by Whyte, Jack
"What d'you think that's all about?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," he said, his eyes on the ill-matched pair across the fire.
Their colloquy, whatever its content, was brief, and they returned directly to where we waited. Feargus, whom I had long since identified as the senior of the two, dropped to the ground, his back against a log and his elbow crooked over it, and spoke his mind without preamble.
"I think King Athol would enjoy seeing his son atop a horse as big as those you ride, accompanied by good friends. You know that empty vessel in the town, tied up by the dock . . . the thing like a big coracle . . ."
"It's a barge. What about it?" I felt a flutter of excitement.
"A barge. Would it transport your horses?"
"Aye, and all of us, but we can't reach it, and even if we could, we could not move it, since it has to be towed."
"Behind a bireme?" He was smiling slightly now, and my excitement increased.
"Aye, or even a longboat, were it big enough."
"What about two fair-sized galleys?"
I was sitting erect now. "How would we reach the barge, guarded as it is?" I asked, knowing the answer from the grin that now split his elfin features.
"We go in from the water and take it. No one will expect anything like that. An empty barge is worthless. We send swimmers in before dawn to cut it loose, and then attack when the sun comes up. One galley to pull it off empty and the other to discourage interference."
And so it came about that the banners, the men and the horses of Camulod travelled to Eire in an open barge, pulled slowly behind Erse warriors and at the utter mercy of the winds, which graciously held their breath.BOOK TWO
EIRE
XI
Eire appeared to us as a mystical dreamscape, emerging silently and almost imperceptibly through the thick fog of an eerie dawn when nothing moved, not even the waters beneath our keel, and the only sounds to be heard were those we made ourselves. Ahead of us, attached by the long, heavy tow rope that sagged now beneath the motionless waters between us, Logan's galley drifted, looming dimly like a spectre in the fog, its big sail furled and its oars raised clear of the sea, so that the water dripping from the blades could be clearly heard by all of us. We lined the sides of our floating platform in silence, the moisture condensing on our armour and rolling down leather and metal like rain, each of us gazing intently to where, ahead and to our right, the fog bank seemed to thicken into solidness. Beside me, Dedalus leaned forward, his hands braced on the rail, the heavy wool of his cloak beaded with drops of water. Quintus stood next to him, and in the dim light I saw vapour coming from his mouth and nostrils as he breathed, and water dripping steadily down the back of his cuirass from the neck guard of his helmet. Someone behind me cleared his throat nervously and the stillness settled again, pressed down beneath the weight of the fog, absolute and impenetrable. A horse moved restlessly, stamping a hoof once on the solid planking of the deck, the sound damp and muffled and echoless, and still the silence persisted as we drifted. No one had warned us to be quiet. We had assumed our mantle of stillness in response to the sudden absence of sound from the galley. If those fierce Ersemen chose to proceed in stealth, we on our ungainly barge were glad to follow their example without prompting.
Then came a muffled order from the galley and the oars dipped again to the water, pulling strongly in a manoeuvre that won my admiration even as I marvelled at its strangeness. Five times the oars dug deep before the rope that joined us to the galley became taut and pulled us into motion, and then four times more, so that we surged forward in its wake. Then some of the oars rose vertically again, while the remainder on one side pulled forward and on the other backed water. The huge galley swung on its own centre, all oars shipped now, and came to rest facing back towards us, parallel to our course, between us and the invisible land mass as the momentum of our continued forward motion brought us alongside. Men stood ready to fend us off with long poles, but the judgment of the manoeuvre had been so exact that they were unnecessary. We glided perfectly to rest beside the larger vessel and Logan himself leapt effortlessly down to our deck. Until he opened his mouth to speak to me, no one had uttered a sound.
Well," he said, holding his voice low, "we're here. Welcome to Eire. You can't see it yet, but the shore is less than half a bowshot from us now. The tidal drift will take us in closer, but I want to take us out again until we know exactly where we are. I merely wanted to warn your people to keep all noise down. Don't let those horses make a sound."
