Godi turned and began making his way forward, slapping men on the shoulders as he did, waving for them to follow him. Gudrid dropped to his knees and began fishing ropes out from under the afterdeck. They had cordage made of various materials, mostly hemp, but the strongest and most expensive were those made of braided walrus hide. It was two of those that Gudrid dragged out from where they were stored and laid them down on the deck. He found the bitter ends and began to coil the ropes down in such a way as to assure they would pay out smoothly and not tangle as the sea anchor was streamed astern.
He was just finishing with the second rope when Godi came aft once more. A half-dozen men were with him and they were moving slow and deliberately, carrying a bundle of half a dozen oars between them. They staggered as the ship rolled and once the three men at the back of the line fell in a heap, but they managed to regain their feet and make it to the stern.
Thorgrim looked down at Failend, tied to the cleat. Her eyes were still shut, but there seemed to be a bit more color in her face, which was encouraging. “We’ll need to move her,” he said, loud enough to be heard. “We’ll need that cleat!”
The others nodded, but none of them save for Harald would dare to manhandle her, so Gudrid took the tiller from him and Harald untied the rope and lifted her and set her in the very stern, leaning against the sternpost. “I think she’ll be safe there!” he shouted and Thorgrim nodded his agreement. Once the sea anchor was set he had reason to hope there would be no more great boarding seas.
The others had set to work on the oars. They laid them down and lashed them together at various intervals, then Godi began to tie the two walrus hide ropes securely to the center, but Thorgrim stopped him.
“Tie one to each end!” he shouted. “So we can adjust the angle we’re dragging them!”
Godi nodded and did as Thorgrim instructed. As he did, Thorgrim looked out over the larboard side. Blood Hawk was there, nearly abeam of them, a quarter mile away and rolling and pitching in the same manic way that Sea Hammer was. Thorgrim could just make out figures moving along her deck. Then he had an idea.
“Godi!” he shouted. “Before you send the oars over the side, lift them and wave them! Wave them side to side!”
Godi looked confused but he knew better than to question Thorgrim, particularly in that situation. He grabbed the bundle of oars and lifted and the others joined him to help, though Thorgrim imagined Godi alone was bearing nearly all the weight.
The oars came up vertical and Godi and the others waved them side to side, which would have been tricky even if the ship was on an even keel and not bucking and twisting. But Thorgrim wanted to attract the notice of the men aboard Blood Hawk . They may have already thought to put out a sea anchor, but if they had not, he wanted to give them the idea.
“Good!” Thorgrim shouted. “Now, get it overboard!”
The men lowered the bundle of oars, resting one end on the edge of the ship. Harald stood with one rope around the larboard cleat, and Hall stood with the other to starboard. Godi lifted the oars and slid them overboard into the chaotic sea. The ropes lifted off the deck as the strain came on them and were instantly straight as iron rods. Harald and Hall began to ease away, paying the rope out as the sea anchor was swept astern.
“Start to check it, slowly, now, slowly!” Thorgrim shouted and Hall and Harald gripped their ropes tighter, slowly stopping them from paying out over the side.
“Good! Hold there!” Thorgrim said. For a moment everyone remained as still as they could on the heaving deck, feeling the motion of the ship underfoot. Thorgrim looked forward to gauge the angle of the ship’s centerline to the set of the waves.
“Hall, ease your line, just a bit!” he shouted, then, “Good! Hold there!”
Once more they stood frozen, seeing how Sea Hammer would respond. Thorgrim could already feel the difference. With the oars dragging behind, the ship was going just a bit slower than the waves pushing her. Rather than racing down the crests and slamming into the rollers ahead, the big seas were moving under her, lifting her stern and rolling forward to lift her bow in turn. Up and down like a teeter-totter, but there was a controlled feeling to it. They no longer felt as if they were right on the knife edge of destruction.
Thorgrim nodded. “Good!” he shouted. The others were smiling and they wore expressions of relief. It was, in truth, way too early to feel anything of the kind, but Thorgrim kept his mouth shut and let them have their little victory.
He looked across the water at Blood Hawk . She was passing ahead of them now, not having the drag of a sea anchor as Sea Hawk did. But hopefully they had seen what Thorgrim was up to and would follow his example. Hopefully all the ships would see, or at least think of the idea on their own. Thorgrim did not think there was any other way they could hope to live through the night.
With the ship pulling at the sea anchor, the steering board had no effect, so Thorgrim let go of the tiller and lashed it in place. His wound throbbed and his arms were stiff and aching, more than he realized, and once he lowered them it was hard to lift them again. But with any luck he would not have to, not for some time.
“Now what?” Harald shouted.
Thorgrim shook his head. “Night’s coming!” he said. “Nothing more we can do! Let’s try to sleep, and if any of us are still alive come morning, then we’ll think of what to do next!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
[S]hort is the ship's berth, and changeful the autumn night,
much veers the wind ere the fifth day
and blows round yet more in a month.
Hávamál
When morning came at last, Sea Hammer and all her crew still lived. That was how it seemed to Thorgrim, though he was not certain, and he was also not certain he was glad of it. He woke sometime after first light and pulled aside the oiled cloth he had used to cover himself and Failend and looked out at the same thick blanket of cloud, the same howling wind and driving rain that had been with them at nightfall.
