One King's Way thatc-2

by Harry Harrison

  The Norsemen, mostly and with exceptions like Ivar the Boneless and his father Ragnar, were not torturers of each other, whatever they might do to slaves. Ragnhild had taken them on board and told them plainly that they had two choices: to be beheaded at once over the side of the ship, or to tell her the situation at Hrafnsey. The fishermen had decided to talk. Ragnhild knew the outline of the harbor, including its catapult defenses and its two longships. She knew, too, that half the men of the area were still boiling blubber at the grind-beach, and the rest were exhausted from hours of loading and unloading, making trip after trip between beach and harbor. What she did not know was that Shef and Cuthred were missing. Her prisoners had simply not noticed, preoccupied with other things.

  What they had noticed and told her was that Brand, desperate for men, had taken the English catapulteers from their posts, and Guthmund's Swedes as well, and set them to work on the jetty, since they were all manifestly useless at anything to do with whales. Listening with half an ear to Cwicca and Osmod's protests, and their demands that something should be done to search for their master Shef, Brand had sent a sentry up to the harbor-point, with instructions to sound a horn for help if he saw any strange craft approaching. The sentry had sat down on the soft turf with his back against a stone and immediately fallen asleep.

  Ragnhild's ship, the Crane, moved into Hrafnsey harbor a few moments before sunrise lit the pallid sky, meeting no challenge, its oversized crew of a hundred and twenty men ready for action. They nudged each other as they saw the bulks of the catapults against the sky, unmanned and untended. Brand, down at the jetty supervising the unloading of another cargo of barrels from his own Walrus, saw nothing till the first catapult-stone whirred across the water.

  It was aimed with deadly skill. The men of the Crane had had time to practice, and no shortage of good round rocks to practice with. Coming from a bare two hundred yards, the distance between jetty and harbor-point, it struck the Walrus full on the prow. The prow kicked back, the planks that fitted into it all sprang loose. If the ship had been running under sail she would have gone to the bottom like a stone. As it was, she merely sprang apart and settled gently on to the rock ten feet beneath her keel, mast still jutting upwards.

  Brand stared, gaping, unable to realize what had happened. The second stone shattered the jetty a few feet from him, sending half a dozen men into the water. At the same moment, light flared on the dark decks of the Crane. The dart-shooter's crew, anxious to try their fire-arrows once more. As they sighted, Ragnhild stepped behind them.

  “There,” she snapped. “There. Aim for that big barrel. Surely you can hit that this time.”

  The crew trained their weapon round a trifle, sighted again, released the retaining toggle. The fire-dart shot across the water, its flight indicated by a line of fire. Slammed into the barrel of whale-oil just unloaded from the ruined Walrus. Instantly a tongue of flame shot into the sky, burning with a pure and brilliant light. The men on the shore stood out immediately as dark shadows, shrieking and running in confusion, some to put the fire out, some to fetch their weapons, the English catapulteers beginning the long run round the harbor and the point behind it to reach their abandoned weapons.

  Ragnhild's skipper, observing, grinned with satisfaction. His name was Kormak, son of an Irishwoman, with long experience in the never-ending Irish wars. He knew when his enemy had lost the initiative.

  “Close up to the jetty,” he ordered. “You with the stone-thrower, sink that other big ship there, the Swedish one. Dart-thrower, set light to the barrels and then the houses. Boatswain, pick twenty men, furl sail, and take the ship back out a hundred yards under oars once the rest of us are ashore. I don't want anyone trying to take the Crane while we're busy. The rest of you, we'll land on the jetty and go straight through the village.”

  “And remember,” shouted Ragnhild over him, “the one-eyed man. Six gold arm-rings for the one-eyed man.”

  Beside her, Valgrim hefted the ‘Gungnir’ spear he had taken from Stein, and Stein from the shore where Shef had thrown it. A good weapon, he thought. To drink the blood of a heretic.

