“There,” Lorcan said. “There are your damned fin gall.” Ronnat translated. Sandarr did not reply.
One of Lorcan’s men named Ultan, younger than Lorcan but not so very much younger, stepped aft. Ultan was a bright fellow, and capable, and Lorcan had taken him aboard the ship in expectation that he would serve as an ad hoc second in command, which he was.
“Lord Lorcan, should we set the sail?” Ultan asked.
Lorcan looked out to weather. He felt the wind on his face, a light breeze, too light to drive the ship faster than the oars would drive her, and what they needed now was speed.
“No,” Lorcan said. “We will keep to the oars. We will go faster with the oars.”
He knew that because he had been paying attention. He understood that Sandarr thought he was just a great, ignorant beast, incapable of learning the workings of something so complex as the longship. It was the same arrogant view all these Northmen had of the Irish, generally to their regret, often resulting in their deaths.
Because Lorcan was not some dumb animal. And he had been paying attention.
When they had set the sail, and adjusted the sail, and adjusted it again, and changed the direction in which the ship had been sailing, Lorcan had been paying attention. He watched what Sandarr did, watched him haul and slack away this or that rope, took note of when he shifted the baulk of timber he called a beitass, figured out how the sail worked best and what was the most advantageous angle it should make to the wind. His men might be ignorant, and might not give a damn for ships and the art of seamanship, but they could be made to learn and they could be made to give a damn. And now Lorcan felt confident that he could teach them.
Lorcan’s eyes had not left the fin gall ship, which he already considered the second ship in his fleet. It had been coming almost straight on, its course directed toward Water Stallion’s right side. But now it was swinging south, it’s shape growing longer as it turned broadside to them.
“They are running, the cowardly dogs,” Lorcan said. “We will chase them down and kill them all. Ultan, see there are two men at each oar. We will overtake them. Then, when we are almost up with them, we’ll get under arms and make ready for battle. We must row fast and not lose them in the fog.”
“Yes, Lord Lorcan,” Ultan said and turned and moved forward, calling out orders. Now Sandarr was speaking, and Lorcan did not need a translation to know his words would be some form of argument. Because that was all he did, the dubh gall turd, he argued.
“Sandarr says it is a fool’s errand to go after this ship,” Ronnat said. Lorcan was not at all surprised to hear that was Sandarr’s opinion, but he said nothing as Ronnat continued. “He says you have the ship you want. He says Grimarr will slip north in the fog and return to Vík-ló and then it will be hard work to get him out of there.”
“Tell Sandarr he may believe as he wishes,” Lorcan said. “We are going to capture the fin gall ship.” Even the day before Lorcan would have been more diplomatic in his dealings with Sandarr, because the day before he still felt he needed him. He was not feeling that way so much anymore.
Then Lorcan sighed and decided he would throw Sandarr a bone. Why, he did not know, but he reckoned it was because he was generous by nature.
“Ronnat, tell Sandarr I think we can take this fin gall ship quickly. The warriors I left on shore should be near at hand, not far off. They should have been following us. We will use them to man the second ship and he will take command of it. Then we will fight Grimarr at sea, fight him while he is weak, his men still weary and injured from the fighting on the beach. After we take them at sea, then Vík-ló will lay open to us. Then he will be Lord of Vík-ló.”
Ronnat translated. Sandarr made a grunting sound and said no more.
Lord of Vík-ló, Lorcan thought. That’s a joke, nothing more. Once he, Lorcan, had the fin gall ship, and Grimarr’s ships, then there would be only one lord in that land, only one lord in all of Leinster. And it would not be Sandarr, and it would not be Ruarc mac Brain. It would be Lorcan. Lorcan mac Fáeláin and his heirs, down through the ages. It would start now.
Chapter Thirty-One
There’s roaring where I’ve grasped the tall
sea-weed since giving up my life.
