“I don’t think those two have all their oars manned, do you?” Harald asked.
Starri took a moment to consider the two ships. “No, they don’t. Hard to tell from here, but it looks as if there are oars missing. On both ships.”
“Maybe they got in a fight with Brunhard?” Harald speculated. “Lost men?” Despite himself, Harald felt a certain pleasure at the idea that these two might have fought a battle without him and lost. And at the same time he felt a flush of guilt for feeling that way. And still the uneasy feeling gnawed at him like a rat at a beef bone.
“Maybe,” Starri agreed. Normally Harald would expect Starri to be upset at the thought of a fight taking place without him, but this time he sounded more thoughtful than upset, which was unusual for Starri. “They’re making a poor show of rowing, I can tell you that.”
He was right, and Harald realized that that was one of the things bothering him. There was an uncoordinated quality to the rowing. It was adequate, sure, the ships were moving in the right direction, and with reasonable speed. But Harald could see the wandering snake-like quality of the their wakes, as the men at their tillers worked to keep the ships on course, fighting the unbalanced force of the oars. He would expect Norse warriors, bred to this sort of thing, to do better.
“Maybe they suffered a lot in the fight. A lot of wounded men,” Harald offered.
“Maybe,” Starri said. There was no more than half a mile between Blood Hawk and the others now, and it was clear that Fox meant to come up on Blood Hawk’s larboard side and Dragon on her starboard.
What else would they do? Harald thought. It was a perfectly reasonable way for the two ships to approach. But still it made him uncomfortable. There was something about the way they were coming at Blood Hawk he did not like, in the same way that one might recognize aggression in someone simply walking toward them.
Can a ship be rowed in a threatening way? Harald wondered. Does that make any sense?
But then Starri spoke, Starri who could see things others could not. “I don’t know, Broadarm. There’s something about these ships I do not like.”
“I know,” Harald said. “I feel it as well. But I don’t know what it is.”
“Neither do I,” Starri said. “But I think the gods whisper to you, the way they whisper to your father.”
“Hmm,” Harald said. He had never thought that, and he found it interesting that Starri did. But there was no time to explore that idea.
Harald ran his eyes over the men at the oars, which was most of the men aboard the ship. Few of them were wearing their weapons, since the weapons were awkward when rowing, but every man’s weapons were within arm’s reach, because Northmen did not care to be any farther than that from their iron and steel. The shields were all mounted on the shield racks along the sides and could be snatched up as quickly as the swords, spears and battle axes.
He looked south once more. A quarter mile of water between Blood Hawk and the others. He could see individuals now, men standing on the afterdecks of the two approaching ships. He could see brown and yellow hair above white faces, could make out beards, tunics of red and brown and green. Nothing at all unusual.
“Thorodd Bollason is master of Fox, is he not?” Starri said.
“Yes,” Harald said. “At least he was when he sailed off, after Sea Hammer beached with her sail on fire.”
“I don’t think that’s Thorodd Bollason on Fox’s afterdeck,” Starri said.
“Who is it?”
“No one I recognize. Sure, even I can’t make out a face over this distance, and maybe I’m wrong. Some of these men who joined us not so long ago. I don’t know them well. But Thorodd Bollason I know, and I know that’s not him.”
Harald nodded. He could not tell what words the gods were whispering but he could hear the volume increase. He stepped forward, a decision made.
“Listen, men,” he called in his most commanding voice. “You at the oars can’t see, but Fox and Dragon are pulling for us, and they mean to run up on either side. They’re friends, our fellows. Unless there’s something wrong, which there might be.” He was stumbling now with his words, talking too much. Explaining. Thorgrim would not have explained, would have just given orders. But in this case Harald knew he had to explain. Or maybe not. Maybe he should just give orders.
“I want you to be ready for whatever happens,” Harald continued, changing to a more direct course. “Be ready to turn the ship sharp if need be, be ready to grab up your weapons and fight. Your shields are in the racks. Grab them up, too. Just be ready for my orders.”
