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

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim looked forward, along the length of Sea Hammer’s deck and beyond, to where the three merchantmen were pitching and rolling and struggling and failing to get clear of their pursuers. “We should know soon enough,” he said.

  The coast of Ireland, earlier no more than an irregular blue-green line on the horizon, began to resolve itself into details as hunter and prey raced southwest. Thorgrim could see the line of brownish beach where the shore met the water, and in places high cliffs with the surf breaking white at their feet. He could see the rolling hills further inland and the mountains beyond that. He could make out green fields and stands of trees. Here and there he could see more of the deadly rocks standing just offshore like sentries guarding the vulnerable land.

  Brunhard’s ships were about a mile from the shore now, and Sea Hammer less than a mile astern of them. Thorgrim looked hard at the coastline beyond, but he could not see any particular place that the Frisian might be sailing for, no place that appeared to be a refuge from his pursuit. As far as Thorgrim could tell, he was just running.

  Another half a mile and Thorgrim could make out more details of Brunhard’s ships, the high stem and sternposts, the straining sails. The largest of the three, Brunhard’s own vessel, Thorgrim imagined, was not in the lead but rather was behind the two smaller ones. That must have been by choice. The larger ship should have been the faster ship. Thorgrim wondered if Brunhard was purposely hanging back, giving some bit of protection to the other vessels, willing to take the initial attack on himself. It’s what he would have expected a warrior chieftain to do, though not necessarily a Frisian merchant.

  “Not long now,” Harald said. He had been walking fore and aft, checking every little thing, then coming back to stand at Thorgrim’s side, then walking fore and aft again. He had Thorgrim’s lack of patience mixed with his own youthful energy, and that made for a restless combination.

  “Not long,” Thorgrim agreed.

  Brunhard’s ship was less than a quarter mile ahead and had closed to just a couple of cable lengths from the Irish coast when they finally turned more southerly and shaped a course roughly parallel with the land. Thorgrim had to wonder how well Brunhard knew that stretch of water. The coast of Ireland was a treacherous one, like his own Norway, with plenty of rocky shoals just below the surface, eager to tear a ship’s bottom out. He himself had never been that far south of Vík-ló, had never sailed those waters. It was all new and unknown to him.

  Well, Brunhard should serve as a good warning to us, he thought. If there were hazards under the sea, the Frisian would hit them first, and hopefully with time enough for Sea Hammer to change course.

  The sun reached its midday point and began the long slide to the west and the seven ships raced south, Sea Hammer coming closer to Brunhard’s beamy merchant ship with every sea mile they covered. Now even Thorgrim and his aging eyes could make out individuals on the deck, men sitting on the thwarts down the length of the vessel.

  Failend was sitting on a sea chest just forward of the afterdeck, half sprawled over it, her face turned up toward the sun, her eyes closed. Her complexion looked good, not the sallow, greenish hue she had sported at the onset of the voyage, and Thorgrim knew she was adjusting to the motion of the ship. She had eaten dagmál, eaten a substantial amount, which pleased him.

  Looking at her now, Thorgrim had an idea.

  “Failend,” he called and she opened one eye and rolled her head toward him. “Pray, come here.”

  She pushed herself off the sea chest and came aft with her usual light step, like a dancer. She stepped up onto the afterdeck.

  “Here’s this Frisian merchant we’ve been chasing,” Thorgrim said, pointing forward.

  “Oh, yes,” Failend said. “That would be the same ship we’ve been staring at since soon after daybreak. And all of the day yesterday. I’m glad to see we’ve nearly caught him.”

  “Do you think you could put an arrow through the man steering her?” Thorgrim asked.

  “Not from here.”

  “No. But we’ll be closer soon.”

  “Closer, I might,” Failend said. “It’s tricky work, shooting at a rolling ship from a rolling ship. I’m not much accustomed to it.”

  “Then I’ll get you closer,” Thorgrim said.

  Failend went forward to fetch her bow and quiver of arrows. Thorgrim moved his eyes back to the Frisian, no more than a cable length ahead now. He could see no excitement on her deck, no sign of panic.

