by Smith, Skye
Only the quick turn save them. The ship that had been coming up along side them to grapple them, was now side on to them, but instead of the Norman's bank of oar blades going under the bow, they were hitting the side of the submerged ram. Oar after oar after oar was torn from their oarsmen’s grasp and splintered and split, and men were hammered with their own oars as the speed of their own ship destroyed their own oars against the ram. The carnage on board the Norman ship was horrific as men were beaten by their own oars, and some men were even picked up by the oars and thrown about like rag dolls.
The speed of the Norman ship had taken it fully passed the Ormurin's bow, and Raynar yelled to his crew to row forward and dig, dig, dig. The Ormurin gained speed and gained steering control, and swept behind the stricken Norman that now had oars only on their starboard side. They quickly became sitting ducks for one the Montreuil longships that swept in close, and then stood off while they committed short range murder with their heavy arrows.
Another of the Montreuil longships had been caught between two Normans ships, and had been grappled by one of them and was about to be boarded despite the withering hail of arrows from the crew. The Norman captain must have seen the arrows do their work on other ships, and was expecting them. The Norman shields were up and defeating the points, as riggers hauled on the grappling lines to bring the two ships together.
The oarsmen of the Ormurin could see none of this for their backs were to the bow and Raynar had the steersmen point that bow directly at the closest Norman doing the boarding. Since the oarsmen couldn't see, and since he didn't want them to break their stroke by twisting their heads to have a look, he was keeping up a running commentary on what was happening to their sister ship. Knowing that their drinking friends were in trouble was enough for the men themselves to yell out for a double count, and the ship leaped forward as if it was being held above the water by the force of the oars.
It wasn't of course. The deadly ram did not break the surface, not then, and not as it split the next wave, and not as it split the next Norman ship. This time the mate had called out a count down to the crash of impact, and only a few of them lost their seats. Again however, all of the archers who had left it to the last second to loose arrows, were thrown to the deck. This time the oarsmen knew that as soon as they felt the impact they must row backwards, and hard. This time they had turned to face the collision so they could not only see it, but so they could use their backs to haul the ram out of the stricken ship.
Yet again, they missed a few strokes while they watched in horror at the effect of the ram. Because this Norman ship was gunnels to gunnels against the Montreuil ship, when the ram hit it, it could not be pushed sideways. Instead it seemed to climb up the gunnels of the Montreuil ship, and then the planking splintered, and then split and with the shriek of splintering planks some Norman warriors were catapulted into the sea.
The captain of the Montreuil ship was quick witted enough to yell to his axemen to run along his gunnels and cut the grappling lines. It was lucky they did, because the Norman ship went down so fast that it would have overturned the Montreuil ship if they had still been rafted together. It didn't save the captains life however, because his ship was now being boarded on the other side as well. Just after he gave the order to his axemen that saved his ship, a short throwing spear went completely through his chest.
Again the grating sound of the ram being pulled out. Raynar yelled at his archers to target any Norman climbing onto their sister ship, and meanwhile he became very busy getting the Ormurin around and free of all these fighting ships and flotsam rigging so he could attack the Norman ship on the other side. He was only half way around when he spotted his three cogs.
The very three cogs he had told to dog the Ormurin in case it foundered, were still with him. Now they were moving fast towards the other Norman ship to rescue the Montreuil longship. The light ships had speed enough and maneuverability enough, even with only half the men on the oars, so that freed up more men to shoot arrows. That meant that twenty bowmen on each cog were loosing arrows at the back sides of the Norman warriors who were trying to board the Montreuil longship.
Unfortunately this meant that the cogs were now sitting ducks for the last Norman longship, which was now closing on them at a hell of a rate. Raynar changed his own course to intercept this next Norman ship in hopes of giving the cogs enough time to rescue the Montreuil longship. For the second time today he found himself speeding head on towards an enemy longship, with both ships rowing at full speed. He yelled to the men that they would use the same tactic as the first ship they had sunk. They would pass on the right and then turn sharply to ram the bastard mid gunnels.
The trouble was, no one told the Norman captain that. Instead of passing on the right as most ships did without thinking, this twerp changed course to pass on the left. The two ships collided bow to bow at a tremendous closing speed of perhaps twenty knots. Or rather, bow to ram. Everyone on both ships was knocked to the deck, and men were howling and screaming from shock and fear and their injuries.
And then came the one scream that every seaman fears more than any other. "We're sinking." Raynar got to his knees and looked forward. The oarsmen were trying to stand, trying to get in a position where any of them could row backwards. But that was not what caught his attention. As he watched the Norman ship was already sinking and she was taking them with her.
Now in a panic every able man grabbed an oar and backed for all they were worth. Men even ran forward to the bow and tried to use their oars as levers to push the two bows apart. The bows did not part, did not even budge. The ram was held fast into the sinking Norman. In his mind, Raynar calculated the angles. Even now it was too late. With both hulls levered on the ram, the ram was fixed in place by the full weight of both ships.
