“Sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t see it. Good work, Stig.”
Stig shook his head. “You’re the one doing all the work. And it’s getting tougher and tougher to see where we’re going in this light. You must be exhausted.”
Hal managed a tired grin. “I must admit, getting a faceful of dust and pebbles is a little different from the occasional bucketful of spray coming over the bows. Not half as invigorating.” For the first time, he realized how tired he was. He glanced up at his first mate. “Do you want to take over for a while?” he said, but Stig shook his head immediately.
“Not me!” he said vigorously. “You’ve got the knack with this mad creation of yours. I wouldn’t have the same feel for it.”
Hal nodded. He realized that Stig was right. Perhaps he should have allowed the bigger youth to spell him earlier and get the feeling for the land sailer. But then, he realized, they’d been in a hurry both coming and going. There hadn’t been time for Stig to acclimatize himself to the controls.
“We’ll push on slowly for a few more kilometers,” he said. Then we’re going to have to camp for the night. I can’t risk traveling once the light’s gone. It’d be too easy to wreck the sailer.” He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders to relieve the strain there. The land sailer was facing dead into the wind and they’d need to push her round. He gestured in the direction he wanted her turned.
“Push her round to port and we’ll get going,” he said.
“Slowly,” Gilan admonished as he climbed down from his perch. Hal gave him a tired grin.
“Very slowly,” he agreed.
chapter forty-seven
The chopping went on for some hours, after which it was replaced by another sound—similar, but not quite the same. The Herons left on board puzzled over the sound.
“It’s hammering,” Jesper said, finally identifying it. “They’ve been chopping down trees and now they’re hammering them together.”
The noise continued as night fell and the wind shifted. They could see the reflected glow of several large fires in the oasis. The uncertainty began to play on all their nerves. Thorn was also becoming increasingly concerned about Lydia. She had been gone for some hours now. She should have had time to find out what was going on and report back.
“Do you think they caught her?” Ingvar asked. He had sensed what Thorn was thinking about. The old sea wolf shook his head.
“I doubt it. She’s very good at what she does.”
“But she should have been back by now,” Ingvar insisted. He glanced to where his voulge was leaning against the mast. “I’ve a good mind to go and look for her.”
Thorn rounded on him instantly. “No,” he said and his voice was sharp, cutting off any discussion about that idea. He saw Ingvar draw himself up angrily and said in a more conciliatory tone, “Ingvar, you’re big and you’re powerful and since Hal made you those spectacles, as you call them, you’ve turned into one heck of a warrior. But the one thing you’re not is stealthy.”
Ingvar went to demur, then stopped. He had to admit that Thorn was right. The one-handed warrior went on.
“Let’s say you go blundering around ashore and Lydia hasn’t been discovered—which is most likely. They’re bound to hear or see you and capture you. And then Lydia will feel obliged to help you. And then you’ll both be caught. Is that what you want?”
“No. But—”
“There’s no but to it. We have to trust Lydia’s skill and her ability to move about the oasis without being discovered. If you go chasing after her, you’ll only cause problems.”
Somewhat surprisingly, it was Jesper who supported Thorn’s position. He placed a hand on Ingvar’s arm.
“Thorn’s right, Ingvar. Trust me, I’ve done this sort of thing and it’s a lot easier for one person to avoid discovery than for two. Particularly,” he added with a small grin, “when the second person is a big muscle-bound oaf with the grace and stealthiness of a bull walrus on the prowl.”
Despite himself, Ingvar couldn’t help a smile touching his mouth. Jesper’s description of his way of moving was a graphic one.
“If you put it that way . . . ,” he began, and Jesper nodded. He did put it that way. “Then I suppose it’s better for me to remain on board. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Thorn nodded unequivocally. “None of us do. But I’m sure Lydia will be okay.”
They heard a faint splash from the stern of the ship, and a hand appeared over the bulwark.
