02 The Invaders

by John Flanagan

  “I can’t wait to see Zavac’s face when you start shooting big holes in his ship!” he said.

  “And his crew!” Wulf added enthusiastically as he pictured the panic on board the pirate ship.

  “They’ll be jumping overboard!” Ulf agreed, and they all laughed as they gathered round the crossbow to admire it.

  “We should call it something,” Jesper suggested. They all muttered agreement, then there was a pause as each tried to come up with a name before the others could think of one.

  “Big Bessie!” Ulf suggested impulsively.

  Wulf snorted derisively. “You want to give it a girl’s name?” he jeered.

  Ulf went red. Sometimes he wished he could remember to think twice before he spoke. Or even once.

  “How about Gorlog’s Hammer?” Edvin suggested. The others looked at him, frowning.

  “Bit classical, isn’t it?” Stefan said. Edvin shrugged diffidently, then Jesper pointed out a fault in the name.

  “Gorlog doesn’t have a hammer,” he said. “Tharon has a hammer.” Tharon was the god of thunder.

  “Well, Tharon’s Hammer then,” Edvin suggested, trying to salvage his idea. But he was greeted by headshakes all round.

  “Naaah. Still too classical,” Stig said. “We want a good blood-and-guts name for it.”

  There was another silence. Hal eventually broke it.

  “I like what Thorn called it,” he said. They looked at him curiously, so he reminded them. “The Mangler.”

  They considered it. Gradually, smiles began to break out.

  “The Mangler,” Stefan said, approval obvious in his tone.

  “That’s what it’ll do, all right,” Ulf put in, and even his brother had to agree with that.

  Hal grinned at Stig. “Well, what do you think? Is it blood-and-gutsy enough for you?”

  Stig nodded, grinning broadly in his turn.

  And so the Mangler it became.

  chapter eleven

  The Heron was cruising in Shelter Bay.

  It was the day after Hal had demonstrated the Mangler to his crew. Outside, on the open seas, the wind still howled out of the south, whipping the ocean into steep, fast-breaking whitecaps. It was no place for a small open ship like the Heron. But the tall headlands broke the force of the wind so that inside the bay there was nothing more than a stiff breeze.

  The crew were made aware of the wild conditions outside when they looked at the trees on top of the headlands, and high on the inland ridge. They were bending and swaying madly, tossing their heads in the savage gusts that hit them.

  The Heron was sailing parallel to the beach, about three hundred meters offshore. The wind was coming over their port side and the sail was trimmed in tight.

  “Stig,” Hal called, and gestured to the tiller.

  His friend leapt eagerly up to the steering platform and took control of the ship. He twitched the tiller from side to side, testing the ship’s instant reaction to the helm, and smiled at Hal.

  “I love this,” he said. “She’s so light and responsive.”

  “I never get tired of it myself,” Hal agreed. Then, in a more businesslike tone, he continued. “We’re coming up on the first target. When I signal, head her in toward the beach. I’ll shoot when we’re a hundred meters out.”

  They’d discussed the plan the night before and the details were clear in Stig’s mind. But it didn’t hurt to run through them one more time. Hal hesitated. It seemed strange to leave the Heron in someone else’s hands. Stig shoved him playfully.

  “Get for’ard to the Mangler!” he said.

  Hal laughed, turned away and made his way to the bow. He passed Ulf and Wulf, who were crouched by the sheets that trimmed the big sail. They nodded to him with serious faces, and he nodded back, knowing they were obeying his rule about not arguing on board ship. He ducked under the port-side shrouds supporting the mast and joined Ingvar beside the Mangler.

  The huge crossbow was now mounted on a wooden platform that swiveled through a forty-five-degree arc, either side of the bow. Hal had added a small bench seat to the carriage so he could look over the sights as Ingvar traversed the weapon to either side. He crouched on it now, watching the target onshore. Then he turned to Edvin, who was waiting to relay his instructions to Stig, and pointed to starboard.

