The lieutenant looked in startled horror at his attacker. Now, as the ragged cloak was cast aside, he saw that this was no elderly, whining villager. It was a fit, strong Senshi warrior, his black hair powdered with ash to make it look grey. On the breast of his fine leather vest was emblazoned a triple cherry symbol.
The sword fell from the lieutenant’s hand and he doubled over, dead before he hit the ground. Quickly, Shukin switched the short sword to his left hand, stooped and retrieved the lieutenant’s longer weapon.
The men of the raiding party had been stunned for a few seconds but now they drew swords and prepared to avenge their leader’s death. They weren’t completely sure how it had happened. One moment the villager had been cowed into submission. The next, their officer was staggering and falling before him. Whatever had happened, the treacherous villager would die for it.
But even as they moved, other figures appeared from the trees behind them, running to flank them and cut them off from Shukin.
The two men who had been sent to fire the cabins were close to him and he turned to face them. He blocked the first man’s cut easily, flicking the sword to one side and, in the same motion, cutting back so that his own blade bit into the man’s neck. As the man fell, Shukin blocked the second man’s cut with the short sword in his left hand, then spun to his right, his long sword reaching back over his right shoulder as part of the movement and taking the enemy Senshi high in the chest.
He stepped clear as the man fell, a few seconds after his comrade.
Now the remaining raiders had no time to avenge their fallen leader. They found themselves surrounded by thirty armed Senshi warriors, all wearing the Emperor’s crest.
For a few brief minutes, the clearing rang with the clash of swords and the cries of the injured. Arisaka’s men fought fiercely, but they never had a chance. Horace, assigned to guard the Emperor in one of the second row of cabins, watched the fight curiously. Each of the enemy was surrounded by two or sometimes three of Shigeru’s men. Yet they never attacked all at once, choosing instead to engage the raiders in a series of single combats. He remarked on this to the Emperor and Shigeru simply nodded.
‘This is the way it is done,’ he said. ‘It’s not honourable to fight three at a time against one man. We win or lose as individuals.’
Horace shook his head. ‘Where I come from, once a fight starts, it’s all in and devil take the hindmost,’ he said. He saw that Shigeru didn’t understand the expression but he made no attempt to explain.
Gradually, the sounds of fighting died away as the last of Arisaka’s men were cut down. But they hadn’t gone easily. Four of Shigeru’s warriors also lay silent on the bloodstained soil of the common ground and another two were nursing wounds.
Shigeru and Horace left the cabin where they had been concealed and moved out to join Shukin. Gradually, the villagers began to reappear, drifting back in from their hiding places in the forest. They regarded the fallen Senshi with something like awe.
Jito looked at Shigeru and inclined his head slightly. ‘This was good work, Lord Shigeru.’
Eiko too had a look of satisfaction on his face. These were the men who had killed his friends and neighbours and destroyed his village, while he was forced to stand by and watch. It was good, he thought, to see the shoe was on the other foot.
But Shigeru was looking troubled. He indicated the bloodstained forms on the ground.
‘Arisaka will hear of this. He’ll hold you responsible and he’ll declare war on the Kikori people,’ he said.
Jito threw a disparaging glance at the dead raiders. His shoulders straightened and his head came up proudly.
‘Let him! Lead us to Ran-Koshi and teach us to fight, Lord Shigeru. The Kikori are declaring war on Arisaka.’
There was a growled mutter of agreement from the people of both villages as they heard his words. They gathered around Shigeru, touching him, bowing to him, pledging their loyalty.
Shukin and Horace exchanged grim smiles.
‘We have men,’ Shukin said.
Horace nodded. ‘Now we just have to turn them into warriors.’
The pirate ship was a long, low galley, narrow waisted and mounting twelve oars a side. She had a small mast and a square sail but for the moment the sail was furled. As she approached the wolfship, the two banks of oars rose and fell in perfect unison.
‘Can we outrun her, Gundar?’ Halt asked.
As ever, Gundar glanced at the sky, the sail and the other ship, then sniffed the air experimentally before answering.
