Scorpion Mountain (14 page)

chapter
twenty-two

A
s the crew hauled in on the grapnel rope, Thorn leapt up onto the bulwark beside the bow post. He had donned his fighting hand, and carried his small shield in his left hand.

The bow bumped against the stern of the
Ishtfana,
and as Ulf and Wulf made it fast, Thorn leapt up onto the bigger ship's rail.

“Come on!” he roared.

Stig was close behind him and they dropped lightly to the deck, turning to meet the group of men charging aft to defend their ship. The first to reach them drew back his sword, yelling a curse at them.

It was the last sound he ever made.

Stig's ax cut the cry short and the man stumbled before falling over on his side, a shocked look on his features. Thorn parried another man's sword with his club-hand, then slammed his small shield into his attacker's face, sending him flying across the deck.

Selethen swarmed over the railing behind them, his attention falling instantly on Kyrios, who was slinking toward Stig and Thorn from slightly behind them, a heavy-bladed cutlass in his right hand and his knife in his left.

Kyrios was suddenly aware of Selethen's gaze. The
Wakir,
taking in the other man's ornate garb—he was dressed in a white silk shirt and wide-legged red trousers of fine linen, with a broad-brimmed felt hat adorned with a long peacock's feather—mistook him for the corsair captain.

“Philip!” Selethen shouted. “Throw down your weapons!”

Kyrios made no reply, but he lunged forward, swinging the heavy sword down in an overhead stroke that would have split Selethen to the chin.

Had it landed.

The
Wakir
contemptuously flicked the blade aside with his shield, then swung his scimitar in reply, in a bewildering combination of strokes.

Side cut, back cut, overhead. The flashing blade seemed to come from several different directions at once. Kyrios blundered back in panic, barely managing to evade the lightning strokes of the master swordsman. With the dim thought that he should try to turn defense into attack, Kyrios attempted a clumsy lunge at his tall opponent. His sword slid along Selethen's, the blades rasping together. Then, with a twist of his wrist, Selethen deflected Kyrios's cutlass, leaving the first mate open to his riposte. The curved scimitar blade darted forward and back like a snake's tongue.

But, unlike a snake's tongue, the scimitar bit, and bit hard. Kyrios barely felt the impact. But he looked down in wonder at the spreading red stain on his shirt.

“I'm . . . not Philip,” he managed to croak, although he wasn't sure why he felt that needed to be said. Then his legs gave out under him and he fell to the deck.

With the threat from behind eliminated, Selethen turned his attention back to Stig and Thorn, and the rest of the corsairs.

The latter stood uncertainly in a ragged semicircle facing the two Skandians. Two of their number were already out of action, and the remainder had witnessed the incredible speed and power of the Skandian warriors as they dealt with that first attack. They had also seen the ease with which Selethen defeated Kyrios. As a result, none of them was willing to be the first to face fighters such as these.

A deep growl began to form in Thorn's chest. He hated indecision and delay. He knew momentum was everything in a fight like this, where he and his companions were outnumbered. He was on the brink of launching an attack at the hesitant Hellenes. Behind him, he heard Ulf and Wulf scramble over the rail and drop onto the deck. That made five of them on board now and that, thought Thorn, was plenty to take on these overdressed popinjays. He tensed his muscles, singling out the first man he would strike down with his fearsome club-hand.

The he heard rushing feet behind him, and a huge voice roared:

“Clear the way!”

Next minute, Thorn was shouldered aside by a heavy body and Ingvar, spectacles firmly lashed in place and his voulge held across his body in both hands, surged past him to attack the
Ishtfana
's crew.

Ingvar swung the voulge horizontally to the left, allowing his right hand to slide down from its position halfway along the shaft until it was adjacent to his left hand, on the butt end, adding immense leverage to the stroke.

The ax blade of the long weapon came round with a deadly hissing sound, like a scythe cutting into barley.

And, like a scythe, it cut down three of the
Ishtfana
's crew, sending them sprawling and their weapons clattering to the deck. The first stroke was barely completed before Ingvar reversed the movement, snagging the shoulder of another corsair's leather breastplate with the hook on the back of the voulge and jerking the man forward, off his feet. As he hit the deck, Ingvar jerked the hook free and lunged with the spearhead of the voulge at a fifth crewman.

This one had a shield and he tried desperately to block Ingvar's stroke. But the big boy had lunged forward, stamping his right foot for extra power, and putting the force of his legs behind the thrust, as Thorn had taught him in their long hours of drilling as they sailed down the Iberian coastline.

