Harald shifted on his side and swam for the forward-most oar. He gave no thought to what he was doing, he saw only something solid to which he could cling, something within his grasp and beyond Grimarr’s. The oar was motionless as the rowers tried to check the ship’s momentum. Harald reached out and wrapped his arm around the smooth wood of the shaft, about three feet above the blade. He felt his grateful muscles relax as they were relieved of the burden of keeping him and Conandil afloat.
“Where by the gods is that little bastard?” Grimarr shouted. Harald could see him looking over the bow, larboard and starboard. Then he called, “Give way, all!” The larboard oars rose together and Harald felt the oar under his arm jerk as the rower tried to lift it but discovered he could not. He heard a shout of surprise from Eagle’s Wing and then saw the rest of the oars swinging toward him as the rowers took their stroke.
The next oar aft came down on top of the one Harald was holding, which, with Harald’s weight on it, the rower had not been able to swing with the others. There was a dull sound of wood on wood and Harald reached up and grabbed the second oar as well, holding both oars with his right arm and Conandil with his left. He could hear shouting now from Eagle’s Wing’s deck and he could see men lining the rails, a lot of men, and Harald recalled that the men of Water Stallion were aboard as well.
If Ornolf boards this ship, all my shipmates will be killed, Harald thought, the first lucid thought he had entertained in some time. The shafts were jerking under his arms as the rowers tried to shake him off, and the neat stroke had devolved into a chaotic flailing of oars.
“Harald! Harald!” Now Conandil was yelling, “Harald, what are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Harald said, trying and largely failing to keep his voice calm. He looked up at Eagle’s Wing. Two men were coming over the side, sliding and climbing down the shafts of the oars that Harald was holding. They moved slowly, deliberately, eyes fixed on Harald, short swords hanging from their belts. Harald felt his stomach turn and he had an image of one of those short swords hacking down on that spot where his neck joined his shoulders and he realized that, unarmed as he was and holding Conandil, there was nothing he could do to stop it. He would have to let go of the oars and swim, but he was not sure he had the strength.
“Harald!” Conandil shouted again, and Harald thought she was going to warn him about the men, but instead she yelled, “There’s another ship coming!”
The terror in her voice was infectious. Harald whipped around, taking his eyes from the approaching men, and he saw the ship. It was bearing down on them, not more than fifty yards away. Far Voyager.
Harald released the oars he was holding. He heard shouts and the sound of the two men hitting the water but he paid them no mind. He kicked with his legs and stroked with his right arm. He burned up the last of bit of energy he had in him making his desperate way toward his ship and the salvation she represented.
He was breathing hard and spitting and Conandil had recovered enough that she was screaming again and thrashing her arms and legs around. He blinked water from his eyes and tried to see the ship coming for him, but he could see only blurry images, light and dark, with the salt water washing over his face. He heard a sound that must have been Grimarr’s voice, but what he said, Harald could not make out.
There was no more than fifty feet between the two ships, with Eagle’s Wing gathering way and Far Voyager charging down on her. And Harald remembered the men, the crowd of warriors on Eagle’s Wing’s deck. He tried to shout a warning but only a weak sound come out of his mouth and then it was filled with sea water and he gagged and spit and continued to fight his way forward.
Something hit the water ahead of him, something large, and he stopped and kicked in place and blinked the salt water from his eyes. Someone had jumped in, someone from Far Voyager, and as his eyes cleared Harald could see it was Agnarr and he was swimming hard toward him. Far Voyager had stopped in the water and Ornolf, unmistakable in his bulk, was standing on the rail, looking down at them.
Agnarr thrashed his way through the water. He stopped a foot from where Harald was struggling to remain afloat, and Harald saw he had a rope in his hand, and there was a loop tied in the bitter end. Agnarr put the loop around Harald’s waist and drew it tight. He pulled Conandil from Harald’s arm and endured a slashing blow to the face, then turned her around, held her the way Harald had been holding her, and took hold of the rope, Harald felt the rope jerk and then he and Agnarr and Conandil were being dragged through the water, pulled so fast that the seas washed over them and choked them and dunked them. Harald did not care. His shipmates were hauling him aboard. Even if he did not make it, he could die with the knowledge that they had come for him.
