by Damien Black
The captain turned back to bark more orders at his crew. As if that would make the wind blow more swiftly.
Squinting out to sea at the longship with unaided eyes, Braxus chewed thoughtfully on the captain’s words. The War of the Cobian Succession. That had been fought just over five years ago, when the Free Ward of Cobia on Thraxia’s southern border had had a succession crisis. That had prompted King Cullodyn to step in and claim it for himself, and satisfy a long-cherished Thraxian ambition to annex the horn of land that had steadfastly refused to join the kingdom for generations.
The war had mostly been fought at sea. It had lasted nine months and ended in a disastrous and humiliating defeat for the Thraxian navy. This did not bode well.
Braxus sized up the crew while he waited for Vertrix to return with the others. Like most cogs the Runner had a standard crew of thirty – ten less than the Northland longship. One advantage of rowing instead of sailing was that you needed more crew to take to the seas in the first place. Very handy if it came to a fight.
But the problem wasn’t just one of numbers. The crew of the Runner did look a likely enough bunch, their sinewed bodies hardened by a tough life on rough seas. But Northland reavers were something else, berserker bloodthirsty and strong as oxen. The Treaty of Ryøskil, signed three generations ago after Thorsvald the Hero King of Northalde defeated the last alliance of Northland sea princes, had kept the Northlanders mostly quiescent, but that didn’t stop the odd privateer turning freesail to try his chances.
The captain had summed it up nicely. It was bad luck for them, very bad luck indeed.
Vertrix emerged with Regan and Bryant. They had partially disobeyed his orders, pulling on mail byrnies, but that was to be expected. Behind them came their squires, including Paidlin. The poor lad had just about found his sea legs at long last – now he would have to find his battle courage too. A distant cousin, he was fourteen summers, the youngest of their party. Braxus bit his lip momentarily as he caught him trying to look brave and hardy, even though it was obviously not the raw wind making him tremble.
Vertrix handed Braxus a target shield to complement his sword. He normally used a heavier kite when on horseback, but this made more sense under the circumstances. Good job the grizzled old knight had insisted on bringing extra arms. All Braxus had been thinking about when they were preparing to leave was how many instruments he could fit in the hold.
‘All right boys,’ he said evenly as the other seven gathered around him, faces set grim and weapons ready. ‘The good captain here is going to try and outrun yon reavers – give them a merry chase and tire those brawny arms of theirs at the least. But it doesn’t take a seasoned sailor to see that we’re not likely to outrun a well-manned Northland longship on a day like this, gusty as it is. So it’s a fight we’re looking at most like, and I don’t plan on losing a single one of us before we get to Strongholm!’
He couldn’t help but catch Paidlin’s eye as he said this. The poor lad was plainly terrified. He had never been in a real fight, let alone killed a man. Out on the sea with a deck heaving beneath his feet was not a good place to start learning.
‘Not a single one of you,’ he repeated, as if to reassure himself. ‘Now, most like they’ve reckoned on piecemeal crew resistance – and our trying to run will only convince them of that. They won’t be expecting a bunch of Cobian War veterans and eight trained swords from Dréuth. So we’ve a small advantage of surprise – when they pull up alongside us, wait for them to board, then hit them hard, and hit them fast. Don’t ask any quarter or give it – we’re not tilting at fellow knights on the plain now, these berserkers are barbarian scum no better than Slánga’s lot. They’ll gut you without thinking twice about it if you give them half a chance.’
Catching Paidlin’s eye again he nodded curtly at him. ‘Never fear lad, this is what you’ve been training for every day except Rest-days since you had ten summers,’ he said, doing his best to sound confident. ‘Just stick by my side and remember everything I’ve taught you these past six months, and you’ll make out just fine.’
Paidlin smiled then. A fresh, naive smile it was, full of hope and courage found unexpectedly in fearful times. The only kind of courage there was, come to think of it. Bravery came all too easily in sight of hearth and home.
