“Harald! Agnarr!” Thorgrim called out. “Round up some men and see everything is lashed down tight! Double check all the lashings! Then let us see about rigging some sort of shelter to windward! It looks like we will be out here for the night!”
Harald and Agnarr nodded, not bothering to strain their voices against the wind, and headed forward, calling to the others. They were Thorgrim’s most trusted men. The others in Far Voyager’s company, to be sure, were good seamen and good warriors. There was no man aboard he did not trust, or they would not have been aboard. But he knew from experience that when he gave an order to Harald or Agnarr it would be carried out as nearly to his wishes as it could be without his having done the job himself.
Starri Deathless sat down beside Ornolf. Ornolf handed him his drinking horn and Starri took a long draft. In terms of personal trust, there was no one aboard save for Harald and Ornolf, who were family, whom Thorgrim trusted more than Starri. He and Starri had fought side by side at raid on the monastery at Cloyne four months before, though to Thorgrim it seemed much, much longer past than that. Starri decided then to follow Thorgrim and he had hardly left Thorgrim’s side since. There had been many fights between then and now, large and small, mead hall brawls and the clash of shieldwall against shieldwall. Always Starri had been there with Thorgrim.
Starri was a berserker, one of those blessed, or cursed, with a wild and uncontrollable lust for a fight. He was a man who dreamed of nothing but being butchered in honorable combat, being lifted to Valhalla and there spending eternity fighting and feasting. Unfortunately for Starri he was so wild in earthly combat, so brutal in wielding his battle ax, that his enemies seemed never able to lay a weapon on him.
Starri had become like a brother to Thorgrim, but Thorgrim did not always turn to Starri for more practical considerations, such as matters of seamanship. Starri could be a bit unpredictable.
Back in Dubh-linn, having recovered from his wound enough to move about, having realized that he could abandon the turmoil of Ireland and sail Far Voyager back to his home, Thorgrim decided to do just that. He had felt compelled to tell Starri in as gentle a manner as he could. He did not think Starri would be pleased.
“I’ll leave Ireland now,” he said as the two men stood on the low hill above the muddy shore, looking out at the mouth of the Liffey and the sea beyond. “Harald is ready to return to Vik. Ornolf is, too. I did not think the old man would ever leave, but it seems the charms of Dubh-linn have worn thin for him, as they have for me and Harald.”
Starri nodded. For all his reaction, Thorgrim might have been telling him what was for supper. At last Starri said, “Very well, to Vik it will be.” It would not occur to Starri to ask if he was invited. And of course he was. Thorgrim was just not so sure he would want to go.
“There’ll be no fighting, no trouble,” Thorgrim warned him. “We will sail to Vik and that will be it.”
Starri laughed. He laughed out loud and with genuine amusement. “Where the Night Wolf goes, there will always be trouble!” he said.
And so there was. But mounting seas and a cold, driving wind on a lee shore was not the sort of trouble Starri enjoyed. He huddled against the side of the ship, pulled a fur over his head. Starri was tall, lean and muscular, all arms and legs like a starfish, well built for the kind of fighting he enjoyed, not so well built to stand against inclement weather and boarding waves.
Harald and Agnarr came aft, moving with care over the wildly bucking deck. The seas were coming aboard with every roller that passed under them, and as the bow lifted to a wave the water cascaded aft and broke around the men’s legs like they were standing in a river.
“All’s secure, father!” Harald shouted. What sunlight there was, filtered through the heavy cover of clouds, was growing dim now with the night coming on, but there was still light enough for Thorgrim to see Harald’s ruddy cheeks, his yellow hair plastered to his head, the thrill of the proximity to danger clear in his unlined, beardless face. “We’ve hands rigging up a lee cloth!”
Thorgrim nodded. He would need someone to relieve him at the tiller sometime soon. In his younger days he would have stood there all night, but he knew he did not have the strength for that now, not after the damage done by his would-be killer’s knife.
