Hero Born

by Andy Livingstone

  Brann had already been surprised at the length, and content, of the conversation. Early on he had felt strongly that the Captain had been struck with a need to unburden himself in some way, and faced with an unthreatening – and, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant – companion, Brann guessed the temptation to take this rare opportunity had been too much for him. He had hardly opened up his soul, but he was clearly talking more than he was used to doing. Perhaps he now regretted saying so much; perhaps not – but either way Brann was left with no misapprehension that the conversation was over.

  The Captain opened the door and nodded to the waiting Cannick. Without another word he turned back to the desk and let Cannick lead Brann back the length of the ship to his bench. Most rowers were still sleeping, but those few who were awake did not show any interest in the sight of him being brought back from the cabin.

  He sat back in his place. Gerens was sound asleep, lying to his left on top of the bench. Grakk was in his customary sleeping position, curled up on the deck in front of the bench. He opened one eye as Brann was fastened back onto the chain, said nothing, and went back to sleep.

  There was a peaceful, golden, almost magical haze as the sun came up, but there was still a sharp edge to the soft breeze, so Brann pulled his cloak about him as he leant against the side of the ship. The words of the Captain filled his head until he dozed off, suffusing him with images of a bigger world that he’d always known must be there but had never previously thought – or had to think – about.

  The wind dropped early during the next day, and the rowers worked for several hours. Brann welcomed the effort even more so than usual. Normally, even if the wind was up, they rowed for a period every day to keep the men at their peak in terms of fitness and technique. Sometimes, if there was a strong forecast from the Lady below decks for wind the next day, they would row at night and sleep through the daylight hours, as they had done for the first three hours during the night after heading directly away from land, and away from the scene of such horror.

  As his fitness and strength grew, Brann had come to enjoy the exercise: it passed the time, and there was a sense of purpose and satisfaction about it that he could not previously have imagined from something to simple and repetitive.

  When dusk threatened to fall, around an hour after they had stopped rowing for the second time that day, and while the rowers were starting to eat, a ripple of murmurs rolled along the benches from the stern. A broad rower two benches away turned around and said simply, ‘Halveka’, before returning to his meal.

  The two boys turned to Grakk. Gerens asked, ‘What does he mean? Who is Halveka?’

  ‘Not who, but where, ignorant lad,’ Grakk chided him. ‘Your eyes are open but do you see nothing? Until now, we have ever sailed due north or due south. But now we head northwest.

  ‘They are taking us to their homeland.’

  Chapter 6

  The servant girl was there, he could feel her presence behind his chair. But he had not heard her enter.

  He had started from his doze at the knowledge she was there, but the slow reaction irked him. Yet another sign of deficiencies that, like bad houseguests, had arrived unbidden and unwelcome and outstayed their welcome. Except that these guests would never leave. There was a time when a shadow could have slipped through the drapes at his balcony door and he would have wakened from the deepest slumber and had knife in hand before the intruder was more than a few paces into the room. There were times when this had been the reason why he had been the one standing over the corpse, reversing the intruder’s vision of that particular tableau.

  Those times were gone. But he was still here.

  ‘Fetch me water, girl.’ He was always thirsty when he woke.

  No water was brought. No answer was given. But there was a voice, soft and dry as the sand blowing across the tiles of the balcony floor.

  ‘Be ready.’

  He started. It was so close it could almost have been whispered right into his ear.

  ‘I will come. Ere then, think as only you can think. Be as only you can be. Be ready.’

  The arms of the chair let him heave himself up and around, barely catching his balance. His breath ragged, his eyes leapt around the room.

  He was alone.

  But he knew he had not been.

  ****

  They rowed frequently for three days, as the winds were light. Brann did not mind: it also meant that the sea was fairly flat, which was good because he was feeling distinctly uneasy about being so far from land.

  The fourth day began eventfully. A huge roar and a raucous commotion below deck was followed by bellowing and cries of pain that sounded young enough to belong to the boys in the hold.

