The Hunters

by John Flanagan

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Thorn asked. Hal licked his lips, studying the Raven once more, judging her speed and the time he had left before she reached them. He checked the telltale. The wind was still coming from their right, or starboard, side.

  ‘I’m going to fake a turn to the left,’ he said, ‘and make him think we’re wearing the ship round.’

  ‘Why should he think that?’ Thorn asked, frowning.

  ‘Because it’s what he’d do. It’s what he’s used to. It’s what everybody does. With any luck, he’ll turn after us.’

  Wearing the ship meant turning with the stern of the ship to the wind, so that the wind blew from behind throughout the turn and powered the ship through it. It was the preferred method for turning a square-rigged ship. No right-minded skipper would turn a square sail up into the wind. The pressure on the sail, rigging and mast would be enormous. At best, the ship would be brought to a stop in the water. At worst, she could be dismasted.

  But the Heron, with her fore and aft sail and its rigid leading edge, could turn easily into and across the wind. Hal was banking on the fact that, in the heat of the moment, Zavac wouldn’t realise that.

  ‘He won’t be expecting us to turn up into the wind,’ he said. ‘We’ll catch him napping.’

  I hope, he added grimly to himself.

  ‘Get your weapons ready,’ he said. He saw Lydia, crouched ready in the bow, steadying herself with one hand on the forestay. He called to her and she turned, a question on her face.

  ‘We’ll be passing close to him on the starboard side,’ he told her. ‘Do whatever damage you can.’

  She nodded and checked the darts in her quiver. She still had nine left. Hal was going to call to Jesper and Stefan and the twins, to tell them to stand ready for fast sail handling. Then he shrugged the idea away. They were ready, he knew. He could see all of them, tensed at their stations, eyes on the black ship coming up fast astern.

  She was getting close. Foam was flying from the water as her oars beat at it. The evil-looking ram loomed closer and closer to his ship.

  He edged the tiller over and Heron began to swing to port. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the Raven hesitate for a second, then she began to swing as well, aiming to cut inside Heron’s turn.

  Now, he thought.

  ‘Going about to starboard!’ he yelled and heaved the tiller hard over. Heron swung smoothly back in the opposite direction. Jesper and Stefan released the port sail and yardarm, letting them slide down the mast. They had linked the sails via a pulley, so as the port sail came down, it helped the starboard sail swoop up the mast.

  Heron turned sweetly across the wind, swinging through the turn so that she was now on the opposite tack and heading back towards Raven.

  It all happened so quickly that Zavac was caught by surprise. He might have matched the Heron’s turn if he had ordered one bank of oars to reverse and the other to go forward but that would have cost him speed, stopping the Raven almost dead in the water. In the event, he didn’t have time to issue the necessary chain of orders, and he reacted instinctively, simply heaving on the tiller so that the Raven began swinging to the right, following the smaller ship.

  Now they were heading for each other on parallel courses. He tried to swing his bow up towards the Heron to ram her, but she easily moved away and stayed on a parallel course. A dart from Lydia’s atlatl sent one of the men in the bow of the Raven staggering back. The others crouched below the bulwark. The two ships were going to pass each other with about ten metres separating them.

  Until, at the very last moment, Hal twitched the tiller, turning the Heron’s bow in towards the pirate ship, angling in at the hull a few metres behind the bow.

  ‘Hang on!’ he yelled to his own crew. Then he straightened her out, so that the Heron was running alongside the other ship, parallel once more, but now with only a few metres’ separation. It was so unexpected that the Raven’s oarsmen had no time to react. Heron’s sharp prow sliced like a giant blade along the starboard bank of oars, smashing and splintering them as she went, hurling the oarsmen off their benches as the butt ends of the oars jerked forward and smashed into them.

  The air was filled with the shouts of injured men and the grinding, smashing sound of the oars as they flew into splinters.

  Then the Heron was clear, turning away from the Magyaran ship and swinging up into the wind once more.