“When they are done with that lee cloth we’ll serve out some of that mutton, and mead to wash it down,” Thorgrim said over the wind and rushing water. “That will do the men some good!” He had yet to tell the men that they would be underway all night, but at this point he knew it would come as no great surprise. Every man aboard was sailor enough to understand the situation Far Voyager was in.
They would not like it. The Northmen did not care to be at sea in the night hours, not with all the unworldly things that lurked in the deep water. But weighing that fear against the near certainty of being wrecked if they approached the shore in the dark made a night at sea seem not so bad.
The lee cloth, a strip of heavy oiled linen stretched along the windward side of the ship to give some shelter to the men huddled there, was soon rigged. Cold mutton and mead were served out as the men settled in for a long and uncomfortable night. Thorgrim remained at the tiller through the meal, not wishing to keep another man from his supper.
The sun went down, unseen behind the clouds, and the dark settled over the sea. It began to rain, or so Thorgrim thought. It was hard to tell with the great showers of spray flying aft, but soon the lightning began flashing around them, illuminating the ship and men with its long, jagged forks. The waves rose up out of the night and Thorgrim strained to see them as they came on, and to work the tiller to twist the ship through each successive breaking sea.
Up, twist, down, the bow hit the trough of the wave and sent the seas over the sheer strake, as if Far Voyager was a great ladle dipping water from a bucket. Water rushed down the leeward side and gathered in churning pools in the low spots. Agnarr organized the men into divisions for bailing, with some staggering down to the leeward side to toss the water back into the sea and others huddling under the lee cloth, waiting their turn.
Thorgrim felt the pressure on the tiller, the responsiveness of the ship. The storm was bad. Not the worst he had known, but bad. Still, he had no fear of finding a salt water grave that night. The ship was well built and he had personally gone through every inch of it. She would not come apart. The sail was in good condition, the rigging new and well set up. Soon they would stow the sail completely and ride it out under bare poles.
Far Voyager could take what Thor or Ægir was throwing at her and turn it aside. Thorgrim did not think the ship and men were in any real peril, unless the gods decided to play their tricks and throw some obstacle in his path, to send some unlikely danger to confound him.
Then the gods did just that.
Chapter Four
Staves of the spear-sister,
you speak of the earl;
this old man is hoary-haired,
but has looked on tall waves.
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue
When Far Voyager slammed down on whatever solid thing they had managed to find in that watery world, the impact was visceral and jarring, out of time with the banging of the rig and pounding of the waves. The ship was taking a beating in a dozen different ways, the seas hitting the hull, the yard thumping on the mast, the rigging swaying and slapping. Still, every man aboard heard the vessel hit this unseen thing; they felt it and they knew instantly that this was something beyond the usual battering of a storm and that it was not good.
Thorgrim was still at the tiller. Far Voyager’s bow rose up from the hollow between waves, lifted into the night sky, scooping tons of water. The rain had come at last, torrents whipping sideways in the building wind, soaking the already wet men, finding those few dry places under shirts and fur cloaks, until there was no difference between being dressed or not, save for the weight of the wet clothes and the little bit of warmth they still offered.
The ship’s bow rose to the a
pex of the wave, hesitated as the sea rolled under, and then once again plunged down into the low spot between rollers. But this time, rather than the familiar feel of the broad hull smacking the water, there was a sharp, solid impact that ran like a shudder through the ship’s fabric. Thorgrim felt it in the tiller. Over the howl of the wind he heard the sound of rending wood.
“What by the gods was that?” someone shouted. Thorgrim leaned over the side. Lightning flashed and in that instant of light he saw something floating, ugly and dark and glistening, mostly awash, with the seas curling around it.
A tree, a damned tree, Thorgrim thought. A tree washed into the sea untold miles from that place. A great oak or maple drifting for months until that moment, on that one spot of ocean, when tree and ship came together, their respective voyages intersecting for that one fraction of a second. And the tree, like a dying man determined not to die alone, positioned itself in such a way as to send Far Voyager and her men to the bottom.
