by Peter Green
Amergin instructed the crew to cast out long lines. This day they will feast, and the hold will be filled to the gunnels, “A blessing heaven sent!” delighted Amergin.
Looking back along the line of the fleet, he saw each crew starting to fish. Instantly fish were being hooked. Flashing, electric shoals of mackerel threw themselves at the hooks. Ten at a time they were landed, hooks gouged out, gutted and placed into trays of sea salt ready for curing. Food for the journey!
“Provisions for the battle ahead!” contemplated Amergin, “these fishers of men will need sustenance and all their strength for what is to come!”
Xomas came over and stood by Amergin commenting on the bountiful ocean, “There, my lord, a pod of Pilot whales coming to join the feast! This is a rich feeding ground. There seems to be an upwelling here, maybe a sign that we are moving from deep ocean to a shallower coastal shelf. I will tell the look-outs to be extra vigilant!” Amergin nodded in agreement as he watched the Pilot whales surface and feed on the starboard side.
Then the whole crew cheered in exuberance as a giant of the ocean appeared on the port side. A loud and voluminous blow that forced upwards twenty feet, “A Fin whale!” yelled Xomas, “one of the benign giants of the ocean, filter feeding in this rich upwelling from the abyss.”
They both could see the place where the colder waters from the deep met the warmer waters of the continental shelf. The white line of turbulence and spume spread northwards to the far horizon.
“Tell the crew to be vigilant Xomas!” instructed Amergin, “Communicate with the rest of the fleet, we will tack to the north-east, and tell them to be prepared!” On the port side, the giant of the ocean seemed to be aware of their plans, and with a mighty blow, dove deep into the abyss, never to be seen again.
Far into the distance another filter feeding giant of the ocean appeared on the starboard side, a Minke whale, dark and mysterious, occasionally surfacing and then diving deep.
“This ocean is the richest I have ever seen!” announced Xomas, “A good sign, we must be close….”
The fleet now turned into the north-east. The Minke whale continued to arc and dive, quietly feeding in isolation.
“Heartening!” declared Xomas, “A sign of fine weather and fair sailing.”
“Hopefully!” agreed Amergin, “We must remember the foe we face at all times!”…a solemn subdued warning, the exhilaration of the day punctured by reality. In the dwindling light of the evening their sense of foreboding was confirmed. The watchman exclaimed loudly, “Killer Whales on the port side!” These were not gentle giants of the ocean! They were the top predators. Killers by name, killers by nature! Not even on their sturdy vessels were they safe! Many a tale of ancient mariners told of Orcas broadsiding and sinking unsuspecting vessels.
Amergin, Xomas and all the Milesian crews watched anxiously as the pod of eight Orcas powered through the ocean. They went ahead of the fleet. They were heading directly for their unwitting, unassuming prey. The benign filter feeding, yet elusive Minke Whale.
Amergin stood on the prow observing, in quiet awe, the eight Orcas surrounding the Minke.
Surrounded and prevented from diving deep, the Minke headed out for the open ocean, trying to out run the Orca, size for size, the individual versus the pod. Baleen versus toothed whale, the odds were stacked. The Minke surfaced and thrashed its massive fluking tail. Shallow dives and thrashing tail, racing to deep water. Waiting for the junior Orca to make a mistake, a lapse in their hunting strategy…
The largest Orca bull charged at the Minke, trying to turn it over, trying to drown it…Once turned over the pod would close ranks, keeping the giant submerged, death would be quick.
Totally outnumbered, time running out, the Minke panic stricken, charged a juvenile Orca! An irresistible force meeting an almost immovable object!
Mass and sheer force won out, the Minke whale head charged and lifted the juvenile right out of the ocean. In the confusion the Minke whale sent out a giant, defiant blow of sea air and in one motion surfaced and then dove deep, deep and way beyond the reach of the frustrated Orca. The pod dove in unison. They were gone for minutes, but Amergin knew the Minke was in its own realm now.
All the teeth and brutality of the Orca were to no avail… here the Minke could dive deeper, stay under longer, and disappear into the twilight of the abyssal depths.