  Raven was in a shambles. With most of her starboard side oars smashed and useless, she drifted helplessly. Gradually, her men picked themselves up, although four of them remained where they had fallen, two nursing broken limbs caused by the flailing butt ends of the oars as Heron smashed into them. The other two lay unconscious.

  A crewman, regaining his feet groggily and shaking his head to clear it, glanced up and stared in horror. The enemy ship had tacked in a circle once more and was bearing down on them, this time from astern. Poised in her bow he could see the two warriors who had led her defence a few minutes earlier – a burly, shaggy-haired older man and a broad-shouldered young fighter, armed with a battleaxe.

  ‘Look out! They’re coming back!’ he yelled, a fraction of a second before the Heron’s bow, the strongest section of her hull, smashed into the corresponding weakest point of her enemy, the planks of the Raven’s side.

  There was another grinding crash as the two ships came together and three of the Raven’s planks were stove in. The impact threw her still-recovering crew from their feet again.

  Then Stig and Thorn were upon them, yelling and screaming war cries, cutting down any who tried to resist them, smashing their way into the confused and disoriented pirate crew. Behind them, Ulf and Wulf added their battle cries to the general noise and the air hummed with the deadly whir of their axes as they swung them in giant, horizontal arcs, smashing through shields and hurling enemies aside like rag dolls.

  Stefan, Edvin and Jesper paused briefly to lash the two ships together, then they leapt across the bulwarks and onto the Raven’s deck, adding their numbers to the sudden assault. Lydia watched for a few seconds, seeing the boarding party driving the Raven’s crew across the deck and forward. Then she gestured to Ingvar, standing ready with a huge axe.

  ‘Come on, Ingvar!’ she said. She took his hand and steadied him as he stepped clumsily onto the other ship. He took a quick look around, gathered himself, and began smashing the axe into the hull. Seawater poured in around his feet and he switched his attention to the watertight central section of the deck that served to keep the ship afloat if she was swamped. A few solid blows of the axe smashed it wide open. If the Raven filled now, she would sink. Satisfied that he had his task well in hand, Lydia stepped back onto the Heron’s upward curving bow and searched for a target among the enemy. The deadly flick-hiss! of the atlatl began once more, and Magyarans began to fall.

  A Magyaran deflected Ulf’s axe with his shield, then scored a cut across the Skandian’s forearm with his sword. Ulf recoiled, looking at the shallow wound angrily. Before he could counterattack, Wulf hurled himself at the swordsman in fury, axe swinging. Again, the Magyaran deflected the blow and his sword flickered out, catching Wulf in the same spot. Blood welled out and the twins glared at the man in rage. Then he went down as Thorn swung a backhanded stroke across his head, shearing through the helmet.

  ‘Will you two stop playing around?’ he demanded roughly and the twins returned to the fight, blood streaming from their wounds.

  Astern on the Heron, Hal waited till the boarding party had driven the Magyaran crew back. Then he stepped up onto the rail and leapt across to the other ship, narrowly avoiding the rampaging Ingvar, who was now going about his task with a vengeance.

  ‘Watch out, Ingvar!’ he shouted, ducking as the huge axe whistled past him on its backswing.

  ‘Sorry, Hal,’ Ingvar mumbled. He’d discovered that the black watch caps worn by the Herons were a useful recognition aid. He could make them out relatively easily and that stopped him from attacking his own side. But that didn’
t help if someone was behind him, as Hal was.

  Hal shook his head and ran towards the stern, crossing the deck and searching for the hatch that led to Zavac’s private quarters. He slid it open and slipped inside. There wasn’t enough headroom to stand erect here. The space was barely a metre and a half high. He noted that water was already ankle deep in the confined space, and the level was rising by the minute. Ingvar’s handiwork, he thought.

  He crawled aft, scrambling over Zavac’s bedroll, trying to remember what Mihaly’s officer had said about the sleeping space. The emeralds had been hidden behind a concealed sliding hatch and he had no time to look for that now. But the Andomal – the big yellow glass ball that the officer had described – had been in plain view. A bulwark ran down the centre of the space, and as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he could see that it was lined with square recessed shelves, angled so that the contents wouldn’t spill out when the ship rolled. He saw a small jewelbox and several items of clothing tucked into the first few. Then he peered into the third and his heart lurched. The angled recess held a large leather sack. He reached for it and withdrew it, undoing the drawstrings with trembling fingers.

