02 The Invaders (43 page)

The
Heron
’s first mate held out his hand in greeting.

“Barat,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Barat slapped the friendly hand aside. His face grew dark as he looked at the young, smiling face.

“You and I have a score to settle,” he said. The men around them stepped back uncertainly. The Herons who had heard his words looked angry. His own men looked uncomfortable at his ungracious and threatening words.

Stig eyed him carefully. With a great effort, he held his own temper in check. Thorn, watching closely, marveled at how Stig had matured. A few months ago, Barat’s action would have provoked
an unthinking, aggressive response from Stig. The boy was growing up fast, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with the added responsibility he had shouldered as Hal’s first mate, and as
Heron
’s helmsman when she went into battle. But there was a limit to how much his barely restrained temper would bear.

“Settle down, Barat,” Stig said in a calm voice. “We’ve just had a victory here. It’s no time to start fighting among ourselves.”

Barat let out a short bray of laughter. “I’m sure you don’t want to start fighting now. Not when I’m ready for you! That’s not your way, is it, you coward?”

Stig’s face began to flush red. The Limmatans around them muttered uncomfortably at Barat’s insult. Jonas stepped forward and laid a restraining hand on the battle commander’s forearm.

“Barat, this is wrong. These Skandian boys have done us a great service today.”

“Have they? They left the greater part of the fighting to us! Nice of them to turn up when it’s all over!”

Jonas shook his head, perplexed.

“We were virtually unopposed!” he pointed out. “There were no defenders on the walls because Hal and his men drew them off. We’ve had minor injuries to two of our men. Do you call that
leaving the greater part of the fighting to us
?”

His comrades began to close in, voicing their agreement with Jonas’s words with increasing force. But still Barat would not be placated. He jabbed his forefinger into Stig’s chest.

“No matter what you say, Jonas, I have a score to settle!”

A deep voice interrupted him. “Then you’ll settle it with me.”

Thorn pushed his way through the crowd to confront Barat.
His left hand jabbed forward and he shoved the Limmatan back with surprising force. Barat recoiled several paces before he recovered. When he did, he found that Thorn had followed him, stepping close to him, thrusting his face into the Limmatan’s.

“You preening idiot,” Thorn continued. “I’ve just watched these boys fighting for your precious town. And nobody fought harder or better than Stig. Now, we don’t have time to waste with you at the moment. We’re after Zavac. But once we’ve got him in the bag, I’ll be delighted to come back and split your skull for you. Just wait right here for me.”

He brandished the massive studded club-hand under Barat’s nose. Thorn’s hair might have been gray and his clothes shabby, but he was a big man, massively built by Limmatan standards. The heavy club, and the ease with which he wielded it, was a daunting sight. Barat blanched. He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.

Thorn turned away contemptuously. “Herons! Let’s go! We’ve wasted enough time here and the job’s not done yet!” He looked around, saw the Limmatan who had acted as their guide. “You! Which way to the quay?”

The man pointed to a broad street on the western side of the square.

“That’ll take you straight to it,” he said. “Do you want me to show you?”

Thorn studied the long, straight street. “I think we can find it,” he said. Then, signaling for the crew to follow him, he strode purposefully across the square.

As they neared the harbor, Thorn heard the unmistakable
sounds of fighting ahead. Axes hammered onto shields, swords rang against each other. And over all, there were the sudden high-pitched cries of the wounded. He quickened his pace, settling into a steady jog, with the Herons behind him in two loose files.

With the collapse of the watchtowers, Magyaran resistance had largely collapsed as well. Svengal and his men had crossed the harbor, using the boom as a makeshift bridge, and climbed onto the eastern quay.

The survivors from that tower’s garrison had seen them coming and fled before them, breaking into small groups and disappearing into the winding, narrow streets of the town. Svengal paused, then split his men into three squads to pursue the scattered Magyarans. Two of these, he sent off into the town itself. The third, he led down the quay. He could see the
Raven
moored deep inside the harbor.
Stingray
, the green ship, was moored alongside the quay only a hundred meters away. As he watched, a tongue of flame leapt up her mast. He could see several figures running away from the ship, heading down the quay toward
Raven
.

“Come on!” he yelled, and led the charge after them.

And that was the moment when Rikard and his ten men chose to emerge onto the quay in front of them.

It was ten against ten. So, as Svengal later recounted, it was no contest. He had the enemy outnumbered three to one.

The fight was short and sharp and vicious. Rikard saw the massive Skandian leader bearing down on him and shoved one of his own men between himself and Svengal, backing away in fright. The Magyarans were not prime fighting men. They were more accustomed
to attacking relatively small crews of unarmed ships or making sneak attacks on an unprepared town like Limmat.

Faced with professional, and thoroughly eager, warriors like the Skandians, they had little chance. Svengal simply bowled over the man Rikard had tried to use as a shield, then cut down Rikard himself. Some of the pirates tried to stand against the wild northmen. They were either struck down by the flailing axes, or simply shoved off the edge of the quay into the harbor.

By the time Thorn and the Herons arrived at the harbor front, there were only three of the Magyarans left. They were on their knees, pleading for mercy. The Skandians, who had never been cold-blooded killers, granted it reluctantly. Some of them urged the Magyarans to pick up their weapons and try their luck once more. The pirates might have been cowardly, but they weren’t stupid. They declined the invitation. The Skandians consoled themselves by delivering hearty kicks to their enemies’ backsides, sending them sprawling.

Behind him, the
Stingray
was now fully aflame. It was too late to save her. The fire ran up her tarred rigging and spread along her hull, feeding off the tar-soaked wool that caulked the gaps between her planks.

