“I think we should investigate more,” said Ragnvald. “Send men over the hills.”
“Murder a few sentries?” Harald asked with an arched eyebrow. “We will not sneak up on them. We have enough men to take Tafjord even if Solvi has gathered allies. Cheer up—this is an adventure.”
“You do not value me for my cheer,” said Ragnvald, still peering up at the cliff tops.
“No, you are my raven of ill omen,” said Harald affectionately. “Half-drowned, with wet feathers.” The byname had ceased to bother Ragnvald very much, but here in the fog he shivered. In this fjord, not far from where they now drifted, Solvi had sent him into the water. Beneath these ripples lay the drowned palace where he had seen his vision of Harald, the golden wolf.
“If I were Solvi, I would have stashed some ships up one of the tributaries, and trap us in between,” said Ragnvald.
“If I were Solvi, I would bet on you thinking that, and coax you to divide your force by sending ships into the tributaries,” Harald returned. “Trust in our luck. Trust in our numbers.”
Harald did call for the oars to be muffled from here on. The convoy drifted while the oarsmen stuffed batting into the oarlocks. Voices quieted too, so the only thing Ragnvald could hear was the creak of rigging and the lap of water against the boards. The men rowed at half pace, long pulls all in unison, and then a longer rest in silence, letting the ships’ momentum carry them forward, as the cliffs rose higher with every stroke.
Solvi’s force emerged from the layer of fog before them. The leading ship cut through like a sword, mist falling away on each side as it glided forward, and then the rest formed out of the gray. Eight ships with shields arrayed along their sides, and men behind those shields who broke into battle yells when they sighted Harald’s ships.
Eight of Solvi’s ships to eight of Harald’s. The ships were far away, and too obscured by fog for Ragnvald to see individual faces, but he recognized the way the foremost ship moved. It came about quickly, like a water-skater on a pond, like no ship could move, unless it was piloted by the ablest man ever to steer a ship, aided by perfectly trained oarsmen, who had fought more sea battles than any other living men—Solvi’s ship.
Solvi had three more ships than he should, meaning his allies had come. “We need to retreat,” said Ragnvald.
“I don’t retreat,” said Harald. “They do not outnumber us.”
“They are moving better,” said Ragnvald. “They can surround us, and our numbers will be our downfall. We need to get into better position.” He met Harald’s eyes for a long moment as Solvi’s ships approached, and finally Harald nodded, and raised his horn to his lips where he blew the signal for the ships to reverse direction.
The oarsmen swiftly stood and turned so they faced the other direction, then began pulling on the oars with all their might. The padding that had been used to silence the oars shifted and fell out into the water, leaving a wake of white batting behind each ship. The space between Harald’s ships and Solvi’s began to open, slowly, then more quickly. Ragnvald felt a breeze on his face, and for a moment his worry lifted, for the moving air made it feel as though the ships had picked up even more speed. The sail flapped and clattered, pressed back against the mast.
Then the breeze began to grow stronger, pushing them back toward Tafjord. The gap between the two forces remained the same for a few strokes of the oars, and then started to close again. The rowers pulled harder, accelerating their pace, but the distance still shrank until, a handful of breaths later, the first of Solvi’s ships collided with Harald’s.
Solvi’s men threw grappling hooks across so they could lash the ships together for easier fighting, one shaking the boards under Ragnvald’s feet as it landed next to him. He pulled his ax from his back and cut through the line, scoring deeply into the deck of the ship. Another landed farther away, and pulled their ship closer to Solvi’s before Harald’s man there could cut it away.
“No retreat now,” said Harald with a tight grin at Ragnvald. He stumbled as the stern of Solvi’s ship swung around to crash into theirs. Then Solvi’s men were upon them, leaping over gunwales, landing with swords bared and axes swinging. Ragnvald was trapped behind a line of rowers who had stood to defend themselves, next to Harald, who had his sword drawn, looking for a gap in the crowd he could get through to the front of the battle.
“We must cut them away,” said Ragnvald. “We can still avoid being trapped, and use our numbers.”
“You worry too much,” said Harald, this time with less affection in his voice. “I never lose.”
