Brotherband 3: The Hunters (41 page)

‘We’ll make him think it’s his idea,’ he said. He checked
Raven
’s position again. She had turned inside them and was heading to intercept them and ram. At the moment, she was gaining slowly. But as her rowers tired, that might not continue.

‘Ulf! Wulf!’ Hal called. ‘Gradually ease the sheets, a little at a time. I want to slow down. But I don’t want Zavac to realise we’ve done it on purpose.’

The twins both waved that they understood. Gradually, they began to ease the sheets, letting the wind spill from the sail. Hal felt the ship slowing.

‘That’s enough!’ he called. ‘Keep it there!’

He looked at
Raven
again. She was closer now. Zavac had learned his earlier lesson and was pointing his ship ahead of the
Heron
’s course, at a spot where he would intercept her.

Hal had a plan in mind to further disable the pirate craft. As the
Raven
came closer, it would call for split-second timing and co-ordination between Hal, Stefan, Jesper and the twins. But they had trained and practised as a crew for months. Hal was confident they’d pull it off.

There were several factors in their favour. Zavac had spent most of his career attacking slow trading ships. Aside from their one encounter outside Limmat, he hadn’t seen how fast and agile
Heron
could be. Their battle so far today had depended more on the devastating power of the Mangler, rather than
Heron
’s superior handling qualities.

Their other advantage lay in the fact that Zavac, like most skippers of square-rigged ships, preferred to change direction by wearing, keeping the wind astern, rather than tacking, or turning head into the wind. Wearing ship was a slower process. Tacking was faster, but much riskier. Chances were he would not expect them to take such a course.

And that could lead to his undoing.

T
he
Raven
was slowly gaining on them. Hal watched her through narrowed eyes, counting the oar beats as they thrashed at the sea’s surface.

‘No foxing this time,’ he said. ‘He’s coming at us as fast as he can.’

It was a common tactic for ships that were intending to ram to approach at less than full speed, putting on a sudden spurt in the last thirty or forty metres. But Zavac wasn’t trying any such subterfuge. He was bearing down as fast as he could, his men straining at the oars to keep the
Raven
skimming towards them. Hal looked closely now. Two of the oars Stig had smashed seemed to have been replaced. Zavac must have been carrying spares.

‘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.