The Heron gathered speed and Hal turned to Thorn, standing ready a few metres away. ‘I’m going to take out their starboard side oars.’
Thorn nodded understanding. Rudderless, the galley was out of control. Her only way of steering now would be with the oars. If Hal could disable some of them, it would make that task much more difficult. Besides, there was another opportunity. The galley’s officers and crew were disorganised and demoralised.
This was the perfect time to board.
As Hal angled the Heron in towards the starboard bank of oars, Thorn dashed forward and seized a grappling iron and a length of rope from under the rowing benches. He stood poised beside Lydia and the Ranger.
‘Hang on to something,’ he warned. ‘Hal’s going to hit her.’
They could see it coming, although the Ishtfana’s crew, cowering out of sight, had no idea what was about to happen. Hal arrowed the Heron in at an angle, sending her strengthened bowpost slicing into the starboard side oars like a giant axe blade.
There was an ear-splitting crash of wood shattering as the oars split and splintered under the impact. Oar shafts and blades spun up into the air as the bow smashed through them. Splinters flew in a further deadly storm. Heron’s crew were ready for the sudden impact and crouched down under cover as their ship ploughed its way through the rearmost six rows of oars.
On board Ishtfana, the rowing deck was in chaos as the butt ends of the oars were suddenly jerked and smashed in all directions, hurling rowers off their benches to send them sprawling on the deck, breaking bones and bruising limbs. The slavemaster, who had bent to peer out through an oar port to see what was going on, was caught across the jaw by one of the leaping oar butts. He fell senseless to the deck. Two of the rowers, seeing their chance, leapt on him, drawing the long knife from his scabbard. The rowing master had whipped too many slaves in his time.
He would never do it again.
On deck on the Heron, Thorn felt the ship come to a momentary halt, her bow wedged at an angle against the galley, with the surface of the water between them littered with broken oarshafts and blades.
He swung the grapnel line up and over, letting it slam into the wood at the galley’s stern, then heaving hard on it to set it tight.
As Hal called for Ulf and Wulf to loosen the sheets, Heron began to drift astern. Thorn quickly measured the distance with his eye and took a turn around one of the Heron’s bollards with the grapnel rope. The rope came up into a straight line, then, with a jerk, Heron began to move forward, towing in Ishtfana’s wake. Amazingly, some of the forward rowers were still at work, sending the ship crabbing through the water. Thorn gestured to Stefan and Jesper, then pointed to the rope.
‘Haul us in!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll board her!’
Hearing the call, Stig and Ingvar left the Mangler and scrambled for their weapons. Thorn glanced round and saw Selethen standing ready a few paces away. His curved sword was still in its scabbard. But now he had a small, spiked shield on his left arm. Thorn gestured to him.
‘You coming, your Wakirship?’ he asked, with a savage grin.
Selethen returned the grin with a smile on his narrow, hawk-like face. He had a score to settle with the skipper of the galley.
‘Just don’t get in my way, northman,’ he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AS THE CREW hauled in on the grapnel rope, Thorn leapt up onto the bulwark beside the bowpost. He had donned his fighting hand, and carried his small shield in his left hand.
The bow bumped against the stern of the Ishtfana and, as Ulf and Wulf made it fast, Thorn leapt up onto the bigger ship’s rail.
‘Come on!’ he roared.
Stig was close behind him and they dropped lightly to the deck, turning to meet the group of men charging aft to defend their ship. The first to reach them drew back his sword, yelling a curse at them.
It was the last sound he ever made.
Stig’s axe cut the cry short and the man stumbled before falling over on his side, a shocked look on his features. Thorn parried another man’s sword with his club-hand, then slammed his small shield into his attacker’s face, sending him flying across the deck.
Selethen swarmed over the railing behind them, his attention falling instantly on Kyrios, who was slinking towards Stig and Thorn from slightly behind them, a heavy-bladed cutlass in his right hand and his knife in his left.
Kyrios was suddenly aware of Selethen’s gaze. The Wakir, taking in the other man’s ornate garb – he was dressed in a white silk shirt and wide-legged red trousers of fine linen, with a broad-brimmed felt hat adorned with a long peacock’s feather – mistook him for the corsair captain.
