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

by James L. Nelson

  The Irish, who were actually becoming rather skilled rowers, leaned into it and pulled together, then again, and Galilee moved noticeably faster through the water. Two more strokes and then Broccáin swung his oar out of time with the others, knocking it into the oar ahead of his, fouling that one, which was struck by the next ahead. On the larboard side they pulled as the starboard became more entangled and Galilee began to turn helplessly.

  “Hold, starboard!” Merulf shouted and the starboard oars came up as the larboard rowers sorted themselves out, an even harder job now that they were two men on each oar. Louis could hear Merulf cursing under his breath, impatient and frightened, and he wanted to point out that they were not in fact trying to escape, but he kept his mouth shut. He was enjoying the master’s discomfort.

  “No, pull, you fools!” Merulf called as the oars were got in line again. “Pull!”

  Louis looked astern. The longship was close enough that he could see the figurehead now, some sort of animal with a long snout, mouth open, teeth bared. He could see men on her deck looking back at him. A lot of men, to be sure, but not as many as, say, Thorgrim’s ship would have held. This was not as big a ship as that. There would not be many more men than Louis commanded, though the heathen’s men would not all be chained together at the neck.

  There were no shields mounted on the longship’s side. In Louis’s limited experience he found that sometimes the Northmen did that and sometimes they did not, and he was not sure why. Now, he imagined, the shields would just get in the way of their climbing from their ship onto Galilee. He wondered if they would bring shields into the fight. He had guessed they would not. It would be very awkward climbing from ship to ship with shields on their arms.

  He hoped they left the shields behind. Shields were a good defense against spears, and the Irish slaves would have difficulties enough in the coming battle.

  He turned and looked forward. “It will not be long now!” he called. He turned to the archers standing nearby. “You, wait on my signal. Keep your bows hidden. Most likely I won’t tell you to shoot until the heathens are on board.” The archers nodded. They did not look any happier than Merulf.

  The Northmen were close enough astern now that they could hear them yelling. It was nothing intelligible, Louis guessed, though all of their barbaric language was a garble to him. They were just shouting and beating their weapons on the side of their ship. They were hoping to frighten their intended victim, and judging by the looks on the faces of Merulf and his men, it was working. Only the Irish slaves seemed more determined than frightened.

  Then the shouting and banging stopped and Louis heard a single voice carry over the water, loud and insistent. He suspected it was one of the heathens calling for them to surrender. Probably offering not to harm anyone who did not fight. Louis did not understand the words, but that did not matter because he would never have trusted the word of a Northman in any event.

  Instead, he climbed up onto the edge of the ship and balanced himself with a hand on the sternpost and shouted back. He called in Irish, since that was the least likely language to be understood on the heathens’ ship. “Come on aboard, you dogs! You swine! Come aboard and we will gut you all like the pigs you are!”

  He hopped back to the deck. He figured that was all the verbal intercourse they would need.

  Soon the shouting and banging resumed and Louis felt a grin spread across his face. He was fond of battle, maybe over fond of it, the way others were overly fond of drink. It was something he had not tasted in some time, but he remembered now how much he liked it.

  The Northmen were nearly on them, the bow of their ship only thirty feet away off the starboard side and a bit down wind. The leering figurehead and the line of men at the ship’s side were perfectly visible. Louis saw something streak through the air and an arrow hit the Galilee’s side with a thump, and then another, just a few feet forward of the helmsman.

  “They’re aiming at me!” the man at the tiller shouted, his voice carrying shock and outrage and not a little fear.

  Of course they’re aiming at you, you fool, Louis thought, but he said in his brightest voice, “There’s no chance they’ll hit you. Not from one moving ship to another.”

  That was not true at all, of course, and Louis knew it. But even if the helmsman was killed it would not matter much. They did not have long now, no more than the time it would take for two or three more strokes of the oars. Louis had noted how the ship behaved when the oars on the larboard side had fouled and it gave him an idea.