‘As long as this wind holds, no problem,’ he said. He called an order to the sail trimmers and they hauled on the sheets, bringing the sail to a harder curve. At the same time, he nudged the tiller slightly so that the bow of the ship swung a few degrees to port. Instantly, Will felt a tremor run through the deck as the ship leaned, then accelerated.
Halt was rubbing his beard thoughtfully, still watching the pirate galley behind them. He estimated that there were forty or fifty men in her crew and he could see her captain leaning forward to yell encouragement to his rowers as he realised that they were losing ground to this strange ship with its triangular sail.
‘And if the wind drops?’ Halt asked.
Gundar shrugged. He, too, studied the pirate craft.
‘Twelve oars a side to our eight,’ he mused aloud. ‘Under oars, she’s probably faster than us.’
Halt turned that information over in his mind, then added, ‘And she’s not likely to be the only one of her kind we sight.’
Gundar nodded. ‘The sailing notes say these waters are infested with pirates.’
The Ranger studied the pirate galley again. Under a renewed effort from her rowing crew, she had made up a little distance on Wolfwill. But now, after that initial surge of enthusiasm, they were beginning to drop back again. Wolfwill’s oars were shipped and at least half her crew were relaxing on the rowing benches, out of sight. Chances were that the pirates thought she was a trader, manned by only a dozen or so men.
‘Can you let her catch up to us without them realising you’re doing it?’ he asked.
Gundar, for once, answered immediately. ‘Easily,’ he said, grinning evilly. ‘I take it you want to give them a little surprise?’
‘Something like that.’ Halt glanced at the men on the rowing benches. ‘Get your weapons ready, but stay out of sight,’ he called. He was answered by at least a dozen wolfish grins from the Skandians. Sea wolves loved a fight, Halt thought.
Gundar, meanwhile, eased the bow a little back to starboard, and called more orders to the sail trimmers. The sail came even tauter, and the ship heeled a little further. It looked impressive, but the reality was that she came off her best point of sailing and lost speed in the manoeuvre. The pirates began to gain on them once more. There were a dozen of them gathered in the prow of the galley, yelling threats and waving weapons at their quarry.
‘They’re a raggle-tail bunch,’ Will remarked. ‘Do you want me to start the ball rolling?’
He had an arrow nocked to the bowstring and the galley was in easy range now. But Halt shook his head.
‘Not yet.’ He glanced to where Evanlyn and Alyss were standing by the rail. Evanlyn had her sling ready, slowly swinging it back and forth. Alyss, he saw, had changed her practice sabre for the real thing. She had it belted around her waist.
‘You two move back here,’ he said, indicating a position in the stern of the ship. Reluctantly, they obeyed. They might have argued with him earlier, but both of them knew that when the ship was about to go into a fight, Halt’s orders were to be obeyed without hesitation.
‘You can knock a few over with that sling as we get closer,’ Halt told Evanlyn. Then he glanced at Alyss. ‘You watch her back in case any of them get on board.’
Alyss nodded. ‘Is that likely?’ she asked, with a faint grin. She’d seen the fighting qualities of Skandians – particularly this crew – in the past.
‘I doubt it.’ Then, addressing Gun
dar and his crew, Halt laid out his plan. ‘We’ll turn up into them as they get closer and take them bow on bow. Grapple them, then board them over the bows and disable their ship.’
‘What about their crew?’ Nils called from the rowing benches.
‘If they get in the way, disable them too,’ he said shortly. ‘Get rid of their mast, knock holes in the hull, then get back on board.’
‘You want us to sink her?’ Gundar asked and Halt shook his head.
‘No. I want her badly damaged but capable of making it back to port. I want the word to go out that the strange ship with the red falcon ensign,’ he gestured to Evanlyn’s ensign, flying from the mast top, ‘is manned by dangerous, hairy maniacs with axes and is to be avoided at all costs.’
‘That sounds like us,’ Gundar said cheerfully. And a rumbling growl sounded in the throats of the crew. ‘Jens,’ he said now to one of the sail handlers, ‘you take eight men up to the bows. Have grapnels ready and lead the boarding party when we’ve got her secured.’