One of Harald’s warriors fell, and his attacker moved to face Ragnvald. Ragnvald pressed him back, forcing him to turn and jump over to his own ship. He did not pursue, instead using his ax in his left hand to cut away a line connecting the two ships. The wind usually blew away from Tafjord, Ragnvald remembered. It made Tafjord hard to attack. If they survived long enough, it would turn for them.
Without the stern rope connecting the two ships, Ragnvald’s began to pivot from the forces of wind and current on it. He looked up and saw where a short fork of the fjord joined the main body. Fog had hidden its shores before. Now Ragnvald saw another line of ships strung across its width, all bearing down on Harald’s. Solvi had gathered many allies for an out-of-season sea battle. Harald’s men, and his dreams of a united future for Norway, would die today with so many against them.
“This is too many,” cried Ragnvald. “We must flee—better a retreat than a rout.” Fear flashed in Harald’s eyes. He nodded, and then had to turn all his focus toward the man attacking him.
“Nidaros men,” Ragnvald called out. “Do not board their ships. Make the sails ready!”
Harald repeated the command, and Ragnvald heard it picked up by other ships. The breeze eddied, and the fog swirled.
The moment the water began to ripple in the other direction, Ragnvald yelled, “Make sail, make sail,” and the creaking of the lines filled the air as each of Harald’s eight ships lifted their huge sails. The fabric bellied out as it filled with wind. Ragnvald’s ship began to move last, stretching the remaining ties between it and Solvi’s ship. Ragnvald scrambled to cut them.
Solvi’s force had been too busy attacking to make ready for the wind to shift, so they lagged behind. The gap widened until they shrank to toys in the distance, but they had made a barrier in the fjord that Harald’s ships could not pass.
“We won’t get by them. We must make truce,” said Ragnvald. “Perhaps they can be bought off.”
“I will never make truce with Solvi Klofe or his allies,” said Harald. “Since we cannot avoid them, we must fight and trust to luck.”
Ragnvald should have foreseen this better—Solvi would not have sent his men to reclaim Tafjord without a plan for keeping it. This was the same trap he had sprung on Solvi in Vestfold, and now it closed in on Harald. “We have time to reach the shore—you can depart over land,” said Ragnvald. “We can still save many men.”
Harald shook his head. “No, this is my battle. If I flee, no man will ever follow me again.”
Ragnvald searched desperately for a way to save Harald. He could not win this battle at sea, but on land his warriors could claim the high ground. Leave some ships out in the fjord as bait to divide Solvi’s forces, crewed by men destined to die, and lure the other attackers into the woods. That might serve. Solvi’s numbers would be against him as his men tried to tie up on the narrow stretch of shoreline wide enough for only a few ships.
He spoke his idea to Harald, who resisted only briefly before commanding his ships to the shore. As soon as the lead ships were pulled up on the sloping grass, Harald asked for volunteers to crew the decoy ships. “I will ransom you for a jarl’s wergild, and when that is done I will pay you or your family a jarl’s wergild. If I fall, my uncle will make sure this is done,” Harald promised.
That drew men to the task, and Ragnvald stepped forward as well. “I will lead the ships,” he said. He was a better sailor than tho
se who had volunteered already.
“Ragnvald, do not,” said Harald. “Others can go.”
“The day of my death is already chosen, and if it is not today, I will claim my reward, I promise,” said Ragnvald.
“I’m with you as well,” said another man—Aldi, the son of Atli. A quieter and more agreeable man than his father. And braver too.
Ragnvald nodded his thanks. “Leave a few men to defend the ships on the shore,” he said to Harald. “Keep watch and see if, by some chance, it is better for you to come to our aid. But draw them into the woods.” He seized a pot of flammable pitch, usually used for sealing the ship’s seams, and passed it to Oddi. “If the battle is going against us, use fire arrows to burn the ships. You will destroy at least half of Solvi’s fleet.”
“Ragnvald, don’t,” said Oddi.
Ragnvald turned away from him. There was no more time. He climbed over the shifting maze of planking that the tied-up ships had formed, while looking out at the fjord, where Solvi’s two forces drew closer to each other. Harald gave him a pleading look, and twisted a strand of his beard between his fingers, a nervous motion. His wide eyes made him look like a boy again. Ragnvald shook his head slightly. This was the only plan that had a chance of keeping Harald alive.
