The surface of the sea shone like new iron and was as flat and smooth as an armourer’s anvil. A mist hung at the edges of the world and it rode along with us on a gentle wind like a baby’s breath. The long oars swept the surface of the water to a glittering, tumbling rubble behind us, as we left the grey shores of the island in our wake. The sun, so full of promise earlier, had withdrawn to peer at us weakly from behind a veil of misty, low cloud.
The atmosphere was heavy with a distant threat of a looming storm. The fearful words of the reluctant sailor haunted my thoughts, “Never been at sea in a proper storm. We’re as likely to sink as we are sail”.
I had lodged myself on a box with my case resting on one of the steps up to the master’s deck. As comfortable as anywhere I supposed, but more importantly, less likely to fall prey to spray from the plunging bow. A group of inquisitive men gathered to see what I was about, but were quickly bored when they discovered the secret.
‘Ivar.’ called Brent. ‘Can you not find any work for these landers? Set them about making a floating target. We’ll have some shooting practice while the weather’s quiet.’ he squinted skywards. ‘I’m thinking it’ll not last.’
Above the thinning, milky mist we could see the tell-tale wisps of mare’s-tail clouds. A sure sign of an imminent weather change in progress explained Ivar, who was taking a spell at the steering oar. We have a rhyme. ‘Mackerel skies with horse’s tails, makes them ships shorten sails.’ he said, and laughed at his joke. I smiled at his friendly humour.
With a jolt I realised that that was the first time I had felt anything like happiness since before being taken prisoner. I made a resolution to guard against becoming too familiar with these barbarians. For that is how I must think of them, I must not forget the innocent children of Watchett and my vow of vengeance and justice.
The long oars rose and fell monotonously and the oily water chuckled beneath the shallow keel. The large square sail remained furled against its spar. Without a useful breeze, it would be more hindrance than assistance.
The sun slowly gained towards its zenith and, as if by the trick of a magician, the misty curtain fell into fragments and disappeared. The colour flooded into the sea like an infusion of emerald.
Behind us, I could see the twin sunlit hill tops of the Island we had just left. They looked like a pale jewel and seemed to hover above the cold green of the ocean.
Carefully, I sketched the view with my charcoal. Two hills, whose flanks swept steeply down to the sea in the east, and in the west, were buttressed by craggy cliffs, to hold their slide into the ocean. The nearest one was significantly taller than its mate sheltering the village on its far side with Brent’s comfortable home and, I’d wager, a large box of King Alfred’s silver safely cached beneath its neatly thatched roof.
Gazing astern, imagining the folk we had left, I noticed Brent setting up a curious instrument. He had a circular piece of board, about the size of a good British dinner plate that he had fixed, through its centre, to a small three legged table top. Fastened into the top surface of the disc, at opposite sides, were two slender pegs. Brent was crouching behind this contraption, seemingly lining up the pegs with the high point of the Island behind us. Then he did something that brought to mind the magic arts of the ancients. He took an object, about the size and shape of a small dagger, suspended it from a piece of thin cord and held it above the wooden disc. The small dagger swung around and about, and eventually steadied. Brent appeared to compare the way it pointed, with the alignment of his two pegs. Quietly he muttered something to Ivar and the old fellow swung the steering board slightly until Brent tapped his shoulder, when he brought it back to the straight ahead position again.
So I thought to myself, I’ve discovered how they find their way through these featureless, watery wastes. Magic!
Carefully Brent wrapped the small dagger in a piece of leather and placed it, almost reverently it seemed to me, in a small box which had been fixed to the bulwarks opposite the steering board. The man’s talents seemed boundless; warrior, sailor, and now wizard. The rotating disc was left fixed to the long-legged table. I’d try to have a look at that when he was off the deck, or sleeping.
Ivar’s frown caught my eye and I turned quickly back to my charcoal notes. Later, I’d sketch what I’d seen on the master’s deck.
The morning rolled rhythmically by, several faces had become a shade paler than the sea that surrounded us and were huddled under the tent awning that had been rigged behind the main mast. There could be a few extra rations finding themselves my way at mealtime I thought.
I still had my bailing duties and periodically I hopped into the well of the hold to scoop out a bucketful or so. To help ease the job, I made a small channel from some scrap pieces of timber planking, sealed the joints with some pitch and rigged it to run from the corner of the hatchway to one of the drainage slots that were cut into the base of the bulwark. All I now had to do was scoop the bucket into the bilge and empty the contents into the channel. Some spilled, but most of it trickled over the ship’s side, back to whence it came. I was quite pleased with my innovation.