  Grakk looked at the two boys, the slight narrowing of his eyes the only indication of his mischievous humour. ‘Boar, I believe, has discovered sea water in his sugar. A taste for sugar, has our Boar. Always has some on board and keeps it in his precious sugar jar. Never shares, never trades it for anything. Boar, you understand, is partial to his sugar.’

  ‘And someone has put water in it?’ Brann asked. The boys were finding it easier to become accustomed to the technique of rowing than to the incongruity of Grakk’s appearance and his speech, although they found that it lent him credibility: cultured words from an apparently barbaric source somehow seemed, with their unexpectedness, more profound.

  The roaring and banging were continuing below. The warriors on deck at the stern were almost dancing with suppressed laughter. Grakk nodded at them.

  ‘I wonder if you can guess who?’ he said.

  ‘Much as I detest Boar, it is a bit childish, isn’t it?’ Brann said. A snort from Gerens and a glance at his expression indicated that he found it grimly amusing. Brann reflected briefly that almost anything connected with Gerens could be described as grim.

  Grakk was also amused. ‘Rowers have rowing to fill their time, and afterwards, our priority is to replenish our energy, so we eat and sleep. Warriors have little to do, even less when they are at sea for many days. Boredom brings out the child in everyone, regardless of their age and station in life, I have found.’

  He nodded towards the stern again. ‘A rower up there heard talk of it, and word soon spread around the benches. The warriors will only be surprised that Boar took more than one day to find out. But then his mind has been pre-occupied with the fact that this is his last voyage with us. It seems our Captain has decided Boar’s particular skills no longer enhance our capabilities.’

  The noise below decks, surprisingly, managed to increase. Brann was only glad the captured boys had been sold on; he didn’t like to think of what might have happened had there been ready targets for Boar’s rage.

  ‘Perhaps they have misjudged how much this would affect him,’ he suggested. ‘He must have been worrying about returning home to tell Mrs Boar that he’d lost his job.’

  Gerens spluttered and Grakk almost smiled.

  The door at the stern exploded open and Boar, a picture of all-consuming fury, emerged like some vast sea monster seeking prey.

  He cast about and glared up at the raised section of deck, where the warriors were a picture of innocence and forced nonchalance.

  ‘Something the matter, Boar?’ one of them asked, and several of the others turned away quickly to study the horizon intently. Boar growled something unintelligible and turned away, starting to stalk down the aisle. The merriment evaporated quicker than spray off the deck on a hot day.

  ‘Boar suffers from an affliction known as cowardice,’ murmured Grakk. ‘He is well aware that the warriors are responsible, but he will not challenge them. He seeks an easier target now to assuage his fury, and logic will not play a part. Be wary. The Captain will not tolerate Boar injuring a rower to the extent that a rower cannot row, but Boar knows well how to hurt you without incapacitation. Do not catch his eye.’

  Brann looked down at his feet, needing no second instruction to avoid Boar’s interest. The huge fat man was
now halfway down the aisle, and was muttering to himself in dark anger. The words grew louder as his fury sought a target.

  ‘Who did it?’ he growled. ‘It was one of you maggots, wasn’t it? I know it was. Who was it?’

  His voice had reached a shout, now, and the benches trembled as his thumping step passed. Brann was trembling also.

  The furious man reached the front and could go no further. He roared wordlessly. He turned and found the seven boy rowers in front of him. His breathing heavy, he stood for a moment, glaring at heads that were steadfastly staring at feet.

  Brann heard the raging man’s breathing grow louder as his heavy footsteps slowly approached behind him. His stomach, already knotted with nerves, lurched as his nose caught the overpowering smell of the man, an aroma that he had thought had passed from his life with his move to the rowing benches. He held his breath, hoping that Boar would pass on.

  But he did not.

  ‘You,’ he growled hoarsely, so close behind Brann that his breath was hot on the boy’s neck. ‘Oh, yes. I should have known. The boy who thinks he is special. So clever, aren’t you? You think you can play a trick on Boar, and get away with it, don’t you? Well it’s not a trick. And you can’t get away with it.’