As Thorn had predicted, with the force of his legs behind the thrust, Ingvar's attack was unstoppable. The wood of the shield split and the spear point went through as if there were no resistance at all. It took the corsair in his left shoulder and he cried out, releasing the shield, leaving it dangling awkwardly on the end of Ingvar's voulge. Then, clutching his shattered, bleeding shoulder, the Hellene turned and ran.

Enraged by the broken shield impeding his weapon, Ingvar got rid of it in the quickest way possible. He whipped the voulge back and forward in a violent movement that dislodged the splintered shield and sent it hurtling into the group of men facing him, knocking another to the deck, unconscious.

And that was enough for the rest of them. Terrified by the awesome figure with the shining black circles for eyes and the deadly long-handed triple weapon, they turned and ran.

Ingvar roared again and set off after them.

“Let's get 'em!” he bellowed to the others. As Stig, Selethen and the twins surged forward after him, Thorn paused and leaned back, more than a little affronted.

“I'm supposed to say that,” he said indignantly.

Hal, having turned over the helm to Edvin, found Thorn standing, decidedly discontented, on the rear deck of the galley, glaring forward as the others surrounded the beaten corsair crew. As the latter let their weapons fall to the deck in a shower of swords, knives and spears, the shabby warrior gestured at the scene with his club.

“He stole my fight,” he said resentfully. “Ingvar stole my fight out from under my nose.”

Hal grinned. “He had plenty of room to move then,” he said. Then, shaking his head in wonder as he saw his massive friend terrifying the cowed galley crew, he added, “I guess the fight's over.” He patted Thorn's shoulder and the two of them started forward to join their victorious friends.

• • • • •

But the fight wasn't over. Not completely. Three of the galley's fighting crew, the first to turn tail and run, had made their way down through a hatch to the rowing deck below. The lines of rowers, chained to their oars, glared at them with hatred. With no one to command them, they had finally stopped sweeping their oars back and forth and the ship rocked in the even swell. The first of the corsairs, a man named Davos, looked at the angry eyes surrounding them. The rowers were chained, but how long they would remain that way was anyone's guess. He saw the slumped figure of the rowing master on the catwalk between the rowing benches. Somewhere on his body was the key that would release the rowers. Perhaps they had already found it. It wasn't a healthy place to be for too long.

“Let's get out of here,” he muttered.

“Where?” One of his companions was wide-eyed with panic. He looked from side to side, seeing the hatred that surrounded them.

“We'll go aft and out a rowing port,” the leader decided. “We'll take their ship and cut her loose. There can't be more than two or three people left on board her. And they'll be sailing crew, not fighting crew.”

Which showed how little he understood the composition of a Skandian crew. On a Skandian ship,
everyone
was a member of the fighting crew.

They ran aft, crouching under the low headroom, their progress marked by muttered curses from the rowing benches. But, in addition to the fact that the rowers were constricted by their chains, the three men were all armed with swords and none of the slaves was ready to confront them.

They reached the aftmost oar port on the starboard side. Here was the point where
Heron
's ramming had caused the most damage. Several men were lying awkwardly on their benches and the oars themselves were splintered and foreshortened.

“Come on!” said Davos. The slave on the bench was huddled over, clutching a broken forearm, moaning in pain. The corsair jerked him roughly out of the way and leaned his head and shoulders out the oar port. The oar, shattered by the collision with
Heron,
was no longer in place to impede him.

He gave an exclamation of satisfaction as he saw the bow of the other ship no more than a few meters away, surging up and down on the waves, snubbing against the hawser that connected her to the galley.

He sheathed his sword and hung his upper body out the oar port again, gripping the railing above him with both hands. Then he kicked his feet clear of the port and worked his way, hand over hand, along the rail until he could grip the rope. He transferred his weight to the rope, feeling it sag under his weight, then swung himself across to the other ship.

His companions were close behind him. The three of them dropped lightly to the
Heron
's deck and took stock of the situation.

There seemed to be only two crew members left aboard the little ship. One of them, Davos saw with a grunt of satisfaction, was a girl. The other was a youth. He was wearing a sword but he was small and slimly built. So far, neither of them had noticed the three corsairs who had just boarded the ship. Their attention was focused on events happening on the galley.

“Easy meat,” muttered Davos to his friends. He took a pace forward.

And froze.

The growl was deep and threatening. So deep that he knew it must come from a massive chest. And presumably that massive chest would have a massive head with massive teeth to match. He dropped his hand onto his sword hilt.

