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

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim had never in all his years of seafaring seen anything like this. Sea Hammer had come down on the afterdeck of Brunhard’s ship and remained there, as if it were grounded on a rock, except the rock was twisting and plunging, rising and falling with the seas. The two ships had spun around in the wind and waves like a leaf floating on a stream. Sea Hammer’s checkered sail was aback now, the wind pressing on the forward side of the cloth. Thorgrim could hear the forestay strain and pop under the pressure.

  “Harald!” he shouted and then corrected himself. “Godi, get some men, get the yard down! Don’t worry about swinging it fore and aft, just get it down!” They were in trouble now; Thorgrim did not know if either ship could still float, and the pressure on the sail was not helping things.

  Godi called the names of a few men, and they raced aft to do as Thorgrim had instructed, with others joining them. Thorgrim reached a place near the bow where his ship and Brunhard’s were crushed together. He stopped and forced himself to take it all in, to assess this bizarre situation.

  “Oh, by Thor’s ass…” he said. The two ships were ninety degrees to one another, all but locked together. A cluster of warriors stood near Sea Hammer’s bow, apparently uncertain whether or not they should still follow their original instructions to board and take Brunhard’s ship, uncertain about the wisdom of jumping the ten feet down to the deck of the merchant ship below them, a ship that might sink in the next instant.

  Thorgrim was not concerned about that. Brunhard was not going anywhere, and the possibility of Sea Hammer’s sinking was more of an immediate concern than the Frisians were. “You men!” he shouted. “Get these deck planks up! Let’s see what damage we have!”

  The men abandoned their place at the rail and grabbed onto the deck planks, which were just laid in place and not fastened down. They lifted them and tossed them aside and Thorgrim looked down into the hold. He could see where some of Sea Hammer’s planks had been stove in with the impact. He did not know if his ship could still float on its own without Brunhard’s vessel holding it up, but he did not think so. Not for long, anyway.

  “Ahhh!” he shouted in frustration.

  He turned and strode to the larboard rail, looked down at the merchant ship on which they rested. Her sides were crushed nearly to the level of the deck where Sea Hammer had come down on her. The ship was bucking in the swells, twisting and jerking as if trying to get out from under the weight of the longship, and water was washing over her deck boards, cascading side to side. Thorgrim could not tell if this water had come in through the crushed sides or if the merchant ship’s planks were stove below the waterline. If Brunhard’s ship went down, Sea Hammer might well sink right on top of her.

  His eyes traced along the deck. There were men lining both sides of the ship; those he had seen seated at rowing benches, larboard and starboard, and others lying in a tangle on the deck and thrashing their way upright again. The rowers were hairy and unkempt men with torn and filthy clothing. Thorgrim could not understand why they just sat there, why they didn’t rush to get away from the vessel threatening to crush them all. Then he saw the chains.

  Slaves! he thought. Brunhard’s a slaver! It had never occurred to him that Brunhard’s cargo was human beings, that the wealth Thorgrim hoped to plunder from the Frisian merchant consisted of Irish slaves. He smiled, despite himself.

  All this trouble… he thought. All this trouble…and now my ship will sink under me… all for slaves. Thorgrim had no interest in slaves. He had no interest in trying to keep a cargo of miserable Irishmen alive all the way to the slave markets across the seas. He couldn’t even manage to get himself and his men clear of the Irish shore.

  The gods do have their fun with me… he thought.

  His eyes moved to the bow of Brunhard’s ship. The men there were not slaves. They were the ship’s crew, and they were most certainly getting clear of the Northmen and the ship that was twisting and grinding on top of them.

  Which one of you is Brunhard? Thorgrim wondered, and then it occurred to him that Brunhard might well have been crushed under Sea Hammer’s keel, and that thought brought with it a wave of disappointment.

  He studied the Frisians at the bow of the merchant ship. They stood huddled together, save for one man who stood apart from them with a posture that was part arrogance, part defiance. He was not as tall as some of the others, but he was broad, powerful looking, with a thick beard and a grand head of hair. His tunic was a deep green color, finer than the clothes that any of the other men huddled there were wearing.