‘Alright,’ he continued, sweeping his eyes across the rest of them one last time. ‘Take up positions – we flank the port side. If there’s any fighting, I mean to see that we’re first in! Looks like they’ve no bows of any sort, but have your shields up and ready just in case.’
The last words were meant for the less experienced squires rather than Vertrix and the other knights, plainly already relishing the latest chance to test their mettle and add some more glory to their names. And they certainly were not meant for Gormly. Squire or no, he was arguably the best fighter of them all besides his master Vertrix and maybe Braxus. He had served as a serjeant in Braun’s garrison for more than twenty summers before unexpectedly seeking knightly service. Couldn’t ride worth a penny, and didn’t carve meat too well, but in every other respect he was a perfect second for any knight.
Across the deck Captain Conway had evidently been giving his crew similar instructions and encouragement. Some of the men still looked afraid, but that didn’t stop them arming themselves with a motley array of weapons as they took up their own positions – hand axes, short swords, the odd cutlass like the captain and his mate, plenty of dirks and one or two iron-shod cudgels.
Crude weapons, and Braxus wasn’t sure they would last long against a Northland war-axe. But then each man to his own. If this lot had managed to survive one of the worst-led naval conflicts in the Silver Age, they had to be made of some fairly stern stuff.
Gradually the Jolly Runner slowed as the crew forsook the sails to fight. The longship was by now plainly in view, looking glass or no: its single sail sported a stylised black carrion crow feasting on a ship broken in twain. The standard flag used by Northland pirates, it was mainly intended to intimidate victims into immediate surrender. But from what Braxus knew of reavers, they preferred to whet their appetites for spoil with a good fight first. Clutching his castle-forged blade, he grimly hoped that today they would get more of that than they bargained for.
As the longship drew up alongside the Runner one of its crew stood up in the stern. Clearly the leader, he sported a tarnished mail byrnie gilded with what looked like silver. Plunder from a rich cargo, probably. He wore a close-fitting helm fashioned in the style of the Northlanders (no horns – why tapestry weavers and bards insisted on portraying reavers with horned helmets Braxus could never fathom, a ridiculous notion with no basis in reality). A broad round shield was slung across his left arm; in his right he clutched an ugly-looking broadsword. He was a head taller than Braxus, and built like a warhorse.
That’ll be my opponent – a good knight never shies away from a challenge, Braxus thought ruefully to himself as the reaver barked a guttural command in thickly accented Northlending: ‘You haf one chance to surrender. You are slaves, or you are dead – you choose.’
Simple but effective, Braxus supposed. The captain understood enough of the Northlending tongue to get the gist too.
‘And ye’ve one chance to turn around and go back to whatever frozen hole spawned ye,’ he replied, brandishing his cutlass in a way that looked more comical than threatening. ‘I’ve four knights of Thraxia and thirty war veterans on board, so don’t think ye’ll find us easy fodder!’
Glancing sidelong at Braxus as he quickly translated, Regan rolled his eyes. ‘Well there goes our element of surprise,’ he observed drily.
‘Yes, I’d so been looking forward to taking advantage of that,’ put in Bryant, drier still.
The reavers’ captain laughed, a barking sound that seemed to scrape at the tangy air between them.
‘Oh, goot, goot,’ he bellowed in between chuckles. ‘Ve like it ven der little men from mainland make us sport ja?’ He bellowed again, this time in
Norric, and his men strained at the oars again, expertly closing the remaining gap between ships and bringing theirs alongside the Runner.
Raising his sword and shield, Braxus tensed as he took up a fighting stance. The parley was over. Battle was nigh.
With blood-curdling war whoops the reavers forsook oars for blades as they launched themselves towards the deck of the Runner. The longship was a war-worthy craft, its freeboard nearly as high as the cog’s, but even so those aboard the Runner had a slender height advantage.
Braxus took the first reaver in the guts as he leapt across the rail at him, his axe biting heavily into his shield. His cry of battle-rage turned to one of agony as he slumped to the deck. Even then he was not done, and picking himself up with another strangled scream he hurled his burly frame at the knight, the mindless assault of a dying man. Braxus darted nimbly back before closing in again lightning quick, driving the point of his sword through the reaver’s unprotected throat.