  “Come to starboard!” Edvin called, and as Stig hauled in on the tiller and the bow started to swing, and the wind came from astern, Ulf and Wulf let the sail out so that it stood out from the hull. It was a prearranged maneuver that they had discussed the previous night and everyone knew his part. Thorn moved forward from the waist of the ship and stood with his back to the mast to observe the shot.

  Hal crouched and peered down the sights, setting the hundred-meter mark against the front bead.

  He was slightly to the right of the target. He held up his left hand.

  “Left… left… left,” he called as Ingvar traversed the Mangler, heaving on a long lever inserted into a socket at the rear of the carriage. The big crossbow moved smoothly on its platform.

  “Stop,” he called as the sights lined up with the target. Ingvar had already cocked and loaded the weapon while Hal was making his way forward.

  The bead sight was still below the target, but as the Heron moved closer inshore, it was gradually coming up. The ship was pitching with the waves, so that the sights now started to move slightly above the target, then drop below it again. He’d have to compensate for that, Hal thought.

  He waited until the sight was on target in the middle of the upward pitch, and pulled the trigger lanyard.

  SLAM!

  The limbs of the bow banged forward, the carriage bucked and the bolt went streaking away. He sat upright to watch it, eyes riveted on the target.

  There was an explosion of sand five meters behind it.

  “Missed,” Thorn said. He might be the oldest member of the crew, but his eyes were still sharper than anyone else’s.

  There was a groan of disappointment from the crew and Thorn turned to speak to them.

  “Early days yet,” he said. “It’s not easy shooting from a moving platform.”

  “Bear away,” Hal said to Edvin, who repeated the order to Stig. They were getting too close to the beach. Hal couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. He’d been hoping for a perfect shot first time. He’d underestimated the difficulty of dealing with the movement of the ship, and the slight delay between pulling the trigger and the bow’s release.

  Stig shouted sail trimming orders and the Heron spun neatly to port, angling out away from the beach. Ulf and Wulf hauled the sail in to match the new course.

  “Was it close?” Ingvar asked. Of course, Hal thought, he hadn’t been able to see the result.

  “Five meters long,” he said.

  “But on line,” Thorn reminded him.

  Hal shrugged. At least that was something, he thought. He glanced at Thorn.

  “This is going to be harder than I thought,” he said.

  The ragged sea wolf inclined his head. “Keep practicing. You’ll get it.”

  But success continued to elude Hal. They tried four more times. On the third, the bolt clipped the right-hand side of the target. On all the others, it sailed clear—either over or under or to the side. Hal was left with only one bolt for the crossbow.

  They stood off the beach and Hal called a council of war with Stig and Thorn.

  “We’re going to have to get closer,” he said. “We’re pitching and rolling—and the Raven will be doing the same. A hundred meters is too far for accuracy. Let’s take her in to fifty meters for the last shot.”

  Thorn screwed his mouth up. Stig looked doubtful as well.

  “Fifty meters?” Thorn said. “That’ll be getting awfully close if we’re fighting the Raven.”

  Hal spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s no good staying away from her if I can’t hit her.”

  Thorn nodded reluctant agreement. “You’ll be well in range if
any of them are archers,” he pointed out.

  Hal’s brows came together in frustration. “We’ll deal with that later,” he said. “Let’s see if we can hit the target from fifty meters.”

  He made a quick mental calculation as he returned to the bow. The minimum setting on the sight was one hundred meters, and the bolt flew virtually flat for that distance. If he set his aiming point slightly below the target, that should be enough.

  “Load her up,” he told Ingvar. As the big boy heaved the cord back and placed the last bolt in its groove, he told him what they were planning. Ingvar’s mouth twisted into a thoughtful expression.

  “Fifty meters? Isn’t that getting a little close?”

  Hal raised one eyebrow. “So everyone tells me,” he said as he took his seat behind the bow.

  The crew held their collective breath as the Heron swept in toward the beach. Ingvar eased the crossbow around until it was on line and Hal crouched over the sights, concentrating fiercely. The bead foresight rose and fell above and below the target.