The Tale of Sarcastic Halli
The fin gall ship was heading south, and by the time Lorcan’s men arranged themselves doubled up on the rowers’ benches and began to pull again it was nearly swallowed up by the fog. It had been stumbling confusion as Ultan passed the orders for the oars to be double-manned. This was all new to the Irish warriors. Men who could have quickly and effortlessly formed a shield wall or gone blow for blow, sword and ax, with any Northmen, now staggered around the crowded and unfamiliar deck as if they had each been kicked in the head by an angry horse.
Ultan pointed and pushed men to where they needed to be. The men sat beside those already at the oars, took up the looms and stared at them as if they had just fallen from the sky. Lorcan wanted to start shouting, wanted to start beating men with the flat of his battle ax, but he restrained himself as he knew that would not ease the confusion any.
Sandarr said nothing but Lorcan could hear the unspoken rebuke, just as Sandarr had earlier heard his. Lorcan did not think their partnership could last much longer, but happily it did not have to. Lorcan was fairly certain that one of them would soon be dead, and that one was not him.
Once the oars were manned Ultan gave the word to pull, all together. Lorcan knew that Ultan, too, had been closely watching Sandarr’s ship handling, taking in all he could about the workings of the vessel, and now he was able to instruct the men in their efforts. Slowly, stroke by stroke, they fell into it, leaning forward, oars down, pulling back. But now there were two men at each oar, and they had to learn how to work together, another hill to climb.
Lorcan looked up, past the bow. The fin gall ship was gone, disappeared into the fog. He felt a stab of panic. He stood motionless, but his eyes swept the indefinite edge of the mist. And there it was, not a ship so much as a dark image in the less dark distance, a specter fading into the gray horizon.
“Pull you bastards, pull, or I’ll flay you alive!” Lorcan shouted. He could not contain himself. The thought of losing their prey after so correctly guessing where to lie in wait was intolerable. If he had to look at Sandarr’s smirking face, he would split the dubh gall’s head like firewood.
Water Stallion gathered way, her speed climbing from a dead stop to a slow forward motion, and then to something more pronounced than that, a muscular progress as the double-manned oars bit deep and swept the long, narrow ship forward. And as if by magic the distant ship, the fin gall, their prey, seemed to grow more distinct, changing from a moving shadow to an actual ship, a solid thing not a ghostly image. The fog was lifting and Water Stallion was closing in and the fin gall could not run forever.
During the dark hours, when they had been all but drifting, and the steering was not so critical, Lorcan had set one of his men at the tiller. But now Lorcan pushed him aside and took the tiller himself, the oak bar familiar under his hands. He had steered enough over the past day that he knew how the ship would react to his touch, both under sail or driven by the oars. He knew how much and, more important, how little to push the tiller one way or the other to get the big ship to react to the rudder that hung off the right side.
He pushed it away from him now, just a bit, and watched the bow to see when Water Stallion would begin her turn, and then he pulled it back as she did and the ship steadied up on the new course, her bow pointing directly at the back end of the fin gall ship. This was another thing he had come to love, the ability to make this massive vessel react to his slightest touch. Here he was, standing on the largest moving man-made object he had ever seen, and yet he was able to change its course with less effort than it would take him to drive an ox cart. Incredible.
The men on the rowing benches had the rhythm now, swinging the oars and pulling the stroke. They were big men, strong
men, Lorcan’s chosen warriors, and the work of rowing was no great hardship. Lorcan could feel the vessel building speed beneath him. It was like stored power, like a bow string pulled back as far as it could be pulled, filled with lethal potential. And it was his.
He pushed the tiller over a bit more as the fin gall ship moved past Water Stallion’s bow and he realized he had made a mistake. If he had been on land, on horseback, chasing another rider and coming at him at an angle as he was the ship, he would not have followed right behind. He would have aimed for a point ahead of the other rider, to intercept him, to cut him off.
It was no different with ships on the sea. He realized that now.
“Damn it!” he said out loud and pushed the tiller further away, swinging his ship on a course nearly parallel to that of the fin gall, rather than aiming for his stern. Because of his foolishness he had given the fin gall some extra time and distance, but it would not help them in the end. It would just give them a few more minutes to contemplate the death that was coming.