The growl came again, even louder and more threatening this time. Where was it? Davos cast his gaze back and forth around the raffle of sails and ropes that littered the forward deck.

“What is it?” asked one of his companions. It was Patrokos, the one who had shown signs of panic a few minutes earlier.

“It's nothing,” Davos told him, although from the way the hairs on the back of his neck had risen, that was obviously a lie. “Just a—”

“Dog,” said the third member of the party, as Kloof emerged from the far rowing well and paced deliberately over the untidy folds of the hastily lowered sail.

Her lips were curled back from her huge teeth. Her hackles were raised, making her appear even larger than she was. And her eyes had a manic, dangerous light in them. She advanced on the three men, her head low, her stride deliberate.

At the stern, Lydia and Edvin became aware of the situation on the foredeck.

“Where did they come from?” Lydia asked, reaching for a dart from her quiver and clipping the atlatl to it. Edvin laid a hand on her arm.

“Careful. You might hit Kloof,” he said. Then, as he saw the withering glance she turned on him, he added awkwardly, “I mean, if she moves suddenly, or jumps at them, you could . . . accidentally, of course . . .”

He trailed off but she nodded reluctant agreement. Relieved, he added, “Besides, she seems to have things pretty well in hand.”

Davos chose that moment to try to draw his sword. As soon as he moved, Kloof leapt at him, hitting him with all her weight and sending him crashing back to the deck. She stood over him, her tail lashing furiously, snarling and snapping those massive jaws just centimeters from his face. Relinquishing his grip on the sword, Davos raised both his arms to cover his face in a vain attempt to stop the furious, snarling dog.

His two companions backed away from the scene, but neither one made any attempt to draw a weapon. They had seen what happened to Davos.

“What do we do?” asked Patrokos, his voice high pitched and whining with fear. His friend nodded his head toward the sea behind them.

“Jump,” he said. But Patrokos looked at the water, looked at Kloof, and shook his head.

“I can't swim,” he bleated. The other man shook his head in disgust.

“This would be a good time to learn,” he said. Then he grabbed Patrokos's arm and dragged him over the side into the sea.

chapter
twenty-three

U
nder Stig's direction, the remaining members of
Ishtfana
's crew were lying belly down on the deck, menaced by Stig's, Selethen's and Ingvar's weapons, while Ulf and Wulf moved quickly among them, lashing their hands behind their backs. Jesper and Stefan, who had boarded behind Hal and so had taken no part in the fight, hurried to lend a hand. In a few minutes, the Hellenes were all securely tied.

Thorn, the aggrieved look still on his face, stepped up to Ingvar, who turned to him, smiling.

“You stole my fight,” Thorn accused.

The huge youth shrugged. “Didn't see your name on it,” he replied. But Thorn shook his head and repeated himself.

“You stole my fight. And you said my thing.”

Ingvar frowned at that. “Your thing?” he said. “What thing would that be?”

“My tactical plan. My battle order,” Thorn said, glaring. Still Ingvar showed no sign of understanding, so he added, “
Let's get 'em.
That's my battle plan.”

“That's a battle plan?” Selethen put in, smiling.

Gilan, who, like Jesper and Stefan, had boarded too late to take any part in the fight, grinned in return. “It's about as complex as Skandian battle plans seem to get.”

Selethen considered this and nodded sagely. “Simple plans are the best. There's less that can go wrong.”

“Exactly,” Gilan agreed. “Once you've said,
Let's get 'em,
you've said it all, really.” Thorn turned to the two foreigners and gave them a withering look. Selethen and Gilan smiled easily at him, remaining decidedly unwithered.

“I'll thank you,” said Thorn, “not to disparage Skandian tactics.” Gilan and Selethen both made disclaiming gestures.

“Far be it from us to disparage,” Selethen said.

Gilan hurriedly agreed. “It was more a case of discussing than disparaging.”

Thorn eyed them for a few seconds longer, then shrugged. “Very well then.” He turned back to Ingvar. “And you should know, Ingvar, that I am the battle leader. When it's time for someone to say,
Let's get 'em,
I will be the one doing the saying. You will be one of the boys who does the getting. Clear?”

“Absolutely, Thorn. My apologies. I got carried away, I'm afraid. Blame Hal. He's the one who fixed it so I can see what I'm doing.” Ingvar touched his hand to the tortoiseshell spectacles strapped over his eyes.

Hal stepped forward and put a hand on his massive shoulder. “All the same, Ingvar, you should be careful. What if someone had slashed you across the face and you lost the spectacles? You'd be helpless.”

