‘Absolutely, Thorn. My apologies. I got carried away, I’m afraid. Blame Hal. He’s the one who fixed it so I can see what I’m doing.’ Ingvar touched his hand to the tortoiseshell spectacles strapped over his eyes.
Hal stepped forward and put a hand on his massive shoulder. ‘All the same, Ingvar, you should be careful. What if someone had slashed you across the face and you lost the spectacles? You’d be helpless.’
Ingvar grinned. ‘Think about that, Hal. What if someone slashed you across the face? Spectacles or no, you’d be pretty helpless too.’
And Hal had to admit that he was right. The young skirl turned to Thorn with a rueful smile. ‘You can take some of the blame too, Thorn. You were the one who taught him how to wield that enormous bargepole.’
‘Did you see him, Thorn?’ Stefan chimed in. ‘It was just like you said. He chopped, he stabbed, he hooked and he chopped again. It was like poetry.’ He stepped forward to slap Ingvar on the back in congratulation. The big boy shuffled his feet, embarrassed at being the centre of attention and admiration.
Thorn finally lightened up. ‘You did well, Ingvar,’ he admitted.
Ingvar looked up and beamed at him. Thorn’s praise wasn’t easily come by – particularly for someone who had just usurped his position in a fight.
‘Thanks, Thorn,’ he said.
Stig, who had finished supervising the binding of the prisoners and, with the twins’ help, had dragged them into a line along the bulwarks, rejoined the group.
‘If we’re finished with this mutual love fest,’ he said, ‘what do we do now? How do we get this ship to go where we want it?’
Hal acknowledged the question and gestured to the hatch leading to the rowing deck.
‘Good point,’ he said. ‘Let’s go talk to the rowers. Stig, Thorn, come with me. The rest of you keep an eye on the prisoners.’ He remembered his manners and looked apologetically at Selethen, realising that he had just told the nobleman what to do rather abruptly. ‘If that’s all right with you, Wakir?’
Selethen gestured graciously for him to go ahead. ‘Perfectly all right, Captain Hal. I’m here to obey orders.’ A sly grin touched his lips. ‘Particularly if someone yells out, Let’s get ’em! ’
‘Everyone’s a comedian,’ Thorn grumbled. Then he and Stig followed Hal through the hatch to the rowing deck below.
They went down a short companionway, momentarily blinded by the dimness below decks after the bright sun outside. Even before they could see clearly, the smell assaulted their nostrils. It was the smell of dozens of unwashed, sweating bodies, kept cramped in the badly ventilated space of the rowing deck, and of the dirty, foul-smelling water that washed back and forth in the bilges further below.
As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they saw row after row of dirty, bearded faces regarding them. There was neither friendliness nor hostility in the eyes that turned towards them. The three Herons paused at the bottom of the ladder, crouching slightly under the low headroom of the rowing deck, taking stock of the situation. In spite of Davos’s earlier fear, the rowing master, whose body could be seen sprawled on the catwalk aft, had made it a practice never to carry the key to the slaves’ chains on him. That would have been placing temptation too close to their hands. Instead, it hung on a peg by the aft hatch, well out of the slaves’ reach.
As a result, the slaves were still held firmly in place, chained to their oars below the level of the central catwalk. Hal moved a few paces aft and thirty-odd pairs of eyes turned to watch him as he went. Towards the stern, he noted several men collapsed over their oars or slumped on their benches, nursing injuries.
‘Fetch Edvin,’ he said softly to Stig. ‘And tell him to bring his healer’s kit. We’ve got wounded men here.’
The fact that they had been wounded by his own action in bringing the Heron slamming alongside was all too obvious to him. The least he could do was have Edvin patch them up as best he could. He stepped a few further paces, stopping about a third of the way down the catwalk. He looked around those unwavering eyes, looking for some glimmer of trust, finding none.
‘We need your help,’ he said, after a pause.
Nothing. No reaction. No buzz of conversation. He looked quickly at Thorn, who shrugged, then he continued.