He had a glimpse of Far Voyager’s oars rising from the water and then suddenly he, too, was up and out of the wet and for a second there was a terrible pain in his midriff as his whole body hung suspended from the loop of rope. Then he was up with the ship’s rail and many hands were grabbing him and pulling him aboard. He saw Ornolf standing behind the others, a look of profound worry on his face.
The men who pulled Harald aboard eased him down to the deck and Conandil beside him. She was gasping, still wide-eyed, half laying in the puddle of water that had run off her. She reminded Harald of a cat that had been dunked and now looked tiny and thin with its fur plastered to its body.
“The men…” Harald managed to gasp. Ornolf pushed through the crowd, knelt at Harald’s side.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The men…Water Stallion…” That was all he managed to get out. He could hear shouting now, from Far Voyager and from outboard. He pulled himself to his feet. Eagle’s Wing was thirty feet ahead and the two ships were closing fast. They would meet larboard to larboard. He could see the mass of men on Grimarr’s ship, shields ready, swords, spears and axes in hand. There were a lot of men.
Then Ornolf turned and shouted down the length of the deck, “Larboard side, run in your oars!” The order was a surprise to Harald, but apparently not to the rowers who pulled in their oars with alacrity, helped by those who were not otherwise occupied. On the starboard side the rowers gave one hard pull, then lifted their oars from the water and Far Voyager shot ahead, driven by nothing more than the momentum she had built.
And then her bow came even with that of Eagle’s Wing and no more than ten feet separated the two ships as they passed. Harald braced for the moment when Far Voyager’s helmsman would put the tiller over, turn the ship to larboard and smash into Eagle’s Wing’s side. The two ships would lock together and the men would pour one to another and the killing would begin in earnest. And Harald realized he had no weapon.
“Grandfather!” he called but Ornolf was standing up on the raised foredeck, one hand on the high, curved stem, and he did not look as if he was making ready for a fight. Eagle’s Wing was slipping past, and then Harald heard the sound of shattering wood. He looked over the side. Eagle’s Wing still had her larboard oars out, and Far Voyager was riding over them as they passed, snapping them off at the oar holes as she did.
Harald heard shouts of outrage from Eagle’s Wing as they, too, saw their oars break clean off, one after another. Some rowers tried to swing the long shafts clear, but in doing so they fouled the others, tangling blades and shafts, and then Far Voyager, with her way still on, broke those off as well.
Had Eagle’s Wing been prepared for a fight she would have had grappling hooks ready to stop Far Voyager and bind the vessels together, but this was all unexpected and the hooks were still stowed away. Spears flew across the space as Grimarr’s men realized they would not be coming to grips with Far Voyager after all. Some of the weapons embedded themselves in Far Voyager’s side, some hit the deck, one even found its mark in the ship’s mast, but none managed to find flesh or bone.
And then they were past. Eagle’s Wing slewed around to larboard, her oars on that side gone, the oars to starboard still pulling. Her deck was chaos; men runn
ing, shouting, drawing broken lengths of oar from the oar ports. Rising above them all Harald could see Grimarr raging and bellowing, his left hand and sleeve red like he had dipped them in a bucket of paint.
“Grandfather!” Harald shouted. He turned to Ornolf and was greeted by a sight he could have happily gone his whole life without seeing. Ornolf had turned his back on Eagle’s Wing. He had hiked up his tunic and dropped his leggings, bent over at the waist and was treating Grimarr to a view of his ample, spotted, hairy behind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dark heathens came to Áth Cliath, made a great slaughter of the fair-haired foreigners, and plundered the naval encampment, both people and property.
The Annals of Ulster
Lorcan mac Fáeláin was getting his sea legs, or thought he was. Sandarr Grimarrson was not pleased.