  He looked back at the longship. Thirty or forty feet away, no more, and starting to turn to run right up along Galilee’s side. He took a step forward and addressed the rowers.

  “When I give the word, the rowers on the starboard side will foul their oars, as larboard did before. Then the heathens will be on us. Make ready…”

  He looked back at the longship. Now! he thought.

  Merulf stepped closer. “What did you tell them?” he demanded.

  “You’ll see,” Louis said. He turned back to the rowers and yelled in Irish “Now! Now! Starboard side, foul your oars!”

  It was chaos, lovely chaos. Half the oars went forward, half back and they locked one against each other in a great tangle of wooden shafts and dripping blades. The larboard side, however, pulled with a nice, clean stroke and Galilee spun around to starboard, right across the path of the on-rushing longship.

  “Ahh!” Merulf screamed. “You idiot! See what you’ve done!”

  Louis smiled. He could see what he’d done. It was exactly what he wished to do. He heard shouts from the longship, what he guessed were orders flying back and forth. The Northman turned hard to starboard to avoid slamming into Galilee. Her sail was hauled up and she slowed, and slowed more as her hull struck Galilee’s starboard side oars and snapped them off, then drove hard against the merchantman’s hull.

  “Ready, ready, wait for my word…” Louis shouted forward, calling in Irish and again in Frisian. The heathens were shouting and waving axes and spears and swords, massing at the side of their ship as the two vessels ground together. Grappling hooks flew and caught in Galilee’s side and the lines were hauled taut as the ships were lashed together. An arrow whipped across Galilee’s deck and embedded itself in one of the Frisian sailors’ guts and the man fell shrieking and writhing to the deck.

  “Steady, steady…” Louis shouted again, in both tongues. This was the hardest moment of all, and the most crucial. If they let the heathens see now they had a fight coming, there would be a terrific effusion of blood, and it would not be heathen blood.

  The ships were bound together, spinning slowly in place. The shouting from the longship had not stopped, but the men aboard the Galilee, the Irish rowers and the sailors and Brunhard’s men, stood watching as if struck dumb.

  The first of the Northmen came over the rail, screaming in his ugly language, a great battle ax over his head, his long beard braided in a few places. But he was not holding a shield, to Louis’s relief. He vaulted over the side, landed on Galilee’s deck, and still screaming swung his ax in a wide half-circle and cut one of the slave’s heads nearly clean off, the spray of blood lashing the man beside him as his body toppled over.

  “Steady, steady!” Louis called and the Irishmen proved their worth, remaining fixed in place, no one panicking, no one moving before his time. The first heathen brought the ax back again, ready to meet any new threat, and then paused. Because no one was moving. No one was fighting back.

  More and more of the Northmen came over the side, weapons in hand, landing on Galilee’s deck in the spaces between the rowers. They came ready for a fight and they got none, and one by one they lowered their weapons, partway at least, as they looked around. Louis could see the growing confusion.

  “Who are you?” he called, loud and demanding. He spoke in Frisian, which was a tongue the Northmen were most likely to understand.

  The first of the Northmen to come aboard looked over at him. He was y
ounger than Louis had first thought, about Louis’s own age. “I am Thorodd Bollason,” he shouted back.

  Louis’s next words were in Irish, and they were loud, emphatic, and anticipated. “Weapons! Weapons! Now! Now! Kill them!”

  Fore and aft, in four rows, sat the oarsmen, and they looked like pathetic, beaten and cowed men, chained to the benches, presenting no kind of threat to the Northmen. And so, as the forty Irish warriors bent down and snatched up spears in a move they had practiced over and over again that very morning, the Northmen were too surprised and confused to react.

  Louis saw the one named Thorodd Bollason turn to see what was happening, this sudden activity. A shout was just coming from his lips, his ax was just going up again when he died on the points of three spears thrust into him by the three slaves nearest where he stood. The command on his lips turned into a scream, his back arched, blood erupted from his mouth and the three Irish warriors pulled their points free and let Thorodd Bollason drop to the deck as they turned to other victims.

