The Hunters

by John Flanagan

  ‘Let’s remember,’ Hal said, after a short pause, ‘our main aim here is to recover the Andomal –’

  ‘Yours may be,’ Lydia interrupted grimly. ‘Mine is to put a dart through Zavac’s heart.’

  Jesper grinned. ‘Might be hard to find,’ he said. But Hal bowed in acquiescence to Lydia’s statement.

  ‘And we’ll certainly do nothing to prevent you attaining that goal,’ he said. ‘In fact, if you do it, we will be eternally grateful – and the sooner you do it, the better. Naturally, we’ll be using the Mangler.’ He indicated the massive crossbow set in the bow, concealed under its canvas cover. ‘So far as I know, Zavac will have little idea about it. After all, he never actually saw it in use.’

  ‘Won’t some of his men have told him?’ Lydia asked, frowning. But Hal shook his head.

  ‘Most of the men from the towers were killed or captured,’ he pointed out. ‘They were the ones who really saw what it could do.’

  ‘And the men at the beach gate,’ Stig reminded him. The beach gate had been the point where the Herons had assaulted the town of Limmat. But again, Hal shook his head.

  ‘They were scattered through the town. And even if any of them made it back to the Raven, they didn’t really see the full force of the Mangler.’ Stig nodded, thinking about it, and Hal continued.

  ‘So I’ll try to use the Mangler to disable the Raven.’ He saw the others frowning as they tried to understand how he might do this, so he explained further. ‘I’ll aim for vital points like the tiller, or the bulwarks where the main stays are set. If I can smash them, the support for the mast will be weakened and we may just bring it down.’

  ‘That would be a big help,’ Stefan said.

  Hal nodded at him. ‘And of course, I’ll also be using the Mangler to try to reduce the numbers against us.’ He looked at Lydia. ‘I hope you’ll be doing the same thing.’

  ‘Count on it.’

  ‘Ingvar, how’s your side?’ Hal asked. The big boy, with his massive strength, was essential to the employment of the Mangler. Ingvar felt his side, then nodded.

  ‘It’s fine. A little sore still, but I can put up with that.’

  ‘Good. Because I have another task for you. Once we’ve damaged the Raven, and hopefully dismasted her, we’re going to have to board her.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Ulf asked.

  Hal smiled at him. ‘Not at all.’

  It was an indication of how seriously they were all taking this matter that Wulf made no disparaging comment about his brother’s question.

  Hal went on. ‘But if we’re going to get the Andomal back, we have to board her.’

  ‘Zavac has fifty men,’ Stig pointed out mildly. ‘You don’t think we’re biting off more than we can chew, do you?’

  Hal shook his head. ‘We’ve always known they outnumber us. But think about it. We’re all in the habit of saying Zavac has fifty men. But he lost some of them at Limmat – maybe ten or a dozen, who knows? And after the other night, he’s short another eight. The men who attacked us are either dead, in the hospital or in Mihaly’s jail. So his numbers are dropping.’

  ‘Still more than us, of course.’ That was Stefan.

  Hal acknowledged the comment. ‘True. And that will work for us. They won’t expect us to board them.’

  He paused, looking round the faces of his crew, and saw that they appreciated his point. A ship with a crew of forty or so would never expect a crew of eight or nine to attempt to board them. And the boarding party would be led by Thorn and Stig, a terrifying combination.

  ‘I’ll bring us in from astern. We’ll grapple them and board over their stern quarter. Thorn, you and Stig will lead the way, with Ulf and Wulf backing you.’

  ‘Make that Wulf and Ulf,’ said one of the twins, presumably Wulf.

  Hal smiled at him. ‘Since none of us can tell one of you from the other,’ he said, ‘you can make it any way you like.’

  ‘Ulf and Wulf then,’ said Ulf. Or perhaps it was Wulf. Hal wouldn’t put it past them to swap identities at a time like this, just for the sake of confusing their shipmates.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said firmly, closing the discussion as he saw Wulf, or Ulf, gathering breath to reply.

