The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) (24 page)

Our archers had been watching me, arrows ready on their bows, waiting for my next command. When they saw the arrow pass over me, Asbjorn and Hallbjorn rose up and launched quick shots toward the warriors in the pirate ship's bow, then dropped back down into cover.

The fourth pirate ship was picking up speed and drawing near. She was a small ship, with only ten pairs of oars. In her bow, I could see two men standing holding coiled ropes and grappling irons.

We were trapped unless we could kill the pirate archer.

Beside me, Tore had pulled the arrow out of his hip, and was now holding a wad of cloth he'd cut from the bottom of his tunic against the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood from it. "Very soon now, this is going to be a bad place for us to be," he said, through gritted teeth.

My shield was lying nearby, where I'd laid it beside my spear. I picked it up and slid it down the deck to Hallbjorn.

"I need you to draw the enemy's fire," I told him. "At my signal, stand up with your bow visible in your left hand, as if you are looking for a target in the front of the pirate ship. But hold my shield in your right, out of sight below the rail, and be ready to swing it up to cover yourself. Be careful—he will shoot very quickly. As soon as you see him release, shout ‘now' so we will know."

Turning to Asbjorn and Gudfred, I told them, "You two and Einar must be ready, and when Hallbjorn tells us the enemy has shot, rise up and launch your arrows at his shield bearer. Kill him, or at least make him protect himself. I will rise with you, and hope for a shot at the archer."

Behind us, I heard a
thunk, thunk
, as the two grappling hooks landed on our deck.

"Look," Einar said. "It is Hrodgar. He is coming to help us."

But there was no time to look. I nodded to Hallbjorn. "Go!" I cried.

He stood, and a moment later, began to swing the shield up. "Now!" he shouted.

The four of us—Gudfred, Asbjorn, Einar, and I—rose up from behind the rail, drawing our bows back as we did. The thumb on my right hand brushed against the side of my jaw and touched the bottom my ear as I reached full draw. On the pirate chieftain's ship, the shield bearer was beginning to step forward as the archer stood staring out across his bow, watching his arrow's flight.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a flash as the enemy's arrow streaked over our ship's side and smacked into the shield Hallbjorn was holding. At the same time, I heard two
twang
s off to my side as Asbjorn and Gudfred released their arrows. A moment later Einar released his. I forced myself to focus my gaze on the archer, to focus my aim on where I knew his chest was, even though it was now hidden behind the shield.

The three arrows arced across the water and struck. One hit the shield low, near its bottom rim, and the second skimmed below it, grazing the shield bearer's thigh. The third arrow—Einar's—clanged into his helm and glanced off. Startled, the man staggered back a step and swung his shield up to cover his face. As he did, I opened the curled fingers of my right hand, releasing the bowstring and my arrow.

My arrow's flight, arcing across the water between the two ships, seemed to take forever. I feared the enemy archer would realize his danger and duck behind the mast. But he turned to glance at his comrade, perhaps to see if he had been wounded. It was just long enough. My arrow struck, and he went down.

I drew another arrow from my quiver, glancing back at the danger behind us as I did. Warriors from the fourth pirate ship were already boarding us, but as Einar had said, Hrodgar had brought our men from the
Gull
's stern to defend against them. Men were stabbing and hacking at each other in a confused, swirling melee along the ship's side where the two pirate ships were grappled and lashed together, and several were already down, their bodies on the deck beneath the feet of those fighting.

A third time, Hastein sounded the signal on his horn.

Turning back to our archers, I pointed toward the bow of the pirate chieftain's ship. It did not look as though any of the warriors from the
Gull
had yet managed to beat back the defenders and board. "Rise up!" I cried, "Jarl Hastein needs us to support his attack."

They stood and readied arrows on their bows. Gudfred began to draw.

"No," I said. "We will all draw and shoot as one, on my command. We will rain our arrows upon them in volleys, like death falling from the sky.

"Draw!" I ordered. "Choose your targets. Loose! Draw…Loose! Draw…Loose!"

Five times we launched our arrows as one. The fore-deck and bow area of a longship is not so large a place. Fifty arrows, raining down among men crowded tightly into such a space are a fearsome thing to experience.