  “Any time now,” Thorn called. He was estimating the range. They’d agreed he would give Hal five seconds’ notice when they were coming up to fifty meters.

  Hal watched the rise and fall of the foresight. Allowing for the slight delay between pulling the trigger and the crossbow’s release, he’d need to be a little below his selected aiming point.

  Almost… almost… now!

  SLAM!

  He sat up in time to see the target explode in a hail of splintered wood. They were close enough to hear the smashing sound as the bolt crashed into it. As the thought hit him, he realized they were also coming perilously close to the beach.

  “Bear away!” he called, and Stig brought the bow round once more. Hal slumped on his seat. The tension of the last few minutes had exhausted him. The other boys were cheering. Jesper and Stefan were dancing a jig on the deck between the rowing benches. Even Ulf and Wulf were pounding each other on the back.

  Thorn slapped him on the shoulder. “Good work!” he said, a wide smile on his face. Hal rolled his eyes.

  “Maybe. But you were right. We’ll be getting awfully close to them. I’m going to have to figure how we’ll handle that.”

  Several days passed, and the Herons continued in their new schedule: physical drills and workouts in the morning and shooting practice with the Mangler in the afternoon.

  The results of the shooting were improving. Now Hal could hit the target at least one time in four from one hundred meters. From fifty meters, the results were much better, with target after target being smashed to splinters.

  But fifty meters was a dangerous distance, as Thorn had pointed out. In addition to the risk of arrows or other missiles being shot from the Raven, it left no margin for any errors in ship handling.

  The Magyaran ship was fast and, under oars, highly maneuverable. Any slight mistake or delay could leave Heron vulnerable to that cruel ram Raven carried in her bow. In his mind’s eye, late at night, Hal had visions of that dreadful iron-shod beam smashing its way through Heron’s fragile timbers and the cold water pouring through a huge rent in the hull.

  He discussed the problem with Stig and Thorn late one night when the others had taken to their bunks.

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” Stig said. “After all, the Raven is a lot bigger than a one-meter target. It’s not as if you’d miss her entirely if we shot from one hundred meters.”

  Hal shook his head. “I want to be able to hit specific targets,” he said. “The rudder, for example, or the hull at the waterline. Or the bulwarks where the shrouds supporting the mast are attached. Or Zavac himself and whoever’s on the tiller. We won’t have enough bolts to just shoot away at the entire ship and hope we hit something important.”

  “So we need to get close,” Thorn said and, when Hal glanced at him, he continued. “We can always mount our shields higher on the bulwarks to protect the crew. And Edvin could cover you and Ingvar with a shield.”

  “Ingvar particularly,” Hal said. “If he’s injured, we can’t load the Mangler. But it’s not just that. If we get in as close as fifty meters, and any one of us makes a mistake—Stig on the tiller, me with my timing, Ulf and Wulf on the sheets—we could find ourselves at the Raven’s mercy.”

  “And that’s not a quality she’s renowned for,” Thorn said. Although there was no proof, he was convinced that the Raven was behind the disappearance of a small Skandian trading fleet many weeks ago.

  “Can we trust Ulf and Wulf on the sail trimming?” he continued. “Should we switch them with Jesper and Stefan?”

  Hal pursed his lips thoughtfully. “We’ll still need to use them somewhere,” he said. “And they have a good feeling for the trim of the sail, don’t you think, Stig?”

  “Yes,” Stig agreed. “It’s a bit of an instinctive thing to get it exactly right so we get the best performance out of the ship. They have the right feel for it. I don’t have to keep telling them to adjust it. They get it right first time.”

  Hal nodded. He’d noticed the same quality in the twins.

  “But if they start arguing—”

  Hal cut Thorn off. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. They know their lives will depend on it.”

  “It’s not their lives I’m worried about,” Thorn replied. “Mine will be depending on it as well.”

  There was a short silence while they considered that. Then Hal came to a decision.

