by Ken Hagan
I have claimed the harrier axe from the crate. It’s under my belt, heft tucked in at my waist like Einar, on the other side from my wood-knife. They all see me with it but no one says a word, not even Ma. Cormac catches me touching the blade and winks his approval.
Chapter 7
Dawn breaking, a call of seabirds flying above the mast. I have been dozing on and off. Strangely my arms ache less than before, hands healing too, despite another night of rope-work. Must be the salt-water. I count the days by fingers. It was our fourth night, it will be our fifth day at sea.
The mist has saved us. ‘A miracle,’ Da said last night to Ma. ‘Patchy stuff, Audeen, but enough to do the trick. The canny seamanship of a skipper helped, but he would not have managed without your mist and your prayers.’
Einar had acknowledged Da’s hint of praise with a studied look to the vane. ‘Look, sea-birds passing,’ he said expectantly, but that was last night and still no sight of landfall.
*
Gulls screeching aloft, circling our masthead. One bird swoops low under the sail; sits on the gunnel, dives in the water, a good sign. Einar could be right. If we have gulls, we must be close to land.
‘Land! There, through the mist,’ chants Mel. ‘Look what I can see on my side.’
True enough, a dark pillar shape, a small islet, comes out of the mist on larboard beam. We hear the sound of breaking waves.
‘No Mel,’ says Einar, ‘that’s not it. Here, on our bows, on this side, a big headland. See the height of the rock, stretching all the way up.’
He is pointing over the steer-board bow, and no mistake, cliffs soar ahead, high and grey, huge overfalls of rock, rising sheer-faced out of the sea. Bedwyr leaves off emptying the cess-pail and scans out over the waves. Ma is breathless. She holds beads to her mouth. Kol catches the excitement. He bobs up and down, sniffs; lifts his nose over the beam.
‘Over here, look,’ shouts Mel running towards us. ‘Mine: can’t you see it?’
‘That’s no island, little one,’ says Sepp. He stops short. We all see her island now.
‘Hell’s teeth!’ shouts Jo, ‘It’s them.’
The pillar prow of their long-ship breaks through the mist, ten lengths from us, cutting wave, cresting the swell, dipping-furrow, rearing-high; dipping-furrow, rearing-high. The sail is hauled aft with head canted aloft, beating wind, and on its stretched canvas the image of a bold black beak, sharpened by the angle of sail — Drak’s Raven flying straight for us.
‘Stand by,’ shouts Einar from amidships. ‘Stand-by to come about! Stand-by, Jo, not yet!’ We have taken our stance by larboard, Jo and I, shoulders together, our hands on the ropes. Da waits at the helm, holding his nerve. Wind and wave are driving the Raven’s beak into our path.
I can’t hold in my fear, can’t stop my voice shaking, ‘Skip, do it now.’ The last word fails on my lips. I doubt if Einar was listening. Jo took no notice, and she’s next to me.
‘Now, skip, now!’ This time the fear screams from my mouth. ‘Now, or it’s too late!’ A blow has stifled my scream. Jo’s hefty dint in my ribs. ‘Stand by,’ her yell in my ear.
A draught of tepid wind sweeps off the west sea, a new wind up from steer-board. At our side, larboard, the Raven is coming at us fast, he is going to ram our beam. I can see them. The blazing eyes of wolflings; bear-serks chewing the spike-ends of their axes; harriers iron-clad, kitted in kirtle and helmet, the front line of kirtle-men ready with grapnel and rope, others behind with sword and shield. Their blazing eyes, their terrible yells, rattling shields, howling wolf, griping bear; mad gibberish, fury of animals, growling frenzy. The Raven’s rage is bearing down on us, and there, iron-headed, laughing at the helm, the tall figure of Drak.
A yell, the order from Einar, his call comes at last. Cormac heaves halyard. Sepp rams the gaff-spar true. Feilan locks the sheet, locks it tight. Jo and I, fingers burning, haul to larboard. We send our sail full aft, and turn it into the wind. Da, Einar and Feilan have put hands and weight against the tiller. The tiller-shaft, no longer fixed to the hull, shakes like the head of a snake. Withies have snapped or withy knots have unravelled — the ones tightened by Einar — either that or the cleats have pulled away. The tiller is twisting loose, it has a will of its own, a snake-head, answering the force of the sea, biting our rudder into teeth of the wave. Three pairs of hands, thralls’ hands, straining to tame the serpent.