  ‘All right. The rest of you will follow behind. Form a wedge and drive the pirates back.’ He glanced at Thorn. In matters relating to battle, he was happy to defer to the old sea wolf. ‘How does that sound to you?’ he asked.

  Thorn nodded slowly. ‘No problem there,’ he said. ‘It’s always easier when you’re in confined quarters, like a ship’s deck. Their numbers can become a disadvantage. They tend to get in one another’s way.’

  ‘What about me, Hal?’ Lydia asked quietly.

  ‘You know your greatest value is to fight from a distance,’ Hal told her. ‘If you stay back, you can pick off any of the Magyarans who start to look dangerous. You’ll be more use to us that way than trying to join in the general melee on the Raven’s deck.’

  She nodded, appreciating the fact. Her uncanny accuracy with the atlatl could be a crucial factor in their victory. Besides, with Thorn and Stig swinging axes, supported by the twins, there would be little chance for her to use her dirk against the pirates.

  ‘Am I in the boarding party, Hal?’ Ingvar asked. He sounded a little wistful. He knew that his poor eyesight usually dictated against his taking part in a fight like this. He was liable to hit the wrong person at the wrong time. Hal surprised him by nodding.

  ‘You are indeed, Ingvar. Once the others have the pirates engaged, I want you to sink their ship.’

  A few heads snapped up at that. But Ingvar was beginning to grin.

  ‘Get hold of the heaviest axe or hammer you can find,’ Hal continued, ‘and once you’re aboard the Raven, start bashing holes in her. Smash the planks. Smash the central watertight compartment. Smash anything you can see.’

  ‘I don’t see too well, remember,’ Ingvar pointed out and Hal acknowledged the point.

  ‘Smash anything you can reach, then. Smash bulwarks, rowing benches, the ship’s bottom. Smash it all. Destroy it.’

  ‘And while all this is going on, I assume you’ll be going after the Andomal,’ Thorn said.

  Hal nodded. ‘We know where it is. That’s why I want to board her from the stern. If you can drive them forward and keep them off me, I’ll make for Zavac’s sleeping berth and get hold of it. Lydia, I’ll rely on you to take care of any pirates who slip past Stig and Thorn.’

  Lydia nodded, while Stig looked affronted and Thorn snorted disdainfully.

  ‘That won’t keep you very busy,’ Thorn said.

  Hal sat back, looking at the ring of determined faces that surrounded him. This was what they had come all this way for, he thought. This was why they had pursued Zavac for the entire length of the Stormwhite Sea. This was why they had destroyed the watch towers and stormed the beach gate at Limmat. This was why they had faced the terror of the Wildwater Rift. This was their chance to regain their former lives. Their dignity. Their pride.

  He felt he should make some resounding statement along those lines – something that would spur them on and lift their spirits so that they were ready for this final challenge.

  But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything.

  The night before the battle, sleep eluded Hal for hours. He tossed and turned in his blankets, listening to the stray sounds of the harbour around him – the lapping of water against the hull, the squeak of the fenders as the small waves pushed the Heron against them, the occasional splash of a fish jumping and the cheerful, often drunken, voices of sailors heading back to their ships after an evening in the taverns close to the waterfront.

  In the small hours of the morning, most of the noises died away. Then, a few hours before daylight, he felt the ship stir and the halyards and the rigging mutter softly, and he sensed that the breeze was slowly building. He sighed with a sense of relief. He had worried that on this day, of all days, there might be no wind. At least tha
t concern was out of the way.

  Now all he had to do was work out how to fight forty pirates with a crew of nine. He went over his tactics for the hundredth time. Content that there was nothing he had missed, he rolled over and pulled the blankets up against the damp chill of early morning. At least now it was all coming to a head, he thought. One way or another, it would be over. They would either recover the Andomal or they would be dead.

  And with the strange sense of comfort that thought gave him, he finally managed to sleep.

  He woke at about the seventh hour, roused by the bustle on board Heron. Edvin was awake and lighting his small cook fire. He had dispatched the twins to a bakery a few streets away to bring back fresh bread. His pride didn’t allow him to serve the crew hard stale bread on such an important day.

