02 The Invaders (28 page)

Angrily, he threw his blankets off and sat up. He folded back
the waterproof canvas he was using as a groundsheet and smoothed the offending ridge flat. Then he replaced the groundsheet and, while he was about it, plumped up the roll of sheepskin he was using for a pillow.

Sighing with satisfaction, he turned and studied the beach once more before lying down.
Heron
and
Wolfwind
were canted over at an angle now, he saw. As the tide had receded, the ships had been left standing on the wet sand and had gently toppled over to their present position.

The tide had run out quite a long way. There was a strip of glistening sand on the beach between the ships and the sea some twenty meters wide. Just as well they didn’t have to launch in a hurry, he thought. Of course, by morning, the tide would come in again and the boats would gradually rise from the sand and float upright once more.

The tide fascinated him, as it did most sailors. A great deal of his life was governed by it and the strong currents that it created. There was a fascinating inevitability about the tide, about the way it rose and fell twice each day.

He knew that some of the older Skandians believed that it was caused by a mythical Great Blue Whale as it breathed water in and out. He glanced around the dark huddled forms on the beach. He wondered how many of the
Wolfwind
’s crew still secretly believed that fable.

Not Svengal, he thought. Svengal was too practical. Thorn? Almost instantly, he dismissed the idea. Thorn was too skeptical to believe such a fairy story. But then, if it wasn’t the Great Blue Whale that caused the tides, what did cause them?

He sighed. The inventor in him wanted to understand how it happened. But so far, nobody seemed to have a logical explanation. Perhaps the answer was simply to accept the fact that the tide came in and the tide went out, and that was that.

And as he had that thought, he realized how he was going to get the oil onto the beach gate.

chapter
twenty - five

H
al, Stig and Jesper were in a skiff borrowed from Barat’s people, two hundred meters offshore from Limmat’s eastern watchtower.

“Aren’t you worried that they’ve seen us?” Stig asked. The pirates manning the tower were shouting insults at them as they rowed past, but although they had sent arrows toward the skiff, none had come close.

Hal shook his head. “They know that Barat and his men have small boats, so we’re not giving anything away. And from this distance, they can’t recognize us as Skandians.”

Stig nodded uncertainly. But, as ever, he deferred to Hal’s reasoning. “If you say so.”

“They can’t even see you’re an Araluen,” Jesper put in, grinning.

Hal rolled his eyes, realizing Jesper’s comment was meant as a joke.

“Too true,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? These pirates may well be
the first people to think of me as a Skandian. Ah, there’s the gate.”

A hundred meters beyond the watchtower, the palisade turned at right angles and headed inland, to the north. There was a small stretch of beach just beyond this turning point, and a heavy wooden gate was set into the palisade, giving access to the beach.

“It’s closed,” Jesper said. He was mystified about this reconnaissance trip. Hal hadn’t told him anything about his plans; he’d just said that he wanted Jesper to see it—so he’d understand what Hal had in mind—and point out any possible problems.

“Lydia says it’s always closed, unless there are ships drawn up on the beach,” Hal said. “They’re an untrusting lot and they don’t let strange ships into the harbor.”

“With good reason,” Stig said, resting on the oars. “Look what happened last time they did.”

“Exactly,” Hal agreed. “So if a ship arrives that they haven’t seen before, that’s where they tell it to land. The strangers can unload their cargo on the beach and the townspeople use the gate to bring the goods inside the palisade.”

“Very well,” Jesper said slowly. “So here we are, after a pleasant boat ride, and we’re looking at a gate that’s kept locked. I assume they won’t be opening it for us?”

“No. We’re going to burn it,” Hal said. “Then Ingvar is going to hit it with a battering ram to break it down.”

“Well, if anyone can do it, Ingvar can. But how are we going to burn it?”

“We’ll drench it with oil, then light the oil with a fire arrow from the Mangler.”

“So far,” Jesper replied, “I can’t fault your logic. Except for one small, and I have to say potentially vital, point—”

“How do we get the oil on the gate in the first place?” Hal said.

The ex-thief nodded.

“We’re going to put it there the night before. We’ll hang a full oil bladder on the gate. If we place it high enough, it won’t be visible from the palisade. Then, on the morning of the attack, we puncture the skin with an arrow or a bolt. Oil flows out down the gate and we set fire to it with another arrow. Simple.”

Jesper turned from his study of the gate and cocked his head at Hal.

“You have an interesting concept of the word
simple
,” he said. “And you said
we’ll
hang an oil bladder. How will
we
manage that exactly?”

“Well, actually,
we
won’t,” Hal admitted. “I’m hoping
you’ll
do that part. Could you get from the water’s edge to the gate without being seen?”

Jesper studied the ground between the gate and the water’s edge. He stuck out his bottom lip.

“At night? I should think so. There’s plenty of undulating ground to give me cover. Might take me ten or fifteen minutes, but I can do it.”

“How does he get to the beach?” Stig asked. “Even at night, they’ll see us if we try to take a boat in that close. And if they know someone’s landed there, they may well check the gate and find your oil bladder.”

“We’re not taking a boat in that close,” Hal told him. “We’ll get to within three hundred meters. A small boat should be pretty
hard to see at that distance and at night. Then Jesper and I will float in—on the last of the tide.”

“Ah… there’s another problem,” Jesper said, holding up a hand. “I don’t float. I sink.”

Hal was an excellent swimmer. Jesper, like most Skandians, couldn’t swim a stroke. But Hal had anticipated that problem.

“I can swim,” he said. “And I’ll be coming with you.”

“Excellent,” Jesper replied sarcastically. “You can watch me drown.”

