Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6)

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim’s ships had been following the merchantman’s wake, skirting close to the headland north of Dubh-linn, keeping between their quarry and the land. They had stayed close together at first, but now the distance between them had opened up, and there was no way to communicate from one ship to the other. Dragon and Fox had turned to the west, toward the land, just a bit. By falling off, turning their bows a little further from the direction the wind was blowing, the ships were no longer sailing directly at the prize they were chasing, but they were moving faster through the water. It was a tradeoff, a gamble, but it might well give them the edge they would need to overtake the vessel they pursued.

  “They’ll pass by us, catch this bastard,” Harald said and Thorgrim could hear disappointment in his son’s voice, and the hint of a suggestion that Sea Hammer should also fall off. Even though they would all share any plunder equally, Harald did not like the idea that another ship would beat them to the prize.

  “We’ll see,” Thorgrim said, straightening. He had been watching the situation carefully—not just the ships, as Harald had been, but the sea and the sky and the clouds, gauging the feel of the air, the strength and steadiness of the wind. This was a more complex game than Harald quite realized, more than the captains of Dragon or Fox, or even Godi aboard Blood Hawk, realized either.

  It was two days now since they had sailed from Vík-ló. When all was at last ready, when all repairs had been made, the ships loaded with their gear and provisions, weapons stored aboard, rigging set taut, figureheads set in place, they had feasted.

  In obedience to Thorgrim’s command, Gellir and Ulf had each brought a pig, both of which were slaughtered at a place down by the water, and Thorgrim used their blood to bless the ships and to bring good luck on the voyage. Then they roasted the pigs and two sheep as well. They broke open barrels of mead and ale; they had bread and honey and whatever greens could be gathered. They sang songs and those with the talent to play the skald recited poetry. Among those was Thorgrim Night Wolf, who was a good skald, though few knew it, since it was a talent he rarely displayed. They feasted late into the night and all of Vík-ló took part and they imagined it was just how Valhalla would be.

  The next morning they were underway. They had no destination in mind; Thorgrim meant to sail wherever the gods made clear they should sail. He had hoped that would be south, that they might run along the shore and then, if the gods willed it, cross the sea to Wales, or Wessex, and then around and back to Norway.

  But it was not what the gods had planned. The four ships rowed out of the mouth of the river that made the harbor at Vík-ló, and soon the wind filled in from the south and no one much felt like rowing against it, and since they were determined to go where the gods blew them they raised their sails and stood north, skirting a coast that Thorgrim had come to know well.

  As they left Vík-ló astern, Thorgrim stood on the small afterdeck, Harald at his side, and watched the mouth of the river and the familiar headland receding in the distance. A few columns of smoke could be seen rising up from the shore, visible long after the earthen walls surrounding the longphort had disappeared from sight.

  “Mar is hard at work, looks like,” Harald mused. There was an almost wistful quality to the young man’s voice, and Thorgrim knew why. He felt it himself, and for a moment he did not dare to speak. They had been through brutal combat in that place, they had seen good friends die so that they could retain possession of Vík-ló. They had fought their way back there after the slaughter at Glendalough, and as they filed through the big gate in the earthen wall they felt the relief that comes with being home.

  But Vík-ló was Irish land; it was not their home. Growing fat and complacent in such a place, ignoring the call of the sea and the lure of plunder and places unseen, that was not what had brought them all those sea-miles from the northern country. It was time to go.

  Thorgrim had not even thought about it in any meaningful way when he had ordered the treasure they had accumulated stowed aboard for the voyage. It was only when Aghen made mention of it, what it implied, that they elected to take all their wealth with them, that Thorgrim understood his own truth: he was not going back.

  And so they ran north in a wind that slowly veered to the west, pushing them farther and farther offshore, until at last the day grew late and the coast more distant. Then Thorgrim ordered the ships to come around on a starboard tack and they stood in toward the shore because Thorgrim knew from his several voyages up and down that coast, from Dubh-linn to the places to the south, that there was a good beach on which to ground the vessels for the night.