"Why not, if we've arrived?"
He raised one eyebrow at me and glanced at Donuil. "Because we don't know where we are exactly. The fog has seen to that. If we are more than three leagues south of where we should be, we could attract attention we don't need. We have no friends to the south of us. Feargus went farther north during the night, to find our anchorage, the spot we should have reached if not for this damned fog. He should be back soon, and then we'll know."
I had looked over his shoulder as he spoke, and now I saw the top of a massive tree emerging through the tendrils of fog that wreathed its branches. "We may be closer to the shore than you think," I said, nodding towards it.
He turned to look, uttered an oath and ran, using the low side of our barge as a step and launching himself upward to his own vessel, where waiting hands pulled him aboard. Thereafter all became confusion. The oars on the side nearest us levelled towards us from above like spears and pushed us away, forcing us sideways in a sluggish, wallowing, ungainly dance, moving their own galley as much as our heavy barge, so that its high mast rolled drunkenly. As soon as we had drifted apart far enough to give them room, the oars dipped again into the sea and began to pull, but not soon enough. Their gathering impetus was immediately aborted, the sweeps stilled in the water amid chaos as the central oars on the right of the galley dug into a rapidly shelving bottom, lodging there and throwing their rowers off balance. We did not discover what had happened until much later, but we clearly heard the violent cracking splinter of at least one oar and a chorus of shouts and screams mingled with the sound of falling bodies as the prow of the galley, propelled by the partial, yet powerful, thrust from the unfouled oars on the landward side, began to swing back violently towards us, its high, pointed nose towering over us until the heavy, reinforced beam crashed slowly, but with amazing power, into our side, splintering our heavy vessel's timbers as though they were made of eggshell. I saw the barge's side bend inwards like a colossal bow and shatter with a noise that almost deafened me, and at the same instant the planking of the deck closest to the side and running from prow to stern heaved upward, splitting into fragments, some of which flew whirring viciously through the air, spinning like wind-blown leaves. Beneath the planks, within a fraction of a heartbeat, I saw the lateral struts to which they had been nailed give way, sprung apart like the sides of a log beneath the axe that was the galley's thrusting prow.
The violence of the collision threw all of us, including the horses, to the deck, where the animals immediately began screaming and whinnying in panic, scrabbling and flailing vainly to regain their footing. I landed hard on my buttocks, my shoulders slamming against the side of the deck farthest from the point of impact, and Dedalus immediately fell sprawling on top of me, his elbow ramming sickeningly into my crotch and blinding me momentarily with pain and nausea. By the time I could drag myself to my knees again, reeling and gasping for breath, everything around me had degenerated into chaos. Dedalus was gone, but Quintus lay squirming close by me, his face ashen, bleeding copiously from the nose again and clutching his right thigh in both hands. That much I saw in the first glance, but then I saw him flinch again, struck by one of the wildly flailing hooves of my own big black, Germanicus, and I knew what had happened. I reached him in a lurch, still on my knees, and grasped him by the armholes in his cuirass, hauling him clear of the horse's reach. "Broken!" he hissed in my ear, and then I was on my feet again and looking all around me. The deck beneath me was
tilted steeply towards the point of impact, where the prow of the galley still thrust through our shattered side as though locked in a vise. Where the two vessels joined, sea water lay deeply pooled, its level creeping upward even as I looked. And then I saw a pair of legs sprawled on the deck, its owner's head and torso lost beneath the water. I threw myself forward and down, barely avoiding being kicked by a horse myself, and grasped the ankles, dragging the drowned or drowning man out and up the sloping deck. It was Metellus, who had not fully regained his senses since falling from his horse on the wharf in Glevum. I had no time to check him for signs of life. The silence of only moments before had been obliterated by a Hadean chaos of noise, with men and horses adding their voices to the tortured shrieks and groans of splintered, twisting timbers, and suddenly I found myself looking up at Logan, perched on the very point of his galley's prow and shouting down at me. As I stood there, trying to decipher what he was telling me, Donuil appeared at my side.