There, that was good, he thought. Not too much talking.
He rested his hand on the grip of his own sword, Oak Cleaver, which he had not removed despite having done his time at the oars. Oak Cleaver was the fine Ulfberht that his grandfather, Ornolf the Restless, had carried, and which had come to Harald on Ornolf’s death. There was no physical object that Harald loved more than Oak Cleaver.
“No, that is certainly not Thorodd Bollason,” Starri said. “And the man on Dragon, that’s not Fostolf, I don’t think.”
Harald frowned and squinted. What had happened here? Who was in command of these ships? Friends? Enemies?
Enemies, Harald decided. Whoever they were, they were no friends of the men on Blood Hawk and they were not coming to talk. Decision made, doubt banished. There was nothing Harald hated more than uncertainty, but that was over. He felt a great weight come off him. He knew what to do now.
“Stand ready at the oars!” he called forward, and his mind was moving fast now and he did not feel the need to explain, only instruct, and he expected his orders to be obeyed as if he were telling his own arms and hands what to do. “Ready…”
Fox and Dragon were less than fifty yards ahead now and closing fast, not because of the awkward, ungainly strokes of their oars but because Blood Hawk was powering down on them. The two ships were altering course again, closing in like two fingers pinching Blood Hawk between them. They were not going to come close, they were going to smash into Blood Hawk’s sides, snapping their oars and Blood Hawk’s oars, and whoever was aboard those ships would come pouring over the sheer strakes, larboard and starboard. They meant to take Blood Hawk by surprise, but the surprise would be theirs.
Twenty-five yards of water between them and Harald gave the order. “Larboard oars, hold! Starboard oars, pull! Pull now!”
There was no surprise among the rowers, no confusion. These men knew their work and they did not even have to think about what Harald had said. The oars on the larboard side came down in the water and stopped, the blades creating a massive and sudden drag. Along the starboard side the men leaned back hard, heaving their oars aft. Blood Hawk spun ninety degrees where she lay, perpendicular to the oncoming ships and right under their bows, too fast for them to react.
Harald heard the shouts of surprise and confusion from the decks of Dragon and Fox but he did not understand the words, which sounded something like his own native tongue but were not. Forward, up by the bow, Fox smashed into Blood Hawk’s oak sides with a crushing, grinding noise. Then, an instant later, and not ten feet from where Harald stood, Dragon’s familiar figurehead came looming over Blood Hawk’s rail as her stem struck just forward of the steering board.
Blood Hawk rocked back with the impact and Harald saw men on the other ships actually flung forward and land sprawling on the deck, so sudden and unexpected was Blood Hawk’s move.
“Weapons and shields!” Harald shouted. “Weapons and shields!” All along Blood Hawk’s decks the men abandoned the oars and snatched up the weapons they had set nearby and yanked the shields from the shield rack. Harald saw the man at the third oar starboard side slip his arm through the strap in the back of the shield, and just as he was taking hold of the boss an arrow drove into his chest, flinging him back.
“Archers!” Harald shouted. “Shields up!” Fore and aft the warriors raised their shields, the move accompanied by the thud of arrows burying themselves in t
he wood. Archers from both Fox and Dragon were shooting at them. Had the ships come along either side, parallel to Blood Hawk as planned, their fire would have been deadly indeed. But as it was, with the two ships bow on, the archers’ aim was blocked by their own stems.
Harald heard a scream at his side, so loud and sudden it made him jump. Then Starri pushed past him, a battle ax in each hand. He leapt up onto the sheer strake right where Dragon had struck, seemed to balance there for a second and then launched himself onto Dragon’s foredeck and disappeared from sight.
“Oh, may the gods take you!” Harald shouted. Once again Starri was going to beat him into the fight, and after he had so cleverly turned things around on the attackers.
Without a thought he raced down the center of the deck, dodging the men there, dodging the mast, and continued on forward, pulling Oak Cleaver as he ran. An arrow made a whirring sound as it passed close to his head, but his only reaction was to shout, “Men on the starboard side, follow Starri! Men to larboard, follow me!”