He was all the way aft, jammed into the narrow wedge at the stern of the ship. Failend was pressed up against him and they had managed to dry a bit under the makeshift tent. A gust of cold wind blew in under the cloth and Failend stirred and made a moaning noise and opened her eyes. She looked much improved from the night before. There was color in her cheeks and less misery in her expression.
“Are we still alive?” Failend asked.
“Must be,” Thorgrim said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t think Valhalla looks like this,” Thorgrim said. “And even if it does, they certainly would not welcome a Christ worshiper like you there.”
“Fine. I’ll happily take my heaven over yours. And I know this isn’t it.”
“How do you know?” Thorgrim asked.
“Too wet to be heaven,” Failend said. “It could be hell. That’s where I would expect to see you heathens. But it seems too cold for that.” They were quiet for a moment and then Failend said, “I’m hungry.”
That announcement was both surprising and welcome. Thorgrim pushed the cloth off of them and stood with more difficulty than he had anticipated. The muscles of his arms and legs were cramped and stiff and sore and they bitterly protested the movement he demanded of them. His wound was tight and he took care as he straightened. He held on to the sternpost with one hand and stretched as best he could.
“I’m hungry, too,” he said. “But whether any of our food has survived this storm, I do not know.”
Once he trusted his muscles to work as they should, he began to make his way forward. First he checked the ropes holding the sea anchor astern. Harald and Gudrid had wrapped them in cloth where they ran over the sheer strake to keep them from chaffing through, which they would have done, quickly, despite the strength of the walrus hide rope. They seemed intact, but Thorgrim eased each one out a few feet so that they would rub on a different section and then repositioned the cloth.
That done, he looked out toward the horizon, moving
his eyes slowly from stern to bow. The seas were still enormous, rolling and breaking and cresting, but Sea Hammer was riding them easily enough, her stern, sharp as her bow, cutting through the waves as they rose around her. Somewhere behind them the sea anchor was still straining at the lines, checking the ship’s drift and holding her at such an angle that she could live in that wild ocean.
And Sea Hammer was not the only ship that lived. Some ways off Thorgrim could see what he thought was Blood Hawk , rising and falling on the seas as his own ship was doing. He guessed from her motion that they, too, had set a sea anchor, and he wondered who had assumed command of the vessel.
Further off and a bit astern he could see another ship that he thought was Oak Heart , and another that was too far off to make out: just a small, dark point on the dark gray sea. He turned and crossed the deck and looked over the starboard side. One of the smaller ships, Fox or Dragon or Falcon , was astern. So at least three of the ships, along with Sea Hammer , had also lived through the night, and Thorgrim was glad of that. It was still possible that the others floated as well, and were just beyond his sight. He nodded to himself and continued on forward.
Most of the men had found some sort of cover: scraps of the old sail or cloaks or the cloth from the tents they would set up when ashore. Sea Hammer ’s deck looked like the wreckage of a cloth merchant’s shop, with sundry bits of fabric lumped here and there. But the men under them were starting to move, starting to pull their covers back and peek out at the day. They were happy no doubt to find themselves still alive and floating. Not so happy to find that their conditions had not changed much.
Godi and Harald and a few others were pulling themselves to their feet as Thorgrim approached. He was about to call to them when a heap of oiled cloth at his feet seemed to burst into life and Starri Deathless kicked himself free of his cover. He leapt to his feet and looked wildly around. For a moment Thorgrim thought he was in one of his berserker rages, and he did not like to think what would happen if that was the case. Then he saw the recognition creep back into Starri’s eyes.
“Night Wolf! When by the gods will we get something to eat and drink? Are you trying to starve us all, now that you’ve failed to drown us?”
“There’s still a good chance you’ll drown, never fear,” Thorgrim said. “As to food, I was just coming to look into that myself.”
The mention of food and drink sparked more activity among the men. They began to shuffle to their feet and work their way around the heaving deck, walking as best they could, and crawling when they could not. They pulled up deck boards, looking for provisions that had been stored down in the shallow bilge and inspecting the barrels and bundles that were lashed in place on deck.
There had not been much food aboard to begin with, as they had only intended to sail for Vík-ló, and of what little there was, most was ruined. Fresh water casks had been bashed open with the wild motion of the ship, their contents mixing with the salt water coming over the sides. Bags of bread had been reduced to a soggy, inedible mess. The same with bags of oats.
But it was not all gone. Two small barrels of salted pork were found, mostly intact. One seemed to have suffered almost no damage. The other was partially stove in, but since the meat was salted already, no one imagined the salt water would hurt it much. As to fresh water, that was happily of no immediate concern. It had been pouring down rain all night, and it was still. The men had only to hold their helmets up to rinse out the salt water, then hold them up again to get their fill of fresh.
The two casks of meat were broken open and a bit of food distributed to all hands. Thorgrim oversaw the operation, and he was parsimonious with the portions. He had no idea how long it would have to last. The storm might blow for another day or more—he doubted longer than that—but once it passed he would have little idea of where they were, or how long it would take them to reach land again. If, indeed, they were ever able to reach land again.