Svengal spun round warily as he heard running feet approaching. Then he relaxed as he recognized Thorn, Hal and the others.

“You’re late,” he boomed.

“Seems as if you’ve got things under control,” Thorn said. “Except for that, of course.” He gestured to the
Stingray
. For a moment, the spectacle of the burning ship held them all, with a kind of horror. It was a sight no seaman could ever enjoy, even if the ship had belonged to an enemy.

Thorn glanced around at the bodies and the cowering survivors. “Is this all that’s left?”

Svengal gestured toward the streets behind them. “The others have scattered through the town. I’ve sent men to winkle them out.” He glanced to Hal and Stig. “Your boys did well,” he said quietly. “Especially young Hal.”

“They did,” Thorn agreed. Then he looked around the quay. “Did you come across Zavac at all?”

Svengal shook his head. “Haven’t seen him,” he replied. “He’ll turn up eventually. I’m looking forward to that.”

“I think you might be disappointed,” said Lydia, pointing down harbor. Unlike the others, she didn’t have the same emotional reaction to the burning ship and she’d been looking around the harbor for signs of damage to her hometown.

Thorn and Svengal followed the direction of her pointing finger. At the bottom of the harbor, thirty meters from the shore, the
Raven
was hauling in her anchor. As they watched, a bank of oars appeared on either side of the black hull, as if by magic. They began their rhythmic rise and fall, and a small ripple of a bow wave formed at her prow.

“She’ll never get out,” Svengal said with satisfaction. “The boom is closed.”

But Thorn was already looking in that direction and he could see the massive logs drifting in toward the western mole with the incoming tide.

“I think someone’s just opened it,” he said.

chapter
forty

C
urse him!” Svengal snarled. “That boom was our way back to
Wolfwind
!”

He looked around frantically, seeking another route to the far side of the harbor. The boom had obviously been cut loose and there was no way they could close it again and use it as a makeshift bridge.

“We can use the
Sea Lion
!” Stig shouted, pointing to the small ship Zavac had used as a decoy in his attack on the town. It was still moored alongside the mole, just inside the harbor mouth. But even as they began to run toward it, flames shot up its mast and rigging and spread rapidly along the hull.

Hal looked back down the harbor. Zavac’s ship was moving slowly as he picked his way through the moored fishing boats and barges that filled the inner harbor.

“We’ve got to get back to the
Heron
,” he said.

Thorn looked at him for a brief moment, then nodded. He glanced at Svengal.

“Are you coming with us?”

But the skirl shook his head. “We’ll go round the bottom of the bay and back along the other side to
Wolfwind
. We may just make it in time.”

He and his men started to run, spreading out in a line along the quay as the faster ones among them pulled away. The
Heron
crew hesitated, then Hal looked at the
Raven
again and felt hope surge in his heart.

“She’s aground!” he yelled, pointing. As Zavac’s own first mate had feared some days before, Zavac’s lack of skill as a helmsman had come back to haunt him. He had misjudged a turn in the narrow channel and the
Raven
had run straight onto a mud bank. The mud had been exposed at low tide but the incoming flood had covered it with a few centimeters of water—enough to let the pirate ship run onto the bank for several meters before it stuck fast. They could see the evil shape of
Raven
’s ram above the surface—a heavy, iron-shod beam that projected from her bow—as she ran aground, and saw the mast tilt unnaturally as she fell off to one side on her keel.

Men were running frantically on her decks as they tried to free her. Some tried to reverse their oar strokes and row her off. But she was too deeply fixed in the mud. Others took oars and tried to pole off the bank with them. But the mud was too soft and they could gain no purchase as they tried to shove her free—the oar blades simply sank into the stinking, semiliquid ooze.

“She’s trapped!” Stig said delightedly. “We’ve got her cornered.”

“Not for long,” Thorn told him. “The tide’s coming in. She’ll float free in ten minutes or so. But it does give us time to get to the
Heron
.”

They turned and ran back down the wide thoroughfare that led to the town square. Behind them, the three surviving members of Rikard’s crew looked at one another, not believing their luck. Furtively, they retrieved their weapons and scuttled into one of the narrow streets running off the quay. Somehow, they felt safer in the dark, narrow alleys than they would on the broad main streets.

But it was a false sense of security. They hadn’t gone twenty meters when they rounded a corner and found themselves facing a large crowd of angry townspeople, all armed with makeshift weapons—clubs, knives, cleavers and even kitchen stools.

They were searching for Magyaran stragglers and they had several days of cruel mistreatment and brutality to avenge. After a few brief, violent moments, the townspeople moved on, leaving the broken, battered bodies of the pirates sprawled on the cobbles.

Hal’s sword in its scabbard banged awkwardly against his side with each stride. His left arm was still encumbered with his shield, so he tugged his sword belt around until he could hold the scabbard steady with his right hand.

Not ideal conditions for running, he thought grimly. But they pounded down the broad main street, gradually stringing out as they went, the thudding of their feet on the cobbles echoing back from the faces of the buildings.

Stig was in the lead, with Jesper close behind him. Hal and Thorn were next, with Lydia easily keeping pace beside them.

They erupted into the square, drawing startled looks from the townspeople and warriors still gathered there. But there was no
time to explain. Hal saw Stig hesitate, not sure which side street led back to the gate.

“Second left,” Lydia called, pointing. Stig nodded and increased his pace again, Jesper on his heels.

It was late afternoon by now and the alleys and side streets were all deep in shadow. The sound of their running feet and the rattle of their equipment bounced back with increased volume from the close-set walls and houses. Stig glanced back at Jesper and grinned.