Morning rode into afternoon, with the promised archery practice the only highlight. I was put into a place on the oars to let all those who would, take up their bows and try their luck. Edmund, my old friend and mentor, would have despaired at the efforts of most of them. I could have pierced their gently bobbing target by throwing the arrow with my hand. Many, it seemed, were not familiar with shooting a bow. The majority of hits were happily accorded to a smiling god, rather than any personal diligence or skill. A tactical point that I carefully noted. But it probably wasn’t too important, the effect of a shower of arrows leaving one deck, however loosely aimed, would have an almost inevitable, devastating result on another as they landed.
The eastern sky turned a shade darker and the sun, never very high, began to lower itself towards the far western horizon. Still, the promised change in the weather did not materialise.
The afternoon fell to the early winter twilight, and a velvety shadow spread out of the east. As the darkness draped itself over the world, the stars shone like chips of brilliant sunlight. I’d never seen them so clear. With relative ease I could identify many of the constellations that the ancients had studied and named; Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and many others, that I knew the shape of, but had forgotten the formal names. Following the two pointers in the Ursa Major’s formation I found Polaris. This was one star that I noted in particular, including the fact that it was almost directly astern, perhaps slightly to the west, of our slow, lonely progress.
An extravagant kick and a growling Ivar woke me from a fitful sleep to the bucking and twisting of the deck. From somewhere in the blackness of the night the weather had broken and a sudden squall had swept upon us.
The first job was to shorten the sail that had been rigged during the night. Roughly we were shoved into position to heave at the lines so that the experienced crewmen could take up the sail using the reefing thongs that were woven and stitched into the sail. The wind that had sprung on us out of the night came sweeping along from the north-west bringing with it the cold of those far northern, icy regions. The Ship was driven along at an exhilarating rate and, I guessed, more or less in the direction that Brent had set the day before. Spray, now and again accompanied by larger, more solid blocks of water, caused the level in the ships bilge to rise so, without the encouragement of Ivar’s cane, I groped my way into the dankness of the hold. Wearily I began the back breaking job of bailing out while we sped along in the semi-darkness.
The noise below decks was quite alarming at first. The creaking of the planks and frames, complaining at their rough treatment, was punctuated by a mighty crack every time the bow plunged through a crest and slapped into the flanks of the next wave.
The wind whistled and moaned its way through the rigging, rising to a howl at the top of each gust.
‘If this keeps up, we’ll haul the sail and its yard.’ I heard Brent shout to Ivar above the cacophony.
In the calm of the night before, I had packed my writing case inside a tarred box and I hoped it would be safe.
The dark hours wore away to a greyness of scudding clouds and a stinging sleet, but the wind had lost a significant amount of its ferocity. My arms and back ached fit to break as I hauled the endless procession of bilgewater from the hull.
The ship’s movement had seemed laboured during the early hours and now we could see why. The sail had become stiff with ice, as had the upper rigging, mast and spars. Pendants of icicles hung from the mast’s standing rigging lines like ribbons in a maiden’s hair. Brent woke a few of his men, who were not affected by the sickness, and set them about clearing the ice. If the weight of frozen water was allowed to build, it could easily capsize the ship.
I carried on bailing. Bending and Straightening. Up and Down. Up and Down. The only good thing about the job, was that it freed my mind to ponder and to carefully observe the goings-on on board the dragon ship.
Exhaustion, the wet and the cold took their toll eventually though, and I was helped out of the hold by another crewman when Brent finally detailed my relief.
I found that my legs were numbed and blue with exposure. Several of the other crewmen were much less fortunate. A party of them had consumed a large quantity of wine during the night and, with the coming of the daylight, they were discovered as stiff as boards. Dead as could be. Without any pretence of ceremony Brent had the corpses dropped over the side, where they swiftly disappeared from view.
A small team of crewmen with the cook, worked at preparing a meal of sorts. The bread was wet and the dried fish definitely an acquired taste. I remembered the bag that old Raddle had given me and in a quiet corner of the deck-tent I ate a good breakfast washed down with a large helping of the bitter Viking ale. Before I curled up to rest I remembered what the old fellow had said about the leaves he’d packed in the bag and, with the aid of a drop more beer, got through two of them. They had a heavy metallic taste, full of minerals I assumed.