  “Archers!” Louis shouted, but the Frisian bowmen already had their bows out from where they had been concealed, already were nocking arrows, and even as the word left Louis’s mouth the first arrow twanged off its string and sent one of the heathens back over Galilee’s side, tumbling back aboard the longship, clutching at the shaft jutting from his chest as he fell.

  The Northmen were recovering from the surprise, but even the few heartbeats they took to do so was too long for many of them. The Irish warriors’ spears reached through the press of men to tear into stomachs and chests. Most Northmen did not have mail, Louis knew, and he guessed that those who did did not care to wear it when fighting on shipboard, lest they go over the side. Certainly none of the heathens he saw now were wearing mail, and that just made it easier for the Irishmen to cut them down.

  And the Irish were doing their work well. The rows of men farthest from the heathens reached through those in front of them and rammed their pole arms into the first rank of the enemy, while those closest to the Northmen reached past them to get at the heathens behind, some still aboard their longship. Men were falling screaming, clamping hands over wounds that would bleed them out if the Irish did not throw them overboard first.

  The Northmen, however, were not the sort to stand and let themselves be cut down. The first few seconds of the fight had been one-sided, but the Northmen recovered quick, and swords and axes swung and parried spear blows and lashed out at the men chained one to another.

  Now those chains became a problem. The Northmen leapt fore and aft, looking for advantage, and the Irish, so hindered in their ability to move, could do little to counter them. A Norse ax came down on one man’s skull, nearly splitting it. A sword opened a great wound in another man’s arm. And each man was a link in the chain, and each one who was disabled only further hindered the others.

  Louis pulled his sword and he shouted, loud as he could, wishing to draw attention, to distract the Northmen, even for the briefest instant. He leapt forward, sword sweeping at the nearest man, who held his ax up to stop the blow. Louis turned his wrist, altered the course of the blade just the smallest bit, and the edge of the sword cut into the heathen’s hand that was gripping the ax.

  The man screamed, blood burst from the hand, the ax fell and Louis brought the sword back and drove the tip through the man’s throat, turning the scream into an ugly gurgling sound. From the corner of his eye he saw movement and he leapt aside as a sword scythed past in a downward stroke. Louis stamped his foot on the blade, but he was too close to make use of his own sword so he hit the man hard in the face. The Northman staggered back and Louis slashed at him as he did, opening up a gash in the man’s leather armor, but doing no worse hurt than that.

  Then Merulf was there, screaming like a lunatic. He had an ax in his hand, not a fighting weapon, per se, but an ax used in repairing the ship. Still, it was effective, particularly in the hands of someone who seemed to have gone mad. He chopped the blade into the man Louis had punched, jerked it free, turned and flailed at the next man forward. Merulf seemed furious at the idea that heathens might sully his precious ship with their unholy presence, and he would not tolerate it.

  Fine, Louis thought. He did not care what drove Merulf, only that he was driven.

  The archers at the bow and stern were still keeping it up, picking off the men in the back while the Irish slaves continued to wreak havoc on the others. There were wounded and dead among the slaves now, men who had half fallen and were held part way up by the iron collars around their necks, doing a macabre and grotesque dance as the men to whom they remained chained continued to fight.

  Merulf was pushing his way forward, his ax flailing. A Northman in front of Louis was engaged with one of the Irish warriors, parrying his spear thrusts, looking for an opening to use his seax on the man.

  The Northman saw Louis coming at him, understood his dilemma, threats from two sides. He turned quick to face Louis, realized his mistake, and died on the end of the Irish spear before he could correct it.

  Some of the heathens were starting to tumble back aboard the longship, but there was no safety for them there, because once they were clear of the tumble of fighting they were easy targets for the archers, who dropped them like sitting birds on the deck of their own ship.

