Brotherband 3: The Hunters (29 page)

‘This is the life!’ he exclaimed. The rest of the crew agreed noisily.

‘I hate to say it, Edvin,’ Stefan proclaimed, ‘but I prefer this to your cooking.’

Edvin regarded him for a moment. Then, with a completely straight face, he replied, ‘I hate to say it, Stefan, but so do I.’

As the meal continued, the sound of talking died away as the diners concentrated their attention on the food. Hal looked around the sumptuous spread and turned to Mannoc, who was seated next to him.

‘Are you sure you can afford this? It looks pretty expensive.’ Hal was speaking from experience. His mother ran an eating house in Hallasholm.

Mannoc grinned. ‘I can afford it, all right. An escort ship is paid for results. If the pirates had taken those ships today, I would have ended up with nothing. So this is well worth the price.’ He paused, looking at Hal, his head tilted slightly to one side. ‘I wish you’d reconsider joining us,’ he said. ‘Good fighting crews are hard to find and I think we’d make a great team.’

Hal nodded his head at the compliment. ‘I wish we could,’ he said. ‘But we need to settle with Zavac. Maybe after that.’

‘Ah yes, Zavac. That reminds me.’ Mannoc beckoned to the waiter and, when he approached, he spoke quickly to him. ‘See if Doric has come in yet, will you? If he has, ask him to join us.’

‘Doric?’ Hal asked. ‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s skipper of another escort ship. He’s due in tonight. He was bringing a convoy upriver, past Raguza. He may have sighted the
Raven
.’

A few minutes passed and the door reopened to admit the waiter. A few paces behind him was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man. He had a long scar across his face and wore a mail shirt and war belt, from which hung a long sword and a heavy dagger. As the food had disappeared, the babble of talk had swelled up again. He looked round the noisy room and saw Mannoc. He smiled and headed towards him.

‘This is Doric now,’ Mannoc told Hal. ‘Let’s see if he has news of the
Raven.
’

After introducing Hal to the newcomer, Mannoc asked how his trip had been. Doric shrugged.

‘No trouble,’ he said. ‘We had four fighting ships with the convoy, so those scum from Raguza weren’t going to try anything on with us.’

Mannoc turned to Hal and explained. ‘The north-bound convoys come up past Raguza. We always provide a strong escort for them. That’s why I was on my own today.’ He turned back to Doric. ‘Hal helped me out of a nasty spot this afternoon. We were hit by a fleet of longboats. He and his men sank two of them.’

Doric looked at Hal with new interest. Previously, he had paid little attention to the young man.

‘Good work,’ he said, sizing him up. Young, he thought, but he’s got an air of confidence about him. Looks as if he knows what he’s about.

‘Thing is,’ Mannoc went on, ‘Hal and his crew are hunting the
Raven.
Did you see any sign of her today?’

‘Zavac’s ship?’ Doric said, scowling. ‘Yes, I saw her all right. She was heading downriver and came sniffing around the convoy. But once Zavac saw that I had four fighting ships to back me up he took off quick smart. Headed into Raguza with his cowardly tail between his legs.’

Hal’s face fell. ‘He’s already in Raguza?’

Doric nodded. ‘He is. And you’ll have a tough time winkling him out of there.’ He looked around the table, counting the crew of the
Heron.
‘There are dozens of ships in port, most of them pirates. You’ll be a little outnumbered if you try to barge in there and fight them.’

But an idea was beginning to form in Hal’s mind. He realised it had been flitting around the edges of his consciousness most of the afternoon, when he had realised that Zavac would probably make it to Raguza before the Herons could catch up with him. Now it began to crystallise.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t fight them,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we should join them.’

‘Join them?’ Doric said, and Mannoc frowned at his young companion, equally puzzled. Hal smiled at them.

‘That’s right. My crew and I are going to become pirates.’