A lively boot once again brought me back to my senses and, opening my eyes a scene of whiteness greeted me from outside our shelter. The driving sleet that had stung the face earlier had given way to a steady fall of snow. With a groan I looked up into the face of the owner of the prodding toes. He jerked his thumb towards the hatch and grunted a garbled order that I couldn’t misunderstand. The wretch sat heavily on the deck next to me. His hair hung in an unkempt greasy mess about a face that was badly scarred, as though mauled by a large animal. When he yawned I noticed that, as well as most of his teeth, his tongue was missing. His mouth was a huge dark hole that smelled of rotting flesh.
Revulsion rose in my throat and I struggled to get up and away from the disgusting beast. He could almost have lurched out of a nightmare.
“Gaaaaawh” he said through the awful mess that was his mouth.
With a feeling close to relief I dropped back through the hatchway and fell again to the monotonous rhythm of tending the bailing bucket.
The weather moderated as the day wore into the gloom of another early evening. I knew enough to understand that we had been caught up in a freak storm, one of those quirks of nature that she likes to throw at us from time to time. But that didn’t make it any the less frightening.
During the height of the tempest, exhaustion had taken the edge from my fear, but not dulled it so much that I hadn’t seen the giant waves towering over our shallow freeboard and the frantic ditching of deck cargo to lighten the load. Most of the men had huddled themselves, white faced, under the awning, awaiting what the scaremongers among them told us would be an inevitable capsize. They all looked on at the desperate efforts of Brent and Ivar as they wrestled with the steering board to keep the careering ship heading into the mountainous ocean seas. It had been amazing how much power had been behind the wind, to press the ship along at such a rate with just her bare mast prodding defiantly at the low helter-skelter of the clouds.
But now the lurching and thrashing of the ship grew noticeably less. The noise below the deck had dropped from the crashing growl to something approaching the normal creaking and tired groaning of the overlapping timbers and scantlings. A few of these timbers must have sprung a little because, even without the continuous wash breaking over the bow, the bilge level was rising. Imperceptibly at first but, I thought, definitely increasing. I scratched a line on one of the frames to mark the level when we were roughly between rolls. It was difficult to judge, with the ship rolling like an auger, but I was sure it was gaining.
I had two, no, three choices. I could go to Brent and tell him, thus avoiding any panic. Secondly, I could yell the news aloud and have half the crew useless with fear. Or thirdly, I could simply do nothing.
‘We’ve sprung a leak.’ I yelled as loud as I could above the keening threnody of the wind.
A shout of horror went up from the deck tent, followed by the thumping of boots on the deck as they ran aft to peer apprehensively into my dark dungeon.
‘Get back! Get back, all of you.’ Brent barked as he pushed through the gabbling warriors. ‘What do you say No-man. How do you know.’ he asked, jumping beside me, down into the hold.
I showed him the mark that I had made, now a half a hand-span beneath the surface when we were on a level keel. Brent’s eyes blazed coldly as they flashed the depth of his anger. His one hand grabbed me at the throat. His hard, bony fingers felt like the grip of an eagle’s talons.
‘Why did you shout like that? You are no fool, you knew how it would affect my good men.’
The hand began to choke, and with a shrug and a twist, I broke his hold,
‘Good men, be damned! They are here to be used as you chose.’ the warrior within me was getting bolder. ‘That case of silver coin? Was that a gift. Or did you steal it from your Good Men.’ I instantly regretted leaking my secret knowledge.
The glistening blade of a dagger appeared from nowhere and pricked at the unguarded skin of my throat.
‘You see too much No-man. I need you and your damned eyes at the moment, but I promise that your life will be forfeit when we reach the Iberias.’
The knife blade swung slowly in an arc. I steeled myself to a silent stillness. Blood trickled down my chin as his razor sharp blade sliced a deliberate line across my cheek. I struggled to ignore the hot flash of pain. With a quiet voice I said,
‘Among your Good Men, you are not the favourite that you seek to be, Brent-one-hand. You should beware that you do not precede me.’ I whispered
‘Hah! You seek to play with words. Imply doubts where there are none. I forbid you to speak to anyone in the crew. If you need to say ought, it will be to me or Ivar alone. Or else...’
‘Or you’ll treat me as you did that wretch up top. Is that it?’ I gambled, cutting across his threat. ‘You’ll tear out my tongue.’
‘There are many things that I wish to do. You are with me now, only because of an oath, made by my father before the gods with that confounded friend of yours, Deaks the bastard!’ he hissed.
‘No!...Deaks, your half-brother.’ I corrected.