  The sun was nearing the distant mountains when the four ships ran their bows up into the shingle and the men hopped down into the surf and pulled them further up and ran lines ashore to secure them. They built a fire. They broke out the ale and mead and roasted some of the fresh meat they had and they had another feast to celebrate their having freed themselves from the weight of the land.

  They were underway again the following day, moving under oars when Starri spotted the merchantman. They began the chase, and continued on under sail once the wind had filled in. And now they were north of Dubh-linn and the mouth of the Liffey and they were chasing still.

  Thorgrim looked forward, past the bow. The merchant ship and the headland were just in sight around the edge of the sail, and Sea Hammer’s bow seemed to be swinging a bit to larboard. Thorgrim smiled. Harald, still at the tiller, was falling off, turning the ship a bit, just as Fox and Dragon were doing, hoping to keep ahead of them, not daring to broach the issue with his father, hoping the old man was too addled to notice.

  Thorgrim turned to Harald. “I think we’ll tack,” he said. It was the last thing Harald expected and probably the last thing he wished to do. By tacking the ship, turning the bow through the wind, they would be sailing almost due east, away from the land and, more importantly, away from the ship they were chasing. Thorgrim could see the dismay on Harald’s face and he almost laughed.

  “Tack?” Harald said.

  “Yes,” Thorgrim said. Harald nodded. He was too disciplined to protest. Thorgrim stepped up to the edge of the afterdeck. “You men, get ready to tack!” he shouted.

  The order was as unexpected to them as it was to Harald, but like Harald, they knew better than to argue. Instead they moved quickly to their places: some men to the braces, some to the sheets, some to shift the heavy beitass from the starboard side to the larboard.

  “Put your helm alee!” Thorgrim called and he heard the creak of the steerboard as Harald pulled the tiller back. Sea Hammer began to turn up into the wind, the headland on the horizon beyond sweeping past. Forward the men watched the edge of the sail for the moment it would start to shake with the wind coming down either side of the cloth. Everyone was alert, but no one moved. The ship was all readiness and potential.

  Sea Hammer was a nimble ship, she responded well to the steer board’s bite in the water, and she spun quickly up into the wind. The leading edge of the sail began to quiver and then the entire sail, so solid-looking with the wind filling it, began to ripple and twist, and then men on the deck moved at once, like a flock of birds all suddenly lifting from a field.

  The tack and the clew, the lines holding the lower corners of the sail, were cast off as the ship’s momentum carried her around through the wind, and the sound of water rushing by the hull was replaced with the crack of the oiled wool cloth as the sail snapped and flogged. The beitass, like a smooth log twenty feet long and ten inches thick, was lashed to the starboard sheer strake, but now a gang of men cast it off and hefted it over to the larboard side, running the larboard tack through the notch in its end.

  Sea Hammer continued to turn, and now the wind came around the front of the sail, pressing it back against the mast, striking it on the wrong side, but helping push the ship around. Hands stood at the braces, ready to haul the yard around to get the wind on the proper side of the single square sail.

  Thorgrim felt the breeze o
n his cheek, ran his eyes over the sail. Sea Hammer had lost nearly all of her forward momentum, the wind both aiding the ship in the turn and killing her headway. The trick was to get through the wind while losing as little speed and distance as possible.

  “Steady now,” Thorgrim called to Harald and Harald pushed the tiller forward. “Haul the braces!” Thorgrim shouted so his voice would carry to the men forward, and with a collective grunt they leaned into the leeward brace. Overhead the long tapered yard began to swing around through nearly one hundred and eighty degrees. On the starboard side, now the leeward side, men hauled the sheet aft. Forward, to larboard, the corner of the sail was hauled foot by foot down to the end of the beitass.