‘Philip!’ Selethen shouted. ‘Throw down your weapons!’
Kyrios made no reply, but he lunged forward, swinging the heavy sword down in an overhead stroke that would have split Selethen to the chin.
Had it landed.
The Wakir contemptuously flicked the blade aside with his shield, then swung his scimitar in reply, in a bewildering combination of strokes.
Side cut, back cut, overhead. The flashing blade seemed to come from several different directions at once. Kyrios blundered back in panic, barely managing to evade the lightning strokes of the master swordsman. With the dim thought that he should try to turn defence into attack, Kyrios attempted a clumsy lunge at his tall opponent. His sword slid along Selethen’s, the blades rasping together. Then, with a twist of his wrist, Selethen deflected Kyrios’s cutlass, leaving the first mate open to his riposte. The curved scimitar blade darted forward and back like a snake’s tongue.
But, unlike a snake’s tongue, the scimitar bit, and bit hard. Kyrios barely felt the impact. But he looked down in wonder at the spreading red stain on his shirt.
‘I’m . . . not Philip,’ he managed to croak, although he wasn’t sure why he felt that needed to be said. Then his legs gave out under him and he fell to the deck.
With the threat from behind eliminated, Selethen turned his attention back to Stig and Thorn, and the rest of the corsairs.
The latter stood uncertainly in a ragged semi-circle facing the two Skandians. Two of their number were already out of action, and the remainder had witnessed the incredible speed and power of the Skandian warriors as they dealt with that first attack. They had also seen the ease with which Selethen defeated Kyrios. As a result, none of them was willing to be the first to face fighters such as these.
A deep growl began to form in Thorn’s chest. He hated indecision and delay. He knew momentum was everything in a fight like this, where he and his companions were outnumbered. He was on the brink of launching an attack at the hesitant Hellenes. Behind him, he heard Ulf and Wulf scramble over the rail and drop onto the deck. That made five of them on board now and that, thought Thorn, was plenty to take on these overdressed popinjays. He tensed his muscles, singling out the first man he would strike down with his fearsome club-hand.
Then he heard rushing feet behind him, and a huge voice roared:
‘Clear the way!’
Next minute, Thorn was shouldered aside by a heavy body and Ingvar, spectacles firmly lashed in place and his voulge held across his body in both hands, surged past him to attack the Ishtfana’s crew.
Ingvar swung the voulge horizontally to the left, allowing his right hand to slide down from its position halfway along the shaft until it was adjacent to his left hand, on the butt end, adding immense leverage to the stroke.
The axe blade of the long weapon came round with a deadly hissing sound, like a scythe cutting into barley.
And, like a scythe, it cut down three of the Ishtfana’s crew, sending them sprawling and their weapons clattering to the deck. The first stroke was barely completed before Ingvar reversed the movement, snagging the shoulder of another corsair’s leather breastplate with the hook on the back of the voulge and jerking the man forward, off his feet. As he hit the deck, Ingvar jerked the hook free and lunged with the spearhead of the voulge at a fifth crewman.
This one had a shield and he tried desperately to block Ingvar’s stroke. But the big boy had lunged forward, stamping his right foot for extra power, and putting the force of his legs behind the thrust, as Thorn had taught him in their long hours of drilling as they sailed down the Iberian coastline.
As Thorn had predicted, with the force of his legs behind the thrust, Ingvar’s attack was unstoppable. The wood of the shield split and the spear point went through as if there were no resistance at all. It took the corsair in his left shoulder and he cried out, releasing the shield, leaving it dangling awkwardly on the end of Ingvar’s voulge. Then, clutching his shattered, bleeding shoulder, the Hellene turned and ran.
Enraged by the broken shield impeding his weapon, Ingvar got rid of it in the quickest way possible. He whipped the voulge back and forward in a violent movement that dislodged the splintered shield and sent it hurtling into the group of men facing him, knocking another to the deck, unconscious.
And that was enough for the rest of them. Terrified by the awesome figure with the shining brown circles for eyes and the deadly long-handed triple weapon, they turned and ran.