  Not far away, but too far, Shef saw the flame suddenly light up the sky. He stood on the shore of the mainland a bare quarter of a mile from the edge of Hrafnsey island. But he had no boat. He would not have believed that they could even get so close so quickly. But Echegorgun, Miltastaray and Ekwetargun with him, had led them inland over paths not even a goat could find, and then over a surprisingly easy ridge-route to the coast close by where they stood. Though they had rowed for hours two days before, they must have walked only five miles, cutting across the base of a peninsula.

  “How do we get across?” he asked.

  “Swim?” suggested Echegorgun.

  Shef hesitated. A quarter of a mile was not so far. But this water, he knew, was always bitter cold. And besides—he could not forget the threat of the whales.

  Cuthred nudged him and pointed. Lit up now by the red glow in the sky, they could see the black dot of a whale-boat, with more behind it, pulling frantically down from the grind-beach. Men carrying a load down, or coming back for water.

  “More Thin Ones,” said Echegorgun. “We go now. Do not speak of us except to my cousin Brand. If you go on the water in a boat, you will speak to no-one again.”

  “Wait!” said Shef sharply. “Can you tell where the whales are?”

  Echegorgun nodded. “Hear them in the water. I know already. They are outside the harbor, watch the strange ship. Unhappy. They want small boats to tip over, not big ship to ram. Don't go in boats.”

  “Can you tell us if they go into the harbor? If it's safe for a few minutes just to row across?”

  Echegorgun sniffed doubtfully. “You hear a noise like a walrus sounding, you row across. Make it quick.” An instant later he had vanished, his great bulk disappearing seemingly into a rock.

  “Noise like a walrus sounding?” muttered Cuthred. “Might as well be an angel belching for all the good…”

  Shef ignored him. He had stepped on to the highest point he could reach, waving the lance he had recovered in wide sweeps over his head. Moments later the leading whale-boat saw him, hesitated, pulled over.

  “Stop the other boats,” said Shef. “No, do as I say. I know the place is under attack. We have to go in together, not a few at a time.”

  Slowly the dories gathered, nine or ten of them, maybe forty or fifty men, fierce and skilled seamen, but unarmored and unarmed except for the long whale-lances some of them carried, their flensing-axes and grind-knives.

  “You're going to have to listen very carefully to what I say,” said Shef. “First, there is a school of killer whales out by the harbor, and we don't want to row into them. Second, we will know when they have gone into the harbor…”

  As a buzz of incredulity greeted his words, he thumped his lance-butt on the rock and raised his voice commandingly over it.

  Kormak was doing to the men of Hrafnsey much as they had done to the whales. Deliberately, he kept up the pressure to make them panic, though he knew their form of panic would be a headlong assault. As the Crane moved up to the jetty, stones whirred from her mule, each one smashing a house. Fire-arrows thumped into wood and oil, turning the whole settlement into a conflagration. Few were killed, few were hurt, the fighting strength of the defenders was hardly diminished. But they had no time to think. Besides, as Brand saw his beloved Walrus a wreck, saw his winter store and his warehouses going up in flames, his heart swelled till it seemed to burst his jerkin. No time to fetch his mail, no time to array the men. Between the flames he stood, his face working, clutching his axe ‘Battle-troll’ and waiting for the despoilers to set foot on land.

  As the side of the Crane touched the jetty, the men Kormak had detailed off sprang ashore, forming an immediate armored front six wide. At the same time Kormak bent, said a quiet word to his boatswain. Two men slipped ashore, walking along the jetty's side struts, one each side. At the right place they heaved a ro
pe across, made fast.

  Kormak pushed forward to the center of the front rank, stepped on two more paces, arranged the men in the Viking wedge. Then they began to move forward, shouting in unison. Kormak waited for the furious charge he expected.

  It came. Seeing the confident figure striding towards him, Brand, the doubts and fears that had afflicted him since the duel with Ivar entirely wiped out by fury and loss, ran forward, axe raised. Behind him, in a ragged wave, came the men of Hrafnsey with what weapons they could snatch up.

