A barrage of flaming arrows soared out from the longship, a score of fiery bolts trailed black lines of smoke. Many fell short, most missed widely, but one did catch the prow of The Skipper, and another found the starboard edge of the mast and sail.
Shamus McConroy was there in an instant, batting at the flames. Two other crewmen came right in with buckets, dousing the fires before they could do any real damage.
At the wheel, eyes locked on his adversary, Aran Toomes wasn’t comforted. Now the longship’s left bank pulled hard, while the right bank hit the water in reverse, pivoting the seventy-foot vessel like a giant capstan.
“Too fast,” old Aran muttered when he saw the incredible turn, when he realized that The Skipper would have a difficult time getting past that devastating ram. Still, Aran was committed to his course now; he could not cut any harder or try to pull back to starboard.
It was a straight run, wind in the sails of The Skipper, oars pounding the waters to either side of the longship. The little fishing boat got past the longship’s prow and started to distance herself from the still-turning Huegoths. For an instant, it seemed as though the daring move might actually succeed.
But then came the second volley of flaming arrows, crossing barely thirty feet of water, more than half of them diving into the vulnerable sails. Shamus, still working to repair the minor damage from the first volley, took one right in the back, just under his shoulderblade. He stumbled forward while another man swatted his back furiously, trying to douse the stubborn flames.
That fire was the least of Shamus McConroy’s problems. He reached the wheel, verily fell over it, leaning heavily and looking close into Aran Toomes’ grim face.
“I think it got me in the heart,” Shamus said with obvious surprise, and then he died.
Aran cradled the man down to the deck. He looked back just once, to see The Skipper’s sails consumed by the flames, to see the longship, straightened now and in full row, banks churning the water on both sides, closing fast.
He looked back to Shamus, poor Shamus, and then he was lurching wildly, flying out of control, as the devastating ram splintered The Skipper’s rudder and smashed hard against her hull.
Sometime later—it felt like only seconds—a barely conscious Aran Toomes felt himself dragged across the desk and hauled over to the Huegoth ship. He managed to open his eyes, looking out just as The Skipper, prow high in the air, stern already beneath the dark canopy, slipped silently under the waves, taking with it the bodies of Shamus and of Greasy Solarny, an old seadog who had sailed with Aran for twenty years.
As he let go of that terrible sight, focused again on the situation at hand, Aran heard the cries for his death and for the death of the five other remaining crewmen.
But then another voice, not as gruff-and deep, overrode the excited Huegoths, calming them little by little.
“These men are not of Avon,” said the man, “but of Eriador. Good and strong stock, and too valuable to kill.”
“To the galley!” roared one Huegoth, a cry quickly taken up by all the others.
As he was lifted from the deck, Aran got a look at the man who had saved him. He wasn’t a small man, but certainly not of giant Huegoth stock, well toned and strong and with striking cinnamon-colored eyes.
The man was Eriadoran!
Aran wanted to say something, but hadn’t the breath or the chance.
Or the clarity. His life and the lives of his remaining crewmen had been spared, but Aran Toomes had lived a long, long time and had heard tales of the horrors of life as a Huegoth galley slave. He didn’t know whether to thank this fellow Eriadoran, or to spit in the man’s face.
Luthien's Gamble Page 34