Trees do not put themselves in our path, Thorgrim thought. The gods put them there.
And then it was gone. For the length of a lighting flash the tree was there and then it disappeared. Far Voyager came down into the waves and forward the men shouted and raced aft. Panic seemed to sweep along the deck where a second before there had been only apathetic misery.
Agnarr appeared at Thorgrim’s side. “Let me take the tiller, Thorgrim, so you may go see what’s happened!” he shouted and Thorgrim nodded and stepped away as Agnarr took up the thick oak bar.
Thorgrim staggered forward. For hours he had been all but motionless at the helm, and now as he tried to move along the deck he found it was no easy task. The ship twisted and rolled, pitched and yawed. Water slammed into his legs and threatened to knock him down and wash him away. The ship was crowded, but the men parted like waves as he came through. He could see wide eyes, mouths hanging open in shock.
“Be calm, be calm, the ship still swims!” Thorgrim shouted as he moved forward, projecting a hopefulness he did not entirely feel. He had an idea of how bad the damage might be.
He paused by the mast, wiped water from his eyes, wrung out his beard. The fur cape around his shoulders was now soaked through and heavy as chain mail so he cast it aside. He moved around the mast step and the ship took a heavy roll and the water came cascading aft. Thorgrim felt his feet going out from under him and then there was a hand on his left arm, a hand on his right shoulder, keeping him vertical. He half turned where he stood. To his profound irritation he saw that Harald and Starri were flanking him, apparently to prevent his tumbling into the bilge, the very thing that nearly had happened. He wanted to curse at them or order them away but he did not have the energy to shout above the wind, so he continued forward again.
With the great rush of water rolling fore and aft it was hard at first to see the damage. Thorgrim worked his way forward of the mast, bracing himself against the beitass as he moved along. He searched that part of the hull where he thought the collision had occurred but he could see nothing but water. Quite a bit of water.
“Do you see any damage, father?” Harald shouted and Thorgrim was just about to say he did not when Far Voyager took a hard roll to starboard and the water that nearly filled the larboard bilges rolled off amidships and there it was. Not a leaking seam or a weak spot on the hull but three planks stove in, a wound four feet long and bulging inward with the seas pounding the other side.
Far Voyager had hit the trunk a solid blow, that was clear, the planks cracked almost clean through with only their jagged, broken edges holding them together. They groaned and shifted as the ship was hit by the lashing sea, and water spouted through the gaps that opened up with the flexing of the hull. Much more of that, Thorgrim knew, and the planks would lose their precarious hold. One solid blow from a cresting wave would knock the broken wood clean out, and in its wake would be a hole big enough for a man to crawl through. When that happened, it would be minutes, no more, before the ship was consumed by the sea.
“We must come about!” Thorgrim shouted. They had to get the shattered planks out of the water, had to get them on the windward side where the pressure from the seas would not be so great. Thorgrim understood this even without thinking about it. He understood that doing so might win them a few more minutes, enough, perhaps, to save themselves.
He looked aft. Agnarr was at the tiller. He was as good a helmsman as any aboard, perhaps the best with the exception of Thorgrim himself. He could remain where he was.
“Harald!” Thorgrim shouted. “Go aft and tell Agnarr we must come about and stow the sail! When he deems it right, he’s to tack the ship! You stay aft and man the halyard! When we come up into the wind and the sail luffs, you lower the yard! You know what to do!”
Harald nodded, the water running in streams down his smooth face. He took one useless wipe and yelled, “Yes, father!” Then he turned and raced aft. Thorgrim could only marvel at the speed and agility with which he moved. It was not quite the fluid, deer-like grace that Starri exhibited; Harald was more stoutly built than Starri and would be stronger than him when he reached full manhood, but he still moved with great speed, leaping over the sea chests, dodging the men in the way, grabbing the bar-taut weather shrouds and slingshotting off them as he charged aft.