  But Edvin had another surprise for the crew when they began to gather around his cook fire, sniffing the sizzling sausages and listening to the eggs sputtering in his huge cast iron pan. The previous afternoon, he had collected all the watch caps he had knitted for the crew. Now he handed them out once again. But each cap now had a small cloth badge sewn to its front – a figure of a heron with its wings spread in flight. It was the same design that was on their sail and the boys studied them with pleasure.

  ‘This makes us look like a real crew!’ Jesper said, delighted.

  Ingvar eyed him curiously. ‘We are a real crew,’ he pointed out.

  Jesper made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

  ‘Yeah. But this makes it sort of . . . official.’ He donned his cap and the others did the same. Hal grinned at them. It was good to have a kind of uniform, he thought. Edvin produced a final cap and handed it to Lydia.

  ‘I figure you’re part of the crew now too,’ he said simply. A wide smile lit up her normally grave face and she took the cap and donned it, looking round at the others for approval.

  ‘How do I look?’ she asked. It was Thorn who answered.

  ‘You look as if it fits,’ he said quietly, and the boys murmured their agreement.

  Lydia flushed with pleasure at Thorn’s statement. She shook her head. He could be so annoying at times, she thought. Then, just when you least expected it, he’d come out with something like that.

  Ulf and Wulf arrived back with several fresh, warm loaves of bread and Edvin busied himself serving breakfast. As they sat on the deck and ate, the twins announced a welcome piece of news.

  ‘By the way, we heard that Zavac’s lost ten more men,’ Wulf said.

  ‘Well, I heard it,’ Ulf said. ‘I repeated it to you.’

  ‘Which means I heard it, when you repeated it, doesn’t it?’ Wulf said. Before the usual wordy battle could begin, however, Hal intervened.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s lost ten more men? Lost them where?’

  Ulf shrugged. ‘Everyone was talking about it in the bakery,’ he said. Then Wulf interrupted, seeing that Hal and the others wanted to know what had happened, not where they were when they heard about it.

  ‘Seems that ten of his men said they weren’t going to fight us. They said they hadn’t signed on to fight warriors.’ He paused, smiling at his friends. ‘How about that? They think we’re warriors.’

  ‘We are warriors,’ Ulf said and his brother glared at him.

  ‘I know that. But it’s pleasing to see that others agree with –’

  ‘GET ON WITH IT!’ Hal shouted at them. ‘What happened when they told him they weren’t fighting?’

  The twins looked at each other, not sure who was going to answer. Finally one of them took the plunge, although Hal wasn’t sure which one it was. They had been moving about while they spoke and had changed positions several times.

  ‘Zavac told them they could get off his ship if they wouldn’t fight. So they did,’ Ulf or Wulf replied. Hal shook his head in wonder, then smiled at Thorn.

  ‘So the odds are improving all the time,’ he said.

  Thorn nodded. ‘Yes. Now we’re only outnumbered by three to one.’

  Stig grinned widely. ‘That’s nearly a fair fight.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Hal said, ‘I’ve been thinking how we should approach this battle.’

  The crew gathered more closely around him, their faces serious now.

  ‘My guess is, Zavac will want to fight the way he always does. His tactics will be to ram, or to grapple us and board us. He’ll want to fight at close quarters.’ He glanced up at Thorn. ‘Is that how you see it, Thorn?’ Thorn was their battle leader and Hal would welcome his contribution.

  The old sea wolf nodded. ‘I can’t see why they’d plan to change. That’s the way ships have always fought. Up until now, the ship has been no more than a method for bringing the warriors into combat. You’re the first one I know who’s thought of having a weapon as an integral part of the ship,’ he said.

  Hal was glad that the experienced warrior agreed with him. ‘That means our best bet is to stand off at a distance and batter him with the Mangler. And with Lydia’s darts,’ he added, glancing at the girl.

  ‘It’s a new style of fighting,’ Hal continued. ‘And I doubt that Zavac will be ready for it, so it should come as a surprise to him.’

  ‘An unpleasant one,’ Jesper said, grinning. Some of the others chuckled quietly in response but Hal remained serious.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ he told Jesper. ‘But our best bet will be to use Heron’s speed and mobility. Zavac hasn’t seen them so far, either. We had that one encounter off Limmat harbour when he got away. But that will hardly have told him anything.’

