“Why not the crow’s nest on the foremast?”
“Pitches too much, sir. What I gain in range I lose in accuracy.”
“Hummph. Fair enough, off with you now. Brian, who’s in the nest?”
“Nils, sir. Best eyes on the ship, has seen longships before.”
Spakka
T
he afternoon dragged on. The crew went about their business cheerfully, not thinking of an enemy - all they had seen was a smoke. The Captain fretted and marched about the deck impatiently, his forehead deeply creased. The day was crisp and clear, the sun warm on their backs and the breeze steady, the sea a rolling swell without a breaking wave. The dolphins played in the bow, every now and again setting off a delighted squeal when Mot went to talk to them.
The sun was still high when Pat came running back from the front, calling loudly, “To arms! To arms! Stand to! The enemy is upon us!”
As he came closer, he shouted up to the Captain as the crew boiled out onto the deck. “Sir! They have a deception spell. The longships are obscured. You can spot them by the seabirds following the ships, everything else is obscured. Get the priest on it. Nearest ship will be in my range in about ten minutes.” He turned and ran back to the foredeck, while everyone turned to look for birds.
Sure enough, they could pick out no ships, but here and there were tiny flocks of birds, all either coming straight at the ship or on a converging course. Looking in front of them, the air was sort of squiggly, almost like a haze, very faint.
Perryn arrived on the poop, and started staring. ‘His’ crossbowman rapidly joined him. “A ship there, another there and a third there Mage,” he said, pointing. “Can you trace the threads of power back to source?”
“What?” Perryn said, who did not have a clue what to do to break the spell.
“If you can follow the threads of the spells back to the Mage, you can direct my quarrel down it and give him a shock. Might even skewer him, but should blow out the illusion.”
“Ah, yes, give me a moment.” He concentrated on the nearest ship, and opened his mind to the spell, feeling it, absorbing it, knowing it. He saw with clarity how the spell was wrought, and saw the thread of power running back over the horizon, combining with other threads of power from the other longships.
“Yes! Give me a moment and I will be ready.” The crossbow man started to wind up his crossbow.
On the foredeck, Pat put up his bow, pulled it back so his shoulders bulged, and casually released one of his heavy arrows, right down the wind. The crew watched as it sailed high up to catch the gusts, and travelled an impossibly long way to plunge into the closest mirage, a good three hundred paces away. As they watched, the mirage wavered, and cleared to reveal a longship, oars all over the place and men rushing around. The oars on one side caught in the water, and the longship swung broadside to them. A cheer came up from the crew.
“Well, I’d never of believed it,” breathed Brian, while the Captain nodding in equal astonishment. “He must have startled them and smashed a board on the side. Put the fear of God into them.”
“Now!” cried Perryn beside him, indicating a direction, and the crossbow man released a quarrel. “Damn, I missed it. I didn’t pick up the quarrel. Can you send another?”
“Give me a minute,” said the crossbow man, unperturbed, and already busily rewinding the heavy crossbow for the next shot. “Should be ready in a couple of minutes. Here, choose a quarrel from the bag and get to know it, drop it in the slot when you are ready. Better if I don’t touch it.”
Pat loosed another of his heavy arrows, with no result this time.
“Perryn reached over, selected a quarrel, noticing with pleased surprise that it had a flint tip not cold iron, closed his eyes and ran his fingers up and down the shaft, barely breathing. He wrapped his concentration around it, took his hands away and with his mind gently dropped it in the slot. The crossbow man raised the crossbow and released the quarrel without a word.
Perryn closed his eyes and used his inner sense to caress the quarrel and tweak it in the right direction. He felt it curve up and drop down on the thread of power, and slide down it away and over the horizon. He stood stock still, delicately balancing the quarrel and felt it increase speed and rush down. His eyes opened wide in shock, and he fell to his knees and vomited.