Ingvar roared again and set off after them.
‘Let’s get ’em!’ he bellowed to the others. As Stig, Selethen and the twins surged forward after him, Thorn paused and leaned back, more than a little affronted.
‘I’m supposed to say that,’ he said indignantly.
Hal, having turned over the helm to Edvin, found Thorn standing, decidedly discontented, on the rear deck of the galley, glaring forward as the others surrounded the beaten corsair crew. As the latter let their weapons fall to the deck in a shower of swords, knives and spears, the shabby warrior gestured at the scene with his club.
‘He stole my fight,’ he said resentfully. ‘Ingvar stole my fight out from under my nose.’
Hal grinned. ‘He had plenty of room to move then,’ he said. Then, shaking his head in wonder as he saw his massive friend terrifying the cowed galley crew, he added, ‘I guess the fight’s over.’ He patted Thorn’s shoulder and the two of them started forward to join their victorious friends.
But the fight wasn’t over. Not completely. Three of the galley’s fighting crew, the first to turn tail and run, had made their way down through a hatch to the rowing deck below. The lines of rowers, chained to their oars, glared at them with hatred. With no one to command them, they had finally stopped sweeping their oars back and forth and the ship rocked in the even swell. The first of the corsairs, a man named Davos, looked at the angry eyes surrounding them. The rowers were chained, but how long they would remain that way was anyone’s guess. He saw the slumped figure of the rowing master on the catwalk between the rowing benches. Somewhere on his body was the key that would release the rowers. Perhaps they had already found it. It wasn’t a healthy place to be for too long.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he muttered.
‘Where?’ One of his companions was wide eyed with panic. He looked from side to side, seeing the hatred that surrounded them.
‘We’ll go aft and out a rowing port,’ the leader decided. ‘We’ll take their ship and cut her loose. There can’t be more than two or three people left on board her. And they’ll be sailing crew, not fighting crew.’
Which showed how little he understood the composition of a Skandian crew. On a Skandian ship, everyone was a member of the fighting crew.
They ran aft, crouching under the low headroom, their progress marked by muttered curses from the rowing benches. But, in addition to the fact that the rowers were constricted by their chains, the three men were all armed with swords and none of the slaves was ready to confront them.
They reached the aftmost oar port on the starboard side. Here was the point where Heron’s ramming had caused the most damage. Several men were lying awkwardly on their benches and the oars themselves were splintered and foreshortened.
‘Come on!’ said Davos. The slave on the bench was huddled over, clutching a broken forearm, moaning in pain. The corsair jerked him roughly out of the way and leaned his head and shoulders out the oar port. The oar, shattered by the collision with Heron, was no longer in place to impede him.
He gave an exclamation of satisfaction as he saw the bow of the other ship no more than a few metres away, surging up and down on the waves, snubbing against the hawser that connected her to the galley.
He sheathed his sword and hung his upper body out the oar port again, gripping the railing above him with both hands. Then he kicked his feet clear of the port and worked his way, hand over hand, along the rail until he could grip the rope. He transferred his weight to the rope, feeling it sag under his weight, then swung himself across to the other ship.
His companions were close behind him. The three of them dropped lightly to the Heron’s deck and took stock of the situation.
There seemed to be only two crew members left aboard the little ship. One of them, Davos saw with a grunt of satisfaction, was a girl. The other was a youth. He was wearing a sword but he was small and slimly built. So far, neither of them had noticed the three corsairs who had just boarded the ship. Their attention was focused on events happening on the galley.
‘Easy meat,’ muttered Davos to his friends. He took a pace forward.
And froze.
The growl was deep and threatening. So deep that he knew it must come from a massive chest. And presumably that massive chest would have a massive head with massive teeth to match. He dropped his hand onto his sword hilt.
The growl came again, even louder and more threatening this time. Where was it? Davos cast his gaze back and forth around the raffle of sails and ropes that littered the forward deck.
‘What is it?’ asked one of his companions. It was Patrokos, the one who had shown signs of panic a few minutes earlier.