The eating was not too pleasant. Salt pork was meant to be boiled at some length to make it edible, and there was no chance of doing that on board a ship heaving in the seas and drenched with rain. So they gnawed at the salty, leathery meat and, hungry as they were, relished it.
And then, with their meal, their one meal of the day, finished and the remainder packed away, there was nothing more to do. Thorgrim sent Starri aloft to see what he could see. When he came down he reported seeing four of the other ships, all within a mile or so, all seemingly riding to sea anchors like Sea Hammer . Other than that it was just water, rolling in great, breaking waves as far as the eye could see. Which was not far, with the clouds and the driving rain.
“All right…” Thorgrim said. He scanned the sky but there was no hint at all of where the sun might be, and thus he had no idea of which direction they were being blown. South and east, he thought, but that was only a guess.
“Godi,” he said next. “Get some men and round up all the barrels and such that you can find that can still hold any water. Rinse them out with rain water, then set up some sort of funnels with the cloth here to fill them as full as they can get. Try to keep the spray out of them.”
Godi nodded. He and the others would see the sense in that. If the rain stopped, they would have no fresh water at all. Worse, with the spray and the occasional boarding seas they were forever getting mouthfuls of salt water, and that would quickly drive them mad with thirst if they had no relief.
Next Thorgrim set those men not helping Godi to rigging the disparate bits of cloth over the lowered yard, making something like a proper tent that might shelter them all. There would be no relief from the misery, but they could at least mitigate it some. It would make things more bearable, and, just as important in Thorgrim’s mind, it gave the men something to do, some work that would improve their situation. The ship was snugged down and riding well to her sea anchor, there was nothing more that needed doing for her, save for bailing every once in a while. But with the chance of a watery death so close at hand, it would never do to let the men loll about and brood on their fate.
It took most of the day for the men to do as Thorgrim ordered, and by the time they were done they had collected a decent amount of water, covered the broken barrels to keep the spray out, rigged a shelter and pretty well exhausted themselves just moving around the rolling, pitching vessel. The rain had begun to taper off as the day wore on, which told Thorgrim it was a good job they had done what they had. The men found places to collapse on the deck, under the tent and jammed up against the ship’s sides, or against the sea chests, lashed in place, where they could remain mostly secure.
Night settled down once more, and while the rain eventually stopped completely, the seas continued on as large as they had been, with Sea Hammer going up and down as each waved passed under. They were used to that motion now. It seemed as if they had been moving that way for so long that none of them could recall what it felt like to stand on solid, unmoving ground.
Thorgrim set a night watch, a man at every quarter, bow, stern, larboard and starboard. He organized their relief through the night, then he staggered aft and once again lay down in the very stern with Failend pressed up against him. Her seasickness had passed, but like everyone aboard, she was hungry and exhausted and happy to sleep, if for no other reason than to make the time pass more easily.
And they did sleep, right through the night, and once again Thorgrim woke in the pre-dawn hours. The cloth was over them for warmth, but since the rain had stopped they did not cover their heads, and when Thorgrim opened his eyes he could see stars above him. For a moment, still stupid with sleep, he looked at them with puzzlement. And then he realized what they were, and at the same time realized that the ship’s movement had lessoned considerably. The violent pitching was now more of a rocking sensation, the ship rising and falling with a long, slow motion.
We’ll be able to haul that sea anchor in , he thought. From where he was, huddled under a cloth in the stern, he could not tell how much wind was blowing. Some, he
was sure, but it did not seem as powerful as before.
He climbed carefully out from under the cloth, trying not to wake Failend, and moved along the deck. The lookouts were in place, he was happy to see, since that meant he would not have to pour his wrath down on anyone for their lack of vigilance. He stood leaning against the edge of the tent amidships and looked out toward what he thought was the east.
And he was right. Not long after he had taken his post he could see a discernable lightening along the horizon, and soon he could tell that he was not looking at a blanket of cloud anymore, but at clear skies overhead.
One by one the men emerged from under the tent and joined Thorgrim in looking off to the east. They were silent as the horizon went from gray to orange and yellow and then the edge of the sun emerged from the water, threw its blessed light over the sea, and every man aboard felt an unalloyed sense of relief.
Save for Thorgrim. His relief was tempered by the need to make some decisions. As long as the storm was raging and the ship as secured as she could be, there was not much that needed his attention, because there was not much he could do. But now, once more, their fate was in their hands, not the gods’, and that meant he had to think of what came next.
Harald stepped up beside him. “The seas are quieter now. We’ve sailed in worse. Shall I haul the sea anchor in?”
“Not yet,” Thorgrim said. The drag from the sea anchor was still giving the ship a more comfortable motion. No reason to change that just then.
“We’ll have breakfast first,” he said. “Get some hands and fish out some of the ballast stones from the bilge and make a fire ring. The ship’s steady enough for that, if you’re careful. There should be some dry wood in the hold, or mostly dry, that you can split up. Boil some of that salt beef and we’ll have that. Then we’ll see what’s next.”
A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8) Page 29