  You are Brunhard, you son of a bitch, aren’t you? Thorgrim thought.

  Everyone aboard the Frisian’s ship seemed to be frozen in place by the shock of what had happened, the very real possibility that they would all be drowned in the next moment. All but one. Thorgrim could see someone hurrying aft, moving with purpose, threading their way past the rowers and the benches to where Sea Hammer lay across the sheer strake. His eyes moved to that person and he saw it was a woman. And she in turn stopped and looked up at him, and for an instant their eyes met.

  She was ten feet below him and fifteen feet away. There was a look of surprise on her face and Thorgrim, too, felt an odd sort of wonder in his gut, and he thought, Haven’t we met before?

  Conandil watched, mouth open, eyes wide, hand still gripping that of the man who had pulled her inboard, as the longship’s bow dropped onto the slave ship’s afterdeck.

  She saw fleeting images: the dripping planks of the ship overhead, the look of terror in the helmsman’s face as he stood, struck to immobility by fear, at the tiller. The same with the two sailors beside him. Brunhard, with presence of mind enough to move, flinging himself forward and out from under the coming blow.

  Then the longship and the slaver had come together, the one rising, the one falling, and the impact had sent Conandil flying across the deck. She felt a shock of pain as her arm and shoulder struck the planking, felt at least one man falling on top of her, felt the chains that held the rowers to the benches whipping her in the tangle of fallen people.

  There was a scream, cut short. The man steering, Conandil thought. There were shouts of surprise and terror, and the shouts were not Frisian alone. She could hear the Norsemen shouting as well, and though she could not make out the words, she recognized the sound of panic and fear.

  She opened her eyes. Her head was resting on the deck and she could see the arm and back of the man who had fallen across her. She could see the underside of the rowers’ benches and the far side of the ship. She could see the bare feet and tattered leggings of the sailors as they ran to the bow, as far from the threat of being crushed by the longship or skewered by the Northmen as they could get.

  She moved her arm to make certain it would still function. She felt a wave of pain, but she could move it nonetheless, and it was her left arm, not her right. The man lying across her was struggling to get free, but he was chained and she was not so she struggled out from under him, put her right hand on one of the benches and pushed herself to her feet.

  The longship had crushed the sides of Brunhard’s ship and now it was resting on the deck, sitting in a wide and spreading pool of blood. It looked like the ship itself was bleeding, but she knew it was the men who had been standing there, and who were now pulp as the longship continued to grind.

  That was not what I expected to happen, Conandil thought.

  The ships dropped down between the waves, twisting against one another, the grinding, rending noise they made almost unbearable. A gush of water flooded in around where the Northman’s ship had crushed the Frisian’s side and ran like a small flood over the deck planks and cascaded into the open hold amidships.

  Will we sink? Conandil wondered. There had to be great damage done to both vessels. Maybe they were sinking now. She looked around for something that might float, something that she could hold onto and perhaps drift back to the shore.

  Her eyes fell on the chains. The men, still bound one to the other, were
struggling to untangle themselves, to get upright again. Each one had an iron collar around his neck that closed with a hasp. The chains, secured to the deck near the bow and stern, were run through each hasp, preventing them from being opened. If the ship went down, these men, these Irishmen, most of whom had been taken with her, most of whom she knew, would go with it.

  Conandil looked toward the slave ship’s bow, but no one seemed to be paying her any attention. Their eyes were on the Northmen, the warriors on the deck of the ship that rested on theirs, and on the ship itself, and Conandil guessed they, too, were wondering if they would be going down in the next few moments. But that did not mean they would stand idle while she undid the end of the chains and set the slaves free.

  But the other ends of the chains were aft, feet from where the longship was grinding into the merchantman’s deck, and no one seemed very eager to be there.

  The knife with which she had slashed the rope was lying on the deck at her feet and she snatched it up and stuck it through the thin leather belt she wore around her waist. She pushed her way through the struggling men to the center of the ship, where it was clearer, and stumbled aft to where she knew the chains were made fast. The two ships shifted in the rising seas and she looked up to see if the longship was going to roll over on her and crush her as it had the men on the stern.

