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

by James L. Nelson

  But Godi was no fool. He was still a quarter mile away when Thorgrim saw the longship’s yard come whipping down the mast, hands gathering the sail up as it came, more hands running oars out through the row ports. Godi would come in under oars, pass a line, tow them free. If he had time enough. Which Thorgrim knew he did not.

  Very well, Thorgrim thought, his mind racing through the possibilities. They could not row clear, could not remain where they were, and Godi would not reach them in time.

  Through the rocks then, and onto the beach… He could see it, a quarter mile away, the long stretch of shingle beach, an easy landing if they could get past the irregular and half-hidden rocks.

  He ran his eyes along the various hazards, the waves breaking at their bases, or sending up sprays of foam where rocks were hidden just below the surface.

  There… Just to the south, a cable length away, a gap where the water seemed to flow unimpeded, a spot where a narrow and shallow draft ship might just safely pass. But could they work their way down to that spot, line Sea Hammer up to drive on through?

  Maybe.

  “Back! Back! When I give the word, starboard will pull!” He braced, felt the lift of the wave under the ship, called, “Starboard, pull!”

  Along the starboard side the men leaned into the oars, driving the ship forward, while to larboard they drove the oars back and Sea Hammer seemed to spin like a dancer. But now the seas were on her beam, catching the ship full on her broadside, making her roll in a frightening way and driving her fast toward the rocks.

  “Pull!” Larboard and starboard they pulled together and Sea Hammer shot forward, even as the seas lifted her like an offering to the gods and tossed her closer to the rocks, then let her wallow in the trough.

  “Larboard, back! Starboard, pull!” Thorgrim shouted, but now the men knew what he was doing, working the ship yard by yard along the shoreline to find a passage through the rocks. They knew what needed to be done, and they obeyed fast and well. Sea Hammer spun back, her bow once more pointing toward the beach, and they were halfway to the gap that Thorgrim had seen.

  “Back! Back!” The men at the oars thrust the looms away and Sea Hammer crawled painfully away from the rocks, making up some of the sea room she had lost in that last maneuver. Thorgrim could see the red faces, the open mouths, the hair drenched with sweat as the men heaved on the oars. At a steady pace, long strokes, they might go for a few hours at the oars. But this was brutal, a fight between ship and sea, mortal combat, at least for the frail men aboard their wooden ship. Thorgrim knew they did not have much more of this in them.

  “Now, one more, and then we ride the seas in like a sled on ice!” Thorgrim shouted. “Stand ready! Now, starboard, pull!”

  Once again the men obeyed, starboard heaving on their oars, larboard backing, and once again Sea Hammer spun on her keel and they shot forward even as the seas tried to dash them on the rocks. Thorgrim gave the order and the ship twisted back and the seas lifted her stern and dropped her bow and he had a vision, a clear view of the water racing through the rocks to larboard and starboard, churning and rolling but not breaking on any submerged obstacle that he could see.

  “Now, pull!” he shouted, and there was a mad, reckless tone to his voice that matched the wildness roiling in him. He remembered how Ornolf the Restless used to taunt the gods and now he knew why, and he wanted to do the same. Take me if you will, you bastards, I’m Thorgrim Night Wolf and I’ll meet any man or god wherever they choose!

  The rowers leaned into the oars. Sea Hammer shot forward, the seas lifting her stern as the momentum built. They pulled again and Thorgrim leaned into the tiller to drive her bow around. They were careening toward the rocks now and either they would find a clear path through or they would hit a ledge and tear the bottom out and spill men, weapons and treasure all over the ocean floor, but there was no stopping the momentum now.

  Thorgrim leaned back with the tiller and saw Sea Hammer’s bow come around and knew it was as lined up as it would get. The rocks loomed above, larboard, then starboard, and twenty feet off either side. He saw panicked faces looking up as the breaking sea crashed against them and flung spume back over the ship. And he wanted to laugh with the madness of it.

  Then he felt Sea Hammer’s bottom hit, a jarring blow that made the ship shudder, made him stagger and grab fast at the tiller to keep from falling. He grit his teeth and waited for the ship to come to a grinding stop, to swing broadside as her keel caught on the rocks below, to see the strakes torn out of her.