  “A big fellow,” remarked Kormak to his nearest shield-companions. He raised his shield to guard and shouted a taunt, unheard in the roar of flame.

  As Brand charged forward, the boatswain, crouched in shadow, raised the rope. Brand's feet went from under him and he hurtled sprawling forward, full-length, his weight shaking the jetty. ‘Battle-troll’ skidded out of his hand. With a roar, Brand started to scramble to his feet, but at the same moment Kormak slammed him mercilessly, with every ounce of force he could summon, on the side of the head. Brand shook his head, continued to struggle upwards. Disbelievingly, Kormak swung his lead-shot loaded sandbag again. This time the giant went down on all fours.

  The charging men behind him hesitated, some also brought down by the rope. Two ran on, were met by a concentrated volley of javelins, fell bristling. The rest wavered, then ran in ones and twos back into the blazing village.

  “Tie him up,” said Kormak briefly. He waved his troop forward, aiming to drive out the stragglers, establish a perimeter, and take control of boats, food and weapons. Hunting down the fugitives would be the job after that. He wished the one-eyed man had charged with Brand. It would have kept Ragnhild off his back.

  The English catapulteers being employed as unskilled labor down at the jetty had run at the first stone. They had no weapons, and no impulse to fight in defense of the settlement. In the dark beyond the firelight, they rallied, gasping, round Cwicca.

  “Shouldn't never have taken us away from the mule,” said a voice in the darkness. “We knew they were coming, we told him, but no, he would have…”

  “Shut up,” said Cwicca. “Thing is, if we get up there now we can train round and shoot up that ship of theirs, no bother. That'll get them back aboard her in a hurry.”

  “No good,” said Osmod. “Look.”

  He pointed to the Crane's pinnace, loaded with armed men, now pulling across the harbor in the direction of the two untended catapults. Kormak had thought of that too.

  Kormak had not thought of the whales. The orcas had been shadowing the Crane all the way in, eager to attack. Yet the bull leader had held off. He had an accurate sense of the Crane's bulk, knew she was the biggest man-thing he had ever come across. Maybe if he rammed her head on, she would fill and sink. Maybe not. The scratch he had received from Cuthred irritated him, but at the same time gave him caution. The sport he wanted was to tip a boat like an ice-floe, to snap up the men inside like unwary seals. So he hesitated, and his school with him, cruising up and down at the harbor-mouth, half an eye on the Crane and the commotion, half an eye on the interesting but shore-sheltered whale-boats he had sensed lying under cover of the mainland a quarter of a mile away.

  Then he heard the regular thumping oars of the pinnace, and hesitated no longer. Filled with the cruel urge, more than hunger, of the fox in the hen-roost, he swept down the harbor channel, with his school behind him.

  “No good,” said Osmod again. “Great holy suffering Christ.” Driven back to childhood, he made instinctively the sign of the Cross to ward him from evil, over the hammer still slung round his neck. No-one corrected him. Staring at the pinnace, they saw all together the great fin that rose man-height behind the boat, the black-and-white body that reared beneath it.

  Boat and men went over with hardly a cry. For an instant, bobbing heads. Then fin after fin cutting through the water as the killers went into their established ritual for striking at a great whale, a blue or a sperm or a finner, swinging in in turn, snapping with the great jaws and swinging out of the way of the next. But where a bite from a full-grown orca would merely wound a sixty-foot blue, it snapped a man in half. The flurry was over in seconds, the whales sounding again to hide their presence.

  “I met one of those things out on the water,” muttered Karli, his face white. “I told you it could have turned me over as easy as winking. The fin's as tall as I am. What are its teeth like?”

  Cwicca roused the others from their paralysis. “Well, Thor help them, but look. The road's clear to the mules. Let's get up there.”

  Still gaping at the threatening fire-lit water, the catapulteers started to run round the harbor to their machines.