Timidity and a lack of confidence were always potentially a problem. They could make a man freeze with indecision, render him immobile like a terrified rabbit. Sandarr had seen that. But at least the timid man would not do something reckless or stupid.
Lorcan did not lack confidence, and he was not timid. He was the very opposite of timid. In his own element he found great advantage in that. But Lorcan was not in his own element now, he was on shipboard, on the sea, in Sandarr’s element. And that was the thing he seemed to be forgetting.
The action on the beach had gone as well as they could have reasonably hoped, given that the attack went off too early. Faelan and Senchan were given orders to wait until the hoard was unearthed before leading their men against Grimarr. The plan, agreed to by Sandarr and Lorcan, was to let the Northmen find the silver and then have his men sweep in and take it from them.
But Faelan, leading the attack from the north, had not waited. No one knew why. Such things happened in battle. And once he struck, there was no choice but for Senchan to lead his charge from the south.
They were both dead now, Faelan and Senchan, cut down in the shieldwall by the swords of the Northmen. And that was probably just as well. An honorable death in battle was preferable to facing Lorcan’s wrath afterward. And they had met death honorably, swords in hand. A Norseman who died that way would do so with the assurance of fighting and feasting in Odin’s great hall until the days of Ragnarok. Sandarr did not know if the Christian God looked as favorably on such a good death, but he hoped for the sake of Faelan and Senchan’s souls that he did.
So those two were dead and many of the Irish were dead, as were many of the Northmen, Sandarr’s former comrades, and the hoard had not yet been dug from the ground. Lorcan raged about that, and Sandarr kept his own council, but he had come to suspect that the hoard was not actually there, that the girl, Conandil, had led Grimarr to the wrong place.
Whether she had done so by accident or design he did not know. They had questioned her back in Vík-ló and she had been taciturn and surly and her answers had come only by way of the young Norwegian, so Sandarr did not have a sense for whether she was cunning or just stupid.
The Fearna hoard, however, was only part of Lorcan’s plans, plans which became more grandiose with every small victory. He wanted a ship as well; his lust for a ship was as prominent as his beard. And while the attack on the beach might not have been everything Lorcan hoped for, the attack on the ship had gone just as they had envisioned, and had not devolved into the debacle that Sandarr thought it would.
Once Faelan and Senchan’s men were fully engaged, Lorcan and Sandarr and seventy picked warriors had worked their way around the high ground to the north and down to the far end of the beach, unseen by the Northmen. They had advanced along the surf line, Lorcan and Sandarr in the lead. Sandarr had no need to limp anymore, no need for a pretext to avoid whatever idiot plan his father had devised, and he was happy for that. Water Stallion was the nearest ship, so they went for that one, though Sandarr would have dearly loved to have taken Eagle’s Wing instead.
They pushed the ship out through the small surf and hauled themselves over the sides and that was where things had started to go not quite so well. Sandarr hurried back to the afterdeck and took up the tiller. He looked forward, expecting to see thirty men running thirty oars out through the oar ports, but instead he saw seventy men standing around, looking in every direction with not a clue as to how to proceed. Sandarr had assumed that Lorcan’s Irishmen would have had at least a rudimentary knowledge of what needed to be done. But he was wrong.
“Ronnat!” he shouted and the girl was there at his side. “Tell Lorcan to order his men to get the oars down and put them through the holes in the side of the ship and to row!” The ship was drifting stern-first out to sea, propelled by the force they had used to shove her off the beach. But the momentum was slowing and the small waves coming in from the sea were twisting her sideways, and would soon push her back ashore.
Ronnat, picking up on the urgency in Sandarr’s voice, spoke to Lorcan, loud, fast and emphatic. Lorcan stared at her, then turned forward and shouted out orders, and the men moved, pulling down oars and handing them out with stunning unfamiliarity.
“They’re oars, by all the gods!” Sandarr said. “Have these idiots never seen oars before?” Ronnat did not translate. She knew better.
One by one the oars were thrust out through the oar ports, and some men even began trying to row, fouling their blades on those ahead or behind them. It was clear that their knowledge of boats did not extend beyond curachs, and that the long, heavy sweeps of the longship were as foreign to them as the Norse tongue.