  Then, almost as suddenly as the fighting had begun with Louis’s call to arms, it stopped. The few heathens still alive, nearly all of whom were wounded, were throwing weapons aside, and some were cut down with the wicked points of spears even as they did.

  An odd quiet swept over the two ships, still bound one to the other, a quiet punctuated by the groans and cries from the wounded. The madness seemed to abandon Merulf. He lowered the ax to his side and came stumbling aft. The fight was done. The first fight was done.

  Louis took a step forward, ran his eyes over the Irish warriors still holding their spears at the ready. This was the moment when they were supposed to lay the spears down, when the weapons would be collected by Merulf’s men. That was what the Frisians expected them to do.

  It was not what Louis expected them to do. It was not what Conandil had whispered for them to do as she distributed the ladles of water to each man. Now was the time to bring their weapons to bear once again.

  Louis had let his sword arm drop, let the tip of his sword rest on the deck in the most unthreatening manner. Now he lifted the blade, turning as he did, looking for Merulf who was standing behind him. When he cut the master down, that would be the signal for the Irish who would turn on the others.

  He spun around and saw Merulf standing just where he had anticipated, just as he had pictured it, save for one thing. Merulf was not standing still; he was swinging his ax around in a big horizontal arc, the iron head on a course to strike Louis right on the temple. Louis had less than a heartbeat’s time to register this surprise before the ax made contact with his skull and something seemed to explode in his brain and then he was aware of nothing more.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Silent and thoughtful and bold in strife

  the prince's bairn should be.

  Hávamál

  Harald Thorgrimson, known as Harald Broadarm, had learned many good lessons in the two years and more he had gone a’viking with his father. He learned much about seafaring and shipbuilding, which he had not learned growing up on the family farm. He had learned a great deal about fighting, despite believing, before sailing from Vik, that he already knew pretty much all one could know on that subject.

  He had learned about death in its many facets, and the ways of men: Norwegians and Danes and Irishmen. He had learned about women, several hard-earned lessons about women. He had learned to think in strategic ways, and in ways of which he was not even aware. And, perhaps most useful of all, he had learned when to speak, and when to keep his mouth shut.

  That part of his education was paying off on the beach on the east coast of Ireland, where Sea Hammer and Blood Hawk and Dragon were run up in the gravel. M
en were swarming over the two larger vessels. Harald, as usual, was in the thick of the work, laboring harder than any two men because he so feared having anyone feel he was not doing his part. But all the while he could not help but think, This is madness…

  Thorgrim was not about to let the Frisian merchant who had so cleverly driven them ashore get away with it, not for long. Harald understood that, and he agreed with that sentiment with all his being. Indeed, there was not one man on the beach who did not take it for granted that they would get bloody and thorough revenge on this Brunhard, even if they had to chase him to Frisia and beyond.

  But Thorgrim also insisted he would go after him with Sea Hammer, despite the sail having burned to ash, the rigging damaged in the flames. In order to use Sea Hammer they had to shift the sail from Blood Hawk and bend it to Sea Hammer’s yard, not a huge task. But they also had to unstep the masts of both ships and remove the rigging from each, shifting Blood Hawk’s undamaged rigging to Sea Hammer’s mast.

  Thorgrim had explained that that was what they would do. Godi frowned but remained silent. His ship, his Blood Hawk, would be stripped of her ability to move any faster than the men could row her. She would be out of the fight.

  But even that was not Harald’s biggest worry. “That will take some time, Father, shifting the sail and rigging.” He looked out to sea, to the south, the direction in which Brunhard’s ships, with Fox in pursuit, had disappeared. The glance was involuntary, Harald had not meant to imply anything by it, but the implication was there nonetheless.

  “We’ll lose some time this way,” Thorgrim said, the words coming out sharp. “But Sea Hammer is the faster ship. If we’re going to run this Frisian bastard down, we’ll need Sea Hammer’s speed.”