“Lydia will be fine,” came the girl’s voice, “if one of you will give her a hand back on board.”
They all moved quickly to the stern. Ingvar leaned over the railing and, grabbing hold of Lydia’s arm, hauled her bodily out of the water and deposited her, dripping profusely, on deck.
“Where have you been?” Thorn asked. He masked his earlier concern for her with a mock severity of tone. “What took you so long?”
She took a blanket that Edvin handed her. Once the sun set in the desert, the night quickly became chilly. She wrapped it round herself, using one corner to mop her face and towel her hair. She smiled her gratitude to Edvin before answering Thorn’s question.
“I thought it best to wait until dark to swim back,” she said. Thorn nodded, reluctantly accepting the good sense in that remark. She couldn’t resist adding a little barb. “Seemed to work too. None of you saw me coming, did you?”
Thorn coughed and tried to ignore the question by asking one of his own.
“Well, did you find out what they’re up to?”
“Yes. They’re building rafts. Obviously, they intend to try boarding us in the morning.”
There was a quick outburst from the assembled crew but Thorn held up his hand for silence.
“Rafts, you say? How many? And how many men are in the oasis now?”
“I couldn’t get an exact count of the men, but I’d say between forty and fifty,” Lydia said. There were exclamations of surprise and concern from the crew as they heard the number. “It looked as if they were working on five rafts.”
“And what makes you think they’ll wait till morning to attack?” Thorn asked.
Lydia shrugged. “They’ve got hours of work to do yet,” she said. “And then they’ll presumably need to rest. Plus they’re cavalrymen, not sailors. I expect they’ll want daylight before they try their luck on the water in an unfamiliar craft.”
Thorn fingered his chin as he digested her words. “That makes sense,” he said. “So we’ve got till dawn.”
Lydia shrugged. “Well, I could be wrong. We’ll need to keep a sharp lookout tonight.” Then she couldn’t resist adding, “Certainly a lot sharper than you kept while I was swimming back out.”
“Yes. Yes. You’ve made your point,” Thorn said, a little irritably.
Stefan was frowning as he considered Lydia’s news. “Thorn, why don’t we just up anchor and sail away? That would seem the simplest course of action.”
Wulf and Jesper murmured agreement.
“Have you forgotten Hal and Stig and the Ranger are still ashore?” Thorn asked him. “What happens if we sail away and they arrive back, slap into the arms of fifty desert nomads?”
Stefan looked abashed at the reply. He shifted his feet uncomfortably. “Oh . . . yeah. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Still,” Thorn said, “we should be ready if we have to get away in a hurry. Edvin, buoy the end of the anchor rope so we can simply cast it off and get under way. Then we can always recover it later.”
“I’ll get on to it,” Edvin said and turned to search for a suitable object with which to buoy the end of the anchor rope. Thorn looked around the others.
“We’ll set a double watch. Wulf and Jesper, you take the first. Three hours, then wake Stefan and me. The rest of us better get some sleep. It’s going to be a busy morning.”
r /> • • • • •
Hal let go the mainsheet and spilled the wind from the sail. The land sailer slowly trundled to a halt, its wheels rumbling and grumbling over the uneven surface of the desert. Not for the first time, he gave a mental vote of thanks to the chariot builders who had constructed those wheels to cope with this rough terrain.
He groaned softly as he straightened up, relieving the tension in his back muscles. The past hour had been an incredible strain, as he peered through the gathering dusk, trying to find a safe path.
Finally, he had to admit that it was time to stop. “I’ll sail us off a cliff if I keep going.”
Gilan had dismounted from his perch on the starboard outrigger. He studied the desert behind them long and hard, looking for some sign of pursuit. He could see nothing, but the failing light and the shadows cast by large rock outcrops could well have concealed riders coming after them.
“Can’t see anyone,” he said, at length.
“Whether you can or not, we’re not going any farther tonight,” Hal told him. “And if there’s anyone riding after us, it’ll be just as difficult and dangerous for them in this light.”