  He was so close now, bending over the boy, that his nose, dripping with sweat, pressed repeatedly, repulsively, terrifyingly against the back of Brann’s head.

  Brann was quivering, visibly. He stared harder at the floor, hoping that Boar would have his say and go away. But he knew that he would not.

  Boar was working himself evermore into a frenzy, so Brann stammered a denial, hoping that the man would accept logic. Still staring down, he said hesitantly, ‘But I have been chained here for days. It could not have been me.’

  Boar, however, was not for accepting rational argument. He wanted a target, and an easy one… and he had found it.

  His fury had reached a level where he could not even form speech. With a frustrated howl, he cuffed Brann on the right side of his head, knocking him roughly into Gerens. Much as he was trying to show no weakness, Brann could not help grunting as the blow landed. His head was left spinning, and it took a moment for his vision to return.

  The men on the raised deck had stopped laughing, aware that the situation had turned serious. They knew that if any of them tried to intervene, Boar was so far beyond reason now that a full-scale brawl was likely to develop. Injuries and, possibly, death could ensue – not just for the warriors, but also for the rowers chained nearby who would be unable to avoid swinging weapons. And casualties among warriors or rowers would not go down well with the Captain. Already they had young boys making up the numbers. Any further reduction in the number of experienced slaves could affect their control of the vessel.

  The only course of action with any chance of success was for someone in authority to intervene, and one man was already hurrying below to fetch Cannick. Another felt that this would take too long, and had started for the Captain’s cabin, much as they wanted to avoid involving him in what was a chain of events begun by their trivial joke. All they could hope was that smacking Brann would have assuaged Boar’s anger enough that he would now limit himself to kicking parts of the ship.

  Boar loomed over Brann, his fury exploding from him in a bellow as he managed to formulate words once again. ‘You think Boar is stupid, don’t you? Don’t you? But Boar has seen you, visiting the Captain and the old witch.’

  Brann was too terrified to point out that he had been escorted on each of these occasions – and once by Boar himself.

  The huge slaver, scarlet-faced and spraying spittle over the terrified boy, had reached a frenzy of irrational rage. His voice high-pitched, he screeched, ‘It was you! I know it was you. Nobody touches Boar’s things. Nobody touches Boar’s sugar. Nobody!’

  He hauled Brann up by the neck of his tunic and, in one astoundingly quick movement, let go and hit him back-handed on the side of his head. Brann battered against the side of the ship and rebounded onto the floor. Head ringing, he knew then he was going to die.

  Grakk leant over and hissed at him, ‘Stay down. Play dead.’

  Brann found that his head had cleared surprisingly quickly, however, and he felt strangely calm. He was aware of where he had been hit, but – for the moment – felt no pain. And he felt with certainty that if he lay down, Boar would continue to beat him to a bloody pulp, such was his spiralling fury.

  He forced himself back to his feet, but was felled again by a full-blooded punch that came down from above and struck him on the top of the forehead. He let his knees buckle to lessen the blow but still crashed again to the deck. A hiss of intaken breath rose from the benches as, to a man, the rowers assumed his neck had been broken, replaced by a gasp of surprise as he obeyed the instinct that screamed at him to start climbing back to his feet.

  He glanced up to see where the next blow was coming from. Boar was casting about for anything that he could lay his hands on that would do quicker damage and stop the boy relentlessly getting back up every time he hit him – once down the boy would be at the mercy of his gleeful bloodlust.

  Brann reached under the bench for leverage as he started to pull himself upright again. His hand brushed against the stolen knife that he had jammed point-first into the underside of the bench.

  He wrenched it free and stood warily, hiding it against his loose trousers. He was unsure what he would – or could – do with it, but it seemed better to have it than be empty-handed. He was well aware, though, that if Boar saw it, he was likely to become even more savagely violent.