  There was a man at the longship’s bow, one of the Northmen, looking down at her. Well-proportioned, not tall but not short, with dark hair tied back and a beard that was also dark, but softened with visible gray. Their eyes met and once again Conandil was brought up short by the shock of what she was seeing.

  Thorgrim Night Wolf? She had been a captive of another Northman, a man named Grimarr, kept alive because she alone knew where their stolen hoard of treasure was hidden. Thorgrim had joined with Grimarr, but he was not an animal like Grimarr was, not the beast so many of those Northmen were. In the end she had escaped by seducing Thorgrim’s son, Harald, and running off while he slept.

  Could he really be here, now? she wondered. Yes, of course he could. But he was not her concern, not her chief concern.

  She pulled her eyes from his and ran aft, nearly to where the longship was resting on Brunhard’s deck. The chains that held the two lines of men, larboard and starboard, were fixed to an iron ring in the deck, secured by a bent iron rod. Conandil dropped to her knees and grabbed the rod and twisted it one way, then the other, trying to work it loose. A wave lifted the ships and dropped them again and the longship twisted and groaned and Conandil looked up in terror, but it did not seem likely to come down on her.

  Water burst through the smashed section of the slave ship’s side and washed over her where she knelt, soaking her up to mid-thigh, but she kept her hands on the iron bar, kept working it back and forth. The ship rolled again and she felt the bar come loose. She pulled and it slid free and the chains fell free of the ring.

  Conandil leapt to her feet, chains in hand. She ran to the nearest man and she could see the relief on his face as she drew the chain through the hasp on the neck ring. The last link came clear and the ring fell open and the man pulled it off and flung it away, leaping to his feet and helping Conandil get the next man free.

  They moved toward the bow as quick as they could, setting each man free in turn, the captives themselves clapping onto the chain and pulling it through the hasps. At the bow, Brunhard and the sailors were fishing the spears and bows and arrows out from the places under the deck they were stored, readying themselves for the rush of now-free men they feared would come for them.

  It was a fear well justified. The last of the captives pulled his neck ring off and then someone shouted, “Get them! Get those whore Frisians!” It was a man named Colgan, one of Bressal mac Muirchertach’s house guard, and his words were met with a cheer and a rush aft, all thoughts of imminent drowning lost in the frenzy of revenge.

  But the Frisians and Brunhard would not sell their lives cheap. Spears leveled, bowstrings nocked with arrows, they crammed back into the tight V at the far end of the ship and braced for the rush. They would lose in the end, but they would make a lot of bloody corpses before they did.

  “Wait! Wait!” Conandil shouted. “Colgan, wait! Wait, you men who serve Broccáin mac Bressal!” She felt a stab of anguish as her husband’s name came off her lips, a flash of anger that he had been taken from her. He could have commanded these men. His word would have been law. To them and to her. She wanted it that way again.

  But that name, an invocation of home, the man those men-at-arms had served, the man who had become rí túaithe after the death of his father, had the effect Conandil had hoped for. The Irishmen stopped, well short of the reach of the Frisian spears. They stopped and some kept their eyes on the hated slavers forward, and the others looked to Conandil.

  “Listen,” Conandil said, loud enough to be heard by all the Irishmen. “Brunhard has done a lot of hurt to the Northmen, and they’ll want their revenge. And we want them to set us free, not sell us as slaves like Brunhard would do. Maybe if we keep Brunhard as a hostage they’ll make a bargain with us.”

  It was not very likely, and she knew it. Mostly she did not want her people to rush into the tips of the spears, did not want them slaughtered now, after they had lived through so much. And maybe if they had Brunhard, and threatened to cut his throat before the Northmen could, then Thorgrim Night Wolf might be willing to strike a deal.

  There was silence fore and aft. No one moved, except to catch themselves from tripping as the ship lifted and fell below them. The wind was louder now, blowing Conandil’s hair sideways, whipping her cheeks. The longship was grinding into the stern of Brunhard’s ship with the ugly sound of pending disaster.