The sky grew brighter, the gray fog almost white and growing thinner by the minute. Lorcan looked to the west and was startled to see the land just visible through the haze, the high cliffs and the hills beyond rising up from the water, distinctly solid in that watery, misty world. Lorcan was particularly surprised to see how close they were to shore. He had imagined they were many miles out to sea, safe from the rocks and breaking surf. But there was the coastline, just down wind and less than a mile off.
It does not matter, we can see land now, Lorcan thought, but still he was shaken to realize just how close they had come to the shore and the death that waited there.
They continued south, the fin gall ship and Water Stallion in pursuit, rowing near parallel courses. Water Stallion, with her larger crew, her fresher crew, oars double-manned, was moving faster through the water than the fin gall, but not significantly faster. They were making progress, that was clear, but that progress was so gradual that Lorcan felt his patience wearing thin, his aggravation mounting.
When he could stand it no longer he would yell at the men to row harder, and for a few minutes they would, and Water Stallion would move noticeably faster. But then they would begin to tire, and the rapidity of their stroke would diminish like the light fading at the end of the day, and soon they would be once again moving at the pace they had maintained through most of the morning hours.
Sandarr had stepped away and was leaning against the side of the ship, his eyes on the chase, his mouth shut. Lorcan thought of what he had said; Grimarr will slip north in the fog… He had dismissed Sandarr’s words, mostly because he did not wish to give the man the satisfaction of taking him seriously, but the words had bit, and they continued to gnaw at him.
Grimarr, you whore’s son, where are you? Lorcan wondered. He turned and looked out to the east, quite involuntarily, but there was nothing to see there but the low, gray rollers that disappeared into the fog some ways off. How far, it was impossible to tell. A few miles, perhaps. But beyond that there could have been a fleet of a thousand ships moving north and he would not have known it.
Lorcan pressed his lips together hard and forced himself to concentrate of the fin gall ship ahead, but the thought of Grimarr only compounded his anxiety. He had no idea where the bastard was. He knew that he had not come north from the beach the day before, had not rounded the headland, at least not during the daylight hours. They had been watching that stretch of water the whole time. He felt certain that Grimarr would not have sailed north at night, but that was based on nothing but a hunch, and he did not trust his sea-born hunches as much as those hunches he had on shore.
Sandarr was not wrong to think it would be hard to dislodge Grimarr if he made it back to Vík-ló. The wall around the longphort was not terribly impressive, but it was a wall and it had to be surmounted before the place could be taken, and many Irishmen would die in the effort. If Vík-ló was in danger of falling to the Irish, Grimarr could take to his ships and put to sea, and then Lorcan would have only a squalid, miserable abandoned longphort for his efforts.
No, he had to catch Grimarr on the water. And that meant he had to dispose of the fin gall quickly.
“Put your backs into it, you miserable bastards!” Lorcan called down the deck. He could not help himself.
The gap between the ships dropped off from a mile to three quarters of a mile, to half a mile, and the fin gall vessel grew more distinct as they neared and the fog continued to thin. Lorcan could see the shields mounted on the ship’s side and he could see the gaps where shields were missing, lost in the fighting on the beach, no doubt, perhaps left behind with the corpses of their owners. He could see the steady rise and fall of the oars. He could see the long yard, the sail lashed tight to it, laid out along the gallows just as Water Stallion’s was.
Lorcan pulled the tiller toward him, the smallest of adjustments, bringing Water Stallion’s bow a bit to the west, pointing more directly at the fin gall. It was time to close with them, to race over the gap between the ships and fall on them with ax and sword. It was time to end this dance with these damned, cowardly, fleeing whores’ sons and take their ship and go after his real target; Grimarr Giant, the so-called Lord of Vík-ló.
Suddenly the fin gall ship turned, spun around like a leaf in a stream, until her bow was pointed north. For a moment Lorcan just stared at it, unsure what was happening, startled by this sudden change after more than an hour of watching the ship hold a steady course.