  You may not be in a panic yet, he thought. The ships had the wind on their beam, and they were skirting close to a treacherous lee shore. One mistake and they could be set down on the rocks or the unforgiving beach just a few hundred yards to leeward.

  If Failend could put an arrow though their helmsman so he let go of the tiller, the Frisian ship would probably fly up into the wind, her sail would come aback, she would be in danger of being driven ashore. They would just have time enough to sort it out by the time Sea Hammer came down on them and Thorgrim’s warriors poured over her side. He was ready for that. He was growing tired of the chase.

  Failend found her bow, strung it and picked up a quiver of arrows. She made her way forward and the men followed her with their eyes, part from lust, part from curiosity. She stepped onto the small foredeck, one hand on the tall stem, and looked forward.

  Thorgrim turned to the man at Sea Hammer’s tiller. “Failend is going to shoot the Frisian’s helmsman,” he said. “You’ll fall off a bit, come up on his starboard side so she may have a clear shot.”

  The helmsman nodded and Thorgrim made his way forward and stood at Failend’s side. They were coming up on the Frisian now; maybe a hundred yards separated the two ships. Sea Hammer’s bow swung off the wind a bit as the helmsman followed Thorgrim’s instructions, steering to come up on the Frisian’s starboard side, giving Failend an unobstructed view of the man at the steering board.

  “Well?” Thorgrim asked.

  Failend shrugged. “I’ll do my best,” she said. “A better than even chance I can put an arrow through some part of him.”

  “Any part should do for our needs,” Thorgrim said. He walked aft, called, “Harald, come here!”

  Harald came over, quick and eager. “Failend is going to shoot their helmsman if she can,” he explained. “If she drops him, their ship will fly up into the wind. It will be madness aboard. We’ll come alongside with Sea Hammer. You take thirty men and go aboard. Starri will be with you. There’s no chance he won’t be. Just make sure he does no great slaughter if they don’t fight. I’ll keep Sea Hammer alongside, see that the Frisian does not get driven ashore. But you must do your work quick and get the ship under control and sail her off to safety, far from the shore.”

  Harald was nodding and suppressing a smile as Thorgrim spoke, delighting in the thought of carrying out his father’s bold plan. He already had his sword belted at his side. Now he turned and began calling out the names of the men who would follow him on board the Frisian.

  Thorgrim smiled. He knew what would happen. Harald would be first over, or at least he would try, but he could never get there faster than Starri. Starri did not do it out of malice, he was not even aware he was doing it, he just could not hold himself back. It drove Harald mad.

  As for Thorgrim, he was too old and had been in too many fights to worry much about whether or not he was first into the fray. He could not move as swiftly as he once could, and he accepted that. As to questions of his own courage, that was another thing to which he gave little thought. Courage, in his mind, meant doing something despite the fear, and he had long ago stopped being afraid, at least of any hurt that could be doled out by men.

  He stepped back to the foredeck. Failend had an arrow nocked, her fingers resting gently on the bowstring, the arrow still pointed at the deck. Forty yards between the ships, and now Sea Hammer’s helmsman had turned so the longship was aiming for the Frisian’s starboard quarter and the broad back of the helmsman was plainly visible.

 
; The wind had continued to build, the ships were heeling to starboard, their sails full, rigging straining, the water rushing white along their sides as they plunged along on near parallel lines. Just a few hundred yards to leeward, here and there, jagged rocks reached up from the surf, the seas crashing at their base.

  Thorgrim ran his eyes along that hazard. Harald had better do his work fast, he thought. If the Frisian ship was out of control, if she could not use her sail to keep off the rocks, then she would be blown down on them in short order, and torn apart as if she were made of cobwebs.

  Once things began to happen, they would happen fast, and there would be precious little time separating triumph from disaster.

  Thirty yards. Thorgrim was still calculating time and distance. Shoot the helmsman, the Frisian flies up into the wind. Sea Hammer closes the distance in the time it takes them to get back under command.

