Warriors of the Storm (2015)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, then laughed.

  Because I was at sea and I was happy.

  The weather worsened that afternoon. The wind veered, forcing us to lower the great sail and lash it to the yard, and then we rowed into a short sharp sea, struggling against wind and current, while above us the clouds rolled from the west to darken the sky. Rain spattered the rowers and dripped from the rigging. Sæbroga was a beautiful craft, elegant and sleek, but as the wind rose and the seas shortened I saw she had a bad habit of burying her head to shatter spray along the deck. ‘It’s the axe,’ I said to Finan.

  ‘Axe?’

  ‘On the prow! It’s too heavy.’

  He was huddled in his cloak beside me. He peered forward. ‘It’s a massive piece of wood, that’s for sure.’

  ‘We need to move some of the ballast stones aft,’ I said.

  ‘But not now!’ he sounded alarmed at the thought of wet men struggling with heavy stones while Sæbroga pitched in the pounding seas.

  I smiled. ‘Not now.’

  We made landfall at Mann and I kept the island well to our east as the night fell. The wind calmed with the darkness and I held Sæbroga off the island’s coast, unwilling to journey further in the blackness of night. Not that the night was all black. There were gleams of firelight from the island’s distant slopes, faint lights that kept us safe by letting us judge our position. I let my son take the steering-oar and slept till dawn. ‘We go west now,’ a bleary-eyed Dudda told me in the wolf-light, ‘due west, lord, and we’ll come to Loch Cuan.’

  ‘And Christ only knows what we find there,’ Finan said.

  Sigtryggr dead? My daughter abducted? An ancient fort smeared with blood? There are times when the demons persecute us, they give us doubts, they try to persuade us that our fate is doom unless we listen to them. I am convinced that this middle earth swarms with demons, invisible demons, Loki’s servants, wafting on the wind to make mischief. I remember, years ago, how dear Father Beocca, my childhood tutor and old friend, told me that Satan sent demons to tempt good Christians. ‘They try to keep us from doing God’s purpose,’ he had told me earnestly. ‘Did you know that God has a purpose for all of us, even for you?’

  I had shaken my head. I was perhaps eight years old and even then I thought my purpose was to learn sword-craft, not to master the dull skills of reading and writing.

  ‘Let me see if you can discover God’s purpose on your own!’ Beocca had said enthusiastically. We had been sitting on a ledge of Bebbanburg’s rock, staring at the wild sea as it foamed about the Farnea Islands. He had been making me read aloud from a small book that told how Saint Cuthbert had lived on one of those lonely rocks and had preached to the puffins and seals, but then Beocca started bouncing up and down on his scrawny bum as he always did when he became excited. ‘I want you to think about what I say! And perhaps you can find the answer on your own! God,’ his voice had become very earnest, ‘made us in His own image. Think of that!’

  I remember thinking that was very strange of God because Beocca was club-footed, had a cock-eyed squint, a squashed nose, wild red hair, and a palsied hand. ‘So God’s a cripple?’ I had asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ he had said, slapping me with his good right hand, ‘God is perfect!’ He slapped me again, harder. ‘He is perfect!’ I remember thinking that perhaps God looked like Eadburga, one of the kitchen maids, who had taken me behind the fortress chapel and shown me her tits. ‘Think!’ Father Beocca had urged me, but all I could think of was Eadburga’s breasts, so I shook my head. Father Beocca had sighed. ‘He made us look like Him,’ he explained patiently, ‘because the purpose of life is to be like Him.’

  ‘To be like Him?’

  ‘To be perfect! We must learn to be good. To be good men and women!’

  ‘And kill children?’ I had asked earnestly.

  He had squinted at me. ‘And kill children?’

  ‘You told me the story!’ I had said excitedly. ‘How the two bears killed all the boys! And God made them do it. Tell me again!’

  Poor Beocca had looked distraught. ‘I should never have read that story to you,’ he had said miserably.

  ‘But it is true?’

  He had nodded unhappily. ‘It is true, yes. It’s in our scripture.’

  ‘The boys were rude to the prophet?’

  ‘Elisha, yes.’

  ‘They called him baldie, yes?’

  ‘So the scripture tells us.’

  ‘So God sent two bears to kill them all! As a punishment?’

  ‘Female bears, yes.’

  ‘And forty boys died?’

  ‘Forty-two children died,’ he had said miserably.