“Pathetic bastards, they are running like rabbits with the hounds after them!” Lorcan crowed. He could only guess that they were hoping to make an abrupt turn and gain some distance with that unexpected move, but it had not worked, not at all. It had made matters worse for them, in fact. Lorcan pulled the tiller a bit more and Water Stallion turned more westerly still. Now, rather than having to approach at an angle, they were making directly at their quarry.
Three more strokes, with Water Stallion fairly flying over the sea, and Lorcan realized the fin gall ship had stopped. Rather than try to run away north, the vessel had come to a standstill, the oars pulled in, no motion at all save for their rocking and pitching in the swell.
Sandarr, still leaning against the side of the ship, straightened and crossed over to where Lorcan stood, his eyes never leaving the distant vessel. Two more strokes and Lorcan called “Stop rowing!” and the men stopped, some lifting their oars out of the water, some not. Water Stallion slewed around, turning broadside to the swell and rolling side to side.
“Pull in your oars!” Lorcan called next and the men awkwardly ran their oars in and laid them across the rowing benches.
Lorcan turned to Sandarr. “They’ve stopped, as you can see. They must be offering battle.” Ronnat, who had followed Sandarr across the deck, translated.
Sandarr nodded slowly as he heard the words, but Lorcan was sure he would never do anything so simple as merely agreeing with him, and he was right.
“Perhaps,” Sandarr said. “Or perhaps they are playing some trick. They’re not in much of a position to stand and fight. They are weak and outnumbered.”
But perhaps they are not cowards like you, Lorcan thought, but he did not say it. Rather, he said, “They have no choice. We were running them down. They would have to fight us before long. Now they have chosen the place where they will make their stand.”
“Yes,” Sandarr said. “That’s what worries me.”
But it did not worry Lorcan, and it did not worry Ultan or any of the other warriors. In fact, there was palpable relief among them when Lorcan ordered them to prepare for a fight. This was something they understood. This was what they lived for, their meat and bread.
And each of them, Lorcan was sure, thought that winning this fight meant getting off the cursed ship. He did not enlighten them in that regard, even though the exact opposite was true. This, Lorcan hoped, would be only the first of a long line of sea-borne battles.
All along the deck the men stood and stretched
cramped muscles and those who had them took up mail shirts and pulled them on, and others found helmets and swords and shields and set them down on the rowing benches.
Lorcan found his own mail and ax. He drove the ax into the deck by his feet and hefted the mail shirt over his head, settled it on his shoulders, and looked forward. His men were standing ready, some looking toward the fin gall ship, some looking back at him in anticipation. Some had their swords in hand. Lorcan wanted to shout in frustration.
“You stupid bastards, we still have to row over to them!” he yelled. “I want one man at each oar, and the rest standing ready to jump onto the fin gall ship when we are next to it!”
It was no surprise, of course, that every man wanted to be among those rushing into the fight, and none wished to be stuck on an oar. But Ultan sorted it out with shouts and blows, and soon the oars were once again manned and run out and Water Stallion slowly gathered way toward the ship they had been chasing since first light.
Lorcan held the tiller, aiming the longship right at the middle of the fin gall vessel. He willed his men to pull hard, but he held his tongue. And even without his verbal blows, they did pull, they pulled with a will, and Water Stallion all but skimmed over the surface of the sea. It was Lorcan’s fear that the fin gall would once more try to slip away, and he guessed his men felt it, too. Every man aboard seemed desperate to come to grips with them before they could even try.
Then Sandarr was talking again, and Ronnat translated. “Sandarr says we should not go in this fast, that there might be some kind of trick.”
“What trick?” Lorcan demanded. “They are there and they are standing ready to fight. Look!” He pointed toward the other ship, growing closer with each stroke. She was lying motionless save for rocking a bit in the swells. The oars were run in and the shields were off the rail and held on the arms of the warriors who stood in a loose shield wall along the starboard side. They were close enough now that Lorcan could see helmets and mail gleaming in the muted sunlight.
The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 30