Brent sheathed his knife and turned away. ‘We must search the hull and find the leak.’
His character again flicked from the edge of aggressive violence to his seamanship concerns like the toss of a coin.
I’d best control my tongue, I told myself, or the next confrontation could well be the last for me. Bound by his father’s sacred oath or not, if pushed too far he would undoubtedly risk a rebellion of the crew by upsetting their superstitious beliefs and happily have me dumped over the side. My slender lifeline wasn’t secure enough to play the hero.
We searched along the sides of the ship, feeling our way in the gloom and eventually found a plank near the bow that had sprung and lost much of its tarred rope caulking. Brent made his way back and swiftly detailed a few of his experienced crewmen to find and lay out one of the spare sails.
Ivar took over at the steering board and skilfully, he held the ship’s head into the wind, steadying the plunging movement as much as he could. Brent and his team went forward, battling with the heavy, flapping woollen sail. Carefully, a little at a time, they fed the huge sail over the high stemmed bows and into the water. With much heaving and cursing, the men slowly pulled it back to cover the damaged section of the ship’s side. When it was fitted smoothly, like a second skin, they lashed it into position and hauled hard to tighten the ropes. From the inside, a trusted carpenter carefully hammered home some lengths of teased rope yarn into the bubbling gaps.
Several of the warriors were sent to help with the bailing chore and we soon had the level well below my scratched line. The warriors cheerfully sang and chanted while they worked at the buckets, happy to be doing something, other than feel miserable.
‘A ship! A ship away on the leeward side, ahead.’ came a sharp call from the forward lookout.
Quickly, everyone gathered on the downwind side and, away in the distance, we could periodically glimpse a heavy hull as she rode the broad waves. At her mast, a scrap of sail billowed brightly in the last light of the day.
‘A Trader by the look of her.’ said Brent thoughtfully. ‘Ivar!’ he called. ‘They’ll have seen us for sure, set a course to head away from them. Towards the south-west.
A moan of disapproval rose and swept across the wet slippery deck. Brent leapt onto the Master’s deck and stood to face them, his good arm crooked about the backstay.
‘To me, my brave warriors. Gather around.’ he scanned the horizon, carefully marking the position of the Trader’s vessel as our long, sleek hull swung away and nosed into the cross sea, corkscrewing uncomfortably.
‘They will have seen us. Darkness is falling, they will think that our watchman sleeps and that they have escaped us. As soon as the cloak of night falls across us we will turn onto a parallel course and take her with the dawn. With a damaged hull, we can’t afford to chance a ramming.’ He beamed around at the grinning faces that looked up at him.
‘My lucky lads. You’ll be richer tomorrow, we’ll all have equal shares in this. The first of our fat prizes.’
A low rumbling cheer greeted his announcement and there were many calls of Var-heil or Good Health, he shot me a look of triumph. Now was not the time for me to promote any more thoughts of mutiny among the men.
The weather continued to improve as the freak arctic storm drove south-eastwards, to spend its fury on the northern coasts of Gaul. The setting sun flashed a golden promise as it sank below the horizon and for an instant, before the darkness closed the day, we could see the rising bubbles of tall creamy cloud glowing in the west replacing the low black menace of the storm.
Ivar was busy with his encouragement as he pushed men into position to hoist and set the great sail. Brent, from the steering board was carefully studying the relative position and speed of the Trader who, by now had begun rapidly falling astern. He would have to be careful not to overhaul him in the darkness. With the sail properly set, Ivar again took the helm and Brent, in the last of the gloomy light, used his curious table and pointer to sight the position of the other ship’s looping sail.
As soon as the darkness of night was complete, Ivar called to his sailing crew to haul the sail and its yard as we slowly turned across the still brisk, north westerly wind to give chase to the trading ship that had melted into the stygian wall before us.
A heavily shaded lantern was lit and in its feeble glimmer, Brent frequently bent to compare the ship’s head with his settings on the magical board. From where I laboured at the bailing bucket, I could see all that went on, and it occurred to me that the curious pointer that Brent suspended so carefully from a cord, always settled its swing to point in a north south manner. Dimly, I could recall a memory of having read somewhere of this phenomenon. So it’s not a Wizard’s trick. I realised with satisfaction, but the useful employment of simple geometry and a natural, albeit rare, crystal.
A relief was sent to take over my now meagre duty of bailing and later, as I curled into my sleeping rug, I felt quite pleased with myself. A strangely ambivalent feeling for those times of almost constant fear.