  On board the Crane, all attention was concentrated on the charge and fall of Brand. No-one saw the pinnace go under except the two fishermen, still prisoner and lashed to the outer gunwale. They looked down at the water under them, trying to estimate its depth. Slowly, looking over their shoulders, they started with new determination to work their hands free.

  On the mainland coast, Shef saw the flames leaping again. The men in the boats were grumbling, reluctant to believe in a threat from orcas, desperate to see what was happening at their homes. Behind him came a strange sound, a kind of long violent blowing snuffle, followed by a slap like a tail striking water.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Sounded like a walrus going down,” said one of the men in the boats. “But it can't be, not…”

  “All right,” snapped Shef. He raised his lance high and called out to all the boats. “It's safe now, maybe just for a few moments. Row right across as fast as you can go, beach on the shore right opposite and get out. Don't go into the harbor. Do you hear, don't go into the harbor. Now row.”

  He sat down in the prow of the lead boat, Cuthred in the stern. The whale-men bent to their oars, sent the boat skimming over the calm sea. Shef twisted from side to side, fearing at any moment to see the fins racing again towards him. The boats reached the mid-point of their passage, raced on. As they closed on the island shore, outside the harbor entrance, maybe half a mile still from the main settlement and hidden from it by a hill, Shef felt the speed slacken.

  “Why don't we just push on in?” called one of the oarsmen.

  “Believe me,” said Shef. “You wouldn't like it.”

  His boat grounded her prow on shingle, followed by most of the others. The men scrambled out, heaving their boats higher, snatching out their makeshift weapons. One boat ignored Shef's shouts, skimmed on towards the harbor entrance, disappeared from sight round the point. Shef shook his head in disgust.

  “I still don't see why…” began another dissident. Cuthred, patience exhausted, clubbed him on the side of the head with a sword-pommel, seized him by the throat, dragged him again on to his feet.

  “Do what he says and obey your orders,” he snarled. “Got it?”

  Shef waved the fifty men he had into a double extended line and led them off in a broad arrow formation. He kept them at a swift walk, curbing any impulse to run. They would need their breath if they had to fight armored men. His plan was to swing wide round the hill at the harbor mouth, and come out of its cover down the stream on which the main settlement stood, to drive the invaders back into the water. Maybe by then they would have dispersed to rape and loot. He hoped so. Surprise was his only chance now.

  The catapulteers reached the first mule and paused for a moment. Man one, or man them both? Even with Karli added, they had less than two full teams.

  “Just the first one for now,” Cwicca decided briefly. “Get winding.”

  They had slacked the twisted ropes off before leaving. It was never good to keep them under torsion for too long. The winding levers were still stacked in their place, though, and the men sprang to it. At the same time Cwicca called Karli to assist him. One improvement they had made in the weeks of waiting. They had never before been able to train their machine round more than a few inches. On a ship, one had to aim the ship rath
er than the mule. However, by trial and error Udd had solved the problem. They had put the heavy machine on small iron-rimmed wheels of its own, not so that it could be drawn overland like the lighter dart-throwers, but so that those small wheels could rest on a larger one, placed flat on the ground and flanged to keep the smaller ones in place. Two strong men could tip the whole ton-and-a-quarter forward on its unmoving axle and train it round by a balancing trail.

  Straining, Karli and Cwicca lifted the trail, walked the machine round from its first position covering the harbor entrance to bear on the Crane now slowly sweeping away from the jetty.

  “Round half a pace more,” grunted Cwicca. “Back a hand's breadth. Right. Tip her forward, hammer in two wedges, no, three.”

  They tipped the machine forward so it pointed, now, down at the water. The ropes were wound, the throwing bar straining at its retaining bolt. Cwicca fitted a thirty-pound rock into the sling, drooping from the bar, checked the very precise angle of the hook from which the sling's catch had, at the right moment, to fly free.

  “Ready. Stand clear. Shoot.”

  The bolt was pulled back, the bar shot up with inconceivable force, the sling whirred round, adding its own vector to the force of the twisted ropes. The boulder shot across the water in a flat hard line.