  And then Colgan took a step back, and then another, and the men beside him did the same.

  “Very well, Conandil,” Colgan said. “Maybe you’re right. And for the name of Broccáin mac Bressal we’ll heed your words.” All together they stepped back, opening up the space between themselves and the sailors at the bow. Two bands of angry and frightened men, their eyes fixed on one another, each waiting to see what the other would do next, from where the next threat would come.

  And then one of the Frisian sailors shouted, the words shrill and filled with surprise and fear piled on fear. He shouted, “Look! Look!” He pointed over the starboard side of the ship, and everyone looked in that direction.

  One hundred feet away, the larger of Brunhard’s two other ships lay sideways to the seas, completely out of control. The sail was edge-on to the wind and flogging like mad. The deck was a mass of struggling men, fists and arms and weapons rising and falling. The slaves, apparently, had gotten their hands on the crew.

  And now their ship was out of control and directly downwind.

  From dead silence, Brunhard’s ship burst into a roar of voices, dozens of men all shouting at once. The men moved as best they could on the heaving deck away from the starboard side. They grabbed hold of anything solid, looked around for some means to shield themselves. Because Brunhard’s ship, and the longship crushing down on it, were both about to slam into this other vessel, and there was not one thing anyone could do to stop it.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  War-oak of the helmet god,

  I now wield but a bucket,

  No sweet wine do I sup

  Stooping at the spring.

  Eirik the Red’s Saga

  Thorgrim Night Wolf was kneeling in the shallow hold forward, chisel in one hand, mallet in the other. Armod was beside him, handing him the bits of cloth.

  “Another, another,” Thorgrim said and Armod put a strip in his open fingers. Thorgrim did not know where the cloth was coming from—old sacks, sail material, torn up clothing—but he hoped it might keep Sea Hammer afloat, at least for a while.

  The two ships dipped down into a valley between waves. Sea Hammer made the groaning, grinding noise that had already become familiar to their ears. A wide section of planking was stove in, the wood shatter
ed around the clench nails that normally held one plank to the other. Thorgrim could see the planks by his knees flex and open. He shoved the cloth in, pounded quick with the edge of the chisel, then pulled the chisel free and the gap closed up with the motion of the ship.

  I’m kidding myself… he thought. There was virtually no possibility that these pathetic strips of cloth were going to keep the ship sealed tight if they slipped free of Brunhard’s ship, or if Brunhard sunk under them. But he had to do something. And maybe his ad hoc caulking would hold long enough for them to slip a cloth around the outside of the damage to further impede the inflow of water. Maybe.

  “Another cloth!” Thorgrim called and Armod passed another strip.

  It was astounding to Thorgrim that Brunhard’s ship was still afloat. The Frisians were good shipbuilders, he knew, and merchant ships were often stouter built than longships, having less need to be fast and nimble. But still he was impressed. And as he worked at the seams he asked the gods to keep Brunhard afloat just a bit longer, just long enough to get Sea Hammer on the beach and to keep Brunhard breathing so Thorgrim could put a sword through him.

  He reached up, fingers spread, mouth open to call for another strip of cloth when he was cut short by a wild cry from on deck. “There! There! Look to leeward!”

  The tone was one that was not to be ignored. Thorgrim dropped his tools and leapt out of the hold, ran to the larboard bow. His eyes swept over Brunhard’s ship below. The men chained to the benches seemed to have got loose and now there was some sort of stand-off forward.

  “There, Thorgrim!” It was Vestar, standing on the sheer strake, one hand on the stem for balance, and pointing downwind. Godi was there as well and he stepped aside as Thorgrim came up.

  Thorgrim followed Vestar’s outstretched arm. The smallest of Brunhard’s three ships had sailed clear of all of them. It was running off to the south, close-hauled, heeling far over and plunging through the seas. She had already put a mile or more between herself and the rest, and Thorgrim doubted she would stop until she reached Wales.