The Vigtyr, turned about, beating hard to north. It must be north, but for a moment I can’t be sure if it’s north or south. There! It is north. I was right. To our right from the east a sharp glow of sun breaks thinly on the water. A blade of light seeks us out. Like a rod of gold, it runs up the mast and, as it does, the blade flashes wider, higher on the sail. Sun swells over the cauldron of water, gilding all before it. Dawn sky flings out fiery brightness. Daylight floods far and wide, filling the whole expanse of sea.
Our steering tackle has been damaged, but that one swift, darting turn was enough to square our steer-board beam against the sun. Suddenly, they are past us on the water, running off astern. Drak pummels out an order, we hear it shouted in anger. ‘Turn-about!’ They flip the sheet in a flash. I have never seen a sail turned like that. Drak snaps the tiller in-board; too full; too sharp, too hasty — too late. His veering rudder throws the Raven into void. Sea grows between us. The Raven, narrow hull tossed in reckless heel, halted back there, yawing drunken on the swell. Stalled, stalled coming about, the Raven at sixes and sevens. We are off from them in thumps and bounds, hull over wave, running north.
Great headlands, shores in clear light, west and north; sunlight climbing the cliffs. Nesting sea-birds rise in clouds from their eyries, from countless eyries on the rocks, hosts of noisy birds flying into open sky. The birds have sight of fish, fat and silvery, darting thickly in morning waters. They dive to break the surface of the waves. Before, behind, above, all around us, they soar, sleek-feathered out of the deep, their bills snapped tight with fish. Fisher-birds, more and more taking to the air, they swirl and dive, their hungered feeding calls screaming over the waters.
Sun beats on the rocky coast; white breakers flying against the foot of the cliffs. Sunlight has reached the long-ship’s sail. The Raven has taken to hugging the shore, to gather wind. He is chasing north, keeping shoreward, but closing on us at every tug of sail.
We can’t out-run them. If we turn west to gather wind, if we hug the shore as they have done, we will lose ground. It would be folly to do that and cross their bows for the sake of more wind. If we flee outbound to open sea; if we bear east we may make it round the next headland — that one looming north — we might just do it. But no, too late. Einar should have done it earlier. Dark water under the headland waits to snare the unsuspecting, a rake of tides to bite the hull and drive us back into the Raven’s path.
A run of open water between the islands might save us — if only one was to be found. If we come across a narrow sound, we may find a channel wide enough to pass. But a passage between cliffs may lead to a dead-end, to deadly shallows and rocks. To sail blind into shadows not knowing what lies beyond is madness. Once trapped between headlands, if there is no way out, we will have to turn and face the Raven, unless we hit shallows and run aground. No one can say for sure what waits for us inside those rocky waters.
‘Hell’s teeth!’ shouts Jo. Einar is turning the Vigtyr, turning into that narrow strait. He’s chosen the shadows, trying blind luck, hoping for depth of water, and width and space to pass through.
There are islands on either side, but islands high and close, a roar of narrow sea confined between them. The roar of sea drowns our voices, but cannot drown the calls of gannets, raucous and loud, gannets hovering, hanging in the air, diving to fish the morning shoals of the sound.
We sail between two faces of rock, cut off from the ocean swell. We have lost sight of the Raven. He is outside the narrow sound, somewhere behind us in open sea. Above us, sea-birds nesting on the cliffs, sea-birds, clustering
nook and cranny, their droppings spilled white over the ledges, the air sour with fish, salt and lime. Waves surge on the reefs, throwing water, plumes of it, higher than a ship’s mast. Tide rolling at our backs, the Vigtyr pitching, straining in foamy swell, as if our hull is plunging down a white river, as if the torrent under us will empty from its seabed, as if water and ship and crew are being sucked into a nether sea beyond.
Ma’s face, my sisters’ faces, are cold and grey within the darkened space. Everything on board has taken on the dull hue of wet rocks, rocks closing on either side of the ship. The morning sun disappears behind the massive headlands. We are cut off from light by the islands, darkness in here, almost night. Kol shivers head to tail.
‘They are following us in!’ As Feilan shouts, he loses his feet, skids on stern deck. My brothers turn aft to look. Ma, my sisters, even Da turns, Bedwyr, Gaukyr, little Tarkyr — somehow the lads find their sea-legs — Feilan back on his feet again; we all stand and look back to the gap between the cliffs, to morning sky, to the last of the sun, to the closing narrow door of light.