  “That’s well! That’s well!” Thorgrim called. And it was. For men who had not been to sea in some time, who had been living and fighting ashore for the better part of a year and had not voyaged much beyond Vík-ló, their seamanship was still passably good.

  Then Thorgrim heard a voice, a small voice, to larboard. “What happened? Why is the ship leaning the other way now?”

  He looked down. Failend had come staggering aft. She was wearing a tunic and leggings, a belt around her waist. Her skin was pale, paler than usual, with perhaps a tinge of green. Her hair had been tied back with a leather cord but some had escaped and Thorgrim could see what he guessed were flecks of vomit in it. She had spent the past few hours either heaving over the leeward rail or getting ready to do so. Thorgrim had forgotten about her and he felt a momentary flash of guilt.

  “We tacked,” he said. “Turned the bow through the wind.” He could see from her expression that none of that made sense, nor was she in any condition for a lesson in ship handling. “If you think you’ll be sick again, you’ll have to go to the other side of the ship.”

  Failend nodded. “Why did we…tack?” she asked.

  “We’re still chasing this poor bastard,” Thorgrim said, nodding over the larboard side toward the distant merchantman. “This will help.”

  Failend looked in the direction Thorgrim had indicated. The other three longships were still directly astern of the merchantman, getting closer to shore all the time, but Sea Hammer seemed to be sailing almost directly away from their quarry. She looked forward. None of the men who were now sitting on their sea chests seemed very happy with the situation. She glanced over Thorgrim’s shoulder and Thorgrim imagined that Harald did not look too happy, either.

  Whatever was happening, Failend clearly did not have enough energy or interest to pursue the issue. She just nodded and then staggered down to the new leeward side, flopped down on an unoccupied sea chest and leaned on the sheer strake, ready to commit anything that might be left in her stomach to the deep.

  They stood on, the distance between Sea Hammer and the other ships growing greater, the discontent growing deeper as Thorgrim’s crew saw their chance of being the ones to capture the prize, and the honor that went with it, slipping away. The wind continued to veer to the east and Dragon and Fox and even Blood Hawk continued to draw closer to the merchantman, closer to the headland north of Dubh-linn. The grumbling aboard Sea Hammer continued.

  “We’ll tack again,” Thorgrim announced to Harald who was still at the tiller. He called forward, sent the men to their stations. They moved more slowly, with less will. They were much farther from the knarr than the other three longships, thanks to Thorgrim’s inexplicable change of course.

  Sea Hammer came about on a starboard tack once more and Failend found herself back on the windward side, the side from which she had been told she should not vomit. She pushed herself off the sheer strake but she remained sitting on the sea chest, looking blankly around. There was a bit of color back in her cheeks, a touch of pink rather than green.

  A sharp gust struck Sea Hammer and she heeled a bit harder to larboard, and then suddenly the wind backed to the north, a change that a landsman might not even notice but to a sailor was an abrupt and startling shift. Thorgrim heard Harald grunt in surprise and push the tiller to compensate. He watched the men forward as they registered this shift in wind direction. They looked to the west and Thorgrim could practically see them realize what this meant.

  “Look here,” Thorgrim heard one of his men call out. It was a man named Armod who had fought with them at Glendalough. Armod was pointing toward the other ships, now a good two miles away. “They’ll never weather that headland!”

  The knarr was close to the headland north of Dubh-linn, but the other three ships, Blood Hawk, Fox, and Dragon, were closer still. If the wind had stayed where it was they could all have sailed easily past the point of land. But now, with the abrupt shift, the three longships would not make it around the point. They would have to tack, stand farther out to sea, then tack again. The merchantman would leave them far astern by then, having effectively scraped them off on the shoreline to the west. He would have had nothing but open ocean in front of him. But he didn’t. Because now, thanks to Thorgrim’s decision to sail away from the land, Sea Hammer was there to stop him.

  “Fall off a little, Harald, make right for him,” Thorgrim said casually. He could see the men of Sea Hammer were in low and passionate conversation, and he knew they were debating whether he, Thorgrim, was a genius with regard to wind or just lucky.