  ‘The bears tore them apart! I like that story!’

  ‘I’m sure God wanted the children to die quickly,’ Beocca had said unconvincingly.

  ‘Do the scriptures say that?’

  ‘No,’ he had admitted, ‘but God is merciful!’

  ‘Merciful? He killed forty-two children …’

  He had cuffed me again. ‘It’s time we read more about the blessed Saint Cuthbert and his mission to the seals. Start at the top of the page.’

  I smiled at the memory as Sæbroga slammed her prow into a green-hearted sea and slung cold spray down the length of her deck. I had liked Beocca, he was a good man, but so easy to tease. And in truth that story in the Christians’ holy book proved that their god was not so unlike my own. The Christians pretended he was good and perfect, but he was just as capable of losing his temper and slaughtering children as any god in Asgard. If the purpose of life was to be an unpredictable, murderous tyrant then it would be easy to be godlike, but I suspected we had a different duty and that was to try to make the world better. And that too was confusing. I thought then and think still that the world would be a better place if men and women worshipped Thor, Woden, Freya, and Eostre, yet I drew my sword on the side of the child-slaughtering Christian god. But at least I had no doubts about the purpose of this voyage. I sailed to take revenge. If I discovered that Sigtryggr had been defeated and Stiorra captured then we would turn Sæbroga back eastwards and hunt Ragnall down to the last shadowed corner on earth, where I would rip the guts out of his belly and dance on his spine.

  We fought weather all that day, butting Sæbroga’s heavy prow into a west wind. I had begun to think the gods did not want me to make this voyage, but late in the afternoon they sent a raven as an omen. The bird was exhausted and landed on the small platform in the ship’s prow where, for a time, it just huddled in misery. I watched the bird, knowing it was sent by Odin. All my men, even the Christians, knew it was an omen, and so we waited, pulling oars into short seas, swept by showers, waited for the bird to reveal its message. That message came at dusk as the wind dropped and the seas settled and the Irish coast appeared off our bows. To me the far coast looked like a green blur, but Dudda preened. ‘Just there, lord!’ he said, pointing a shade or two to the right of our bows. ‘That’s the entrance, right there!’

  I waited. The raven strutted two steps one way, two steps the other. Sæbroga pitched as a larger wave rolled under her hull, and just then the raven took to the air and, with renewed energy, flew straight as a spear for the Irish coast. The omen was favourable.

  I leaned on the steering oar, turning Sæbroga northwards.

  ‘It’s there. Lord!’ Dudda protested as I turned the ship’s head past the place he had indicated and kept on turning her. ‘The entrance, lord! There! Just beyond the headland. We’ll make the narrows before dark, lord!’

  ‘I’m not taking a ship into enemy waters at dusk,’ I growled.

  Orvar Freyrson had four ships in Loch Cuan, four warships manned by Ragnall’s warriors. When I entered the loch I needed to take him by surprise, not row in and immediately be forced to look for somewhere safe to anchor or moor. Dudda had warned me that the loch was full of ledges, islands, and shallows, so it was no place to arrive in the near darkness while enemy ships that were familiar with the danger
s might lurk nearby. ‘We enter at dawn,’ I told Dudda.

  He looked nervous. ‘Better to wait for slack water, lord. By dawn the tide will be flooding.’

  ‘Is that what Orvar Freyrson would expect?’ I asked. ‘That we’d wait for slack water?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ He sounded nervous.

  I clapped him on a meaty shoulder. ‘Never do what an enemy expects, Dudda. We’ll go in at dawn. On the flood.’

  That was a bad night. We were close to a rockbound coast, the sky was clouded, and the seas choppy. We rowed, always heading north, and I worried that one of Orvar’s men might have recognised Sæbroga’s distinctive prow when we first made landfall. That was unlikely. We had turned northwards well offshore and had been under oars so no one on land could have seen the much larger red axe on the big sail. But if the ship had been recognised then Orvar would be wondering why we had turned away rather than seek shelter for the night.