  Breathing heavily, he watched as Boar spotted a hand-axe, forgotten when the dead warrior had been stripped of his weapons and consigned to the sea. With a howl of delight, Boar seized it and turned back to Brann.

  The Captain burst from his cabin and took in the scene at the other end of the ship in an instant. ‘Boar!’ he shouted, his voice slicing through the air like an arrow. ‘Stop this now!’

  But Boar was oblivious. With a roar, he lurched at Brann, swinging the axe down from high on his right. It was cutting directly for the side of Brann’s neck, and would have cleaved into his chest – had he not swayed back instinctively at the last moment.

  The axe smashed down into the bench, embedding its edge in the wood and slicing the end from Gerens’s little finger where his hand was resting on the seat. The boy shouted in shock and clutched his hand to his chest as Grakk dragged him away from the madness.

  The Captain, Cannick and two warriors were sprinting down the ship, weapons drawn. They would be on them in seconds, but Brann knew that it would not be soon enough.

  Laughing manically now, Boar pulled the axe from the bench as if it were a toy and, without a pause, swung a sweeping back-hand stroke that would behead Brann in an instant.

  Without time to think, Brann stepped forward, closer to Boar, and smashed his forearm, supported by his other hand, into Boar’s solid arm. He could not hope to stop the force of such a blow, but he did manage to deflect it upwards just enough for it to pass a fraction above his head.

  Boar’s arm swung up high to his right. He was unbalanced, and surprised, and his front was completely open to an attack that he never imagined would come. But it did.

  Brann, his arm still numb from deflecting Boar’s swipe, put one foot on the bench and lunged forwards. In an action that was almost a punch, he stabbed the knife into the front of Boar’s throat. Undefended and unexpected, the blade plunged in to the hilt. Unfettered and unexpected, an animal roar burst from his throat, carrying with it his pent-up fury at his brother’s death.

  The surprise of the blow over-balanced Boar further, and he toppled backwards, incomprehension widening his eyes. His hand started to reach for his throat, but Brann was still gripping the hilt. The chain attached to Brann’s ankle had reached its limit and pulled him also from his feet, snatching the weapon from the wound.

  Boar crashed to the deck, as did Brann, but with considerably less noise. Blood
fountained from the wound and the knife fell from Brann’s grasp and slid across the deck. Grakk reached down and, as the Captain skidded to a halt beside them, casually flipped it over the side of the ship.

  Inspecting the area around his feet, Grakk said, ‘Merely some rubbish lying on deck, Captain. Some people are so very careless.’ He looked up. ‘Someone could get hurt.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Captain said, dryly. He cast a cursory look at Boar’s body, and turned to Cannick. ‘Get this scumbag off my ship, and have the mess cleaned up. And have the medic see to the boys’ injuries.’

  Brann rose to his knees, his throbbing arm clutched to his chest. He stared at the corpse, at the face staring skywards from a pool of its own blood, but seeing only his brother’s face, drained of colour and life, still expecting the look of surprise to be replaced in an instant by the familiar and irresistible grin. His roar of release had released little. The cold returned to his stomach; spread up to his head. In a solitary concession to the situation, his body started to shake.

  The Captain faced the benches, and raised his voice. ‘Let this be a lesson to all of you,’ he called. ‘The deck is a dangerous place: it is unsteady and it is slippery. Nasty falls can happen, as in the case of poor Boar, here. Learn from his folly.’

  The message was clear – the matter was closed. The Captain turned back to Cannick and, low enough that only the veteran warrior could hear, he said, ‘See to the boy. I think he’s had enough of the deep and meaningful heart-to-hearts. Keep it short and sweet, but make sure it doesn’t push him over the edge.’

  The older man cleared his throat, then seemed to change his mind and turned to follow the orders. The Captain’s hand on his arm stopped him. ‘What?’

  ‘The boy, Einarr.’ His voice and eyes were soft. ‘He is not…’

  ‘Don’t,’ the taller man snapped. ‘Don’t say his name.’

  Cannick nodded. ‘My apologies. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I know that.’