‘I’m going too, skirl!’ It was Nils Ropehander, from his position on the front port-side rowing bench. Gundar nodded.
‘First four rows from either side follow Jens aboard her,’ he said. ‘But stay out of sight for now!’
‘Show yourselves only when I give the word,’ Halt called. ‘We want the sight of your lovely faces to be a big surprise for these lads.’
Again, a growl of assent from the crew. They lived for this sort of encounter, Will realised. Several of them were already chuckling at the thought of the panic that would fill the pirates’ hearts when they realised that the helpless-looking, apparently unarmed sailing ship was literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A sea wolf in sheep’s clothing, in fact.
‘Evanlyn, let’s see what you can do,’ Halt said quietly. The princess needed no further urging. She already had an egg-shaped lead shot loaded into the pouch of her sling. Glancing around to make sure she was unimpeded, she whirled the sling up, let it circle twice, then released and sent the shot whizzing on its way.
They could follow the flight of the shot for a few seconds, then lost it against the mass of the galley. But a second later, one of the shouting, gesticulating pirates in the bow suddenly toppled over, folding up like an empty garment. His companions stepped away in shock, silenced for a moment, then redoubled their threats and insults, urging their rowers to go faster and catch this insolent intruder. They were a ragged group, as Will had mentioned, wearing tattered white and coloured robes and dirty turbans. They were generally thin and dark skinned. As they grew closer, Will could see that their weapons were a mixture of curved swords, dirks and knives. There seemed to be no uniformity among them and Will guessed that they were more accustomed to slaughtering helpless crews than fighting trained warriors.
Halt nodded approvingly at Evanlyn’s successful shot.
‘Interesting. Just two spins,’ he said. ‘In Arrida you spun the sling round and round a lot more before releasing.’
‘I’ve been practising,’ she said. ‘Spinning it too much warns your enemy and leaves you exposed to return shots. The ideal is to get maximum velocity in one spin, but I’m not up to that yet.’ She reached into a leather pouch slung over her shoulder and took out another of the specially shaped lead projectiles. The days of using river pebbles were long past.
‘Shall I do another?’
Halt regarded the oncoming pirates, his eyes slitted against the glare of the sun from the sea.
‘No. I think we’ve stirred up that hornets’ nest enough. Once we’ve grappled them, you can let fly at that group around the tiller as much as you like.’ He turned away to Gundar. ‘Any time you’re ready, skirl.’
Gundar judged distance and the angles and the set of his sail.
‘Coming about!’ he bellowed and leaned on the tiller. The ship swung neatly, the wind going out of the sail as she turned, leaving the canvas flapping wildly.
‘Down sail!’ he roared and the boom and sail thundered down to land on the deck. Hastily, two of the sailing crew gathered the flapping canvas in out of the way.
On board the pirate galley there was a sudden silence as their quarry unexpectedly swung round to face them.
‘Show yourselves, sea wolves!’ Halt yelled and sixteen big, heavily armed men appeared from the rowing benches to supplement those already in the bow of the ship.
The pirates, expecting to attack a dozen or so lightly armed sailors, suddenly found themselves facing at least thirty yelling, hairy denizens, all armed with double-headed battleaxes.
At the same moment, two grapnels sailed out from the bow of the ship and thudded into the woodwork of the pirate galley. The captain, aft at the tiller, started to scream orders to his men to cut the ropes that were now drawing his ship closer to the foreigners’ craft. He gesticulated to the rowers to back water and pull them away from this unexpected danger.
Will heard a quick whizzing sound as Evanlyn whirled and cast again. The pirate skipper abruptly reared up, clutching his forehead, then crashed over backwards onto the deck.
There was a grinding crunch as the two ships drew together and the yelling, battle-mad Skandians poured over their own bow and onto the deck of the galley. Most of the pirates gathered in the bow took one look at the huge men and their huge axes and ran for the stern. Some of them took a shorter escape route and dived over the rail into the sea. The few who remained to fight had little time to regret their choice. The boarding party, led now by Nils, who had forced his way past Jens, smashed through them, scattering their limp bodies to either side.