  He looked now at the twins, and at Stefan and Jesper. ‘That means that sail handling and trimming are going to be vital. We can’t afford mistakes. We’ll have to get in close – although not as close as Zavac will want us – and then get out again. So you four have to be on your toes.’

  They all nodded, serious now, and he turned his gaze on Ulf and Wulf.

  ‘And that means no arguing. Is that clear?’

  Ulf and Wulf exchanged a quick glance. Then they both said in unison, ‘You can count on us, Hal.’

  Hal felt a momentary surprise that they had come up with exactly the same words at exactly the same time. He noted it away. Twins, he thought. There was a lot more to them than people ever realised.

  ‘Will we be using fire bolts?’ Ingvar asked. In the attack on Limmat, they had used fire bolts – bolts from the Mangler with their heads wrapped in oil-soaked rags and set on fire – to great effect.

  But Hal shook his head. ‘I thought about that. But we’ll be twisting and turning and heeling all the time. The decks will be unsteady and I don’t want an open fire on board. Besides, if we make a mistake and Zavac gets alongside us, we could be in big trouble. At Limmat there was no other ship near us. But here, it’s just too big a risk.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Thorn said. Like most experienced sailors, the idea of a source of fire on board ship was a terrifying prospect.

  ‘We’ve got visitors,’ Stig said, looking down the jetty.

  The others followed his gaze. There were three soldiers approaching, wearing the purple and green livery of the Korpal. One marched ahead of the others. His armour and equipment marked him as an officer. He paused as he came level with the Heron, looking down on her decks from the jetty.

  ‘Are you the Skandian crew?’ he asked, although it was obvious that they were. Hal stood and walked to the rail. The jetty was a metre or so higher than the ship’s bulwarks, so he had to look up at the officer.

  ‘We are,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come on board?’

  The officer shook his head. He looked distastefully at the little ship. He didn’t like walking on anything that seemed to move of its own accord and he could see the decks slowly rising and falling with the small waves of the harbour.

  ‘No need for that. I’m here to tell you the conditions for this duel of yours. Then I’ll be on my way.’

  Hal made a gesture indicating that the man should continue. ‘Let’s hear it t
hen,’ he said. The captain reached inside his tunic and produced a sheet of paper. He consulted it for several seconds, then spoke.

  ‘The wind is from the north-east,’ he said. ‘Korpaljo Mihaly has had a square fighting area marked with buoys outside the harbour, in the bay. Both ships will begin with the wind on their beams.’ He frowned. He was a landsman and he had no idea what that meant. But he noticed that the young Skandian was nodding so he assumed he had got it right.

  ‘The Korpaljo drew straws for positions. Your ship will start from the western side of the square. The Magyarans will begin from the east. You’ll be escorted out of the harbour by one of our longboats, and another will be anchored at the spot where you’ll begin. All told, four longboats will monitor the battle.’

  And what do they plan to do, Thorn thought sarcastically. The longboats could indicate the starting positions for the two ships. But once the battle began, they could have little effect. However, if it gave Mihaly a false sense of being in control, that was no problem to him.

  ‘The longboat will arrive to escort you out of harbour at the ninth hour,’ the officer said. There was a final note to his voice that indicated he had said everything he had to say. ‘Any questions?’

  Hal shrugged. ‘It all sounds clear to me.’ He turned to Thorn. ‘Thorn? How about you?’

  Thorn grimaced. ‘No. It’s all pretty straightforward.’

  Hal turned back to the officer. ‘No questions,’ he said and the man folded the sheet and replaced it inside his tunic. He called a curt order to his two escorts, who came to attention. But he was stopped by Jesper.

  ‘I’ve got a question,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to wish us good luck?’

  The man stiffened at the mocking tone in Jesper’s voice. ‘I’ve got ten korona wagered on the Magyarans. They’re favoured three to one to win,’ he said. Then he turned and marched away, followed by his men.

  Jesper turned to his friends and pouted. ‘Well, that’s hardly encouraging.’