“You can’t drown. I need you. We’ll build a raft. Or better still, we’ll find a log that’s washed up as driftwood. We’ll tow it behind the skiff till we’re a few hundred meters off the beach, then slip overboard. I’ll tie you on, Jesper. You won’t sink.”

“So you say,” Jesper said doubtfully.

“If we stay in the water behind the log, we won’t be seen. The pirates, if they notice anything, will see a piece of driftwood wash ashore. We’ll give them ten or twenty minutes to get used to it, then you slip up the beach with the oil bladder.”

“And how do you get out?” Stig asked. The workings of Hal’s mind fascinated him. The idea seemed quite feasible now that he heard it.

“Same way we came in. We’ll let the tide take us out again and you can pick us up out of sight of the towers.”

“Me?” Stig said, surprised.

“You’ll have to take the second group of Barat’s men down the bay while we’re attending to the gate. On your way back, wait offshore, out of sight, and we’ll drift out to you.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What if we miss you?” There was genuine concern in Stig’s voice.

“That would be embarrassing,” Hal admitted.

Jesper eyed him with some alarm. “I’ll be more than embarrassed,” he said. “I’ll be downright disappointed. We could drift halfway to Teutlandt if Stig doesn’t spot us.”

“Could this possibly be one of those small details that you so very occasionally overlook?” Stig asked innocently.

Hal frowned as he considered the problem.

“It should be all right. We should be able to predict where we’ll drift to. And once we’re off the beach, we can raise a flag on the log, so you should be able to see us.”

“You know, I’m not fond of
should
,” Jesper said, with some spirit. “I think I prefer
will
. Forgive me if I’m lacking enthusiasm for this scheme.”

Hal pursed his lips, deep in thought, then he gestured back the way they had come.

“No need to keep hanging around here,” he said, changing the subject. “I’ll think of a way round this on the way back.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Jesper said.

Stig hid a grin. Jesper, a non-swimmer, was being asked to float into the beach, holding on to a log, make his way to the gate, avoiding being seen by any sentries patrolling the palisade, hang a bladder of oil on it, then drift out to sea again on the vague assurance that Stig and the other Herons would be able to find them. Welcome to Hal’s world, he thought.

Stig set the oars in the water and began rowing back. He had
been planning on suggesting that Jesper might spell him on the way home, but he decided that he had enough on his mind already. But he couldn’t resist one final sally.

“You know, I’ve heard Teutlandt is very nice at this time of year,” he said. “They do have very nice sausage there.”

Both Hal and Jesper glared at him. He chuckled to himself. Hal will come up with something, he thought.

But by the time they arrived back at the camp, Hal still hadn’t found a way to solve the problem.

“It should be all right,” he said to himself as he trudged up the beach, deep in thought. “I should be able to calculate where we’ll drift to and Stig can be waiting for us there.”

The problem with that, he realized, was that, while Stig was an excellent helmsman, he wasn’t a very talented navigator. He was competent, of course. He’d been through the brotherband training course and navigation was an important part of that. But Hal had done the advanced navigation classes, and knowing what a superb navigator Hal was, Stig had tended to skim through the theory work, assuming that his friend would be around to do the difficult part.

I’ll work out reference points for him, Hal thought. That way, he could give Stig two points on the land on which he could take bearings, and that would set him in the correct position. But even that wasn’t totally satisfactory. A lot of the finer detail of navigation came down to instinct and judgment. If the wind grew stronger or changed direction, for example, it would take their makeshift raft off the predicted course. Hal would be able to sense that and allow for it.

Would Stig? If Hal was completely honest with himself, he had to admit that he doubted it.

While he pondered the problem, he strode along the water’s edge, looking for a piece of driftwood that he and Jesper could use as a raft. There was one large tree trunk that looked suitable. It was gray and dried with salt and still had a tangle of dead, bare branches at one end. Where three of them grew close together, they had collected a mass of lighter branches and dried weed among them. It looked like an outlandish bird’s nest, Hal thought.

Or a bundle of kindling, he thought idly, as he walked back to fetch Ingvar and some of the others to help him drag the log into the water so they could float it to where the skiff would be launched. The log was half buried in the sand and it would be beyond even Ingvar’s strength to move it on his own.

Hal stopped in mid-stride. The log
did
look like kindling, he thought. He headed back down the beach with a new spring in his step.

He found Jesper and Stig by the cook fire, drinking coffee with Thorn. The old warrior looked up as he approached.

“How did the reconnaissance go?”

Hal eyed him dubiously, wondering if Stig and Jesper had outlined the problem with his plan. He decided that they hadn’t. Thorn’s expression was ingenuous.

“Fine,” he said. “Jesper’s confident he can pull it off. We had one small problem, but I’ve got it solved.”

Stig and Jesper both pricked up their ears at that, looking at him curiously.

“There’s a big log down the beach that will suit us,” he said.
“And it has a whole lot of lighter material tangled up in its branches. I’m thinking that if I take another small jar of oil, and a flint and steel, wrapped in a watertight pack, I could set fire to it once we’re offshore. You’ll see the smoke, Stig. Then you can come and collect us.”

Stig nodded at the idea. He was impressed. “Sounds like it will work,” he said. “I knew you’d come up with something.”

Thorn nodded as well. “Good idea,” he said. “If you mix a little damp seaweed in once it gets burning, you’ll send up plenty of smoke. Should be visible for miles.”

They all looked at Jesper, to see if he agreed. The former thief was shaking his head as he looked at Hal.

“I thought it was bad enough when you wanted to go drifting off to Teutlandt,” he said. “Now you want to burn our raft out from under us.”

Hal opened his mouth to protest, then realized that it was a fair assessment of the situation.

“Stig will find us before it gets to that,” he said reassuringly and Stig made suitably concurring noises. Jesper glared at Hal, then at Stig.