He had no time to savour his opponent’s gurgling death throes. Another reaver came at him hard on the heels of the first. For a while they fought ferociously, trading blows and blocks with sword and shield. Braxus felt the deck lurch beneath him several times; the gusty weather was bad enough on its own and the crowding of men on the port side didn’t help.
The seasoned reaver was used to it. Braxus was not. The ship lurched again just as he was thrusting his sword at a gap in his foe’s defences. It caught him off-balance and forced him onto one knee. The reaver leered at him as he brought his sword down towards his head. Flinging up his shield he caught the blow. Dropping his sword and unsheathing the dirk at his boot in one fluid motion, Braxus brought it down hard on the reaver’s unarmoured foot, pinning it to the deck. The reaver screamed in pain as, lurching upwards, Braxus barged him with his shield, forcing him to fall backwards, his pinned foot twisting agonisingly against the cold unyielding metal. Reaching down he swiftly snatched up his sword and hacked savagely at the reaver’s neck, just below the helm. A fountain of blood erupted from the wound as the Northlander slumped awkwardly to the deck, which lurched again, pulling the dirk free of the boards.
Not the most chivalrous way of despatching an opponent – but then you could hardly be expected to play by the rules fighting at sea with a rolling deck beneath your feet.
Braxus took advantage of the brief respite to take in how the others were faring. As he had feared, the sailors were getting the worst of it. Most of the reavers had fought their way onto the deck of the Runner by now, and the melee was spreading towards the middle of the ship. Ten of Conway’s men lay dead or dying, the others were hard pressed. Vertrix had slain one reaver – no, make that two: his second man turned a red pirouette of spurting blood before collapsing to the gore-spattered boards in a twitching heap. Regan and Bryant were fighting back to back, a sensible move seeing as they were outnumbered two to one.
Their squires had followed suit – but then Conric and Heiran were fairly seasoned fighters by now, just a year or two away from knighthood. Gormly had already killed two reavers, butchering them like slabs of meat with the great two-handed axe he liked to use. He was pressing another one hard as he fought stolidly by his master’s side, his face never changing expression.
But where was Paidlin? A scream of agony soon answered that question. Turning around he saw the young lad hit the deck, a great gout of blood welling up from his thigh. A grinning reaver stood above him, scarlet axe raised to deliver the death-blow as the youth writhed on the deck.
With a roar Braxus charged the reaver, hurtling into him, his shield bludgeoning aside the blow meant for his squire. A red mist came over him then – afterwards he remembered only a flurry of grey blurs as his sword went up and down, left and right. And then he was standing over the mangled corpse of another reaver, his breath coming hard in ragged gasps.
Just went to show Thraxians could do berserker rage too, when called for.
Paidlin was moaning pitifully, squirming about and clutching at his spurting leg, which looked to have been half severed. But Braxus had no time to tend to him. Regan and Bryant had evened up the odds, bringing two more buccaneers low, and Vertrix and Gormly were stepping over fresh corpses to help Conric and Heiran.
But the wider skirmish was being lost.
More than half of Conway’s men were down. The doughty captain was backed up against the mast, doing his best to fend off the cruel strokes of the chief buccaneer. Tough as he was, it didn’t look like a fight he could win by himself.
He would get precious little aid from his men. Some fifteen reavers were dead or on the way to being, but that still left twenty five. To his right the mate Cullen was struggling against three attackers. One of them had blood pouring from a deep cut in his head and clearly wouldn’t last long, but even so his chances didn’t look good either. On top of that Cullen was injured too – his bloodied left arm hung limply at his side.
The rest of the crew were just about holding their own – for now. That gave Braxus a chance to save either the mate or the captain.
He should save Conway. He ranked the highest, and if they could bring down the reaver’s leader it might just turn the tide. It made sense.
Then Conway’s drunken boastfulness flashed through his mind, along with Cullen’s long-suffering eye-rolling...