"Can't hear you!" he yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth.
Logan heard him, and did the same with his own hands, funnelling his voice towards us. "We can't backwater to free ourselves! Too close to shore. Stern's aground. We'll have to push you like this. Donuil, come aboard!"
"I'm staying here! Do what you must. Push us out if you can, then turn us.
Logan hesitated for a moment, high above us, and then turned and disappeared. Donuil grasped me by the arm and leaned closer, shouting into my ear. "Did you understand what he said?"
"Aye, he's fast aground. I heard that. But how will he push us out, if his men can't row?"
"They'll push, until they have enough water beneath the keel. It shouldn't take long. Only the stern's aground. Once they're clear, they can throw their full weight on the oars and push us around. They hit us aft of centre, so we'll swing fairly easily. The motion should break our hold on them and allow them to break free of us."
"Aye, and what then?"
"We'll sink, once they've pulled free. The barge is broken well beneath the waterline. We'll have to swim ashore." As he spoke, the motion of the barge changed suddenly, and with the change came an agonized groaning of wood from the junction of the two craft. I glared around me at my men, my mind in a turmoil.
"Damnation, Donuil, we're all wearing armour. We'll sink like stones and drown!"
He had anticipated me. "We'll swim with the horses. They'll carry us, but we have to get them on their feet. Come on!"
I ran immediately towards my horse Germanicus, feeling the barge's deck lurch again beneath my feet as Logan's men thrust their long oars against the sea bottom, poling both vessels away from the land. "Up!" I yelled to everyone. "On your feet and get the horses up! Quickly, or we all drown."
We had haltered the animals to four stout ropes slung from side to side across the deck and fastened by heavy iron spikes hammered through their knotted braids, which meant that the horses themselves stood facing either front or rear. The sidelong impact had sent them all tumbling, and only a very few had regained their footing. I reached Germanicus and knelt in front of his head, grasping his bridle in both hands, and talking to him, seeing the rolling of his eye that bespoke utter terror. "Come on, big boy," I told him, fighting to maintain the familiar level tones he knew from me. "Come on, let's get you on your feet again. Come on, up!" I raised myself, pulling the straps of his headstall, raising his head clear of the deck, then straightening and heaving as I almost dragged him to his feet. Slowly, hesitantly, but gathering confidence from my persistence, the great animal shrugged himself around until his front hooves were flat against the deck, after which he pushed himself up, as a man will on his arms, until his legs were straight. Once there, the rest was fairly simple. He tried once, then again, and on the third attempt gathered his haunches and lurched to his feet, where he stood spread-legged and unsteady, bracing himself delicately on the tilting deck, his nostrils flaring, ears laid flat along his head and his eyes still rolling wildly.
Now, all around me, I saw my men doing as I had done, pulling the animals upright. Only one still screamed, and I looked towards the awful sound and saw a beautiful roan with a mangled right foreleg, the skin broken and pierced by a long shard of bloodied bone. As I looked, absorbing the animal's wound, one of my men smote the animal between the eyes with a hand axe, killing it instantly. The sudden cessation of its agonized screaming made the remaining tumult seem like silence. I used that instant to capture everyone's attention with a shout.
They listened attentively as I explained what was about to happen, shocked, but plainly aware of the need to waste no time in making preparations. As soon as I had finished speaking, they fell to work, saddling their own mounts and stowing their weapons before loading the packhorses. I had told them not to worry greatly about cinching the saddles perfectly. It would be difficult on the sloping deck, and all that was really required was that the saddles should stay in place. They would not be riding ashore, but swimming alongside their mounts, hanging on and kicking, trusting their animals to keep them from drowning. As I turned back from fastening my own cinch, tightening it as firmly as I could, I saw Donuil back at the broken side, talking to someone up on the prow of the galley. And then, amazingly, I saw a figure dive from the side of the galley, straight down into the sea. He surfaced almost immediately and came swimming to where Donuil crouched, ready to pull him out. The diver emerged, dripping, and then Donuil helped him climb back up to the craft above again before turning and making his way to me.