“Of course,” Stig put in, “there may be no pursuit. I think that scar-faced man was glad to be rid of us.”
“That’s true,” Gilan agreed. “But we’d better set a watch none the less. Hal, you’re all in. You’ve been doing all the work today. You get your head down. I’ll take the first watch and Stig can take the second. That way, you’ll get six hours straight sleep.”
“I can use them,” Hal said wearily. He dragged his bedroll off the land sailer, then went to lower the sail and furl it. Stig took the halyard from his hand.
“I’ll do that,” he said. “You get some rest.”
Without argument, Hal spread out his bedding and literally fell onto it, rolling the blanket around him against the chill of the desert night air. Within seconds, he was asleep. Gilan regarded the still form for a few seconds, then looked at the spidery shape of the land sailer and shook his head once more in admiration.
“He’s a remarkable young man,” he said quietly to Stig.
The first mate nodded agreement. “We all look up to him,” he said. “Funny, growing up in Hallasholm, he was something of an outcast. Half Araluen and half Skandian and nobody completely trusted him because of it.”
“You did,” Gilan pointed out. Thorn had told him a little about the background of the Heron crew, how they had all been outcasts and misfits, yet had gone on to become the champion brotherband of their year. Stig looked at him, his bottom lip pushed out thoughtfully.
“He saved my life,” he said finally. “We weren’t friends or anything at that stage, but he risked his life to save mine. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”
The Ranger nodded. “That’s a pretty good basis for a friendship.” Then, changing the subject, he unpacked the last of their meager rations. “Let’s eat, then you get some sleep. I’ll wake you for the second watch.”
Stig munched on a piece of stale flat bread, wrapping it round some salted pork with just a hint of Edvin’s precious pickles. He nodded wearily.
“Amazing how good this can taste when you’re hungry,” he said.
Six hours later, Hal woke instantly to the gentle touch of Stig’s hand on his shoulder. His eyes shot wide open and for a moment he lay still, not sure where he was or what he’d been doing. Then the memory of the wild, plunging ride on the land sailer came back to him and he sat up, rubbing his eyes. Stig handed him a beaker of water and he drank deeply.
“No coffee, I’m afraid,” the first mate said. “Gilan didn’t think we could risk a fire.”
“He’s probably right,” Hal said, yawning. He drained off the water, then tossed his blankets aside. Rising to his feet, he shrugged on his sheepskin vest and buckled his sword belt around his waist. The weight of the sword on one side and the heavy saxe on the other was strangely comforting.
Stretching, he walked to the slightly elevated spot where Stig and Gilan had kept watch. It was a small outcrop of rocks and it gave a wider view of the desert around them. He scanned the horizon through three hundred and sixty degrees but there was nothing in sight. Yawning again, he settled down on the hard rock. Stig, he saw, was already stretched out in his blanket. Hal wriggled his buttocks on the hard rock.
“No risk I’ll fall asleep on watch,” he reflected.
But he was wrong. In spite of the hard, sharp-edged rocks, he began to nod off after an hour. He jerked awake, got up and walked around. Eventually, deciding he was fully alert again, he sat down once more.
And within a few minutes, he was asleep.
He awoke with a jerk and looked around guiltily. Stig and Gilan were still sleeping peacefully. But in the east, the first red streaks of dawn were showing. Then a sound alerted him—the soft whiffle of a horse’s breath. He swung round and his heart sank.
They were on an elevated piece of land, which afforded a good view of the desert around them. As he watched, a file of horsemen seemed to rise out of the ground behind their campsite, spread in a half circle to enclose them.
chapter forty-eight
Stefan and Jesper had shared the last watch. Now, as dawn began to break over the desert and the ocean, Stefan reached out to shake Thorn’s shoulder. The old sea wolf was leaning against the base of the mast, his sheepskin pulled up around his ears.
“I’m awake,” he said, before the hand touched him. “Anything happening?”