Amergin stepped down from the prow. What a spectacle, the chaser and the chased, the predator and the prey, outnumbered but not outfought!
A poignant tale of cetaceans, the parallel of Milesians versus the dark Sidhe was not lost on Amergin.
Xomas stayed at the helm while Amergin made sure the entire crew, were on alert. “Keep watch, my brave ones. The Orcas have been thwarted. They may turn their attentions on to us!”
Amergin returned to his quarters. The evening light steadily diminishing… still no sign of the Orcas…
In the gunnels of the wooden, clinker built vessel, the energy and constant percussive sounds of the ocean were filtered out. A crashing wave became a noise of gentle buffeting. The wind through the rigging became a sonorous low pitched lullaby. “A good contemplative place!” thought Amergin. He needed it… his tribe were on the cusp of a great journey. To connect with the spirit world, he liked to clear his mind and let his thoughts pour forth in a stream of consciousness.
The thoughts came forth in poetic lyrical form. His thoughts, his dreams, his emotions, his love and his faith in the Great Spirit…
*
“Purify your heart…
Turn away from the material world, and look deep within.
Find your true self, your immaterial agent of thought.
Assimilate to eternity, to the unity within.
Your body a reflection, an image, that counts for nought.
*
Unity linked to beauty, to goodness, to truth.
Original unity, mystical nothingness, the form of the good,
Intellectually, intuitively, anchored to a universal truth,
Celestial hierarchy, the soul, the intellect, the mystery of the Great Spirit”
*
Amergin’s philosophical and poetic contemplations were jarred back into reality…“Orca! Orca!” the watch man yelled. The pod had returned, thwarted and frustrated by the Minke, but still in chase mode… the hunt was still on!
Amergin commanded the crew, “Remain at your positions! Be steadfast and we shall endure!”
He hurried to the weapons store and quickly handed out eight foot pikes. They would be ready to lunge at first sight of an Orca.
Amergin recalled the tales of ancient mariners that told of Orca leaping clear out of the ocean and broadsiding unsuspecting vessels. Shattering wooden hulls and splintering masts, and then preying on the crew. “Surely this vessel is built too strongly? Surely the Orcas would not attack one of a fleet of vessels?”
Xomas sounded the ships bell, warning the rest of the fleet to be on high alert until the danger was passed!
The pod of Killer whales divided and cruised powerfully through on both sides of the fleet. They were looking for weaknesses…
They had all watched as the Orcas hassled, harassed and cajoled the Minke. Again they probed, they tested. They were the prey! These massive cetaceans were cunning, deadly and threatening!
At the end of the line of the fleet, they dove in unison. They had reconnoitered and assessed their prey and now they contemplated their attack…
A murderous silence fell around, only the sound of the ship’s bell.
On high alert, all of the crews were armed with pikes. The vessels closed ranks in a well rehearsed naval manoeuvre. They presented a united front, pikes in readiness, to their speedy, deadly aggressors.
Amergin looked down the line of the fleet, he saw his brothers Eimbear and Eiremhou, and Scota and Milidh, all stood, pikes in hand, on the prows of their respective vessels. Amergin had a very uneasy feeling about this… These were top predators with deadly inten
t. Mariners’ tales were one thing, but for a pod to take on an entire fleet! This had the feel of a dark conspiracy. Other forces were at work here…
From the depths, dark and foreboding, came an intense high pitched wail, like the sound of a Banshee. This sent shivers up the spines of all the Milesians. The Banshee was deep in their psyche, to them it meant that a life would be taken that night… the portal to the spirit world would open and emissaries of the dark would snatch a soul for their own evil intent…
“Be ready my brave ones!” shouted Amergin. He braced himself, pike facing towards the depths. As one, the pod of Orcas, flexing every muscle and sinew, burst through the surface intent on a kill!
A powerful bull exploded out of the ocean immediately in front of Amergin. Amergin was consumed by a frothing, seething avalanche of aerated white water! All eight Orcas were airborne in an orchestration of assassins. They breached in unison with calamitous effect, belly flopping as an entity, sending half the ocean, so it felt, in a monstrous wall of foaming brine straight at the flagship.