After our fourth volley, I saw Torvald rise behind the front rank of warriors in the bow of the
Gull
, holding a barrel up over his head in both hands. He heaved it onto the enemy warriors crowded on the fore-deck of the pirate ship, crushing several beneath it and scattering the rest, just as our fifth volley landed among them. Warriors from the
Gull
and
Serpent
scrambled over the bow rails of their ships onto the pirate ship's bow and fell upon the suddenly disarrayed defenders there, stabbing and hacking.

We could no longer shoot without endangering our own men. Dropping my bow and quiver upon the deck, I retrieved my shield and spear and turned to face the growing danger upon the ship we were on.

On the edge of the fight, I spotted Bram, the young man from the village, backing away from a pirate who was swinging his sword back and forth with rapid cross strokes, each one chopping a piece out of the top edge of Bram's raised shield. I ran toward them and as I drew near, hurled my spear. I missed—in truth, I have little skill throwing a spear—but when the spear flashed past him the pirate looked to see who had thrown it and saw me running toward him, drawing my sword as I came.

He swung a final slashing cut at Bram then turned to face me. I raised my shield and drew back my sword to strike, but when I tried to slow my speed and plant my feet, they landed in a large pool of blood and slipped out from under me.

I landed hard, flat on my back. As the pirate lunged forward and chopped down at me, I frantically swung my shield across my body to cover it and blocked his blade. Behind him, Bram moved forward and stabbed his spear at the pirate's back. Snarling, he spun around, swatting at the spear shaft with his blade and knocking it aside. As he did, I rose up into a sitting position and swung my sword from right to left in a slashing cut that hit the pirate's back leg just below the knee. My blow did not have enough force to cut through the bone, but the wound caused the pirate to topple sideways onto the deck. I crawled onto his chest and stabbed my blade into his throat.

As I was rising to my feet, someone—I did not see who—struck a blow that rang hard against my helm and momentarily stunned me, dropping me down onto my hands and knees. As my senses cleared, I realized I was straddling a body. It was Hrodgar. There was an arrow in his back—it must have been one of the last ones shot by the archer on the pirate chieftain's ship—and his neck had a gaping wound that had almost severed his head from his body. His eyes were open, and his once-white beard was now stained red. His body was surrounded by a large, spreading pool of blood—the blood that I had slipped in.

I felt a wave of rage wash over me. In truth, I do not know exactly what happened after that. The next thing I knew, I was in the stern of the fourth pirate ship, standing over a man's body, swinging my sword down into it, over and over.

Someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned on him, raising my sword to strike, but another man reached from my other side and grabbed my sword arm.

The first man spoke. It was Gudfred. "It is enough. He is dead," he said.

The man holding my sword arm was Einar. "They are all dead," he told me. "We have cleared the ship. It is ours."

Though the tide had turned in our favor, the battle was far from won. We had cleared two of the pirates' ships, and aboard the ship of their chieftain our warriors, led by Hastein and Torvald, had pushed its defenders down the length of the hull as far as the mast.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of the red killing rage that seemed to have clouded it, and looked around me. The bodies of fallen warriors were strewn along the pirate ship's deck from its bow to its stern. We had driven them off the ship we had been on and had followed them onto theirs, fighting a running battle back to the stern, where the last of them had died. I had no recollection of any of it. It troubled me.

Our warriors—the ten remaining archers, all of whom had survived the fight, plus another ten or so men from the crews of the
Gull
and
Serpent
who had come across with Hrodgar—stood gathered around in the stern, staring at me, watching me, as if awaiting orders.

"How many men did we lose?" I asked.

Gudfred answered. "Four dead. Skuli and Kari from the village, old Hrodgar from the Limfjord, and one of our own men—Grimar. All fell during the first of the fighting, on the other ship. We lost none after we pushed them back onto this one."

For a moment my mind struggled to understand what Gudfred had meant when he'd called the man Grimar one of "our "men. They were all our men, all from the crew of the
Gull
. Then I recognized the name, and realized that Grimar had been one of my father's and brother's men, one of the housecarls from the estate.

"We should go," Einar murmured quietly, so the others could not hear.

He was right. The fight was not over. "Archers," I said. "Retrieve your bows. The rest of you, come with us. There are enemies yet to kill."

We trotted the length of the cleared pirate ship back to its bow and climbed over the rail onto the deck of the first ship we'd captured, the one which was now lashed tight against the hull of the
Gull
. I stopped when I reached Hrodgar's body, where it lay in the pool of his own blood. Einar came up behind me.