He looked around trying to calm his own panic. Luckily his crew were wearing Norse brynjas instead of mail, and those felted sheepskin vests could keep a man afloat for those crucial moments it took him to shed everything heavy from his body, like his weapons belts. If they had to hit the drink, at least they would make it back to the surface for that first life giving breath of air. Behind him he noticed that the three cogs had successfully rescued the Montreuil longship, and the men of the Montreuil were finishing off the Norman seamen and throwing them overboard.
He sucked up two lungs full of air, pushed two fingers into his mouth and blew the longest hardest whistle he had ever sounded in his life. The men around him realized what he was doing and they too began to whistle. The entire ship began to whistle. And then they saw their angel, the Anske, turning towards them, and saw the oars change speed from one up, to double, to triple. Now the other two cogs were turning towards them too. They would be saved.
* * * * *
From the rudder deck of the Anske, Raynar watched the stern of the Ormurin Langi slip beneath the waves. The crew had been taken off it onto the three cogs, which all together just had room enough for the seventy five extra men. They had drifted in place while the two longships sank, in case any heads bobbed up. There were none. None of the Normans had survived the weight of their mail.
"A more fitting death to the old bitch than ending her days as a stock barge," the tillerman said. "We're overloaded, so I'm going to swing around over to the other longships. The Ormurin crew can become the new crew of the prize longships."
Raynar didn't say anything. There were a dozen men aboard this ship that were equal to skippering it. Let them do so. He just stared at the bubbles that marked the watery grave of the two ships that had just fucked each other to death, literally. He said a quick prayer for the eighty drowned Norman warriors, who would never be found by the Valkyries and never sing their stories in Woden's great hall. At least drowning was painless and fast. Your lungs fill with water, there were a few moments of panic while your body complained, and then you went into a dreamlike sleep that you never woke from.
After the extra men were offloaded on the prize ships, with the skip
per of the Anske taking control of them, Raynar again became the captain of the Anske. While the two longships that had been grappled, sorted themselves, the Anske and the other two cogs followed their other longships towards the two fleets that were now fighting it out just to the north of them. Of the Norman escort, four had been sunk, and two captured. There were no walking wounded, and any with heavy wounds had been given the gentle death of the sea.
Now for the real work. There were at least sixty Norman ships ahead of them carrying the finest war horses of Normandy. If they could kill those horses, and steal or sink the carriers, then the Norman army would have precious few horses for ranging across England. That would slow the army to a walk, or even better, to the crawling pace of ox carts.
By the time they caught up to the two fleets, the battle was almost done. The small ships had kept to Raynar's rules. There had been no grappling or boarding or hacking with blades. They had let their arrows do the job from a safe distance. The enemy ships were lightly manned but heavily loaded with very skittish but powerful horses. Usually a few oil-and-rag fire arrows well place to hit a few of the horses had been enough to win the battle for each ship.
Of course the simple fire arrows were quickly put out by the crews, for no crew allowed a fire to burn, not when they were surrounded by water. What wasn't so easy to put out was the panic of the horses at the sight of fire. If you think a panicked, bucking, rearing, kicking, biting ton of horseflesh was a problem on dry land, just think about the problem of such a horse onboard a narrow ship. Every time an oarsman shipped his oar to douse a fire or to cinch down a horse, the ship slowed. Each time a man stood to do so, he was nailed by at least one arrow.
Most of the Norman ships resigned the battle as hopeless, for if they weren't killed by arrows, they would be killed by hoofs. Once the crews were secured, then the real work began. At first they tried using the mast boom to lift each horse, each panicked, bucking, kicking horse, up out of the hold and then swing the boom out over the waves and drop the horse into the drink.
They quickly gave up any plan of unloading live horses. It was safer and more humane to put an arrow through their brains first. The first few horses they had unloaded live, were still swimming their hearts out. It was pathetic. They would swim until exhausted, and only then find a peaceful end in a lung full of water. Once all the horses were dead, they physically hauled them one at a time over to the gunnels and then used back power to lift them and roll them over board.
By night fall they had gathered all the ships to raft them. They counted forty-eight captured, all now with prize crews aboard. There was no accurate count of how many foundered. Maybe twenty, maybe thirty. Once rafted - now in two floating harbours, the wounded were taken care off, the dead missed and mourned, and the healthy ate in silence to calm their stomachs and their nerves, and then slept like the dead.
The next day they dropped the Norman captains and crews unharmed but unarmed on a long beach near to the mouth of the Seine. Yes, unharmed, not even lamed, even though they were the enemy, for they were also seamen who had shared the risk of drowning with them during the battle. It took the fleet four days to get back to Montreuil-sur-Mer because the crews were spread across twice as many ships and the wind was against them.
It wasn't until the crews were feasting in the fortress of Montreuil, no expense spared, that the shock of the sea battle hit them. During the entire long row home, they had pushed the surging battle energy into the oars and sung about their great victory, but now, in this great hall, they all suddenly went quite quiet. They had survived.