Roaring another battle cry Braxus trampled over corpses and thrust his sword deep into the side of one of the reavers pressing Cullen. The mate had just enough time to spare him a grateful glance as the wounded reaver turned on Braxus with a snarl. Braxus went back on the defensive, letting him come. He’d lost a lot of blood, half of it seeping into his eyes, and the lunge was wild and unsteady – as he had known it would be. Sidestepping, Braxus cut downwards in a vicious swipe that took the reaver’s sword-arm off at the wrist. He expired in a fainting heap.
Cullen found renewed energy. Pressing his reaver hard he caught him a tidy thrust in the midriff. It was a street fighter’s move, a canny move and a lethal one. The reaver slumped to his knees making an odd belching sound as he dropped his axe and clutched at the cutlass stuck in his guts. Braxus took his head off his shoulders.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, flashing the goggle-eyed mate a grin as blood showered both of them. ‘That one still counts as yours.’
A flicker of motion to his left. He turned just in time to parry the first blow, and the next. The captain of the reavers was on him, lashing frenziedly at him with a sword slick with Conway’s blood and brains. Braxus took a couple of steps back, tripped on a corpse and fell flat on his back.
He remembered then what Vertrix had told him once, more than ten summers ago when he still squired for him. No matter what befalls you on the battlefield, never lose your composure. There’s always a way to turn a bad situation around. Don’t die till you’re dead!
Braxus had no intention of dying, not by a reaver’s hand anyway.
The barbarian captain straddled him, raising his sword high. Desperately Braxus made as if to lunge at his midriff with his sword. The captain brought his shield in to ward off the coming blow...
And screamed as Braxus kicked him hard in the groin.
The shock was enough to put his swing off, and the captain bent over double as his blade bit the deck. Lurching to his feet Braxus was just about to press his advantage when the captain’s back arched spasmodically, a red curved sword-tip sprouting from his mailed chest.
Braxus blinked as his assailant slumped to the deck, revealing Cullen, a vicious snarl on his face as he yanked his weapon free.
‘That’s for Conway, Northland scum – looks like that fine mail wasn’t so fine after all.’
Braxus glanced about him. All of a sudden, as was so often the case in battle, the tide had turned. The remaining reavers were fleeing back to their ship, Vertrix and the other knights hewing down a couple more for good measure as they pursued them to the rail.
Leaning on his cutlass and breathing heavily, Cullen motioned with his head to the corpse o
f the reavers’ captain and grinned sardonically.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘That one still counts as yours.’
The cost of victory was not cheap. Of the casualties on their side, eleven including Conway were dead and three more soon would be. Vertrix and Bryant and all the squires barring Gormly had taken light injuries, but Paidlin was in a bad way.
‘Most like he’ll lose that leg,’ said Vertrix quietly after Gormly had bound up the wound and put it in a makeshift splint. Bereft of any kind of opiates aboard ship, they had left the unfortunate squire writhing in agony below decks to take the air before sunset. ‘Gormly’s an experienced field-dresser, but without a proper chirurgeon to see to that wound it’ll fester. We’re still five days out of Strongholm, probably more now we’re left with a skeleton crew. That’s all it’ll take, mark my words – I’ve seen it before.’
‘So have I,’ snapped Braxus, ‘in case you’d forgotten all the years that have elapsed since I was your squire.’
He regretted the harsh words instantly. The surprised look of hurt on Vertrix’s face did little to allay his guilty feeling.
‘I’m sorry Vertrix,’ he said, laying a hand on the knight’s uninjured shoulder. ‘I had no right to say that. Please forgive me. I’m just... dammit, Paidlin was my charge! He wasn’t supposed to get into a vicious fight like that for another year at least! He wasn’t ready – yet another miserable failure of Braxus of Gaellen, good-for-nothing son and heir to Lord Braun!’
He slumped miserably over the rail of the deck, where but two hours ago all had been pandemonium and bloodshed. He could still smell that blood in his nostrils.