Billowing sail of the Raven, harrying beak, gaining on us, following us into darkness. Their chasing ship broaches the sound; catches the running tide. The Raven prow surges after the Vigtyr, flying towards us in terrible suddenness over the waves, their hull seems to leap, skip, fly over the surface, barely touching the foaming sea. The tide is driving their narrow hull faster than ours. They are gaining on us, nine ship-lengths between us; six lengths, down to four, three. In the narrows the sea is master, not the wind, their ship and ours its playthings. We are venturing into darkness, carried on a rush of sea, under giddy heights of rock.
Einar aims mid-channel — there is nothing else he can do. He steers past outcrops, fallen boulders beaten to a black shine at the foot of cliffs. Can’t hear a thing, can’t hear or be heard, all words now, all noise, even the screaming of birds, deafened by the rage of running sea.
We watch for signs from the helm. Einar has no course but ahead, while Drak is aiming to draw alongside. There is barely space for them and us, barely space for two hulls to run abeam. From skip hurried signs — loosen luff, front of sail — release bowline as far as it will go. The bowline is my job.
I run the length of ship, making for the bows; see Da and Sepp, Feilan, Jo, brandishing spears; the same spears thrown from the Raven in their first attack. Cormac has his short sword to hand; he has picked up Sepp’s club in the other. Ma and my sisters, little Mel too, hurling ballast at the men in the long-ship.
I run behind their line of fire, pushing past Bedwyr on steer-board beam. I have to luff the sail, luff the sail — skip wants it done.
The Raven’s prow edging on us, pulling level, his steer-board to our larboard beam.
Shameful for men to surrender, futile to try, but for women it is no shame. That is why my sisters have let down their hair. Ma has told them to. Vrekla’s tresses fair to the waist; Alu’s thick and red, her white shoulders a mass of curls, little Mel’s frizzy ringlets, auburn. But I wonder if they will do what Ma has asked of them; if they will do her bidding, when the time comes. Ma must doubt that they will. She wants her girls to look like womankind, not to be mistaken for men. She wants them to beg for their lives, to throw themselves on Drak’s mercy. Should they be taken, when they are taken, she wants them to beg at the feet of the Raven, to submit, to offer themselves captive. Ma hasn’t untied, and Jo has refused to untie hers. No special treatment for Ma or Jo, no quarter will be asked, when Drak takes the Vigtyr, as take us he surely will.
Nowhere to flee, hemmed in by the strait. There is nothing we can do but stand and fight. We have run out of sea, run out of wind. They are drawing level, only a ship-width separates us. The Raven’s hull, over-flooded, slender, waves pounding it, is almost frail beside ours, lower in the water.
Claws of iron, grappling irons are hooked fast on the Vigtyr, eight sets of them on our larboard beam. A rope-length draws on each hook, a rope-length hangs between us and death at their hands. They man the ropes to haul us in, beam to beam. They will come aboard, engage at close quarters; overwhelm us. Numbers alone will do it. Their sail is down, their rudder out of the water. Oars-men have gone to the far side on their larboard beam, not rowing in these violent waters, but paddling with their oars, beating and buffering their ship from rocks on the cliff opposite, as best they can in a flood of sea. Men in kirtles on this side are facing us abeam, others at their backs not with axes drawn, or sword in hand, but holding shields abreast and overhead, against our hail of stones. They parry with disdain, as if our pitiful throwing is but a tiresome delay.
Their kirtle-men will be first to board — unless the axe-men rush ahead of them to draw first blood — or maybe Drak and his bear-serks will wade in first. The bear-serks are massed at the stern, three; four - now five of them - ready to leap, to scale the gunnels, to maul with axe and bill, as the hulls come together. Wolflings have gathered on the side opposite, on their larboard beam, their axes belted, their blades undrawn, holding to some pre-arranged plan, whatever it might be. The wolflings — hell’s teeth — here they come. On swing-ropes from the masthead, wolflings swoop airborne over their deck towards the Vigtyr, flying over the heads of their crew; I hear nothing but roar of sea, nothing from them on the Raven, nothing from us, see only fright in our frantic eyes, our mouthing jaws. My brothers, my sisters, Ma yelling, they are yelling to utmost, to vent her fearful anger, to rant and rave against the bloodthirst.