“Heard a bit of rustling and such a half hour ago,” Stefan told him. “And we thought we heard voices—sounded as if they were trying to keep them quiet.”
Thorn smiled grimly. “That usually ensures that people can hear you,” he said. He stood up and stretched, moving forward into the bow. There was a water skin hanging from the Mangler. He took it, rinsed his mouth and spat over the side. Then he peered through the shadows to the beach.
“There’s something there,” he said, pointing. “See those dark shapes on the edge of the water?”
Stefan followed the line of his pointing hand. There were several dark shapes lined up on the beach but, in the dim light, he couldn’t make them out.
“What do you think they are?”
“I’d say they’re the rafts Lydia saw them making, and they’re getting ready to launch them. Wake the others.”
The sun appeared over the eastern horizon and seemed to shoot up into the sky. The light intensified and, within a few minutes, the objects on the beach took on hard lines. There were five of them, Thorn saw. They were approximately four meters long by three wide, constructed from large bamboo trunks. He heard the rest of the crew moving behind him.
“Get your weapons,” he said quietly. He had moved back to his spot by the mast and was fastening his club-hand in place. His sword and saxe hung from his belt. For a moment, he considered donning his shield, then discarded the idea. He’d need both hands free in the coming fight.
The others gathered around him, all of them watching those five dark shapes on the water’s edge.
“If it all goes wrong,” Thorn said, “we may need to make a run for it. Edvin, be ready to cast off the anchor rope, then take the tiller. Stefan and Jesper, you stay ready to raise the sail and sheet home.”
“What about me?” Wulf demanded truculently. It was normally his job to look after the mainsheet.
“You’ll help Ingvar and me keep them off the ship,” Thorn said. After himself and Ingvar, Wulf was the most skillful fighter aboard.
“Do you want me on the Mangler?” Lydia asked.
Thorn shook his head. “The Mangler’s not very useful against bamboo rafts. It might smash a log or two, but the raft will stay afloat. Besides, I need Ingvar free to take care of any would-be boarders,” he said. “He won’t be able to load or train the Mangler for you. Use your atlatl and your dar
ts. Take care of anyone who actually makes it on board.”
Lydia frowned. “I’ve only got half a dozen darts left,” she said. She had lost some of her store of darts in the previous battle.
“Then make them count,” Thorn told her. He glanced around and saw Kloof, head on her paws, watching him intently. As usual when Hal was absent, she was tethered to a ring bolt in the deck. “Oh, and untie Kloof. If anyone makes it past us, she can be our second line of defense.”
“That’s some second line.” Wulf grinned.
Thorn studied him for a few seconds. Wulf had been more cheerful over the past few days. He claimed that he could somehow sense that his twin brother was regaining his health and strength. Just as well, Thorn thought. He didn’t want him distracted by concerns over Ulf in the coming battle.
“Thorn?” It was Edvin, peering at the beach. Instantly, Thorn swung to see what had caught his attention, the others following suit a second or so behind him.
“Here they come,” said Jesper.
A dark line of men was advancing quickly from the shelter of the trees in the oasis, fanning out to run to the beach in groups of six.
“Stay quiet,” Thorn ordered. “Let’s let them think they’ve caught us napping.”
The Ishti warriors reached the rafts and seized them, lifting them over the sand and launching them into the calm sea. Then they scrambled aboard—six men to each raft. They picked up paddles that had been left ready and began driving the clumsy craft out into the small waves that lapped against the beach. As they approached the ship, their courses began to diverge.
“Two to port. Two to starboard. One over the bows,” Thorn said, judging their courses. One of the starboard-side rafts was pulling away from its comrades as its occupants paddled more skillfully. A mistake, Thorn thought. They should have made sure they all reached the boat at the same time to split the defenses.
“Wulf, Jesper, Stefan,” he ordered. “You take the bow. Ingvar and Edvin, port side. I’ll look after these characters to starboard.”