The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  He swung around and started shouting orders, all of which were unintelligible to me, and within moments his men were swarming up ropes and doing things with the enormous sail.

  “Where are you going to go? We have to land there, don’t we?”

  He looked at me with a grimace, baring his teeth. “You might have to,” he growled. “I don’t. This is the only ship I own, and I owe it to my crew to keep it afloat. They rely on me to keep them alive and safe from getting drowned or murdered by pirates, and that’s what I intend to do. If you’re determined to be foolish I’ll drop you ashore farther along the coast, if that’s what you really want, but I’m not going any closer to land right now, not until I’ve made sure they’ve got no swift battle boats lying in wait behind some headland, waiting for me to sail into a trap.”

  The words had barely left his mouth when two swift-moving vessels came into view upwind to the right of us, the spray from their sweeps catching the rays of the midday sun and sending up rainbow showers of drops as the ships drove straight toward us, plainly intent on overhauling us. Fortunately for us, however, they had made their opening move too soon. Joachim wasted no time in congratulating himself on his caution. He simply rapped out more orders to his crew and we swung away westward, our ship lying over on her left side with the steepness of the turn. We had the advantage of a fair wind at our back and soon left our pursuers behind.

  From then on, the weather began to deteriorate, and so did Joachim’s good humor. He had been fretting for hours before that, eyeing the gathering cloud masses to the north and west and anticipating the onset of the winds as he muttered to himself, invoking the ancient gods of the sea to hold back their displeasure and not to send the winter storms too soon. But they were either deaf or angry with him, because all his pleading was in vain. The wind came fitfully at the outset, blowing in short-lived, uneven gusts for the first hour or so, with long gaps of stillness between gusts, but as the day wore on the gaps grew shorter and the gusts more violent, whipping streamers of stinging spray from the curling tops of the waves that had suddenly taken on an appearance more coldly hostile than any we had seen before.

  Long before sunset we had lost all sense of sunlight. The wrack of clouds overhead was low and roiling, the masses of vapor churning upon themselves as the air grew darker. And then the first rain squall struck us and abruptly we were all blind, in a world of utter blackness filled with howling winds, hissing sheets of rain, and terrifying, chaotic motion that annihilated all the rules by which we had been taught to live and move on land. Above and beyond all of those things, however, were the appalling noises made by the ship itself under the stresses of the storm, when the threat-filled, menacing creaks and groans and screams of tortured ropes and planks made it sound as though the vessel were about to rip itself asunder and disintegrate under the hammering of wind and water.

  All four of us passengers, who had believed ourselves to be ill until then, immediately plunged to the bottom of an abyss of despair and abject, inhuman sickness. I know not how the sailors fared during all that transpired that first night—I have to presume that they continued doing what they were employed to do, since we survived the tempest—but we four, embarked upon an adventure, suffered beyond description. For several days one hammering storm rolled over us and passed by only to be replaced by another, even more violent upheaval. None of us could recall having been that sick, or that helpless, or that frightened at any time in our lives.

  I often talked to people about that voyage in the years that followed, and I was always amazed at the unworldliness and the indescribably profound ignorance of people who have never been aboard a ship in foul weather. They simply cannot conceive of the difference between a storm on land and a storm at sea, and the most common question I encountered whenever I told the tale was, “Why didn’t you go ashore and get out of it?”

  Why indeed? It was a question I might have asked myself, the day before we set sail upon that voyage. But experience taught me very quickly that it was a question with no simple, clear-cut answer. In the first place, and most particularly at night, we could not even see the shore, and all we knew was the terrifying truth told to us by our captain and his crew—that we had to hold the ship in safety far away from the land in order to prevent its being hurled against the rocks and crushed like an egg. So great was the power of the breaking waves, we were told, that our bodies would be destroyed by its savagery, pounded into unrecognizable, bloodless meat against the rocks along the shoreline. That was a comforting vision to sustain us in our terror. Then, too, we were prohibited from any simple act of “going ashore” by the size and shape of our vessel. It was a trading craft, broad and deep-keeled, designed to carry large volumes of cargo, which meant that it could not simply be rowed up into the shallows fronting a beach and grounded there.

  In order to bring our large ship to land and unload his goods in safety, Joachim required the presence of a pier at which he could moor the vessel, or, failing that—a situation the captain described with no great enthusiasm—he needed to find a straight-edged shoreline or a riverbank along which the water was deep and calm and its surface no more than half the height of a man below the land’s. Neither one of these could be achieved with anything resembling safety in stormy conditions, and one or the other of them was necessary for us to unload our eight horses and all the goods we carried with us. We ourselves might leap over the side in relatively calm waters and swim to safety, but we would do so at great cost, since we would have to leave everything, including our armor and weapons, behind us aboard ship and would thus be stranded in a strange land without any means of surviving or even defending ourselves.