  But that didn’t happen. She hit again, less hard that time, and then she was through, the rocks astern, clear water ahead, as far as he could see, clear to the beach.

  Still he wanted to laugh, to shout, to curse the gods, but instead he shouted, “Stroke!” and the stunned men remembered themselves and leaned into the oars again. They had to run up on the beach, assess the damage, set things to rights as best they could. And then get underway once more. There was work to do. In the next day or so, Brunhard would die or he, Thorgrim Night Wolf, would die. There was no other option.

  The men were pulling with an easy stroke, the need for frantic heaving at the oars over, the beach only a few hundred yards away. Thorgrim turned and looked back over the larboard quarter. Brunhard was well clear now, half a mile off, heading out to sea, having sprung his trap by luring Sea Hammer in among the rocks. Thorgrim felt a rage building in him such as he had not felt in a long, long time. And he felt like a fool, and he felt ashamed of the trick for which he had fallen, and that all seemed to open up a vicious, gaping wound for which blood was the only salve.

  He turned and looked over the starboard side. Godi in Blood Hawk was under oars, standing off from the rocks, clear of the surf’s grip. As Thorgrim watched, Blood Hawk spun around and headed the other way and Thorgrim guessed that Godi was looking for a way to reach the beach as well, a less treacherous way than the one Thorgrim had been forced to take. And further off, still under sail, Fox and Dragon were racing to catch up.

  Thorgrim looked back at Blood Hawk. Part of him wished Godi would go after Brunhard, for fear the Frisian might slip away. And part of him did not wish Godi to do that, for fear Godi or one of his men would kill the man and deprive him, Thorgrim, of the pleasure. But what Thorgrim wished did not matter. Godi had apparently decided to stay at Sea Hammer’s side, and, with half a mile separating them, Thorgrim had no means to tell him different.

  Two more strokes and Sea Hammer’s bow ran up onto the sand with a gentle grinding sound. The oars came in, men leapt over the sheer strake into the surf and hauled the ship further up the beach. Thorgrim let go of the tiller and hopped down off the afterdeck and lifted some of the loose deck planks.

  There was water in the bilge, as there always was, but no more than usual. He could see no strakes stove in, no gaping wounds where the ship had struck rock. He guessed that the keel itself had struck, maybe taken a nasty gouge, but nothing worse than that. Silently he thanked the gods, and worried that in his madness he may have offended them. At least he had not said any of the taunts out loud. He was not sure if that made a difference.

  Men were already swarming over the blackened yard, cutting away the last charred bits of sail and the short lines that lashed it to the spar. Starri was scurrying up the rigging to assess the damage the flames had done to the rope. Others were stacking the oars back on the gallows.

  “It’s not so bad, Father,” Harald said, coming aft. Thorgrim could hear the hesitation in his voice. Harald would not know what his father’s state of mind was, but he could guess it was not good, and he was likely concerned about the reaction he would get. But Thorgrim only grunted, so Harald went on.

  “The yard got blackened, but it didn’t burn, really. I think it’s still strong enough to hold a sail. Or would be if we had a sail, which we don’t. Nothing but a few charred bits of that left.”

  Thorgrim grunted again. Of everything aboard the longship, the sail was the most difficult and expensive to
replace. That was why there was no spare. Thorgrim could replace any other part of the ship by cutting down a tree and using the tools he had on hand to shape it and fix it in place. There was spare rope to replace damaged rigging and spare clench nails and all the tools needed. But when it came to weaving cloth for a sail, he would not know where to begin even if he had a loom, which he did not.

  He looked north up the beach. Godi had found a way in through the rocks and was pulling for them, closing the distance quickly. Thorgrim made a decision. “We’ll take the sail and standing rigging from Blood Hawk,” he said.

  “Ah….” Harald said. “Certainly, we could do that… Her mast and yard are near enough the same length as Sea Hammer.”