  “Whenever you think you have a shot, Failend,” he called.

  Failend nodded, stepped forward and raised the bow. No one on the Frisian ship seemed to be looking back at them. The few men he could see were focused on something else. Thorgrim thought he could see wisps of smoke coming up from some place forward of the helmsman and blowing away in the breeze, but he knew he might be wrong. Probably was. Lighting a fire on a ship, particularly in such conditions, was madness.

  Failend drew the bowstring back and held it and kept holding it as her legs moved with the ship and the point of the arrowhead moved up, down, side to side as she got the feel of the ship’s motion and the way the Frisian was moving in relation to Sea Hammer. On shore, Thorgrim knew, she would have released long before this, and put the arrow though whatever she was aiming at, but this was a much more complicated situation.

  And then her fingers let go and the bowstring twanged and the arrow shot out over the water, a straight, bright line from her bow to a point right between the Frisian helmsman’s shoulders. Thorgrim saw the man arch back, his arms fly up, thought he could hear his strangled cry of agony. He reeled aside and the tiller whipped over and, with no one steering, the Frisian merchantman began to turn wildly up into the wind.

  The space between the two ships was closing up fast. Thorgrim looked aft. Harald and his men were gathered at the larboard side, ready to leap across onto the Frisian’s deck. Starri was whirling around and making jerking motions with his arms.

  Thorgrim looked back at the Frisian, in time to see a thick set, bearded man grab the wounded helmsman and pull him aside like he was made a straw, and then grab the tiller and haul it aft, reacting quicker than Thorgrim had hoped they would. The ship’s bow, which had been spinning up into the wind, began to turn again, but it didn’t matter. Sea Hammer’s bow was almost up with the Frisian’s stern, and in no time at all Harald and his men would be pouring over the side.

  Then another man appeared on the Frisian’s afterdeck, and this one was looking aft, looking at Sea Hammer. He had a staff of some sort in his hand—Thorgrim was not sure what it was—but an instant later he recognized it as a bow, like the one Failend was holding. There was an arrow nocked, and the end of the arrow was engulfed in a ball of flame, a fire as big as a man’s head.

  Now, what by the gods…Thorgrim wondered. Fire on shipboard was a danger, to be sure, but if this fellow meant to set Sea Hammer ablaze with his flaming arrow he was dreaming. It would be hard to get the thick oak planks burning, easy for Thorgrim’s men to put it out.

  And then the man raised the arrow and pulled back the string and Thorgrim realized what he intended.

  “Oh, Thor strike you dead!” he shouted, then turned aft and called, “Up into the wind! Come up into the wind!”

  He never knew if the helmsman heard or not. Certainly the man did not react before the flaming arrow came sailing overhead and lodged itself in Sea Hammer’s sail. The oak that made up the hull might not ignite easily, but the wool sail, well-oiled to protect it from the weather, certainly did. The flames spread out from the arrow, building and climbing up the cloth. Then another arrow struck, further down, and a second part of the sail ignited.

  Thorgrim felt Sea Hammer come up on a more even keel as the wind spilled through the burning cloth. He turned and raced aft, past men looking up with stunned expressions. He had no thought for them, no thought for the Frisians. Because now it was Sea Hammer that was out of control, his ship that was being driven down onto the rocks by the merciless wind.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There is mingling in friendship when man can utter

  all his whole mind to another;

  there is naught so vile as a fickle tongue;

  no friend is he who but flatters.

  The Counseling of the Stray-Singer

  Thorgrim had not even reached the stern before Harald and the other men began to react. He heard Harald’s voice call out, “Lower the yard! Lower the yard!” just as he made the step up onto the afterdeck.

  The helmsman saw Thorgrim coming and he stepped aside as Thorgrim grabbed the wooden tiller bar and whirled around so he was facing forward. The sail was fully engulfed in flame, black smoke rolling off the cloth and blowing away to leeward, bits of flaming wool dropping to the deck where they were stomped out under the feet of frightened men.