  The wind fretted in the darkness, blowing us towards the Irish shore, but I had twelve men pulling on the oars to hold us steady. I listened for the dreaded sound of surf breaking or of seas crashing on rocks. Sometimes I thought I heard those noises and felt a surge of panic, but that was likely a sea-demon playing tricks, and Ran, the sea-goddess, who can be a jealous and savage bitch, was in a good mood that night. The sea sparkled and glimmered with her jewels, the strange lights that flicker and glow in the water. When an oar-blade dipped the sea would shatter into thousands of glowing droplets that faded slowly. Ran only sent the jewels when she was feeling kind, but even so I was fearful. Yet there was no need to be nervous because when the dawn broke grey and slow we were still well offshore. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Dudda said when at last he could make out the coast, ‘sweet mother of God. Thank Christ!’ He too had been nervous, drinking steadily through the night, and now he gazed bleary-eyed at the green strip of land. ‘Just go south, lord, just go south.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘One hour?’

  It took longer, not because Dudda was wrong, but because I gave my men time to eat, then to pull on their mail coats. ‘Keep your helmets and weapons close,’ I told them, ‘but I don’t want anyone in a helmet yet. And put cloaks over your mail!’ We could not arrive at the loch looking ready for war, but rather like men tired from a voyage and wanting nothing more than to join their comrades. I called Vidarr, the Norseman who had deserted to join his wife, back to the stern. ‘What can you tell me of Orvar Freyrson?’ I asked him.

  Vidarr frowned. ‘He’s one of Ragnall’s shipmasters, lord, and a good one.’

  ‘Good at what?’

  ‘Seamanship, lord.’

  ‘Good at fighting too?’

  Vidarr shrugged. ‘We’re all fighters, lord, but Orvar’s older now, he’s cautious.’

  ‘Does he know you?’

  ‘Oh yes, lord. I sailed with him in the northern islands.’

  ‘Then you’ll hail him, or hail whoever we meet, understand? Tell him we’re sent to attack Sigtryggr. And if you betray me …’

  ‘I won’t, lord!’

  I paused, watching him. ‘Have you been into the loch?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  He told me what Dudda had already described to me, that Loch Cuan was a massive sea-lake dotted with rocks and islets, and entered by a long and very narrow channel through which the tide flowed with astonishing speed. ‘There’s plenty of water in the channel’s centre, lord, but the edges are treacherous.’

  ‘And the place where Sigtryggr is trapped?’

  ‘It’s almost an island, lord. The land bridge is narrow. A wall of ten men can block it easily.’

  ‘So Orvar would attack by sea?’

  ‘That’s difficult too, lord. The headland is surrounded by rocks, and the channel to the beach is narrow.’

  Which explained why Orvar was trying to starve Sigtryggr into submission unless, of course, he had already captured the fort.

  We were close to the land now, close enough to see smoke drifting up from cooking fires and close enough to see the waves breaking on rocks and then draining white to the foam-scummed sea. An east wind had livened after the dawn and allowed us to raise the sail again, and Sæbroga was moving fast as she dipped her steerboard strakes towards the brisk waves. ‘When we get there,’ I told Dudda, ‘I want to sail or row straight through the channel. I don’t want to stop and feel my way through shallows.’

  ‘It’s safer …’ he began.

  ‘Damn safer!’ I snarled. ‘We have to look as if we know what we’re doing, not as if we’re nervous! Would Ragnall look nervous?’

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘So we go in fast!’

  ‘You can sail in, lord,’ he said, ‘but for Christ’s sake stay in the channel’s centre.’ He hesitated. ‘The narrows run almost straight north, lord. The wind and tide will carry us through, but the hills confuse the wind. It’s no place to be taken aback.’ He meant that the hills would sometimes block the wind altogether, or veer it unexpectedly, and such a change could drive Sæbroga onto the rocks that evidently lined the narrows, or drive her into the whirlpool that Dudda described as ‘vicious’.

  ‘So we use oars as well as sail,’ I said.

  ‘The current is frightening, lord,’ Vidarr said warningly.

  ‘Best to go really fast then,’ I said. ‘Do you know where Orvar keeps his men when they’re ashore?’ I asked him.

  ‘Just off the channel, lord. On the western bank. There’s a bay that offers shelter.’

  ‘I want to run straight past him,’ I told Dudda, ‘as fast as we can.’

  ‘The tide will help,’ he said, ‘it’s flooding nicely, but Vidarr’s right. The current will take you like the wind, lord. It runs like a deer.’

  We hit rough water south of the headland that protected the entrance to the narrows. I suspected there were rocks not far beneath Sæbroga’s keel, but Dudda was unworried. ‘It’s a bad place when the tide ebbs, lord, but safe enough on the flood.’ We were running before the wind now, the big red axe sail bellied out to drive Sæbroga’s prow hard into the churning water. ‘Before we sail back,’ I said, ‘I want to move ballast stones aft.’