I hear nothing but see it all. How slow Da is moving, his every action slowed, and yet so gainful. Cormac — no one fleeter of foot — here unhurried, the dull shifting of his limbs in slow mockery of his body, and yet before my eyes I have seen him take three men down. Sepp can’t help his shambling gait, but here he leans graceful into his strokes, like a spear warrior practised in the art, taking a toll of blood. Feilan, slim, willowy — slender branch in tender breeze — he has drawn blood from a man twice his girth.
The more I urge to hasten over the deck, axe weighing me down, the less I’m able to quicken my limbs. And yet I have bounded a ship’s length without effort. I am moving swiftly and yet I cannot feel the swiftness in my body.
With a sudden rush after luffing sail at the bows, I’m back to where I ought to be, standing aft with Jo, our job to guard the skip, guard Einar while he keeps the helm.
From here I see it all. The harriers, alike to us, alike, unhurried in the blood-brawl. The same numbing slowness has gripped them to the bone. Drak’s men are acting out their tasks, blade and shaft, shield and rope, oar and paddle, in the same slow, deliberate fury. An evil has possessed us here; it has trapped us in a dawdling trance. As if the struggle is contained within a dream, a slowed-down dream.
From sea, from ship and from the air above, the same slow beat, unhurried: waters of the sound, breaking on rocks; unhurried: foam flung over deck; unhurried: gannets circling the mast, all grinding to a standstill, slowing to the same, furious, unending now. All of this within the shadows of the sound, and gripped in silence, utter silence. Endlessly trapped in now; idling in now, noiseless now, swiftly deadening now.
Iron claws drag the Vigtyr in, beam to beam, wolflings fly over the kirtle-men, over, upward, across the watery deep between hulls, swinging from their deck to ours, leaping at us on mast-ropes from the long-ship, both hands gripped to the ropes, no axes drawn.
A shape flies at Da. He moves slowly, deftly to one side and back. My brothers see what Da is up to. Like him they take a step back, a slow step back. Da pierces the first through the ribs with barely a lift of his spear. Feilan takes the second wolfling, a casual blow, spear-pointing the wolfling’s neck; Sepp slams a third, spear-shaft to the belly of the beast, trailing his spear-head, twisting, pulling outward, whips the innards bare. Cormac dallies with a fourth on his blade, leaves it pummel-deep for ages; draws it out. Now he takes two more, the fifth and sixth to fall, slashing their throats, all this happening with as little ease as had twice the wolflings
fallen at his hand.
Ma, my sisters, pelting stones, Bedwyr with them, Gaukyr, Tarkyr digging in the ballast creels, hurling sea-pebbles for all they are worth, aiming at Drak, at his bear-serks, hitting the mark. No shields for the bear-serks to parry the stones. Their blood is running.
Drak is having no more of it. He steps back for a flying leap. The bear-serks blood-red from their wounds, wild at his back, now they set to, to spring off the deck towards us, stepping back to run and leap, mindless of the waters in between.
With one great step Drak is on the Vigtyr, the blood of rage on his face. The bear-serks, wild-eyed, following Drak, leap from their deck; their legs out-stretched like him. Eyes wild and empty, unlooking, unknowing, their leaping movements stall mid-air, held; held in their unleaping trance. The beast-men tumble, plummet, crash and sink in boiling water between.
The heavy swell carries their hull, and carries ours after them, towards the boulders, The Raven tilts on the wave, tosses over rocks, rips along larboard-length, shearing, shredding to smithereens, hull, strakes, rails, cross-beams, rowing benches snapped, wood splintered in the water like twigs of kindling. Rope-men who had pulled grapnel ropes, oarsmen who had madly paddled oars, are sucked under water, their bodies splintering on the rock, clumps of fleshy bone or skull, wool and leather, torn from the broken ship, the back-wash flesh-spilled, wood-spilled, boiling red. The back-wash, churning blood, flings the Vigtyr out, out, out from the rock. The kirtle-men stand motionless with gaping eyes. They lean against their steer-board beam as if the floating shell of the Raven held them glued to the deck. Their ship is split in two like a half-ship, like a hull with unbuilt frame, half-timbers on a keel.
And now on the Vigtyr wind gathers slack in loosened sail. We are through the narrowest point of the sound, gusts, blowing head-on from north, blasting our bows, the opening mouth of sea.