Thorgrim pulled his eyes from his son. He loved to watch the boy, but now he was more concerned with preventing his untimely death and that of every man aboard.
“You that are bailing, keep bailing, fast as ever you can!” The impact with the waterlogged tree had done wonders to motivate the men, and they were flinging water overboard with a vigor and enthusiasm they had not previously exhibited. They wielded buckets, bailers and helmets as if they were swords and axes in a shieldwall. Sheets of water flew off downwind as they scooped and tossed. It seemed to make no difference whatsoever.
“The rest of you, make ready to dip this yard and gasket the sail!” Thorgrim shouted. The men huddling under the lee cloth stood and staggered amidships, lining up, steadying themselves as best they could on the wildly pitching deck.
Thorgrim looked astern. In the flashes of lightning he could see Harald at the halyard, the rope in his hand. Agnarr was at the tiller, peering forward, wiping rain and spray from his eyes. Thorgrim could sense the tension in his body, like the string of a drawn bow. If he mistimed the moment when he swung Far Voyager’s bow through the wind, the seas could catch her broadside and roll her clean over. It would have been a tricky thing in daylight. At night, blind to the coming waves, it was as much in the gods’ hands as Agnarr’s.
Once again the ship’s bow rose to the sea and Thorgrim thought, Now, Agnarr, now! And just as the words raced through his mind he felt Far Voyager begin to turn, felt the angle of the wind on his face start to shift, right to left. Forward, the leading edge of the square sail began to curl and the sail began to shiver as if it, too, was susceptible to the cold and wet.
The ship’s bow swung into the wind and the ship stood more upright than she had for many hours. The sail, flogging wildly, seemed to be trying to break free. Then the big yard began to slide down the mast as somewhere aft Harald eased the halyard away. When the yard was half way down, Harald held fast and the yard stopped in its quick descent. Eager hands grabbed the sail and yard at the starboard end. They pivoted the long spar, starboard end down, the larboard end going high aloft, and when the starboard end was low enough to swing inboard, clear of the shrouds, they twisted it fore and aft along the centerline of the ship.
The instant the end of the yard was inside the shrouds Harald began easing the halyard again, a bit quicker than Thorgrim might have liked, but it was crucial to get the sail under control before it beat itself to death. As the heavy spar came down to the deck, men leapt on the flogging sail, bundling it against the long shaft of the yard and lashing it in place.
Thorgrim turned his attention from the yard to the bow of the ship. He could feel the wind blowing directly on his face. They were pointed right into it like a
weather vane but he could not tell if the ship was still turning. If not, if she had stopped, or if she fell back on a starboard tack, they would be in trouble. Thorgrim believed that the windage from the mast and rigging alone would give them sail area enough to steer, but if they did not then the ship would turn sideways to the seas, make one long death roll, and be swallowed up.
He looked aft. Lightning flashed and he saw that Agnarr had the tiller hard over and was starting to ease it back. He felt the wind and driving rain coming more from his left now. He looked back toward the bow. The wind was most certainly coming over the larboard side. Even as he realized that he felt the ship start to heel to starboard, saw the mounting seas coming in over the larboard bow, the high side now. Which meant the shattered planks were lifted at least part way out of the sea. Which meant they might still have a chance to live through the night.
The bailers who had been so feverishly working on the larboard side now scrambled over to the starboard and began to bail anew. A man named Godi was among them, a big man who had fought with them at Tara. Thorgrim grabbed him by the arm, pointed toward the starboard rail. “Godi, get that lee cloth down and bring it forward to me!” he shouted.
Godi nodded and headed for the rail, pulling his dagger as he did. Thorgrim plunged off through the swirl of water toward the bow. The fractured planks were more visible now, being out of the deluge in the bottom of the ship. They were just above the curve of the bilge, at the point where the ship’s bottom became the ship’s side. Thorgrim watched them bulge and withdraw as the ship’s hull twisted in the seas. He braced himself for the sight of them giving way completely and the great inrush of water that would follow.
The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 4