Looking past the bow, Sandarr could see the Northmen moving down toward the water’s edge, eager to get to their ships, aware now that Water Stallion had been stolen from under their noses. Some were fighting as they moved, unwilling to turn their back on the enemy. Others had already broken their lines and run. It was chaos, and that alone might buy him and Lorcan time enough to get Water Stallion properly underway.
He shifted his eyes inboard. Most of the oars were run out, most of the men sitting at the rowers’ benches, most facing the wrong way. That was all right for now, they had only to put a hundred yards or so between themselves and the men on the beach, and then they could straighten it out.
“Ronnat!” Sandarr shouted again. “Have Lorcan tell them, ‘lean forward, oars in the water, lean back and pull!’ Tell him to count a rhythm!” This was damned, damned awkward, but he did not think Ronnat had a voice loud enough to issue the orders herself, nor did he think Lorcan would tolerate her doing so.
Lorcan gave the orders. Most of the men did as Sandarr intended, the rest did not, and some of them managed to foul the oars of those who were pulling the right way. But it was enough. Water Stallion gained momentum and speed as she backed away from the beach.
Grimarr’s men were splashing into the surf and flinging themselves aboard their ships, but others were still trying to extract themselves from the fight and Bersi’s men were trying to figure out where they should go, now that they had lost their ship. It would take Grimarr precious time to straighten it all out, with the Irish still pressing their attack.
Lorcan’s voice tumbled down along Water Stallion’s deck, a series of words in regular time, and Sandarr guessed he was counting as he had been told to do, creating a rhythm for the rowers to pull in unison. And it was working, after a fashion. The stroke was becoming more even, the oars were fouling one another less often, and the gap between ship and beach was growing wider.
And that was all good, but the ship was still going backwards. Sandarr held the rudder straight and let her make a bit more sternway before he judged them far enough from shore to try something fancy, or fancy at least by the standards of Irish farmers.
“Ronnat,” Sandarr called and the thrall stepped closer. “Tell Lorcan we must shift things around.”
The orders were passed from Sandarr by way of Ronnat to Lorcan and on to the men. It was a ridiculous chain of communication, but in an awkward, clumsy way it worked. The oars were run in, the men reseated on the benches, all facin
g aft this time, the oars were run out again. The men on the starboard side held their blades in the water, the men to larboard pulled and Water Stallion spun on her keel two hundred yards from the beach where Norse and Irish still struggled in the surf.
“Good, good,” Sandarr said, relieved to have that behind them. “Now, the men need only row, all together, and we shall stand out to sea.” There was more awkwardness as the Irish warriors tried once more to get the feel for that unfamiliar work, but soon they did, and the oars were moving up, forward and aft with relative uniformity. Water Stallion rose and fell as she breasted the low rollers coming in from the northeast, rolled side to side as the seas met her bow at an oblique angle, and Sandarr relished the feel of the living vessel under his feet.
He looked over his shoulder. Eagle’s Wing was underway, as was the Norwegian ship. Fox, too, was making her way from the beach. But something else was going on. Sandarr had expected all the ships to come in pursuit of Water Stallion, but they were not. The Norwegian ship had turned and was making for Eagle’s Wing as if they meant to attack it. Sandarr wondered what had happened, what treachery had been unveiled, what internecine fight was about to break out.
Curious as he was, he had no time to speculate. At some point Grimarr would settle matters with the Norwegians and then come after Water Stallion, and when he did he would handle his ship with considerably more skill than the Irish would handle theirs. Sandarr understood that if he wished to avoid being disemboweled on a stake in Vík-ló’s square he had better put distance between his father’s ship and his own.
Lorcan’s ship, actually.
“Ronnat!” Sandarr called. “Tell Lorcan we must set the sail.” Ronnat translated. Lorcan did not looked pleased by this, and he made reply.
“Lorcan says, ‘we are going well now, why do we need the sail?’” Ronnat said.
The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 26