Ingvar grinned. “Think about that, Hal. What if someone slashed you across the face? Spectacles or no, you'd be pretty helpless too.”

And Hal had to admit that he was right. The young skirl turned to Thorn with a rueful smile. “You can take some of the blame too, Thorn. You were the one who taught him how to wield that enormous bargepole.”

“Did you see him, Thorn?” Stefan chimed in. “It was just like you said. He chopped, he stabbed, he hooked and he chopped again. It was like poetry.” He stepped forward to slap Ingvar on the back in congratulation. The big boy shuffled his feet, embarrassed at being the center of attention and admiration.

Thorn finally lightened up. “You did well, Ingvar,” he admitted.

Ingvar looked up and beamed at him. Thorn's praise wasn't easily come by—particularly for someone who had just usurped his position in a fight.

“Thanks, Thorn,” he said.

Stig, who had finished supervising the binding of the prisoners and, with the twins' help, had dragged them into a line along the bulwarks, rejoined the group.

“If we're finished with this mutual love fest,” he said, “what do we do now? How do we get this ship to go where we want it?”

Hal acknowledged the question and gestured to the hatch leading to the rowing deck.

“Good point,” he said. “Let's go talk to the rowers. Stig, Thorn, come with me. The rest of you keep an eye on the prisoners.” He remembered his manners and looked apologetically at Selethen, realizing that he had just told the nobleman what to do rather abruptly. “If that's all right with you,
Wakir
?”

Selethen gestured graciously for him to go ahead. “Perfectly all right, Captain Hal. I'm here to obey orders.” A sly grin touched his lips. “Particularly if someone yells out,
Let's get 'em!
”

“Everyone's a comedian,” Thorn grumbled. Then he and Stig followed Hal through the hatch to the rowing deck below.

They went down a short companionway, momentarily blinded by the dimness belowdecks after the bright sun outside. Even before they could see clearly, the smell assaulted their nostrils. It was the smell of dozens of unwashed, sweating bodies, kept cramped in the badly ventilated space of the rowing deck, and of the dirty, foul-smelling water that washed back and forth in the bilges farther below.

As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they saw row after row of dirty, bearded faces regarding them. There was neither friendliness nor hostility in the eyes that turned toward them. The three Herons paused at the bottom of the ladder, crouching slightly under the low headroom of the rowing deck, taking stock of the situation. In spite of Davos's earlier fear, the rowing master, whose body could be seen sprawled on the catwalk aft, had made it a practice never to carry the key to the slaves' chains on him. That would have been placing temptation too close to their hands. Instead, it hung on a peg by the aft hatch, well out of the slaves' reach.

As a result, the slaves were still held firmly in place, chained to their oars below the level of the central catwalk. Hal moved a few paces aft and thirty-odd pairs of eyes turned to watch him as he went. Toward the stern, he noted several men collapsed over their oars or slumped on their benches, nursing injuries.

“Fetch Edvin,” he said softly to Stig. “And tell him to bring his healer's kit. We've got wounded men here.”

The fact that they had been wounded by his own action in bringing the
Heron
slamming alongside was all too obvious to him. The least he could do was have Edvin patch them up as best he could. He stepped a few further paces, stopping about a third of the way down the catwalk. He looked around those unwavering eyes, looking for some glimmer of trust, finding none.

“We need your help,” he said, after a pause.

Nothing. No reaction. No buzz of conversation. He looked quickly at Thorn, who shrugged, then he continued.

“I'm Hal Mikkelson, skipper of the Skandian ship
Heron.
We've captured the
Ishtfana
and imprisoned her crew. You'll probably be glad to hear that her captain is dead. He was killed in the fight.”

“That wasn't Bloodyhand,” a voice from a bench close to him growled. “It was his first mate, Kyrios. Bloodyhand didn't come on this voyage.”

Hal made a small moue of interest. “Well, that's news to me. Nevertheless, we've killed or captured Bloodyhand's crew. But we have no wish to keep you imprisoned here. I plan to set you all free.”

That
created a stir of interest. A low muttering ran along the benches as they heard that magic word
free
—a word none of them had hoped to even think about for the rest of their lives. Hal held up a hand and silence gradually fell.

“But, as I said, we need your help. We plan to drive Iqbal and his Tualaghi bandits out of the town of Tabork, and we need to use this ship to do it. We'll set you free, feed you and clean you up if you wish. But we'll need you to row the ship back to Tabork for us.”