  One of the older hands, a man named Vali, was the first to the halyard. He tossed the coil of rope aside and took the heavy line off the cleat, but he knew better than to just let it go. With a turn still around the cleat he slacked the halyard away fast. The yard came down in a controlled plummet and Vali checked it when it was five feet above the deck.

  From where Thorgrim stood the yard looked like nothing but a great shaft of flame, the fire wrapping itself around the spar, bits of flaming rope and cloth falling onto the deck and the sea chests and into the sea. The men had all strapped on swords or taken up axes or spears in anticipation of fighting the Frisians and now they used those weapons to impale bits of flaming material and heave them over the side. Others were grabbing up buckets and scooping seawater where they could and tossing it on the flames.

  Thorgrim devoted the space of a few heartbeats to the scene, no more. He knew that the fire was not the greatest danger to Sea Hammer and her men. With the sail gone the ship could make no headway, and if she made no headway she could not be steered. Already the wind had her and was driving her down toward the murderous rocks rising up from the ocean bottom.

  “Ahh!” he shouted in frustration and pulled the tiller hard, leaning back as he did, putting all his weight into it, and was rewarded with the sight of the bow turning to leeward. There was no stopping Sea Hammer from being driven ashore, but maybe he could thread the ship through the rocks before she was torn apart. If he couldn’t, then anyone who was not a strong swimmer was dead, and those who could swim were likely dead as well.

  The tall prow came around and Thorgrim could see open water between two rocks and he pushed the tiller forward to steady the ship’s swing. “Oars!” he shouted. “Ship some oars!” he called again. The men forward were thinking only of the fire. Thorgrim knew well how easy it was to forget about everything that was happening beyond the rails of the ship. “Oars!”

  The cry broke through at last. Hall and Bjorn, two of Ottar’s men, but good men, reliable, grabbed up two of the oars off the gallows and turning to larboard and starboard ran them through the nearest oarports.

  “Pull!” Thorgrim shouted. As long as the sea was driving them the steerboard was nearly useless. The oars would give more steerage, more control. Hall and Bjorn leaned back, faces turning red with the exertion. Forward, more hands lifted oars from the gallows and thrust them through row ports.

  A roller came in from the east and lifted Sea Hammer’s stern and then set it down, then lifted the bow in turn. The surging water slammed into the rocks ahead, racing through the gap for which Thorgrim was aiming the longship. The seas poured through the space and Thorgrim saw them boil and break over a ledge that lay all but submerged between them, a rock that seemed to be crouched in hiding,
ready to rip Sea Hammer’s bottom clean out.

  “Oh, by the gods!” he shouted. “Back! Back your oars! Back!” He saw looks of confusion forward, but just a flash, because these were men with many sea miles behind them. Hall and Bjorn and the three men forward of them who had also managed to ship oars now leaned back, dropped the blades, thrust their arms forward as they leaned into it. They were too few to move Sea Hammer astern, but they stopped her forward momentum, checked her headlong drive into the rocks.

  They moved together, as best they could, Hall setting the stroke, the others following. Back, down, thrust the loom of the oar forward, Sea Hammer hung on her patch of ocean as more men ran the oars out and joined the effort.

  Another sea came and lifted the stern and Sea Hammer spun to starboard, caught in the grip of the surf. “Larboard, stroke! Starboard back!” Thorgrim shouted and the men obeyed, mostly, two oars on the starboard side fouling as the rowers mistimed the stroke. Slowly, painfully, the ship twisted in the sea until her bow was once again pointed more or less at the beach.

  “Back!” Thorgrim shouted.

  He had thought, just for an instant, they might actually be able to back the ship away from the rocks, get clean of the shore, get sea room enough to keep off the beach, but he could see now that would not happen. The seas rolling in from the horizon had them now, and at best his men could keep the ship where it was for a brief time more. But in the end they would be flung onto the rocks. There was nothing for it.

  He looked off to the north. Blood Hawk was charging down on them, her sail set and drawing, the foam curling up under her bow, and Thorgrim had a sudden terror that Godi would do something foolish, would try to come to their aid under sail and get caught as they were with the seas driving them ashore.