‘I’m Hal Mikkelson, skipper of the Skandian ship Heron. We’ve captured the Ishtfana and imprisoned her crew. You’ll probably be glad to hear that her captain is dead. He was killed in the fight.’
‘That wasn’t Bloodyhand,’ a voice from a bench close to him growled. ‘It was his first mate, Kyrios. Bloodyhand didn’t come on this voyage.’
Hal made a small moue of interest. ‘Well, that’s news to me. Nevertheless, we’ve killed or captured Bloodyhand’s crew. But we have no wish to keep you imprisoned here. I plan to set you all free.’
That created a stir of interest. A low muttering ran along the benches as they heard that magic word ‘free’ – a word none of them had hoped to even think about for the rest of their lives. Hal held up a hand and silence gradually fell.
‘But, as I said, we need your help. We plan to drive Iqbal and his Tualaghi bandits out of the town of Tabork, and we need to use this ship to do it. We’ll set you free, feed you and clean you up if you wish. But we’ll need you to row the ship back to Tabork for us.’
Again, there was muttering on the benches. This time, he sensed a darker reaction. He hurried to reassure them.
‘There’ll be no whipping, no ramming speed, no force used. We don’t even want you to fight for us. Just get us to Tabork and you’re free to go.’
He paused, looking around, waiting for a reaction. He saw uncertainty in some eyes, agreement in others, hostility and distrust in a minority.
One of the rowers spoke up. ‘What if we say no?’
Hal spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘We won’t try to force you.’
Then Thorn stepped forward and spoke. ‘But we won’t unchain you, either. You can stay here, locked to your oars, while we find another way to get into Tabork. In other words, if you won’t help us, we won’t help you.’
Hal glanced at his old friend. It was a harsh threat, he thought, and one that he wouldn’t have made. Yet he saw the sense in it. Thorn was simply promising to pay the rowers in their own coin. Don’t co-operate with us and we won’t co-operate with you.
In fact, it wasn’t a threat that Hal would carry through. If necessary, they’d tow Ishtfana behind the Heron to the rendezvous point on the coast. Once there, they’d have plenty of men to row the ship to Tabork. But it would take time, and Hal knew that the sooner they got back to Tabork, the better it would be. The longer they took, the greater the chance that Iqbal would be suspicious on their return. Their entire plan could collapse if the slaves didn’t agree to one more journey at the oars.
The silence in the dim rowing deck seemed to stretch on for minutes. Hal heard footsteps on the companionway and turned to see Edvin descending into the rowing deck, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He had his healer’s kit slung over his shoulder in a canvas satchel. Hal pointed to the injured men in the stern.
‘Down there,’ he said. ‘See what you can do for them.’
Edvin hurried aft along the catwalk, stopping at the sternmost oar, where the rower slumped against the hull, nursing an obviously broken arm. His face was lacerated and bloodstained. The slightly built healer stepped down onto the rowing bench beside him and began to mop gently at the gash on his forehead – caused by a splinter from the shattering oar.
He worked quickly, but with a light touch that caused as little discomfort as possible. And he spoke in soft, encouraging tones to the man as he worked. The other rowers had swivelled on their benches to watch.
Edvin finished cleaning the wound, smeared it with a healing paste and quickly bound the man’s head with a clean linen bandage. His deft touch, and his caring manner, impressed themselves on the watching slaves.
Gently, he prised the man’s left hand away f
rom his broken right forearm, inspecting the injury with critical eyes.
‘Stig,’ he called, ‘I’m going to need you to straighten this arm.’
The tall first mate hurried down the catwalk and stepped down onto the bench. Edvin showed him where he wanted to grip and pull the arm back into position.
‘When I give you the word,’ he said, ‘do it firmly, but don’t jerk it. Just pull smoothly and keep going until it’s straight. Then I’ll splint it.’ Stig nodded, licking his lips nervously. Edvin touched the wounded man on the shoulder, and leaned close.
‘This will hurt,’ he said. ‘It will hurt very badly. But it will only be for a minute. And we have to do it if you don’t want your arm to be bent for the rest of your life. Understand?’