  Thorgrim could all but hear the arguments in Harald’s head, the first being that swapping out the sail was not necessary. Blood Hawk was nearly as big and fast as Sea Hammer. The expedient thing to do would be to leave Sea Hammer on the beach, load the men aboard Blood Hawk and go, rather than waste the hour or more they would need to move sail and standing rigging. Also, Godi would not be happy about this, not happy at all.

  Thorgrim did not care about any of that. He was in command here, Sea Hammer was his ship, and he would not give any Frisian whore’s son the satisfaction of knowing he had forced a Norseman to leave his fine ship behind.

  He heard Godi’s big voice, heard the splash of Blood Hawk’s oars and turned just as the longship ground up on the beach thirty feet away. Godi was over the side even before his ship came to rest, making a big splash as he hit the water and waded ashore.

  “Thorgrim!” he boomed, coming up the beach, covering the distance with his long strides. “By great Odin’s ass what happened? Was it Thor set your sail on fire?” His expression was half amused, half uncertain.

  “No, it was that goat turd Frisian. He let us get close up and then put a couple of flaming arrows into the sail. Burned like dried thatch.”

  “Hmm,” Godi said, and Thorgrim could hear that the man was impressed with the cleverness of the trick, but knew better than to say as much. And well he might be impressed. Thorgrim was calm enough now to also see how clever it was. He would be impressed if he had seen the trick played on someone else, if he personally had not been so humiliated by it.

  “Look, Father,” Harald interrupted. “Dragon is coming ashore, too.”

  Thorgrim and Godi turned to look north. Fostolf was following the path Godi had taken around the rocks and was heading for the beach.

  “Seems Thorodd is the only one to go off on his own,” Thorgrim said.

  “He’s young,” Godi said. “Rash.”

  “Yes,” Thorgrim agreed. He was surprised by this. If he had had to wager, he would have bet Fostolf, not Thorodd, would have been the one to strike out on his own. He wondered if Thorodd would be any match for the Frisian, Brunhard. He did not think so.

  “So what do we do now?” Godi asked. “My guess is that you have a plan already to get revenge on this Brunhard bastard.”

  All three of them—Thorgrim, Godi and Harald—turned and looked to the south. Brunhard’s ships were barely visible now, and in their wake, but still a few miles astern, was Thorodd’s Fox.

  “Yes,” Thorgrim said, turning back to the others. “Yes, Godi, I do have a plan. And I fear you will not like it very much.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  [B]rief is wealth, as the winking of an eye,

  most faithless ever of friends.

  Hávamál

  Like the sun breaking through a thick layer of cloud, so Master Brunhard’s mood improved as the Frisian ships put distance between themselves and the Northmen. Louis was hardly surprised.

  The biggest of the longships had all but run them down, come so close that someone on their deck was able to drop Wind Dancer’s helmsman with an arrow. An impressive shot, to be certain, but not a long one as the Northman was nearly alongside. At that moment Louis was certain the situation would end in a bloody and one-sided fight on the Frisian’s deck.

  But Brunhard had surprised him. Again. And even more impressive than the Northman’s bow shot was the Frisian’s trick with the flaming arrows.

  Louis had been watching the ships astern so closely he had not even seen the preparations. When he finally noticed the archers stepping aft, thick twists of oiled cloth lashed to their arrow shafts and blazing away, he had thought they meant to shoot the arrows into the Northman’s hull, and he knew that would be pointless. He didn’t even think of the sail until the first arrow pierced the cloth and hung there, well out of reach of anyone on the Northman’s deck, igniting the cloth before anyone could react.

  Another arrow struck, and another. The sail seemed not so much to burn as to melt, so quickly was it consumed. And then the seas had the Northmen it their grip, hurdling them toward the shore.

  They could not see, from Wind Dancer’s deck, if the Northmen had wrecked or made it to the beach. The distance between the ships opened up and the Northman was lost from sight among the rocks as the Frisian ships continued south as fast as they could sail. Any sound they might have heard of the ship breaking up or the drowning men screaming was lost to the wind and Brunhard’s booming laugh, his shouting with glee, his boasting and recounting of what he had just done, as if all the men around him had not also witnessed his triumph.