H
al said no more about his plan that night. It was a rough idea only and he wanted to flesh it out before he discussed it with the others. He spent the rest of the evening quizzing Mannoc about Raguza: who ran the port, how ships gained entry and protection, what were the rules of the city, and any other detail he could think of. He wanted to gain as full a picture of the pirate haven as possible. Later, after he and the crew returned to the
Heron
, he sat for long hours in the bow, his back resting comfortably against the shrouded mass of the Mangler. He watched the moon traverse the sky, and the stars slowly wheel around the dark night in their stately procession, as he thought the idea through. Finally, yawning, he pulled his sheepskin up around his ears, tugged his watch cap down and slept.

He woke stiff and cold to the delicious smell of fresh coffee. He opened one bleary eye. Edvin was crouching over him, a cup held enticingly under his nose.

‘Where did that come from?’ he asked, his voice thick with sleep. Edvin grinned as Hal took the cup and sipped it, closing his eyes with pleasure.

‘Freyth’s ship was carrying a cargo of it,’ he said. ‘He insisted on giving us several kilograms. Naturally, I objected – for approximately two seconds. Then I graciously accepted.’

‘Lorgan’s ears but it’s good,’ Hal said. The coffee they had brought with them from Limmat had been mediocre, to say the best. This was rich and powerful. Best of all, it was freshly ground. He sipped again and felt the hot drink draining through his entire body, sweeping away the stiffness of his muscles.

Around him, the ship was slowly coming to life as the crew woke, rose and stretched. When they were safely moored like this, Edvin could light a cook fire on board – the charcoal grill resting in a tray of wet sand. The smell of the coffee, and sizzling bacon and eggs in his large cook pan, wafted to the boys’ nostrils and brought them out of their sleep.

‘Nothing wakes a boy like the smell of food,’ Thorn observed to nobody in particular. He eyed Hal curiously. ‘Spend the night there, did you? Something on your mind?’

‘You could say that. I was thinking about our problem with the
Raven.
I think I’ve come up with a way to get us into Raguza without having the locals attack us.’

Lydia had approached while Hal had been speaking. She caught the last few words.

‘Is that what you were talking about last night?’ she said. ‘When you said we should become pirates?’

‘Well . . . yes,’ said Hal, a little stiffly. He had been hoping to state that part of his plan as a dramatic denouement. Now Lydia had jumped in and pre-empted him. Girls had no sense of drama, he thought, frowning. No wonder none of them were saga-tellers.

Thorn, however, looked interested in the idea, drama or no drama. ‘How do you propose we do that?’ he asked. In answer, Hal pointed to
Seahawk
bobbing gently on the wavelets beside them.

‘I was thinking about the way Zavac tricked his way into Limmat harbour,’ he said. ‘I thought we might take a leaf out of his book. If we turn up outside Raguza, with
Seahawk
in hot pursuit, chances are they’ll take us for another pirate.’

Lydia frowned. ‘Zavac will hardly fall for his own trick,’ she said. ‘In any event, he knows the
Heron.
He’s seen her.’

‘That’s the point,’ Hal replied. ‘We don’t have to convince Zavac. We have to convince the man who is in charge at Raguza – Mannoc told me he has some strange title, the Kropajo or something like that. We’ll say Zavac recruited us for the raid on Limmat, then left us in the lurch – along with
Stingray
. That’ll give us the high ground if Zavac tries to discredit us. Of course he’d turn on us if he’d betrayed us and left us to die. He’d have to.’

Thorn stroked his chin with his forefinger and thumb as he thought over what Hal had said.

‘It’s not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘Of course, it’ll depend on us reaching this head man and putting our case before Zavac does.’

Hal shrugged. ‘It’ll be better if we can, but it’s not essential. In any event, once we’re in Raguza, we’ll have a chance to get on board
Raven
and find the Andomal.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’ Lydia asked.

Hal shrugged. ‘I haven’t quite figured that part out yet,’ he admitted. He paused, thinking for a few seconds. Then his mind went off on a tangent. ‘It’s a pity we don’t have any of the emeralds from Limmat,’ he said.

Thorn cocked his head in question. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I was talking to Mannoc about it last night. The system in Raguza is that each ship pays ten per cent of her plunder to a central council. That’s what buys them the protection of the port. That means Zavac will have handed over a share of the emeralds he stole. If we could produce more of them, it’d strengthen our story that we were at Limmat with him. They’re pretty distinctive, after all.’