"I asked for someone to dive down and see how deep the bottom is," Donuil explained. "He touched bottom on his dive, so it can't be much more than the height of a tall man."
"So? That's deep enough to drown in."
Donuil actually grinned at me. "Aye, but it's also shallow enough to dive in. The sun will be up soon enough, and that means the fog will disperse, so we'll be able to recover anything that we lose in swimming ashore. Shields, for example, and heavy weapons. All we have to do now is hope that we are either in friendly territory, or that there's no one around to ask awkward questions before we can reorganize ourselves. We—" His voice was suddenly lost in an upsurge of the grinding, wrenching noises from the join of the two ships. As we had worked to prepare ourselves, Logan and his crew had been labouring mightily, heaving on their oars in a series of complicated manoeuvres and pushing us first outwards and then around, so that our own prow now pointed towards the land, which was clearly discernible, although still mist- shrouded, in the early morning light.
My attention was immediately all for the horses. The sides of the barge were not high, but they were certainly high enough to deter a balking animal that had no wish to leap overboard.
"Tell Logan to stop, quickly!"
Donuil turned and yelled an order to the man on the galley prow. The great oars stopped churning almost instantly.
"Now," I told him, speaking loudly for the benefit of my men, "it is imperative the horses go over facing in the right direction, otherwise they're likely to swim out into deep water. Tell Logan that, and explain it. He knows nothing of horses and how stupid they can be at times. His ship is parallel to the shore now. If he reverses the thrust of his oars, he should be able to pull free, and the same motion should pull our stern around again, towards the beach. As soon as he breaks free, this thing will start to sink, tilting shoreward, if we have any luck at all. That should make it more than simple to put the horses in facing the proper way. Tell him to do it now." As Donuil sprang back towards the galley, I raised my voice to the others. "Cut the halters and hold fast to them. Those of you who can handle two, do it. When the deck starts to really tilt, lead the horses down and try to keep them calm. They'll want to panic, so don't allow them to. Go with them, and hang on. They'll get you safe ashore. You heard what Donuil said. We can come back later for any weapons you lose, so don't weigh yourselves down any more than you have to, but don't leave yourselves defenceless, either. Now, wait for my word." I glanced around me. "Where's Metellus?"
>
It was Dedalus who answered me. "He's dead. Kicked in the head, I think, by one of the horses."
"What about Quintus?"
"Quintus is here. He should be fine."
I turned to see Rufio standing behind me, holding two halters. Quintus was draped face upward and tied firmly to the bare back of one horse, the only white one we had, a huge gelding that dwarfed even my own mount.
"Where is his saddle?"
Rufio nodded. "Over there, on the king's stallion."
"Good. Look after him."
I saw a wave of movement as the banked oars of the galley came down into the water again and thrust backward in unison. The barge shuddered and lurched and an evil, highpitched rending sound was ripped from the mouth of the barge's open wound. For long moments nothing happened; the oars cleared the water and dipped again, accompanied by a heaving, grunting, concerted roar of effort from the galley's rowers. And then came a sudden screech and the deck beneath our feet shuddered as the galley sprang free, tossing its prow in the air, the scars on its bow planking showing new and bright against the darkness of the timbered hull, although the damage appeared superficial. The old barge, however, was mortally wounded and heaved upward, threatening to topple all of us again and sending the pool of sea water swirling around our feet before the vessel's returning, downward roll brought the holed side down beneath the level of the surface and the sea came pouring in. There could be no recovery. Within moments, what little liveliness the ungainly craft had ever had was gone, and it began to settle quickly, as the space beneath the shallow deck was inundated.