  Shortly before dawn on the morning of our second day at sea, we felt the wind abating and the motion of the ship became less violent, sufficiently so for me to bestir myself to find the captain and ask him what was happening. He told me we were in the lee of Wight, which left me squinting painfully, wondering if I had lost the proper use of my ears. Wight, he told me then, is an island off the south coast of Britain, and we were now sheltered between it and the mainland, enjoying the respite that its bulk provided from the winds. We would stay there, he told me, in the hope of riding out the remainder of the storm.

  Day broke, and even from afar we could see the fury of the waves that pounded the coastline of the mainland to the north of us. To our left, however, the coast of Wight seemed benign and placid, and I mentioned to Joachim that we might be able to land there. He gazed at me with what seemed like pity, and so long did he take to respond that I began to think he was going to say nothing at all.

  “Aye, you could,” he said, eventually, a half smile quirking at his lips. “No difficulty about that, if you want to. But you might have some trouble after that, once you’re ashore.”

  I frowned. “Why is that? Are the people hostile there?”

  “No, they’re not. But that’s Wight, over there. It’s an island. If I land you there, then sail back to Gaul, you might not be able to get your people off again. There’s four of you, remember, and eight horses. I doubt if you’d find a boat on the whole island big enough to carry off all of you at one time, and even although it may not look like a great distance from there to the mainland, this stretch of water is miles wide, so you couldn’t swim.”

  I felt my face flush at my own obvious stupidity, but Joachim laughed. “Hey,” he said, sweeping his hand across the horizon in front of us, “you’re a landsman. How could you be expected to know about the shortage of ships on Wight? There’s no way to tell from here that it’s deserted, but it’s true. Most of the people who once lived there now live ashore, on the mainland. But the only reason I know that is because I’ve sailed this way before, more times than I can recall. My livelihood depends on knowing things like that when I go to sea. I dare say, were we among your woods in Gaul, you’d be leading me by the hand, because I can’t stand being hemmed in. I like to feel empty distances around me … nothing but me, my ship, and my crew between t
he water below me and the sky above.”

  “But you could have dropped us ashore there anyway and made your way directly home, and had anyone asked, you could have said that I requested to be set down there.”

  He looked at me sideways and smiled more broadly now, although still with an element of ruefulness, as though he were wondering about my lack of wits. “Think you so? Really?” He shook his head. “I have your gold in my chest, that’s true, but there’s also the fact that you have come to me from Germanus, and that’s worth more to me than gold. If I did anything as stupid as you suggest, I would lose his friendship, and I don’t care to do that.”

  I nodded slowly, acknowledging the wisdom of what he had said. “Then what should we do?”

  “Exactly what we are doing. We stay here in reasonable safety, riding at anchor, and we watch for wind shifts while we wait out the storm.”

  We remained in the shelter of the island for the rest of that day and the night that followed, and by dawn the following day the weather had become calm and the skies clear. The storm had blown itself out.

  We struck out once more to the westward immediately, and for the space of several hours we had blue skies and only scattered clouds overhead, although the waves pounding the beaches had scarcely lessened in their fury. Once again, however, by the middle of the afternoon the clouds were blowing in from the northwest in marshaled ranks. Hoping to evade this new storm, we swung in sharply toward the coast, but we could see from a long way out that the coastline here was one of high, unbroken cliffs fronted by ragged lines of rocks against which angry breakers smashed themselves into towers of spuming whiteness. There might have been inlets there where we could shelter, Joachim said, but he was unfamiliar with the coastline here and by the time we approached close enough to search for suitable havens, we would be too late to make our way back out to safety against the incoming storm if we found none. So once again we remained far out at sea, at the mercy of the winds and the waves, and our misery deepened.

  The hardened mariners had regained their seagoing constitutions by that time and they ate contentedly despite the motion of the seas, chewing dried meat and hard bread and washing that down with beer or watered wine. The mere sight of them eating and drinking made the four of us landsmen sicker than we had been before.

  In due time, we rounded the point of Cornwall, gazing despairingly at the towering cliffs that offered us nothing in the way of moorage, and made our way forlornly back to the northeast, the wind now blowing directly toward us so that our passage became even slower and more difficult than it had been until then. Glastonbury was our destination now, Joachim told us, although if a safe harbor appeared between now and our arrival there, we would take advantage of it.

  We clawed our way slowly and with enormous effort up along the coastline, rowing into the teeth of the wind, with all four of us passengers contributing our efforts for the common good until we were barely able to keep ourselves from collapsing into unconsciousness. And as we went, having lost all awareness of day fading into night on several occasions, the storms continued to fall upon us in an apparently endless succession, each new one following closely after the passing of its predecessor. Eventually, however, we entered the estuary of a large river, and the waters quickly began to grow calmer. I had begun to regain control of my bodily functions two days before that and had been improving steadily if slowly, so that I noticed the lessening of the turmoil under our keel immediately and lost no time in asking Joachim for an explanation. He pointed with his thumb toward the distant shoreline that was barely discernible through the curtains of rain on our left.