  The rich, warm glow of the Andomal shone back at him, catching the meagre light below decks, seeming to have an inner glow of its own. He refastened the drawstring and looped it around his wrist. The water was several inches higher and he noticed that the ship was now listing heavily to starboard. Time to go, he thought, turning to retrace his steps out of the sleeping cabin.

  Then a figure slid through the low hatchway and into the compartment, a long dagger held between his teeth.

  Zavac.

  Zavac, staying well back behind his crew as the Skandians drove them inexorably towards the bow, had seen a flash of movement astern as Hal crossed the deck and dropped into the well where the rowing benches were situated.

  Instantly, he knew what the young Skandian was after. The Skandians had been present when Mihaly’s man described the spot where he’d found the emeralds. And he’d mentioned the ‘large yellow ball’ of glass as well.

  Zavac was seized with a sudden rage. The cursed young Skandian, and his shabby old one-armed friend, had checked him and foiled him at every turn. They had been instrumental in his defeat at Limmat. They had rescued the wolfship he had rammed outside Limmat harbour. They had caused him the loss of half of the emeralds he had stolen.

  And now they were destroying his ship. He had no doubts about that. The decks were heeling sharply as the giant member of the Heron’s crew went on a berserking rage, smashing through the hull and the watertight compartment with a massive axe. Raven would never recover from that.

  And now that cursed boy – he searched for the name, then found it – Hal, would recover the great treasure of the Skandians and return home in triumph.

  Zavac snarled in fury. He glanced around. The battle was going badly for his men. Some had even taken oars and spare pieces of timber, hurled them into the sea and dived after them, hoping to be picked up by the Raguzan longboats standing by. Dead and wounded men littered the decks – all of them from his crew. It was only a matter of minutes before the rest of them surrendered.

  A red rage flashed before his eyes. Looking around, he could see that the Skandians were fully occupied by the battle. He crept to the port side and dropped into the recess where the rowing benches were situated. Keeping low and out of sight, he slipped like a snake towards the stern. As he came level with the open hatch to his sleeping berth, he took a long dagger from his belt, placed it between his teeth, then crawled forward. With the dagger between his teeth, his mouth appeared to be set in an insane, enraged grin.

  ‘You!’ Hal cried as he recognised the Magyaran. Zavac reached up and took the dagger from his teeth. He smiled cruelly at the young man as Hal tried desperately to scrabble for his saxe. But the weapon was beneath him and he couldn’t reach it.

  Then Zavac hurled himself forward, the dagger plunging down at Hal’s throat as he landed full length on the younger man.

  Cramped and confined in the low, narrow space, Hal was trapped by Zavac’s weight on top of him. He clawed desperately for the other man’s knife hand and managed to catch his wrist. But the Andomal, tethered around his own wrist by the drawstring to its bag, swung awkwardly and hit him across the forehead. He was momentarily dazed and he felt the dagger skip closer to his throat as Zavac brought all his weight to bear behind it.

  He locked his free hand around the Magyaran’s wrist and managed to heave the knife a few centimetres away from his throat. But then Zavac placed his own left hand on the knife handle as well and began to bear down.

  Slowly, slowly, the knife point came closer. Hal struggled and heaved desperately. But Zavac was heavier and bigger than he was and, in this cramped space, weight and strength would tell. Hal realised that the water was deeper in the hull now and he could hear a dull rush from further forward – the sea pouring into the massive rents that Ingvar had smashed in the hull.

  If I don’t get out of here, I’ll drown, he thought. Then he giggled insanely as he realised that he’d be dead long before that could happen.

  Zavac’s face was only centimetres from his own. The man’s breath was hot on his cheeks. ‘Think it’s funny, do you?’ Zavac snarled. ‘You young swine. You’re dead!’