Harald hesitated for another breath, and then inclined his head. Ragnvald nodded in return and set his ship loose. He was a fair pilot, but without oarsmen, and with the strange, shifting air currents in the fjord, the sail could not be depended upon to give him speed. The decoy ships could only drift about and confuse their attackers, then surrender and hope for ransom. It would buy Harald more time though.
While Ragnvald waited for battle to be joined again, he stripped the gold from his belt, and put on a battered, old steel helmet rather than his usual polished and decorated one. In the confusion, he might have an opportunity to disguise himself as one of the enemy soldiers. Even if this disguise lessened his honor, he could not know which path might lead him away from death. Ronhild’s prophecy said that he would not die until Harald had united all of Norway. Ragnvald calmed his fear with that thought.
The force from Tafjord reached the decoy ships first while the other ships hovered in the distance. “Your allies wait for your success,” Ragnvald yelled across the gap. “They are cowards.” He received no response as Solvi’s ship came crashing into his. Ragnvald recognized the bulk of Ulfarr in the prow, waiting for his chance to leap.
“These ships are empty,” he heard Ulfarr say.
“They’re probably hiding beneath the rowing benches,” said someone else. Usually the rustle of hundreds of men ready to fight, no matter how still they tried to be, drowned out the voices of the enemy. The quiet made the coming battle seem unreal.
“I don’t think so,” said Ulfarr. “It’s some other kind of trap.”
Ragnvald adjusted the steering oar with his foot, to better catch the small breeze. He would take every moment he could to give Harald time to arrange his men in the woods.
“It is a trap,” said Solvi. Ragnvald recognized his voice immediately, the clear, resonant tone that seemed too loud and deep for Solvi’s stature, a voice for shouting between ships in a gale.
Ragnvald only expected his shifting of the steering oar to keep the ships apart for another few breaths before Solvi’s rowers brought them together. He felt the clear detachment, the freedom from emotions, that battle often granted him, and a sharpening of all his senses. A small gust gave him another moment to steel himself before grappling hooks landed on the ship—too many to repel—and pulled the ships together with a crunch of wood.
“They mean to entangle us in those near-empty ships and then attack from the shore,” said Solvi. “These poor wights on board must want a quicker death than we will give their friends.”
One of the volunteers on board Ragnvald’s ship called out, “King Harald will ransom us for a jarl’s wergild.”
“I’ll pay more than that for their heads,” said Solvi to his men.
Ragnvald stood so Solvi could see his face above where the gunwale rose in the stern. “Harald will pay even more for me,” he said.
Solvi looked shaken to see him. His fierce battle-grin faded. “Yes, take the surrendering coward alive,” he said of Ragnvald. “Just that one—kill the rest.”
He moved as easily between the shifting ships as a squirrel climbing among high branches. The man next to Ragnvald was not ready for Solvi, who slashed him across the throat with his short sword, not even watching as he fell. Bjorn was his name, Ragnvald remembered; he had been orphaned at a young age and raised by his older sister, who would now wait forever for his homecoming.
Solvi advanced toward Ragnvald. Ragnvald held his ax in his left hand but had not drawn his sword. In the close quarters of a ship battle, his ax would be more useful.
“I promised my wife that I would not kill you if it was in my power to do so,” said Solvi. “Now I can keep my promise, and trade you for her.”
“She doesn’t want you,” said Ragnvald. “And since you are outlawed, it is as if she was never your wife.”
“I do not accept your Harald’s laws, laws that make every man a slave,” said Solvi. He commanded Ulfarr to tie Ragnvald up and take his sword. Ragnvald flexed his wrists while Ulfarr bound them to give himself as much room to free them as possible. If battle started to go against Solvi, he did not know if he would be killed or traded. The latter was likely only if he kept close to Solvi.
Solvi sent half his ships to trap Harald’s against the shore, as Ragnvald had hoped he would. His men would follow Harald’s into the woods and die on the steep slopes. Ulfarr threw Ragnvald to the floor of his ship, and brought a few men across to work the lines and steering oar. This ship was a fine prize for Ulfarr, built by Harald’s master-builders of the straightest, strongest wood that Norway’s forests had to offer, and worth as much as a star-steel sword made by the finest Frankish smith.