He leapt onto Blood Hawk’s low foredeck without breaking stride and charged over to where Fox’s bow was grinding against her hull. An archer onboard Fox was following him with the point of his arrow and Harald managed to duck just as the bowman let fly. He saw a blur and heard the arrow pass and realized he had not bothered to grab a shield.
Too late for that, he thought. He straightened and caught a glimpse of the men behind him charging forward, those on the starboard side racing aft to climb aboard Dragon. He set his left foot on Blood Hawk’s sheer strake and hefted himself up, teetering there on the edge of the ship, and thought, I’d like to see Starri move better than that…
Rarely could Harald match Starri’s grace, despite being at least ten or more years Starri’s junior.
He could feel the press of men coming behind him as he gauged the jump onto Fox’s bow. Three, four feet, and already a bowman was drawing on him so he knew he had better jump soon. He pushed off again, screaming as he flew over the gap between the ships, Oak Cleaver raised overhead. His left foot hit Fox’s rail and he kept going, hurling himself into the bowman even as the man made ready to shoot.
The arrow was a heartbeat too late. It passed though Harald’s tunic as Harald slammed into the frightened-looking archer. They went down together on the foredeck, but Harald, unlike the archer, was expecting it, and he raised himself quick and slammed a fist into the archer’s face, feeling the man’s nose collapse under the blow.
Harald rolled to his left and up onto his feet in time to see an ax swinging around at him, wielded by a stout, muscular man with only a smattering of teeth showing in his open mouth. The man no doubt expected Harald to leap back, to try and get clear, which would have allowed him to leap forward and take Harald’s head clean off.
But Harald did not do that. Instead he stepped toward the man, grabbed the collar of his tunic with his left hand and jerked him close. The ax completed its swing, the man’s arm bouncing off Harald’s shoulder as Harald brought his forehead down with a powerful snap against the man’s face. He felt the man go limp, like his bones had turned to dust, and he let him fall to the deck at his feet.
More of the men from Blood Hawk were leaping aboard now and Harald stepped aside to give them room. In the seconds that followed, Harald had a chance to run his eyes over Fox, bow to stern, but he still could not understand what was going on.
There were men at the oars, men seated on each of the sea chests, but he recognized none of them. And, more incredibly, they were doing nothing, not standing and fighting, not grabbing up weapons. Not really moving at all.
There had been half a dozen men near the bow. Harald had dropped two of them and the men coming behind had killed the others. There was another ten or so aft, some with bows, some with spears, some with axes. There was one man shouting orders, a big man, his voice approaching hysteria. There was something else about the man that was not right, and Harald could not grasp what it was.
And then he realized. The man was speaking in Irish.
“Get up, you bastards! Get up and fight! Now, you worthless whore’s sons!” the man was yelling, the pitch of his voice getting higher and higher with each word.
Then, midships, starboard side, three of the men at oars stood, awkwardly, and Harald could see they were chained together, chained at the neck. Slaves? he thought. But who would go into a fight with a crew of unarmed slaves, chained to their rowing benches? It made no sense.
But the slaves were not unarmed. As the men stood Harald saw spears coming up from under the benches, spears gripped in their hands. “Spears! They have spears!” he shouted the warning to the men behind him. But before he or his men could react the slaves who had stood now spun around as best they could and one after the other hurled their spears, not at the Northmen but at the men on the afterdeck.
The big man who had been screaming in Irish fell silent as they turned, his mouth open, his eyes wide. “No!” was the only word he managed to get out.
One of the slaves replied: “We’ll see you in Hell, Áed!”
That, at least, was what it sounded like to Harald. And then the rower threw the spear. There was power and skill behind the throw; the man was no stranger to pole arms. The long weapon whipped over the heads of the seated men and drove itself into the Irishman’s chest. His eyes went wider still and he staggered back a few feet, dropping the ax he was holding and clutching at the spear as if he hoped to pull it free, as if that might save him. His legs wavered and his mouth hung open and blood came spewing out.