The man nodded, sweat breaking out on his forehead in anticipation of the pain to come.
‘Yell long and loud if you want to,’ Edvin told him.
The man looked up into the steady eyes of the healer and trusted what he saw there. ‘Do it,’ he said.
Edvin prepared himself with two wooden splints and a roll of bandage, then nodded to Stig. ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One, two, three.’
Stig gripped and pulled steadily, stretching the arm against the tendons and muscles that wanted to keep it crooked and crippled. Edvin had chosen Stig deliberately. He was young and his muscles were hardened by long hours of rowing and weapons practice. He was stronger than anyone on board, except perhaps Ingvar, and strength was what was needed to put that arm back into a straight line. Thorn, of course, would have been stronger, but with only one hand, he would have been incapable of pulling the two halves of the bone back into position.
The rower screamed in agony, his cries echoing down the length of the rowing deck, the other rowers wincing and turning away as they heard it. Then the arm was straight, the bone was back in line and Edvin quickly wrapped the splints in position, one on either side, whipping the linen bandage round and round to hold them firmly in place and keep the arm straight and supported. The man stopped screaming, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
‘You can let go now,’ Edvin said. Stig released his grip on the man’s arm and stood erect. His brow was covered in sweat too.
‘Thank you . . .’ the rower gasped. He put his filthy left hand up to touch Edvin in a gesture of gratitude. ‘Thank you, my friend.’
There was a collective release of breath from the rowing benches. Then the man who had queried Hal spoke up.
‘We’ll row you to Tabork.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BUTRUS IBN’SHAFFRAN LEANED on his spear, gazing out over the dark ocean, and yawned quietly.
The sun had set several hours earlier, plunging into the blood red western waters of the Constant Sea in a spectacular display of light. As yet, there was no sign of the moon and the sea was black, glistening occasionally with reflected starlight, or where a wavelet toppled over and broke into white foam.
Aside from the muted sounds of the ocean, there were the sounds of the desert behind him as the heat of the day departed. The coast here was hard, rocky ground, but there was a belt of sand dunes half a kilometre wide just inland from the beach, and the sand constantly emitted a low-level whisper of sound as the grains cooled, contracted and shifted closer together. Butrus was a town dweller, not a desert nomad, and the sound was alien to him – alien and a little disconcerting. But now, as most of the heat dissipated into the clear night air, it was dying down.
He estimated that he had another two hours on watch and yawned again. Behind him, the camp was sleeping. They had eaten early, before sunset, and the men had promptly spread their sleeping blankets close to the cook fires and turned in. They were experienced campaigners and took any opportunity to snatch a few hours, or even minutes, of sleep. Only Butrus and five other sentries remained awake and on guard – along with the troop sergeant major, who seemed to need no sleep and had a disturbing ability to materialise out of the dark, virtually without warning, to check that his sentries were all awake and alert.
‘Anything moving?’ The sergeant major’s hoarse whisper came from just behind Butrus and startled him out of his thoughts. He was sure he actually jumped several centimetres in the air, then brought his spear and himself to the correct vertical position, stiffening to attention as he did so.
‘No, Sergeant Major,’ he said, managing to keep his voice low in spite of the shock. The forty-odd men sleeping on the beach wouldn’t thank him for waking them with a shouted reply.
‘Then what in the name of the Crimson Djinn of Djebel-Ran is that?’
The sergeant major appeared beside him, grabbing his shoulder and jerking him around so that he was facing to the half right and out to sea. And there, sure enough, was the faintest sign of a bow wave – indicating that a ship, a large one, was only forty metres off the beach. Butrus groaned inwardly. That slip-up would cost him a week’s fatigue duty, he knew.
‘It’s a ship, Sergeant Major,’ he said in a dejected tone.
‘A ship. So it is. Were you planning on reporting it to me?’
The voice was laced with sarcasm and Butrus ground his teeth in frustration and a sense of unfairness. After all, the sergeant major had already seen the ship. He had pointed it out, in fact. It seemed somehow excessive to now tell him what he already knew. Nevertheless, he was the sergeant major.