Several of the boarders, directed by Jens, dropped into the rapidly vacated rowing benches and smashed their axes into the hull’s planks below the waterline. Seawater gushed in through the massive rents they created. Satisfied with their work, they then busied themselves throwing oars overboard, while their companions hacked at the stays holding the ship’s low mast in place. One man swarmed up the mast itself and released the sail, then slid rapidly down again. The sail filled with wind and strained at the mast. Unsupported, the mast withstood the pressure for a few seconds, then there was an ugly crack and it sagged to leeward, taking a tangle of sailcloth and cordage with it.
Gundar glanced at Halt. The Ranger had been assessing the damage to the galley and her crew. Nearly half the pirates were killed or disabled and the ship was already settling at the bow. Time to let the remaining pirates make repairs and take news of this very unwelcome foreign ship back to their lairs on the coastline.
‘Bring ’em back,’ he said and Gundar bellowed to his men.
‘Back on board! Sea wolves! Back to the ship!’
The men began to scramble back to the bow of the galley, clambering from there up to Wolfwill, which stood higher than the pirate ship. Their comrades on board helped them over the bulwark. Nils was the last to come. Initially, he was fighting a one-man rearguard action. Then the pirates seemed to realise that there was no future in coming within reach of that whirling battleaxe and they left the deck to him. Annoyed, Nils spread his feet, brandished his axe and yelled a challenge at them.
‘Come on, you raggedy-bum backstabbers! Come face a real pirate!’
But there were no takers and he actually began to advance down the deck towards them again.
‘Nils! Get back on board, you great idiot!’
Gundar’s bellow cut through the fog of anger and battle madness that filled Nils’s mind. He stopped, shook his head, then turned and grinned sheepishly.
‘Coming, skirl!’
Will had to smile. Nils sounded like a naughty boy answering his mother’s call to dinner.
Nils made one last insulting gesture at the pirates, then turned and ran lightly back to the bows. Disdaining help, he sprang from the pirate’s bulwark back aboard.
‘Cut the grappling ropes!’ Gundar called and two axes swung and thudded in quick succession, severing the two ropes. No longer fastened together, the ships began to slowly drift apart. Gundar looked down
at the last four ranks of rowers on either side – the men who had remained aboard Wolfwill through the brief, one-sided battle.
‘Out oars! Give way!’ he ordered. As the men reacted instantly, Will realised that the Skandians had done this sort of thing many, many times before. Wolfwill slowly gathered sternway under the thrust of the eight oars, and the gap to the pirate ship widened.
‘Hoist the sail!’ Gundar ordered and the boom and sail ran smoothly up the mast.
‘Sheet home! In oars!’ he called and the sail handlers hauled in on the sheets and hardened the flapping sail to the wind. Wolfwill’s bow swung downwind and as the skirl leaned on his tiller, she began to gather way.
Behind them, the pirate galley was bow down in the water and her men were swarming forward to repair the massive holes smashed in her planks before she went under.
Gundar nodded in satisfaction. His men had performed well. He jerked a thumb at the half-submerged pirate ship.
‘I doubt we’ll be hearing from them again,’ he said.
Selethen was watching the wallowing ship as her crew worked to stop her sinking.
‘You know,’ he said to Halt, without any trace of a smile, ‘it might have been simpler to have the two girls board her with their practice swords.’
They exchanged a long look, then Halt shook his head. ‘I needed to leave some of them alive,’ he said.
With each passing day, their numbers grew. As the Emperor’s party clawed and stumbled up the steep, muddy mountain tracks, climbing one ridge, descending the other side, then climbing the next, which always seemed to be steeper and higher than the one before it, more and more Kikori quietly joined their group. They would emerge silently from the trees, having travelled secret and dangerous paths known only to the mountain people, make a simple obeisance to Shigeru, then attach themselves to the column.
The leaders of the column learned, without too much surprise, that the Senshi patrol they had defeated at Riverside Village was not the only advance party sent out by Arisaka. There were more than half a dozen other small groups combing the mountains, brutalising the Kikori, burning their villages and torturing their leaders in an attempt to learn Shigeru’s whereabouts.