  ‘If we live,’ Dudda said quietly, then sketched the sign of the cross.

  We turned north, slewing the sail around to keep the ship moving fast and I felt her picking up speed as the tide caught her. I could see Dudda was nervous. His hands were clenching and unclenching as he gazed ahead. The waves seemed to be racing northwards, lifting Sæbroga’s stern and hurling her forward. Water seethed at the hull, waves shattered white at the prow, and the sound of seas crashing on rocks was incessant. ‘Loch Cuan,’ Finan had to speak loudly, ‘means the calm lake!’ he laughed.

  ‘We call it Strangrfjörthr!’ Vidarr shouted.

  The sea was thrusting us as if she wanted to dash us onto the great rocks either side of the channel’s entrance. Those rocks were wreathed in huge plumes of white spray. The steering-oar felt slack. ‘Oars!’ I shouted. We needed speed. ‘Row harder!’ I bellowed. ‘Row as if the devil were up your arse!’

  We needed speed! We already had speed! The tide and wind were carrying Sæbroga faster than any boat I had ever sailed, but most of that speed was the current, and we needed to be faster than the seething water if the long steering-oar was to control the hull. ‘Row, you ugly bastards,’ I shouted, ‘row!’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan muttered.

  My son made a whooping noise. He was grinning, holding onto the boat’s side. The waves were broken, slapping into white caps, shredding the heaving rowers with spray. We were racing into a cauldron of rock and churning seas. ‘When you’re past the entrance,’ Dudda was shouting, ‘you’ll see an island! Go to the east of it!’

  ‘Does it get calmer inside?’

  ‘It gets worse!’

  I laughed. The wind was rising, whipping my hair across my eyes. Then suddenly, we were in the entrance, in the jaws of rock and wind-driven foam, a
nd I could see the island and I pulled to steerboard, but the blade had no bite. The current was stronger than ever, sweeping us towards the rocks ahead. ‘Row!’ I bellowed. ‘Row!’ I heaved on the steering-oar and Sæbroga slowly responded. Then the hills caused a wind shadow and the huge sail flapped like a crazy thing, but still we raced inland. To right and left were maelstroms where the water eddied and broke over hidden rocks, where white birds shrieked at us. The waves no longer heaved us forward, but the current was rushing us through the narrow channel. ‘Row!’ I shouted at my sweating men. ‘Row!’

  The green hills on either bank looked so calm. The day promised to be fine. The sky was blue with just a few tattered white clouds. There were sheep grazing on a green meadow. ‘Glad to be home?’ I called to Finan.

  ‘If I ever get home!’ he said morosely.

  I had never seen a channel so rockbound or so treacherous, but by staying in the centre where the current ran strongest, we stayed in deep water. Other ships had died here, their black ribs stark above the hurrying water. Dudda guided us, pointing out the whirlpool that ripped the sea’s surface into turmoil. ‘That’ll kill you,’ he said, ‘sure as eggs are eggs. I’ve seen that thing tear the bottom out of a good ship, lord! She went down like a stone.’ The pool was to our right and still we seethed on, leaving it safely behind.

  ‘The harbour, lord!’ Vidarr shouted, and he pointed to where two masts could be seen above a low rocky headland.

  ‘Row!’ I shouted. The channel was at its narrowest and the current was sliding us at astonishing speed. A gust of wind bellied the sail, adding speed, and we cleared the point of land and I saw the huts above a shingle beach and a dozen men standing on the rocky shore. They waved and I waved back. ‘Orvar has four ships, yes?’ I asked Vidarr.

  ‘Four, lord.’

  So two were probably ahead of us, somewhere in the long reaches of the loch, and that lay not far ahead, just beyond a low grassy island.

  ‘Don’t go near the island, lord,’ Dudda said, ‘there are rocks all around it.’

  Then suddenly, amazingly, Sæbroga shot into calm water. One moment she was in the grip of an angry sea, the next she was floating as placid as a swan on a sun-dappled lake. The sail that had beaten dementedly now filled tamely, the hull slowed, and my men slumped on their oars as we gently coasted on a limpid calm. ‘Welcome to Loch Cuan,’ Finan said with a crooked smile.