A murmur of surprise went up from all sides, as the illusion fell away and the longships were revealed, nine of them, all pulling for the Queen Rose, while Pat’s victim was getting itself together and would be under way again soon. The crossbow man knelt beside Perryn, looking worried.
“You alright, lad?”
Perryn looked at him bleakly. “I was riding with the quarrel when it hit. I felt it go straight into an eye and a skull explode. Dear God, I just killed a man. I felt his death. It was horrible.”
“Ah, lad, that’s it, is it? Well you wouldn’t be much of a man if you didn’t feel like that on your first kill, and I am sorry I didn’t warn you from riding the quarrel. Didn’t really know, actually. Mage I worked with couldn’t ride ‘em. That’s a good skill, lad. Now don’t worry about killing the man, yeah, it ain’t a good feeling, but you will get used to it. Just make sure you never lose the bad feeling ‘cos ordinary men don’t much like Mages who can kill easily. Just remember that killing that Mage gives us a better chance to win this battle. You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see. Bear up laddie.”
He looked at the Captain, who raised an eye, and he nodded.
The Captain stepped forward. “Fine job, Perryn. Well done. You look exhausted and I am not surprised but we can take it from here. Get him to his master, soldier.”
“Sir! Come on Perryn.” The crossbow man helped him up and splashed some water from a bucket over his face, the remainder washing the vomit into the scuppers. He got Perryn”s arm over his shoulder and started him towards the wardroom. The door opened and Walters took over, releasing the crossbow man to go back to his duty.
Lieutenant Mactravis was standing beside the Captain, and nodded when he came back.
“Good work Little. Looks like you’ve earned yourself another promotion. Think you can last a bit longer this time before you make us bust you?”
Little grinned. “Hey, boss, this trip is looking to be fun. It’s only when I get bored I make trouble. Have we got to stop all these little boats, or can we let a couple board so we can have some fun?”
Captain Larroche gasped and found himself speechless, but Mactravis answered. “We’ll stop them without boarding today, thank you Little. Plenty of time for fun when you’ve taught some of the crew how to fight. Go and join your squad and tell Sgt Russell to look after the second longship.”
“Sir!” Little turned and jumped down to the lower deck without bothering with the stairs.
Mactravis turned to the Captain and continued. “I think we can trust that cowboy to sort out the first longship, and I’ll get another squad on the third. That should leave you to run on down the wind, Captain. How long before we will be out of reach of them?”
The Captain looked at him. “Not sure that any others are able to get in range, Mactravis. You think you can stop them from getting closer? The ballistas are not too accurate for hitting longships.”
“Sure, Captain. Don’t worry about it. I will go and make sure the second squad is ready.” Lieutenant Mactravis did use the stairs.
Brian looked at the Captain. “Suddenly I am feeling a lot more secure, sir.”
“Indeed, his confidence is infectious.”
There was a peal of laughter from deck of the fo’c’sle, and they looked over to see Pat scowling at Linda and Terri who were laughing at him.
“Seems others are confident as well. Acting like it’s a damn tea party for their entertainment.”
“Don’t they know anything about the Spakka?”
“Maybe the Spakka don’t know anything about our military. Perhaps we should have had some soldiers aboard before - we might not have had that close a scrape off Sarl last year.”
“That first longship is getting a bit close. When’s Pat going to start?”
“I told him to take them at 100 paces - he said he would take them further out.”
The Spakka longship was about two hundred paces out, and now the front of the longship was bristling with shields and bearded faces looking over them and shouting curses. The drums could be heard, echoing across the water. The voice of the master came faintly on the breeze, “Ram speed!” Clearly the command in their guttural speech, as the drums picked up the pace and the longship seemed to leap across the water straight at the bow of the Queen Rose.
