She rose to it gracefully, dipped her bow, then slid down the far side, gathering speed as she headed north.

  Across the water, the Socorran heard the faint sound of cheering as she moved away.

&
nbsp; It was late in the afternoon when Heron slipped quietly into the little bay by the village of Deaton’s Mill.

  Hal had decided to bypass Cresthaven. The twelve rescued slaves were eager to get home and let their families know they were safe and he was happy to accommodate them. As he headed the ship towards the beach, he sniffed the air. The smell of burnt wood was still evident.

  A few villagers were on the beach as Heron slid her sharp prow into the sand and rode up a few metres onto dry land. Stefan, as ever, was ready with the beach anchor. He dropped over the bulwark at the bow, ran inland and drove the blades of the anchor firmly into the sand.

  The half dozen villagers reacted with alarm at the sight of the ship. She was smaller than a wolfship, but she was built on similar lines. And when Stefan slipped ashore, his clothing marked him as a Skandian.

  And Deaton’s Mill had all too recently had trouble with Skandians and wolfships.

  The bystanders began to run up the beach towards the village. Gilan moved quickly to the bow and leapt up onto the bulwark, his green and grey mottled cloak identifying him as a Ranger.

  ‘King’s Ranger!’ he shouted. ‘You’re safe! No need for alarm!’

  Two of the villagers kept running, shouting to warn the rest of the village. But the others stopped where they were, looking curiously at the sight of the Ranger perched on the bow of this strange ship.

  Then Walton moved into the bow and joined Gilan, although he was nowhere near as sure of his footing as the Ranger. He recognised one of the men on the beach, who was hesitating, still poised to run if necessary.

  ‘Ben Tonkin!’ Walton shouted. ‘What’s up with you? Can’t you see we’re back?’

  The man hesitated, then raised his hands to shade his eyes as he peered at the figure in the bow of the beached ship.

  ‘Walton?’ he said uncertainly. ‘Is that you, boy?’

  ‘Aye, it’s me all right,’ Walton shouted. ‘And the others who were taken. We’re back safe and sound!’