  “We’ll leave them as they are for the moment and keep drilling. If there’s any sign of an argument during the drills, I’ll switch one of them to raising the yardarm with Jesper and switch Stefan to sail trimming.”

  Thorn looked at him keenly for a few seconds. There was no trace of doubt in Hal’s voice, or in his eyes. Finally, the shabby warrior nodded assent.

  “You’re the skirl,” he said.

  “There’s something else I wanted to bring up,” Hal said. “You’ve said the key to our winning a fight is speed and agility.”

  Thorn nodded, waiting to hear what was coming next.

  “I think it’s going to be the same in a ship-to-ship fight. Particularly if we’re getting in close. We need to get maximum speed out of the Heron. And we need to make her turn and change course as quickly as she can.”

  “She’s pretty responsive to the helm now,” Thorn said. “And she’s fast.”

  “I think we can make her faster,” Hal said. He glanced at Thorn. “What do you think, Thorn? Do you think she’s faster than Raven?”

  Thorn rubbed his bristled chin before answering.

  “Most of the time, yes,” he said. “If there’s a good wind. But if the wind drops and Raven’s under oars, she’ll be faster. And she’ll turn more quickly. All Zavac has to do is back oars on one side and row forward on the other and she’ll turn in her own length. What’s your idea?”

  Hal paused, ordering his thoughts. “Two years ago, I went on a trading voyage with Anders,” he said. “He was buying hemp and timber and we went into several Sonderland ports. I saw some of their big trading vessels there. They had huge wooden boards on either side of the ship that they could raise or lower as they wished.” He looked questioningly at Thorn, who nodded.

  “They call them leeboards,” Thorn said. “They extend below the hull when they’re lowered. They give the ship a greater resistance against the water, so they make less leeway. That’s important for them because they spend a lot of time in shallow coastal waters, with the wind blowing toward the shore. When they get into really shallow water, they can raise them again so they don’t run aground.”

  “I was thinking of trying something similar on Heron,” Hal said.

  The others looked at him doubtfully.

  “You can hardly mount big, heavy boards along Heron’s sides,” Stig said.

  Thorn agreed with him. “Those Sonderland barges are massive slab-sided craft,” he said. “The Heron’s built much lighter and the hull is curved. There’d be no place to put leeboar
ds—no structure to support them.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of putting them on the sides. I thought I’d use one in the middle. Beside the keel.”

  “And how would you mount it there?” Thorn was still trying to get his mind around this idea.

  “I thought I’d cut away a section of the planking next to the keel and—”

  “Just a moment!” Stig protested. “You’re planning to cut through a plank next to the keel?”

  Hal nodded. “That’s right. Then I could—”

  “You do know what happens when you cut a hole in the bottom of a ship, don’t you? The ship tends to sink.” He looked to Thorn for corroboration. “You tell him, Thorn.”

  Thorn raised his eyebrows. As a rule, he trusted Hal’s ideas, but this did seem extreme.

  “It’s not usually considered a good idea to cut holes in the bottom of a ship,” he said. Stig threw his hands in the air in a see-what-I-mean gesture.

  “I’m not cutting holes in the bottom of the ship, as you put it. It’s only one hole.” But Hal got no further before Stig erupted again.

  “It’s only one ship! How many holes do you want? One will definitely be enough to do the job! You cut. We sink. Not a good idea, Hal!” He shook his head violently. “Or is this just another one of those small details you tend to forget?”

  Hal’s head snapped up angrily at those words. “I wondered when we’d get to that,” he said.

  Stig threw his hands up again. “Well, it’s a pretty obvious question, isn’t it? You do have something of a track record with water going where it shouldn’t.”

  They all paused for a second, remembering the disastrous scene in Karina’s kitchen when Hal’s running water system had gone disastrously wrong, flooding the kitchen and nearly landing a large cask on Stig’s head.

  “This is different,” Hal said.

  Stig nodded vigorously. “It’s different, all right. That time we just got wet. This time we could drown!”

  Thorn decided it might be time to intervene. At least, he thought, Hal should be given a chance to explain his idea.