Again, there was muttering on the benches. This time, he sensed a darker reaction. He hurried to reassure them.

“There'll be no whipping, no ramming speed, no force used. We don't even want you to fight for us. Just get us to Tabork and you're free to go.”

He paused, looking around, waiting for a reaction. He saw uncertainty in some eyes, agreement in others, hostility and distrust in a minority.

One of the rowers spoke up. “What if we say no?”

Hal spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “We won't try to force you.”

Then Thorn stepped forward and spoke. “But we won't unchain you, either. You can stay here, locked to your oars, while we find another way to get into Tabork. In other words, if you won't help us, we won't help you.”

Hal glanced at his old friend. It was a harsh threat, he thought, and one that he wouldn't have made. Yet he saw the sense in it. Thorn was simply promising to pay the rowers in their own coin.
Don't cooperate with us and we won't cooperate with you.

In fact, it wasn't a threat that Hal would carry through. If necessary, they'd tow
Ishtfana
behind the
Heron
to the rendezvous point on the coast. Once there, they'd have plenty of men to row the ship to Tabork. But it would take time, and Hal knew that the sooner they got back to Tabork, the better it would be. The longer they took, the greater the chance that Iqbal would be suspicious on their return. Their entire plan could collapse if the slaves didn't agree to one more journey at the oars.

The silence in the dim rowing deck seemed to stretch on for minutes. Hal heard footsteps on the companionway and turned to see Edvin descending into the rowing deck, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He had his healer's kit slung over his shoulder in a canvas satchel. Hal pointed to the injured men in the stern.

“Down there,” he said. “See what you can do for them.”

Edvin hurried aft along the catwalk, stopping at the sternmost oar, where the rower slumped against the hull, nursing an obviously broken arm. His face was lacerated and bloodstained. The slightly built healer stepped down onto the rowing bench beside him and began to mop gently at the gash on his forehead—caused by a splinter from the shattering oar.

He worked quickly, but with a light touch that caused as little discomfort as possible. And he spoke in soft, encouraging tones to the man as he worked. The other rowers had swiveled on their benches to watch.

Edvin finished cleaning the wound, smeared it with a healing paste and quickly bound the man's head with a clean linen bandage. His deft touch, and his caring manner, impressed themselves on the watching slaves.

Gently, he pried the man's left hand away from his broken right forearm, inspecting the injury with critical eyes.

“Stig,” he called, “I'm going to need you to straighten this arm.”

The tall first mate hurried down the catwalk and stepped down onto the bench. Edvin showed him where he wanted to grip and pull the arm back into position.

“When I give you the word,” he said, “do it firmly, but don't jerk it. Just pull smoothly and keep going until it's straight. Then I'll splint it.” Stig nodded, licking his lips nervously. Edvin touched the wounded man on the shoulder, and leaned close.

“This will hurt,” he said. “It will hurt very badly. But it will only be for a minute. And we have to do it if you don't want your arm to be bent for the rest of your life. Understand?”

The man nodded, sweat breaking out on his forehead in anticipation of the pain to come.

“Yell long and loud if you want to,” Edvin told him.

The man looked up into the steady eyes of the healer and trusted what he saw there. “Do it,” he said.

Edvin prepared himself with two wooden splints and a roll of bandage, then nodded to Stig. “On three,” he said. “One, two, three.”

Stig gripped and pulled steadily, stretching the arm against the tendons and muscles that wanted to keep it crooked and crippled. Edvin had chosen Stig deliberately. He was young and his muscles were hardened by long hours of rowing and weapons practice. He was stronger than anyone on board, except perhaps Ingvar, and strength was what was needed to put that arm back into a straight line. Thorn, of course, would have been stronger, but with only one hand, he would have been incapable of pulling the two halves of the bone back into position.

The rower screamed in agony, his cries echoing down the length of the rowing deck, the other rowers wincing and turning away as they heard it. Then the arm was straight, the bone was back in line and Edvin quickly wrapped the splints in position, one on either side, whipping the linen bandage round and round to hold them firmly in place and keep the arm straight and supported. The man stopped screaming, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“You can let go now,” Edvin said. Stig released his grip on the man's arm and stood erect. His brow was covered in sweat too.

“Thank you . . . ,” the rower gasped. He put his filthy left hand up to touch Edvin in a gesture of gratitude. “Thank you, my friend.”

There was a collective release of breath from the rowing benches. Then the man who had queried Hal spoke up.

“We'll row you to Tabork.”