The two other rowers who had stood had also snatched up spears and they threw as well. One missed its mark and sailed overboard but the other found one of the bowmen and embedded its long iron point in his shoulder. He fell howling to the deck, and the sound seemed to bring the rest of the slaves to life. They leapt to their feet and Harald could see that each of them had a spear hidden below their feet, and each of them raised them as they stood.
On either side of Harald men from Blood Hawk pushed past, men who had managed to grab up shields on their way, and they formed a sort of shield wall across the foredeck, a defense against the spear-wielding rowers, but they need not have bothered. The Norsemen were not the ones the rowers were after.
The bound men turned aft, spears raised, stumbling and swaying with the encumbrance of the chains around their necks. Some were within spear thrust of the ship’s crew, men too stunned to move who were cut down by the points of the rowers’ pole arms.
Those slaves too far to reach out with their spears flung them aft, a hail of wooden shafts and iron points. Not all the spears struck home, but enough of them did. The men who had been on the afterdeck died on the afterdeck, spears jutting from guts and chests. One of the slaves, a big man, his hair wild, shouted, “Turn and sit! Hold up your hands!” and the others obeyed him, turning aft toward Harald and the other stunned and confused Norsemen, and sitting down again on the sea chests, hands held open to show there were no weapons there.
Harald turned and looked over the larboard side toward Dragon, which had run into Blood Hawk’s after end. It was quiet there as well, the fighting over, though how it had ended Harald did not know. But however it had played out, the fight was done; the ships that had once been part of Thorgrim’s fleet were now part of that fleet again.
Harald turned to Gudrid, who was standing beside him, shield still raised. “That was without doubt the strangest fight I’ve ever seen,” he said, and to that Gudrid could only nod his agreement.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
With promises of fine drinks
the war-trees wheedled,
spurring me to journey
to these scanty shores.
Eirick the Red’s Saga
They dragged Starri Deathless back aboard Blood Hawk, though he had mostly calmed down by the time they got him over the rail. Blood was splashed across his face and chest and his hair was in a wild confusion. Hall had one of his arms, a man named Jokul had the other and tw
o more of the Blood Hawk’s men had his legs.
Harald was just climbing back aboard over Blood Hawk’s bow when he saw them. He trotted down the length of the deck, calling, “Is Starri hurt?” It was not so long ago that Starri had received a near fatal wound in battle. Once Harald had thought Starri could not be touched by any weapon wielded by man, but he had learned then that the berserker was not as invulnerable as that.
“No, he’s not hurt,” Hall said as Starri shook the men off and stood. Harald stopped in front of the small group. Starri was still holding his twin battle axes, but the insanity was leaving his eyes, and he was returning to whatever state of mind he occupied when he was not in a berserker rage.
“We had to stop him,” Jokul said. “He went aboard Dragon and killed nearly everyone on the bow before any of us could follow. He started to go after the men at the oars, but they were just chained up, poor bastards. Slaves, I suppose. Anyway, they had no weapons but Starri didn’t realize that right off. But we did, and then Starri did, so we went after the men on the afterdeck. They had spears and bows and axes. Cleared them out. But Starri didn’t want to stop.”
Harald nodded. This was not unusual at all. Some men had to be prodded into fighting. Starri had to be physically restrained to get him to stop. Usually he would be weeping at this point, despairing of the fact that he had not been killed and sent off to his reward at the corpse hall of Valhalla. But he seemed to be taking his survival better this time.
“They had no weapons, you say? The men at the oars?” Harald asked.
“Well, it turned out they did,” Hall said. “When the fighting was done we saw they had spears, on the deck at their feet. But hidden near the side of the ship. They could have picked them up and given us a bloody welcome, but they never did.”
“Huh,” Harald said. “The rowers aboard Fox had spears, too. But they used them against the crew who had taken her, not us. They were Irish, the rowers. Are they Irish aboard Dragon?”
Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6) Page 26