  “We’re heading directly eastward now, entering the river channel the local people call the Severn. That shoreline over there, that’s Cambria. Never been there but I’ve heard much about it. Hostile to everyone, the people there, although nobody seems to know why they should be. They have nothing much to be jealous of. Country’s mountainous and mostly impenetrable, once you strike inland from the sea. Romans never really made much of an attempt to conquer it, although they say the biggest gold mine in the Empire’s in there somewhere … some place called Dolaucothi, or something like that.”

  He pointed again, this time to the closer, low-lying land on our right. “That’s your destination, over there. It’s mainly flat inland, but boggy and treacherous close to the sea. Glastonbury lies farther down the coast. We passed by it early this morning. Didn’t wake you because there was nothing to see and we didn’t even approach it—no hope of landing there in weather like this. It’s too flat. Too shallow and muddy. And the approaches—there’s only a few navigable channels that let you get in there—have probably been destroyed by now, churned up and fouled by these storms. I wasn’t prepared to sail into a bog to put that to the test.

  “I decided to keep moving up to the estuary here. There’s an old river port about thirty miles upstream. Romans called it Glevum. It’s deserted now. Or it was last time I came this way, about three years ago. But the wharves were still serviceable then, and if no one’s been along to tear them down or burn them up, they should still be usable. Good enough for us to land you on, certainly.

  “From there you should be able to make your way easily. There’s a main road goes close by there, and once you’re on that, you can go anywhere. The road network connects all parts of Britain. At least, I’ve been told it does. Never was interested enough to go and find out for myself. Roads make me nervous. Too narrow and predictable and too many people use them. Nowhere to escape to, on a road. Give me the sea any day, even in weather like this. A man who knows what he’s doing can escape from anyone, anytime, at sea, providing he’s got a fast ship and an able crew.

  “Anyway, if nothing else we’re off the open sea and out of the storms, with calm water under our keel from now on. Pass on my felicitations to your friends on surviving the crossing.”

  He grinned and left me standing watching him as he returned to the business of captaining his vessel, and within a matter of hours we were drifting slowly into the river port at Glevum, gazing at the spectacle of a ruined and uninhabited town as we glided slowly toward an abandoned wharf that was lined with warehouses and appeared to be in perfect condition. For the first time in days, not a breath of wind stirred from any direction, and beneath us the surface of the river would have been mirror calm had it not been for the slashing rain.

  The ship’s side bumped against the wharf and two seamen leaped ashore with ropes that they quickly secured to massive, oaken bollards. Others rushed to lower the side of the ship, creating a gateway to the deck, while yet more of the crew manned the block-and-tackle cargo hoist and struggled to extract the gangway from its resting place along the center line of the ship and swing it outboard to the wharf. A sudden grunt and a scuffling noise was followed by a panicked curse, and then came a bump and a splash as one of the crew slipped on the rain-slick boards and fell overboard between the wharf and the ship.

  All movement stopped instantly as men watched and waited for the screams of the man being crushed between ship and wharf. For long moments nothing happened at all, and then the fallen man splashed to the surface on the other side of the vessel, having dived deep and swum beneath it. With a roar of relief, his shipmates hurried to pull him safely aboard again, and then they all returned to the work of preparing to unload.

  Tristan looked at his brother Perceval—I had already stopped thinking of him as Ursus—who stared quietly back at him, his mouth quirked up to one side, then turned to me. “Well,” he said quietly, “he didn’t die, so let’s hope we can accept that as a good omen.” He glanced back at Bors and Tristan, who stood watching. “Welcome to Britain, lads. It’s wet, and it’s dark, and it’s none too pleasant, and there’s nothing yet to like about it, that I’ve seen. But at least it looks as though it’s solid underfoot. Who’s to be first ashore?”

  I was, and as soon as my feet landed on the wharf I immediately threw out my arms and lurched forward ludicrously, fighting for bala
nce and trying not to fall headlong as the ship’s crew, who had been waiting for me to do just that, roared with laughter and jeers. The others followed me more cautiously, all three of them frowning intently with concentration as they moved, but they had no notion of why I had behaved the way I had, and so were equally unprepared and fell about the same way I had, to be greeted with equally loud jeers from the crew.

  It took less than an hour for us to unload our animals and provisions, and we all set out for the town, in search of a roof to keep the rain away from us while we lit a fire and cooked the sole remaining joint of venison that we had brought with us from Gaul—a fine haunch that held enough meat to feed all twelve of us in the last meal we would share with our seafaring friends for some time. Sound roofs were few and far between in Glevum, we discovered, although the ruins of the fallen ones offered a wealth of dry firewood, but we found a whole roof eventually, at the extreme end of one of the warehouse blocks lining the wharf next to the one on which we had landed, and all of us moved in gratefully, happy to be out of the incessant rain and within sight of the leaping flames of a real fire.

  As we waited for the spitted haunch of salted venison to roast, we salivated over the savory smells of baking bannock and of garlic and onions bubbling in a pot with greens of some kind provided by the ship’s cook.

  I handed Joachim a small package containing ten more gold coins than we had agreed upon. He looked at it askance.

  “What’s this? You paid me already.”