Pat snapped something at the girls, picked up his bow, turned and fired off two arrows so quickly they were almost instantaneous. No height on these, they streaked across the gap, just over the heads of the bearded men, who ducked - far too late. The arrows disappeared into shields set up at the stern of the longship, passed straight through them as if they were not there. The drum cut off and a bald figure reared up, bare to the waist and with batons in each hand, an arrow through his chest. He fell backwards at the same time as the longship swung violently to the left, oars getting caught together and snapping with the impact. Screams came over the water and the slave oarsmen were standing up, many with bits of oar impaled in them. Overseers with whips came into view, but not whipping, more looking on with astonishment.
The Queen Rose rolled majestically on.
“Two arrows,” breathed Brian. “That’s all it took.”
“Very special arrows. And a few years of training - plus inherent skill.”
“How in hell did it have that effect so quickly?”
“I guess the oarsmen got confused without the drum, some stopped and some didn’t, while the helmsman must have fallen on his rudder and pushed it hard over. Who would have thought it?”
They watched as the longship fell away behind them. It left five abreast thundering down on the Queen Rose. Pat pulled back his bow again, the arrow streaked across the water, through the barrier, and nothing happened. The second arrow also gave no response. The longships came on, water thrashing at their sides as the rowers strained at ramspeed.
Nils, up in the crow’s nest, leaned out and peered at the longships, then simply dived into space. He twisted in the air, landed feet first in the foresail travelling at a terrific velocity. The sail changed the angle of descent, slowing him slightly. He turned and scrabbled at the sail edge, clutching at it to slow his descent. He grabbed the rope at the bottom of the sail and heard his shoulders pop as he tried to hold on, gripped onto a rope and tried to slide down it, squeezing hard to slow down.
Linda pushed Pat to one side, seeing this shadow above them, and both stood back in amazement as Nils smashed into the deck, blood splattering up from the impact. Nils groaned, tried to turn over and looked up at Pat.
“Pat!” he croaked, barely able to speak, “the steersmen are lying on the gunnel, to the starboard, holding the tiller with their feet!”
Pat whirled to look at the longships, and sent a bodkin arrow low and to the left. This time his reward was the sight of the steersman falling back into the sea. The longship came on. He was shocked, having expected more success. The longship was at ramspeed and the steersman was superfluous, Nils’ sacrifice in vain.
On the main deck, Lieutenant Mactravis was lining us his men ready to take on the boarders, oblivious that they would be outnumbered about ten to one. The soldiers were looking eager, and preparing their feet on the deck. The Master Blacksmith, a dwarf, pushed out of the armoury and came up to him.
“Kaptin, I ‘ave parasols for you,” he grunted. He had metal shields over one arm, and poles on the other.
“Wonderful! Thanks. Russell! Distribute these! Parasols! Axe defence formation!”
Sergeant Russell came running up beaming, grabbed the shields and quickly gave them to the five largest men. He ran to the arms lockers and started pulling out long spears, which he gave to the others. The parasol holders fixed the shields on the metal poles and stood ready by the side of the ship. Each parasol was a small heavy metal shield, with a hand’s breadth of soft wood above it. The metal poles screwed into the base so when an axe fell, the parasol caught it, trapped the blade and vibrated the wielder’s arms. The harder he struck, the more it would hurt.
Five men stood behind them with long spears, ready to skewer the axe wielders, Strachan amongst them. Lieutenant Mactravis took the right side and worried about the left. Sara spotted this, and appeared on the left, smiling wolfishly at him.
“I’ve got this side, Lieutenant. I know what to do, fought with parasols against the Spakka before.” He nodded at her and concentrated on the five longships
A loud twang echoed and thrummed from the bow as Else released her ballista. She had loaded it with a sheaf and it split perfectly a few yards from the first longship, sending over twenty long light spears in a shower along its length. The men in the longship seemed to explode, screams echoing, as the spears lanced through rowers and axemen alike. The drummer appeared from behind his shield, a spear through his body and he slumped over the side. Some of the spears had transfixed two or three men.
The longship stopped dead in the water, blood flowing away from it and turning the sea red with the sharks already appearing. The remaining four boats did not notice and kept coming.