Lydia cleared her throat noisily and they turned to look at her. A slow smile was spreading over her features.

‘What is it?’ Hal asked. She paused, trying to fight past the smile, then spoke.

‘Remember that parcel I gave you when we left Limmat? You put it in the strongbox.’

Hal nodded. ‘Yes. What about it? I assume it’s some particular valuable of yours.’

‘Actually, it contains eight Limmatan emeralds,’ Lydia told them. She enjoyed the way both of her listeners’ jaws dropped.

‘And . . . where did you get them, may I ask?’ Hal finally managed to say.

She shrugged airily. ‘I took them. They were in the Counting House. They were part of the last batch delivered from the mines. But Zavac missed them. After all, he was in a hurry to leave. Nobody had noticed them. They were left in a linen sack on a table in the Counting House anteroom. I looked in the sack and saw them, and I figured you all deserved some reward for saving the town. I also figured Barat would never pay you anything. So I . . . took them.’

‘You stole them?’ Hal asked, and she scuffed her shoe on the deck, not meeting his eyes.

‘I . . . liberated them. In the name of a deserving cause.’

Thorn emitted a low rumble of laughter. ‘Ah, girl,’ he said, ‘you definitely are a keeper.’

Lydia flushed with anger. ‘I’ve told you not to call me that, old man,’ she said, a warning glint in her eyes. Thorn continued to smile at her, totally unabashed, and she finally had to look away, shaking her head. He was incorrigible, she thought, not for the first time.

‘The thing is,’ she said to Hal, ‘if we show them, and hand over one of them in payment, it’ll be pretty obvious that they’re from the same source as the ones Zavac paid over.’ She spread her hands out to either side, palms upwards.

‘So it will appear that we were working with him,’ Hal said slowly. ‘That’s excellent! That’d be worth handing over all of the emeralds!’

‘Let’s not be hasty,’ Thorn told him. ‘Whoever’s running Raguza will expect us to try and hold back as much as possible. Pirates aren’t known for their generosity, after all.’

‘That’s why they’re pirates, in fact,’ Lydia said, smiling.

Hal finished his coffee and rose to his feet, yawning and stretching. He returned the empty cup to Edvin’s cooking area, then glanced across to the decks of
Seahawk.
There was a small guard left on board, but the majority of the crew had gone to their homes. He could see no sign of Mannoc yet, but the skipper had said he’d come down to the ship during the morning.

He and Stig spent the next two hours going over the ship, checking sails, masts, halyards and standing rigging for any sign of wear and tear. It had been some weeks since they had had enough free time to attend to such matters and soon the entire crew were hard at work making minor repairs – splicing ropes, greasing blocks and pulleys and re-tarring the stays where there was any sign of fraying.

When Hal had shot the massive bolt into the bottom of the pirate longboat, he’d noticed a slight extra movement in the massive recoil of the giant crossbow. It had seemed to lurch a little to one side. He removed the canvas covering and crouched to examine the two leather restraining straps that absorbed the recoil. He hadn’t checked them since the battle at Limmat and he found that the starboard side strap had frayed slightly where it passed over a timber piece of the crossbow’s frame. The timber was hard edged and the constant rubbing back and forth as Hal had shot had caused wear on the strap. As the strap thinned, it had stretched a little, leaving the Mangler slightly unbalanced.

He fetched his tool kit and took out a hand plane, working it on the wood until the sharp edge was rounded off. Then he rubbed it with a smoothing stone to make it even less abrasive. As soon as he began to examine the weapon, Ingvar had joined him, crouching beside him to see if there was anything he could do to help. Hal smiled to himself. Ingvar had a proprietorial interest in the Mangler. He alone was strong enough to cock it and load it single-handed. After a lifetime of being made to feel superfluous, Ingvar was delighted to find a vital task that only he could accomplish.

‘How’s the side?’ Hal asked as he worked away with the plane. Ingvar touched the spot where he had been wounded, and pressed experimentally.