‘There’s a ship, Sergeant Major, approaching the beach. Looks like the corsairs’ galley.’
‘Well, I know that,’ the sergeant major replied. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, Sergeant Major,’ the hapless sentry replied. There was no other possible answer.
The sergeant major nodded several times. ‘But were you planning on reporting the other ship as well?’
And, a moment before he said it, Butrus was aware of a smaller ship emerging from the darkness, thirty or so metres astern of the galley.
‘There are two ships, Sergeant Major,’ he said miserably.
The grizzled veteran stared hard at him, shaking his head scornfully. What was the army coming to, he wondered.
‘Idiot,’ he said. ‘Go and wake the captain. Tell him there are two ships here. I assume it is only two ships?’ he added sarcastically.
Butrus actually leaned forward to peer into the darkness again. ‘Yes, sir. Two ships. Just two.’
The sergeant major snorted derisively and started to head down the beach towards the spot where the ships would run ashore. Butrus hesitated a moment, then set off at a run towards the captain’s small tent, his equipment and mail armour jingling in time with his hurried footsteps.
‘Stop rowing. In oars,’ Hal called down the companionway. On the deck below him, he heard Thorn repeat the order and the long ash wood oars rose up from the water to lie parallel to the surface for a count of three. Then, with a slithering clatter of wood on wood, they slid inboard to be stowed.
Ishtfana, with way still upon her, glided the last twenty metres in to the beach, her bow nudging into the coarse sand. Hal glanced over his shoulder and saw Heron slipping alongside, to ground her own bow five metres away.
He tied off the spare oar they had rigged as a makeshift tiller and nodded to Selethen. ‘Let’s get your men on board.’
The tall Wakir was already striding forward to where the bow of the ship rested on dry land. Hal followed him, seeing a small group of men standing on the beach ready to greet their leader. Further up the beach, he could see dark shapes stirring as the junior officers woke their squads preparatory to boarding the ship.
Hal slipped down the aft companionway and looked along the twin line of rowers. Small lanterns at bow and stern cast an uncertain light over them but he could see more than half of the men were clean and clad in fresh clothes. On the trip to pick up Selethen’s men, he had allowed groups of five to clean themselves and take new clothes from the corsairs’ quarters in the bow. He had also allowed them to eat – food from the corsairs’ supplies, not the vile muck that had been kept for them as sl
aves. Edvin, who had finished patching up the rest of the injured men, had supervised them, making sure they didn’t eat too much, too fast. A sudden excess of rich food after months of near starvation could make them violently ill.
‘Thank you,’ Hal called along the lines of rowers. ‘Just a few more hours and you never need to touch an oar again.’
Hal couldn’t resist a smile as he looked at the men on the rowing benches. For months they had spent their time clad only in filthy loincloths. Occasionally, the crew would ‘bathe’ them by hurling buckets of water over them as they sat chained to their oars. Now those who had already cleaned themselves up, washing in buckets of sea water on the main deck, were dressed in the corsairs’ finest clothes, and, as has been noted, the Hellenese pirates tended towards the flamboyant when it came to fashion. The rowing benches now were a mass of scarlet, yellow and bright blue silks and satins. Shirts with ridiculously wide sleeves gathered at the wrist were very much the order of the day. Hal doubted if anyone had ever seen such an exotic group of rowers. He shook his head and made his way back to the main deck.
Already, the first of Selethen’s twenty-five soldiers were clambering over the bow, carrying their weapons and equipment. They stared about them curiously as they came. Many of them were desert cavalrymen and, the odds were, none of them had ever seen a ship close up, let alone been on one, before. They were shepherded aft by the twins. That was another point of fascination for the Arridans. Several of them gawked openly at the two identical sailors who were urging them to keep moving.
Finally, Wulf reacted to the constant staring and head shaking.
‘What are you looking at?’ he demanded of one young soldier – a youth barely out of his teens. The cavalry trooper pointed to Ulf, who was a few metres away.
‘That man,’ the trooper said. ‘You look just like him.’
Brotherband: Scorpion Mountain Page 16