  “Ha! Louis! Did you see that?” Brunhard shouted, though he and Louis had been standing nearly shoulder to shoulder through the whole of the affair, from the moment Brunhard had pulled the wounded helmsman aside and grabbed the tiller himself. “I could practically smell those Norse pigs shitting themselves! And now they are dead on the rocks, and the crows will feast when they wash up on the beach.”

  Brunhard, of course, did not actually know if that was true or not, but that would not stop him from saying it, and Louis knew better than to point it out.

  “Very clever, Brunhard, very clever indeed,” Louis said instead. It was one of the few sincere things he had ever said to Brunhard.

  “Of course it was clever, I told you it would be!” Brunhard roared. “And see, the other Norseman, he’s going into the beach, too! No doubt to chase the crows away from the bloated corpses of their fellows!”

  Louis turned and looked aft. The big ship, the one with the red and white striped sail that had nearly run them down, was lost to sight. Half a mile or so behind it was the second of the longships, a slower vessel, apparently, since it was always trailing behind. Now they had their sail down and oars out and seemed to be looking for a way to get past the rocks and onto the beach where the first ship had been driven.

  The image of that red and white striped sail played in Louis’s mind. For weeks he had been a prisoner of the Northman Thorgrim Night Wolf, carried down the Avonmore River aboard Thorgrim’s longship. They had never set the sail, only used it as an awning, but Louis was sure it, too, was striped red and white.

  No, that’s ridiculous, he thought. This coast is filthy with these Norse pigs and no doubt half of them have sails of red and white stripes. It’s not possible that this is Thorgrim Night Wolf…

  Thorgrim, he was sure, would wish to kill him on sight. It would be absurdly bad luck if this, of all the Norse raiders in Ireland, was indeed Thorgrim Night Wolf. But then, his luck had been running about as foul as luck could run.

  After some time Brunhard seemed to grow tired of bragging to Louis, or perhaps ran out of additional things to say, so he wandered off forward to find another whom he could regale with a retelling of the events they had all just witnessed. Louis sighed and looked astern once again, not looking at anything in particular, just letting his eyes rest on the far shore. It was the view he preferred, looking aft, and he suddenly understood why. Looking astern meant he did not have to look on the wretched slaves on the thwarts and the gloating, vicious crew. It was the only direction in which he could look and not be reminded of the awful situation in which he remained.

  And he was indeed still in a bad circumstance. The reappearance of the Northmen
had taken the Frisian sailors’ attention away from him, and Brunhard’s delight in his victory had distracted him from the vengeance Louis was certain he intended, but those things would not last. Brunhard would soon grow bored and look for a new victim and happily for him he did not have to look far.

  He heard a soft footfall beside him and knew it was Conandil because she was the only one aboard who moved softly. “It seems the Northmen are not done with us,” she said. Louis turned and looked down at her, her pretty, expressionless face, her thick hair unkempt and tied behind her head. She, too, was looking astern and Louis wondered if she did so for the same reason he did.

  “What do you mean?” he said. They spoke softly, backs turned to the others, so no one would hear or see them converse. No one knew that they could.

  “See?” Conandil said, nodding toward the horizon to the north. “There’s another ship, still coming after us.”

  He looked in the direction she was looking. He saw nothing, nothing but the east coast of Ireland off to his left, and directly behind them, and stretching all the way around to the right in a great half circle, the bright line of the horizon.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “There.”

  Louis squinted, leaned forward until he realized how absurd a thing that was to do and straightened again. And then he saw it. Just a white speck, really. But the more he looked the more he saw it was not a white speck. The rectangular shape slowly resolved itself, the slight wobbling motion left and right. Another ship, right in their wake.

  “There were four of them, weren’t there?” Louis said. “Four of these heathen longships.”

  “Yes,” Conandil said.

  “Brunhard wrecked one, the other went in after it. Two left, and here’s one of them, at least, still coming after us.” He glanced over at the sun hanging in the west. “He won’t catch us, I don’t think, before it is dark.”