From where Ragnvald lay, he could only hear the fighting. He could tell from the cries of dismay when Solvi’s men discovered Harald had hidden his men in the woods. He twisted himself onto his stomach, and then to his knees, awkward on the ship’s curving floor, with his hands tied behind his back. He saw that the ships of Solvi’s allies had come no farther, and felt the reason why: the wind from Tafjord, a sodden wind, blowing out toward the sea. The ships’ oars beat the water, trying to draw them nearer, and failing. The sky grew darker.
Ronhild’s magic, or the gods’ favor, it mattered not. Ragnvald struggled to standing and called with all his might across the water. “We are more than them. Harald, do not hold back.”
He did not know if Harald heard him, through battle and over the water. Someone hit Ragnvald’s head hard and sent him sprawling over the deck. His teeth slammed together when his chin hit, and he tasted blood. He lay there for a moment gathering his wits, but when no other blow came, Ragnvald pulled himself to his knees again. One of his lower teeth felt loose. Ragnvald clenched his jaw to press it back into place.
Harald’s men poured out of the woods, killing Solvi’s men where they stood. Soon they regained their ships and began to fight back against Solvi’s men. Bodies splashed into the water at the shore. Ulfarr maneuvered Ragnvald’s ship closer to the fighting. Good, he would have a better opportunity to escape. He worked at freeing his hands, and by the time his ship crashed into the next, he had made enough slack to force his fingers through the binding. His captors no longer paid attention to him, too busy fending off Harald’s warriors, who leaped from ship to ship. Ragnvald crawled over the oar benches behind the fighting, until he reached his sword. He belted it on again, drew it, and fought his way forward, killing another of Solvi’s men before he reached Ulfarr.
“Ulfarr Torvisson, Solvi’s dog, fight me,” said Ragnvald. In these very waters, Ulfarr had been the one to hold back Egil from helping Ragnvald when Solvi had tried to kill him. He had been a mighty warrior then, and he was still bigger than Ragnvald, with a longer reach.
Ragnvald was not sure he could best Ulfarr in a fair fight, but he was fresh, having spent most of the battle tied up, while Ulfarr was tired. Ragnvald pressed Ulfarr back a few paces until he backed into Oddi, who had fought his way to Ragnvald’s ship.
“Do you want him?” Oddi asked Ragnvald.
“Coward,” Ulfarr spat. “Solvi should have killed you in Ireland.”
“Solvi was never better than a murderer for hire,” said Ragnvald. “You follow a coward.”
That made Ulfarr angry, as Ragnvald had meant it to, and Ulfarr rushed toward him. He tripped over one of the rowing benches, and Ragnvald thrust his sword up into Ulfarr’s belly, his hand growing hot from the spilling of Ulfarr’s blood upon it. The force of Ulfarr’s falling body embedded his sword so deeply in his stomach that Ragnvald had to push Ulfarr onto his back to free it. Ulfarr did not struggle, knowing his wound was mortal.
“Do you want to die slowly of this wound, or quickly?” Ragnvald asked him. The few duels that remained on the ship were quickly coming to a finish. This ship was Harald’s again.
Ulfarr held his hands to his bloody waist. Blood soaked into the ship’s boards beneath him. Ulfarr might bleed out rather than die of the rot and fever Ragnvald wanted for his end. He felt at his belt for his dagger. Ulfarr could still be dangerous. “I do not want to die by your hand,” he said.
“Good,” said Ragnvald, and slashed Ulfarr across the throat. Ulfarr retched and choked on his death even before he could move his hands from his stomach to his neck. Ragnvald reached down to free a clasp of silver and lapis from his breast, while blood covered the white linen of Ulfarr’s shirt, and his eyes, staring up at the sky, began to collect rain.
In the distance, sheets of rain hid the rest of Solvi’s allies. Dead bodies littered the deck of his ship, and Harald’s soldiers stood panting, swords and axes gripped limply in exhausted fingers. Most of the ships were still lashed together, but Ragnvald saw that one, Solvi’s, with its dragon head that Ragnvald remembered so well, had freed itself from the morass and now rowed out into the middle of the fjord, where it caught the storm gust and was carried away. Solvi had escaped them again.
The Sea Queen Page 24