"He was a good man. I shall miss him," he said, then added, "It was here that we broke them. It was you that did so, you know."

I looked at him and frowned. Gudfred paused beside us and nodded his head. "Aye," he agreed. "It is true."

"From across the ship I saw you down on your hands and knees on the deck, here by Hrodgar's body," Einar continued. "I thought you were wounded, and was running to help you, for two pirates were closing in. But suddenly you were up on your feet, and had stuck the blade of your sword through the neck of that one." He pointed to the nearby body of a warrior sprawled on his back, his throat ripped open. "Then, almost quicker than I could see, you whipped your blade sideways and cut clean through this other one's neck." He pointed at another body, this one headless. Einar grinned. "I think it was the sight of his head sailing through the air that unnerved the rest, for the pirates closest to you backed away as fast as they could, and they all broke when the rest of us pressed forward against them."

Gudfred turned his head to the side and spit upon the deck in disgust. "It is always a bad idea to turn and run," he said. "Many of their slain have their death-wounds in their backs. It is a poor way to die."

I stared at them blankly. Einar squinted and studied my face. "You do not remember it, do you?" He and Gudfred exchanged quick glances.

I did not answer. "We must not tarry here," I said, and trotted away to where I had left my bow and quiver. Tore was still there, leaning back against the side of the ship, his eyes closed. His breathing was so shallow that for a moment I feared he was dead. When he heard me approach he opened his eyes and looked around, seeming confused.

"How goes the battle?" he asked. He was very pale, and the leg of his trousers was soaked with blood.

"Help me lift him," I said, turning to Einar. "We must take him to the
Gull
, to Cullain. Perhaps he can stop the bleeding."

Tore groaned as Einar and I pulled him up and draped his arms across our shoulders. "Do not leave my bow," he panted.

Gudfred bent down and picked up Tore's and my bows and quivers. "I will bring these," he said.

"Get Storolf's quiver, too," I told him. "Divide his and Tore's arrows among the archers."

Aboard the
Gull
, the wounded who were strong enough to walk or crawl away from the fighting had gathered aft of the mast, and were seated or lying on the deck there. Cullain was moving among them, checking and binding their wounds. He was helping the archer from the
Serpent
who had been hit in the shoulder with an arrow remove his tunic when Einar and I arrived with Tore. He was no longer even trying to walk between us—his feet were dragging across the deck, the right one leaving a trail of blood behind it.

Seeing him, Cullain hurried over. "Where is he wounded?" he asked.

"In his hip. It was an arrow."

After we laid Tore on his back on the deck, I straightened up and took my bow and quiver from Gudfred. "We must go," I told Cullain, who was removing the makeshift bandage Tore had tried to staunch the bleeding with. The strips of cloth were so soaked that blood was dripping from them onto the deck. "Can you save him?"

"His life is in God's hands, but I will do what I can."

The battle was now being fought primarily on the wolf-headed longship of the pirate captain, Sigvald. Its bow was still wedged between and lashed to the bows of both the
Gull
and the
Serpent
, and the sounds of fighting—men shouting, cursing, sometimes screaming in pain, and the clash of weapons striking shields and helms—carried from it back onto the deck of the
Gull
, where I paused just forward of her mast to survey the scene. The front half of the
Gull
was completely deserted—all of her crew, save Cullain, the wounded, and the warriors who were with me, had boarded Sigvald's ship with Hastein.

Most of the
Serpent
's crew, including Stig, had also joined the boarding party, climbing from the right side of the
Serpent
's prow onto the pirate vessel, though a handful of men still manned the
Serpent
's fore-deck to guard it against attack from the pirates' other longship, which had grappled the left side of the
Serpent
's prow early in the battle and was still lashed bow to bow with her. The pirates aboard it had also grappled and tied their ship side by side with Sigvald's, and most of them had by now joined in the battle to repel Hastein and his men. Some had crossed over to Sigvald's ship to fight with his men, while others lined their own ship's side and launched missile fire at Hastein's flank. Seeing that most of the
Serpent
's warriors had boarded Sigvald's ship, the pirates had left only a few men on their ship's fore-deck to guard against any attempt to board from the
Serpent
.