At the head table with Raynar was the castellan, a man with a French title but just as well connected to Brugge as to Paris. "So Ray, you've done both Flanders and France a monumental service this week. You will be given estates by the dozen for it."
"What do you mean?" Raynar asked, not quite all there, as he too was feeling the shock of survival and with it an inner emptiness which had made him quite spacey and dreamy.
"Why you have saved both thrones from the Conqueror's largest ever army. You have marooned them in England. They are stranded away from Normandy, away from France, away from Flanders. It is a dream come true for King Philip. As soon as my couriers tell him of your victory, they will begin planning the invasion of Normandy. This is the end of the Conqueror on the continent. Who'd have guessed that you would sacrifice all of England just to get even with William the Bastard."
The words stung. They hit Raynar like an arrow through the chest. His own reasoning had been to take the ships and the horses away from the army that had just landed in England, so as to slow them down. Without ships or horses they must march on foot. Without them, the folk would not be surprised by fast raids, and would have time enough to flee and get away from them. Without the ships, the North Sea fleet remained unchallenged.
He had never thought of the other side of his strategy. An army of twenty thousand brutes now had nothing else to do but be blood thirsty parasites on the folk of England. He was glad he had finished his soup already, else he would have drowned himself in it.
"Oh, by the way," the castellan continued, blissfully unaware of the wounds his previous words had inflicted on his guest. "there is a warrant for your arrest in every port from here to Denmark."
"So are you arresting me," Raynar looked up, too crushed to react, and too upset to sense the humour in the man's words.
"Me, are you flipping jesting. Me arrest the most powerful admiral in two seas. Not flipping likely. Besides, Le Rechin only went along with the warrant to please Canute. As far as he is concerned, you walk on water." The castellan finally noticed the sorrow in Raynar's face. "Don't worry, Ray. By the time my messages are read in Brugge and Paris, the warrants will disappear as if they had never existed. I expect the first message back will be from Le Rechin asking for your help in capturing Rouen and the entire Seine valley. Think of the estates he will give you there."
The next day the fleet sailed north and west for the Wash. They left the Montreuil captains with four prize ships to fatten the purses of the crews. The new fleet of the Wash was now a naval power to be reckoned with, but somehow Raynar felt weak and alone and ashamed.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 19 - The great harrowing of England, Harvest 1085
"Another message has arrived," Judith called up the stairs. "Ray, are you there?"
"He is with Maud in the tower," one of her women told her from over beside the hearth.
Judith was so thankful that Raynar was home in Huntingdon. She always felt so confident when he was around. She hurried out the back door of her ever expanding manor, and up the man made motte to the tower. On the lookout deck she could see two figures, no three. Lucy must be with them. She reached to foot of the tower already short of breath, but did not rest. It was only four flights to the top.
While Raynar read his messages, Maud pointed out the ships masts that were working their way up the river from the sea. Judith was only half interested. She would rather have been watching Raynar's face.
"How does Cristina find out these things?" Raynar said softly. "Did you read this?"
"Yes. It makes perfectly good sense, I mean, if you were my uncle the King."
"But how did she find it out. She is a nun, all right, an abbess, and yes she lives close to Winchester, but still. These are military secrets. They must be." He read the message again. The invading Norman army has been split in two. Half is marching to Dover and then London, and from there will march along the coast of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. As they march they will garrison every fort and castle near to the coast, and to remove all succor from that coast. The other half of the army is marching to York and from there will garrison Durham and Lincoln and those garrisons will march south along the coasts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
He read it again and then he leaped down the tower steps two at a time and raced down the motte to the
manor and his maps. That is where Judith found him ten minutes later, leaned over a table which was covered in maps. To her man, maps were like Holy Scriptures. He saw things in them that others did not see. Visions of the past, visions of the now, visions of the future.
"How old is Cristina's message?" Judith asked. He ignored her. He was running a finger along a map and mumbling to himself. She repeated the question.
"Three days. The first carter she gave it to would have taken it directly to John in Winchester, who would have had it copied many times to send out on every highway to warn everyone. As soon as the first copy was made, her original would have been hurried to Wylie in London, where more copies would have been made to send out, while her original would have been hurried here."
"Your carters amaze me. They must be watching every main crossroad."
"No choice love. In '67 the kingdom was lost because no one knew what was going on. We won't make that mistake again." He moved sideways in his seat and sat her on his lap. "You can see their strategy on this sea chart. The coastal people would rather have Canute as their king than William. They will help Canute when his fleet lands. The Norman army, therefore, is going to harrow the entire eastern seaboard. While they are harrowing, it will be as if a black cloud is moving along the coast, turning everything green into charcoal, for what they don't need themselves, they will surely burn."
She sobbed, "But with the peace of the anarchy, the folk have been building homes and clearing fields and planting and settling and... and ... and all of that work, years of work .... is to be burned." She hugged him closer. "Can't we stop them?"