“Brace yourselves!” Xomas yelled, as half of the crew, in self survival mode, let go of their pikes and grabbed rigging, the others dropped to the deck like stones.
Only this morning, Amergin was reveling in the glory of the day, the cooling spray of the breaking ocean. Now! A mighty weight of water fell on him, knocked him from the prow, flooring him heavily and painfully. Winded, wounded and bedraggled, half concussed, he frantically grabbed a loose sheet lying on the deck. His safety line as half the ocean drained from the deck. Like live bait dangling from that line, he held on with all his strength, for dear life! Washed out over the railings, he stopped at the extremity of the line – just as the jaws of the massive bull Orca snapped shut, a hair’s breadth away from Amergin’s exposed torso! With a glint of an unblinking eye, the monster disappeared back into the deep.
Serrated teeth and sheer jaw power had snapped Amergin’s pike clean in two. “That could have been my body!” thought Amergin, “So close!” His senses recovering, but still in shock, he anxiously looked around. The ocean still receding, he saw one poor soul taken in the torrent of sea water, his arms flailing desperately, before the jaws of the same unblinking monster snapped together, dismembered in a gory instant…
Other crew started to get to their feet as the tide receded. Xomas hung on bravely and steadfastly to the tiller. Amergin went to him, they were speechless. Instinctively they knew they had to act fast!
They peered down into the depths, only a trail of spiraling spume in the liquid slabs of turbulent dark water showed any indication of their hunters presence, a swirling stream of oxygenated crimson, the only remains of the brave crew man. “The Orcas will return!” Amergin was sure of this. These deadly top predators will be merciless!
Amidst the turmoil, they must react calmly, their lives depended on it.
Amergin remembered the plight of the Minke whale. Their response too, must be strong, forceful and effective. There will be an instantaneous glimmer of a chance against the hunting Orcas. They must take it, but how?!
Amergin and Xomas mustered all their marine skills and survival instincts…
They would form a raft, close ranks, strength in numbers, just as pelagic fish shoal to confuse their predators and maximise their chance of survival.
Just enough light to mirror a message, the word flashed around the fleet. They immediately began to close ranks. They knew one charge from an Orca bull would be sufficient to sink a vessel. They were in grave danger. The fleet was spread out still, the line exposed and vulnerable.
“Orca!!!” screamed the watchmen on a number of rafting vessels. Instinctively they braced themselves, pikes to the ready! The last vessel in line was the weak point, exposed and vulnerable, like a forlorn isolated cetacean…
Separated from the core fleet, they were the target! This time the Orcas charged in one irrepressible line. Six of the Orcas breached as one, crashing into the ocean and sending an all consuming wall of white water to the port side of the vessel… It lurched and rolled, exposing the hull and the keel.With this, the remaining two of the Orca launched into the heavens, propelled by their massive fluked tails. They landed with an almighty, shuddering crash and huge downward force on the weaker timbers of the hull. The sound of fracturing, splintering, cracking timbers could be heard throughout the fleet.The crew of the floundering vessel were in the water and scrambling for their lives, trying to climb on the overturned hull. To no avail! They were as lambs to the slaughter. One by one, Orcas charged, and charged again. One by one the frantic crewmen were mercilessly plucked from the rolling overturned hull, nowhere to hide, like stranded seal pups in the shallows of some desolate beach.
A body blow to the entire fleet, they all whinced and recoiled at the sheer power and devastation. Amergin grabbed the ship’s bell rallying the fleet, the message urgently sent to keep rafting. Xomas, sickened to the pit of his stomach, leapt from rail to rail as each vessel drew in, lashing the vessels together and telling each crew to lash the eight foot pikes facing outwards in a protective rampart of bronze spear heads.
Amergin in survival mode called to Xomas, “Breath is life! Instruct each vessel on the outer raft to soak their rope fenders in palm oil.”Amergin hoped the slick of oil will hinder the Orcas, hampering their breathing, and irritating their eyes. An act of desperation to keep the monsters at bay…
The palm oil soon began to ooze into the ocean from the saturated rope fenders. A glistening, smothering, suffocating slick covered the surface of the ocean, spreading ever outwards.