‘It’s nothing,’ Davos told him, although from the way the hairs on the back of his neck had risen, that was obviously a lie. ‘Just a –’
‘Dog,’ said the third member of the party, as Kloof emerged from the far rowing well and paced deliberately over the untidy folds of the hastily lowered sail.
Her lips were curled back from her huge teeth. Her hackles were raised, making her appear even larger than she was. And her eyes had a manic, dangerous light in them. She advanced on the three men, her head low, her stride deliberate.
At the stern, Lydia and Edvin became aware of the situation on the foredeck.
‘Where did they come from?’ Lydia asked, reaching for a dart from her quiver and clipping the atlatl to it. Edvin laid a hand on her arm.
‘Careful. You might hit Kloof,’ he said. Then, as he saw the withering glance she turned on him, he added awkwardly, ‘I mean, if she moves suddenly, or jumps at them, you could . . . accidentally, of course . . .’
He tailed off but she nodded reluctant agreement. Relieved, he added, ‘Besides, she seems to have things pretty well in hand.’
Davos chose that moment to try to draw his sword. As soon as he moved, Kloof leapt at him, hitting him with all her weight and sending him crashing back to the deck. She stood over him, her tail lashing furiously, snarling and snapping those massive jaws just centimetres from his face. Relinquishing his grip on the sword, Davos raised both his arms to cover his face in a vain attempt to stop the furious, snarling dog.
His two companions backed away from the scene, but neither one made any attempt to draw a weapon. They had seen what happened to Davos.
‘What do we do?’ asked Patrokos, his voice high pitched and whining with fear. His friend nodded his head towards the sea behind them.
‘Jump,’ he said. But Patrokos looked at the water, looked at Kloof, and shook his head.
‘I can’t swim,’ he bleated. The other man shook his head in disgust.
‘This would be a good time to learn,’ he said. Then he grabbed Patrokos’s arm and dragged him over the side into the sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
UNDER STIG’S DIRECTION, the remaining memb
ers of Ishtfana’s crew were lying belly down on the deck, menaced by Stig’s, Selethen’s and Ingvar’s weapons, while Ulf and Wulf moved quickly among them, lashing their hands behind their backs. Jesper and Stefan, who had boarded behind Hal and so had taken no part in the fight, hurried to lend a hand. In a few minutes, the Hellenes were all securely tied.
Thorn, the aggrieved look still on his face, stepped up to Ingvar, who turned to him, smiling.
‘You stole my fight,’ Thorn accused.
The huge youth shrugged. ‘Didn’t see your name on it,’ he replied. But Thorn shook his head and repeated himself.
‘You stole my fight. And you said my thing.’
Ingvar frowned at that. ‘Your thing?’ he said. ‘What thing would that be?’
‘My tactical plan. My battle order,’ Thorn said, glaring. Still Ingvar showed no sign of understanding, so he added, ‘Let’s get ’em. That’s my battle plan.’
‘That’s a battle plan?’ Selethen put in, smiling.
Gilan, who, like Jesper and Stefan, had boarded too late to take any part in the fight, grinned in return. ‘It’s about as complex as Skandian battle plans seem to get.’
Selethen considered this and nodded sagely. ‘Simple plans are the best. There’s less that can go wrong.’
‘Exactly,’ Gilan agreed. ‘Once you’ve said, Let’s get ’em, you’ve said it all, really.’ Thorn turned to the two foreigners and gave them a withering look. Selethen and Gilan smiled easily at him, remaining decidedly unwithered.
‘I’ll thank you,’ said Thorn, ‘not to disparage Skandian tactics.’ Gilan and Selethen both made disclaiming gestures.
‘Far be it from us to disparage,’ Selethen said.
Gilan hurriedly agreed. ‘It was more a case of discussing than disparaging.’
Thorn eyed them for a few seconds longer, then shrugged. ‘Very well then.’ He turned back to Ingvar. ‘And you should know, Ingvar, that I am the battle leader. When it’s time for someone to say, Let’s get ’em, I will be the one doing the saying. You will be one of the boys who does the getting. Clear?’
Brotherband: Scorpion Mountain Page 15