  And he suddenly thrust down with a convulsive heave, putting all his weight behind the knife. Hal just managed to twist his body to the side. The dagger scored a shallow cut across his neck and he felt the hot blood flowing from the cut.

  Strangely, he felt no pain. The dagger point buried itself in the planking and Zavac had to struggle to release it.

  Dimly, Hal heard voices shouting, heard Stig calling on the Heron’s crew to disengage and fall back. The ship beneath him lurched and the angle of the deck increased even further. It actually threw Zavac slightly clear of him and he wriggled away. But then Hal had to grab for Zavac’s knife hand again as the pirate wrenched the knife clear of the deck and attacked once more. Using both hands, Hal tried to twist the blade away from his throat – but with little success.

  Zavac heaved himself back on top of Hal and once more the deadly contest of strength began – Zavac putting all his weight behind the knife as he forced it down, Hal trying with all his strength to stop it.

  But this time, he realised dully, he wouldn’t manage it. This time, Zavac would force the dagger slowly through his throat. He summoned all his strength into one last, supreme effort to force it back. He heaved upwards desperately. But it was useless. The dagger didn’t budge. Then it began to descend. He could hear Zavac snarling with the effort, feel his breath, and he knew that this was the end. He had nothing more to give.

  I don’t want to die here in the dark, he thought. Somehow, it might be more bearable if he could see the sun.

  Then something peculiar filled his vision. A piece of polished wood shaped like a double-sided hook came into sight. It looked familiar somehow. The two halves opened like a claw, then closed again over Zavac’s knife hand. The Magyaran looked up in surprise, his weight momentarily coming off the knife and giving Hal a brief respite. Then Thorn’s bearded face appeared over Zavac’s shoulder and he seized the adjusting thong on his false hand and jerked it tight around the Magyaran’s wrist.

  ‘How lovely to see you again,’ Thorn said.

  Then he pulled the hook tighter. Then tighter. Then tighter still.

  Zavac screamed in agony as the two-piece clasping hook clamped down on his forearm like a vice. Hal actually heard several small bones cracking as Thorn increased the pressure. Then the dagger fell from Zavac’s hand and splashed into the water filling the compartment. The Magyaran threw his head back and screamed in pain.

  As he did so, Thorn jerked him sideways, freeing Hal from his constricting weight.

  ‘Get out of here, Hal,’ he said and Hal scrabbled awkwardly on his back past the two of them, forcing his way past in the narrow space, backing out of the hatch into the ro
wing well. He was startled to see that a good two-thirds of the Raven was now below the surface, with only the stern still afloat – and that listing heavily to starboard.

  He staggered to his feet. The decks were empty. Zavac’s men had either abandoned the ship or were dead or wounded. His own crew were back aboard the Heron, shouting for him to join them. He leaned against the butt of an oar, trying to get his breath. Then he saw Stig leap back aboard and sprint towards him. His friend grabbed him under his arms and hoisted him up onto the main deck. Hal tried to turn back.

  ‘Thorn’s in there!’ he said.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Stig replied, and half-carried, half-dragged him to where the Heron was still lashed alongside, and willing hands were ready to lift him aboard. The Andomal, in its leather sack, bumped awkwardly against his side.

  ‘Thorn!’ he shouted desperately, feeling the Raven give one more lurch.

  Below decks, Thorn smiled into Zavac’s contorted, furious face. His hand was busy with the strap that held his false arm in place.

  ‘Try to knife my boy, would you?’ he said in a conversational tone. He slipped his right arm free of the socket that held the false hand in place. The wooden hook was still clamped firmly at right angles across Zavac’s wrist and the Magyaran writhed in agony. Thorn looked around, saw a V-shaped frame on the inside of the hull. He seized Zavac’s wrist with his left hand, twisting it so that he could pass Zavac’s forearm, and the attached hook, through the narrow V. Then he twisted it back again so that the wooden hand was firmly jammed between the frames, trapping Zavac by the arm.

  ‘A good captain always goes down with his ship. It’s time for you to start being a good captain,’ Thorn told him. Then he backed out of the cabin, crouching on his knees, and ran across the sloping deck to the Heron.