The last vessel in the line had been sacrificed, giving the rest of the fleet time to defend against the onslaught. One desperate martyr clung to the overturned hull. Amergin had to turn away as the unfortunate man threw himself into the ocean in a desperate bid to reach the rafting fleet. Never a chance! With an appalling upward motion of gaping jaws, he was taken. The jaws snapped shut, severing his torso and flailing limbs. The poor soul gone!
An occasional diving sea bird succumbed to the oozing slick of palm oil – never to fly again!
The fleet felt as if they were in the bloody final scene of a macabre carnival act, as the leader of the Orca pack rose imperiously out of the slick covered ocean, with a mighty flexing thrust of the fluking tail, rolled in mid air and with an awful snapping of jaw and teeth, tried to pluck one of the watchmen from his lookout on the outer raft, disappearing beneath the waves with that demonic set grin and the unblinking eye staring back at his fearful audience.
“This cannot be all nature Xomas!” conjectured Amergin, “This has to be driven by more sinister players. This has to be the dark Sidhe at work!”
Amergin’s faithful comrade in arms had to agree, “I have heard of mariners’ tales of old, but nothing quite like this. Nothing so orchestrated, so macabre, so evil…”
The last remains of the crippled and broken vessel sank into the void, an unceremonious sea grave for the brave crew. The eerie murderous silence returned, the ever thickening oozing slick deadening the sea’s surface. Time stood still, the dreadful waiting. When will the Orcas return?
Amergin’s attention turned to the vessels lashed into the outer raft. He recognised the figures deep in fraternisation, the untrustworthy High Priest of the Chapter of Mystics, Gonne, and his headstrong, unruly and now suspicious brother Eimbear.
Amergin waited until they returned to their own vessel. He leapt from vessel to vessel checking for anything out of the ordinary. Sure enough, he found lashings untied, pikes thrown to the floor, and where was the watch?! More worryingly he spotted the palm oil saturated rope fenders drifting away from the fleet. There was a breach in their defences! There is an enemy within!
Amergin’s stomach churned. A concoction of fear and deception unsettled him. He was right to be fearful, in the distance a rigid dorsal fin of a giant Orca! The killers had returned!
The deception cut him to the core… his own brother! Deception by Gonne was by now a given,
his corruption well known, but deception by his own blood line!?…words and emotions failed him. They threaten the entire mission, and the lives of his loyal mariners.
The upright, posturing, sail-like dorsal fin sliced through the ocean surface, heading straight towards the now place of weakness, where they had no defences.“Orca!!! To your positions!” fully animated Amergin added, “The defences are down here! Make ready! We are under attack!”
Xomas was the first to react. He had been watching Amergin inspecting the defences…Amergin braced himself at the exact place where there was a breach, pike pointing seaward.
The Orca bull meant business. The tip of the dorsal fin sliced the sea, submerged and was gone! “He charges!” A powerful submarine thrust of the tail fluke threw up an eruption of boiling sea.
One of the crew, slow to react whilst tying a new fender, lost his footing. He was a stride away from the safety of the deck. Amergin cried out” Hurry! You have no time!”
Torpedo like, the Orca projected up and out of the ocean! In one calculated, rolling motion, lunged at the panicked crew man with evil intent and ferocity!
Amergin was shocked! Such evil! Such intent!
The Orca plucked the crew man off the dangling fender, a tender morsel in a sprung man trap, that snapped violently shut. Falling to the depths, the ocean stained blood red…The same dark swirling turbulence… then silence.
The crew and Amergin were in shock… they froze momentarily…
Amergin sprung into action, “Get the defences back. Soak the fender with oil. Lash the pikes in position!”
He knew the rest of the Orca would soon follow. In that moment he saw the rigid dorsal fin cut through the surface… seconds away he calculated at the speed of the attack. Another crew man was in the line of attack, tying one of the fenders… just a stride away from safety! “Not again!” Panicked Amergin, “Not this time!” he screamed out. This brute must be stopped!