  It was both, but Thorgrim would not admit as much. He always kept an eye on the weather, noting signs and trends. As a seaman, even as a farmer, it was a crucial skill. In the years he had spent in Ireland he had seen that late day shift of wind frequently. It tended to happen when the sky was clear as it was that day and clouds were building to the west.

  And so he had guessed the wind would give him the shift he wanted. But he was not sure, because things like wind shifts were never a certainty. They were the province of the gods, and there were none as capricious as the gods. So he kept his thoughts to himself and hoped and this time he would be rewarded.

  They’re pleased we’ve sailed from Vík-ló, Thorgrim thought. The gods are happy we are doing what men should be doing.

  This was a sign, an omen, that he had done the right thing, and even as Sea Hammer swept down on the struggling merchant ship, he took pleasure in that knowledge. But not an excess of pleasure. He knew the gods might be happy now, but soon they would get bored, and they would begin to toy with him once more. Because they always did.

  Chapter Seven

  I will steer the reins well

  Of the sea-king’s horse…

  Egil’s Saga

  A mile and a half to the west the merchantman tacked and Thorgrim thought, This will be easier than I imagined. And then he chastised himself for thinking such a thing and inviting the gods to make a fool of him.

  Still, it was hard not to think it. The other three longships had tacked to get around the headland, and the merchant ship had tacked as well, the master apparently fearing he was getting too close to land. Perhaps there were rocks just below the surface that he knew about but Thorgrim did not. Whatever the reason, he was wasting a lot of time and sea room coming about, and that meant Sea Hammer would be on him all the quicker.

  “Everyone, up on the weather side, come on,” Thorgrim called down the length of the deck. Most of the men were already sitting up on the high side, sitting on sea chests or on the deck with their backs against the side of the ship, but others were sitting amidships. With the sail set and drawing well and the vessel holding steady on her course, there was not much for them to do. But they might get a bit more speed out of the ship if they put all the weight up to weather and flattened her out a bit. It was worth the effort, certainly.

  Fore and aft men jumped to their feet and moved up the slanting deck to the starboard side. They moved with alacrity, now that they could see they would have the honor of taking the prize because they, collectively, the Sea Hammers, had made the right call when it came to the vagaries of the wind. That at least was how they would perceive it.

  The merchantman tacked again and soon she was racing north once more, running in a direc
t line away from Sea Hammer, a race she would not win. Sea Hammer was a fast ship. She was freshly cleaned and fitted out and not loaded down with cargo, and so it was not long at all before she was only a few ship-lengths behind her quarry and quickly closing the distance. Even Thorgrim, whose eyes were not what they had once been, could see men moving about on her deck.

  “I see eight men of her crew,” Starri called down from aloft. There was a grudging quality to his voice; this was not his idea of action. Thorgrim might love the challenges of seamanship as much as he loved the challenges of battle, but Starri Deathless certainly did not feel the same.

  There would be no fight here. These men on the tubby merchant ship would be fools to put up any resistance. The best they could hope for now would be to get away with their ship and their lives, but even those might be forfeit to the Northmen.

  Yard by yard Sea Hammer continued to overhaul the merchant ship. Thorgrim could see the details of the vessel now, the steering board, the white foam rolling down the ship’s side, the straining shrouds leading from the weather side to the masthead. This ongoing chase was pointless—the merchantman could not escape—and Thorgrim was suddenly tired of it, though he knew that he would have done the same thing had he been master of the knarr.

  Thorgrim looked over at Failend, who was still sitting on the sea chest ten feet away. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be watching the distant ship and even taking some interest in the world outside her misery, and that he took to be a good thing.

  “Failend,” he called and she looked over at him. Thorgrim nodded toward the merchant ship, now little more than a hundred feet away. “Do you think you can stick them with an arrow, show them the folly of trying to flee?”