Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
The wind had dropped, and the flood-tide was under way, driving them all south and east, against the cliff-face of Hoy and, ultimately, round and into
the east-running race. And the ship they were on and Thorfinn’s ship, lashed to it, and his own longship, grappled also below, were on the easterly fringe of the battle and all three about to drive on the rocks unless the oars on
Grágás
could hold them.
Then Thorfinn was beside him, shoulder to shoulder, with his shield up, saying breathlessly, ‘
Enough! said Ferdiaidh, and be fell dead at the ford
. Could you man this boat?’
‘No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. A man came at him, fighting left-handed, and he drove at him with his sword.
‘Then call your men back to the longship and cut free. Have you time?’
The cliffs were very close. ‘I think so,’ said Thorkel Fóstri and, ducking, lifted his horn. As he blew, he saw that Thorfinn was already fighting his way back to
Grágás
, the rest of his men with him. And that, on the way, they were slashing and flinging overboard all the Norwegians’ oars. Then he himself was back in his longship with the last of his crew, and the grapple freed not a moment too soon, as his own oars came out and began to pull against the drag of the tide and away from the cliff.
By then, he had less than twenty-five men, many wounded, so that, although he took an oar himself, the longship hung without responding for long beats of time. It must have been then, on the other side, that Thorfinn cut
Grágás
free of the Norwegian ship on his beam, and, oarless, the foreign ship lurched and swung and began to drive cliffwards.
The men remaining on her were in no two minds about what to do. As the red cliffs hung over their prow, they jumped and swam: some to be thrown on the rocks of the shore, some towards Thorkel Fóstri’s longship with its low freeboard, so easy to grip and to mount.
It was the end of Thorkel’s vessel. Either he allowed himself to be boarded, or his men abandoned their oars and fought back. For a while, they rowed at half-strength while Thorkel himself and the rest hacked and slashed at the hands and heads and shoulders fringing his gunwales. Then, borne on the tide, the beam of the abandoned Norwegian ship swept past them and with her undertow caught the undermanned longship and bore it, too, faster and faster to the cliff-side. Then there was nothing for it but to jump into the water, alongside the enemy, and fight the sea, and the men in it, for what was left of your life.
The rending crash as the Norwegian ship struck and the lesser one as Thorkel’s longship in its turn broke its back on the rocks were hardly heard by the remnants of each crew as they struggled in the littered, buffeting water.
They had been seen. Thorkel Fóstri did not know until later that when
Grágás
loomed at his side, ropes trailing, she had arrived there dragging with her the enemy ship whose grappling had caused Thorfinn to return in the first place. He did see, however, the second Norwegian ship that, cutting itself free of the longships assailing it, moved slowly towards him and the other men struggling in the water, and bringing forward its bowmen, began methodically to pick off all those men who were recognisably his and Thorfinn’s. Then they were within range of
Grágás
, and the direction of the barbs altered.
His hands about another man’s throat, Thorkel Fóstri held on until he felt the enemy slacken, and then, plunging for Thorfinn’s flagship, seized a rope and got himself aboard with his axe safely still at his belt. Then he saw the Norwegian boat already lashed to Thorfinn’s other beam, and the dead lying under his feet, and, snatching somebody’s shield, set himself grimly to weather the curtain of arrows falling from the second enemy ship, and to collect what men he could to repel a second boarding while the red cliffs he had escaped once began to come nearer and nearer.
At his shoulder, someone said, ‘They’re mad. They’ll have to disengage and row, or we’ll all crash.’
It was Arnór Jarlaskáld, white of face but apparently unscathed. ‘In verse,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, panting, as he hefted a newly come casting-spear, aimed, and flung. ‘In verse, mighty Grettir-battler. That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it?’
But of course Arnór was right. He could not understand the enemy’s purpose. That three of the great ships had been able to concentrate on
Grágás
meant, he knew, that the longships of their own fleet must have suffered desperate losses. The dead on Thorfinn’s ship alone showed what his self-imposed task of monitor must have cost him. It was true, as well, that until the solid flotilla now spanning the sea took care also and began to pull westwards, movement away from the cliffs was almost impossible.
Then, over his shoulder, he saw bare masts moving and realised that part of the fleet at least was disengaging and rowing out of the current. At the same moment,
Grágás
swung, and an outbreak of hoarse cheering behind him suggested that one attacker, at least, had been repelled and cut loose. He could do no more than guess, for the enemy ship now close on his side had deployed no oars to hold its position or to escape the current, but was allowing the tide to fetch it nearer and nearer while bringing to bear on them, with smooth efficiency, the crushing assault by missile that was the preface to boarding.
And around him, men were dying. He threw back what weapons he got, for by this stage in the long battle it was clear that Thorfinn had no reserves left, of casting-spears or of arrows. For a moment, indeed, the fighting was so hard that he thought he was fainting, for his eyes blurred, and the prow of the enemy ship for a moment seemed wreathed in smoke, as if its dragon had come to life and the golden-haired demon at its neck, laughing, was a thing of white flame and sulphur.
Then he saw the reason for the suicidal attack, and why they need look for no withdrawal. The enemy ship reaching their side was the flagship, and the man in the prow was Earl Rognvald.
Thorfinn’s voice said, ‘I can’t bring any more to help you. We’ve cut loose from the other ship, but she’s still there, and there’s a third coming up on the stern. The mist may just save us.’ A spear, flashing across, glanced off the bright rim of his shield, and he swore under his breath as his hand on the strap took the jolt. There was blood on his neck, and his sword-hand was thick with it.
Thorkel said, ‘Mist?’
‘Rognvald will drive his ship on the rocks if he has to, but the rest won’t. When it gets to mast-height, they’ll disengage and start rowing. Otherwise, the tide-race through the firth will simply swallow them. Look. It’s catching us now. Whether we row or not, we’re setting to the south of Hoy.’
‘White Christ, protect us,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Tor Ness is down there. All right. The rest will make westwards. But Rognvald won’t. Rognvald will follow you.’
They spoke in gasps. It was as much as he could do to risk a tearing glance over his shoulder. But Thorfinn was right. It was mist, and coming down fast, with swathes already lying between ship and ship, and a strange white light on all their faces. Behind, a sudden brightening told that the enemy ship lying there had veered off. A moment later, the vessel astern had begun to move also, oars glancing with light.
Thorfinn’s voice rolled over
Grágás
. For a moment, on Thorkel Fóstri’s side, there were no defenders at all. Then, on every second or third two-man thwart there was an oar thrust through its slot, and the hazed golden prow was swinging slowly and cleanly away from the white-swaddled red of the cliffs and into the shadowed white curtain that had stolen the place of the sky and the sea.
Behind, on Rognvald’s white ship, there was a glint of gold and a glint of silver and a voice calling, cutting in contempt and in anger. This time, Rognvald was not laughing.
Then the mist came fully down, and he and his ship hung on its wall for a moment and then disappeared.
Thorkel Fóstri sat down.
The roll of the ship roused him. That, and Thorfinn’s grip on his arm, and Thorfinn’s fist with a horn full of strong liquor in it. The golden helm set aside, his foster-son’s face was smeared with blood and dirt, the black brows a single bar under the disordered black hair.
‘Drink,’ said Thorfinn. ‘We’re rounding Tor Ness, or so Otkel swears. I’m trying for Aith.’
The bay of Aith, a notch in the south coast of Hoy, was past the next headland, and the next headland at flood-tide was a killer. Thorkel Fóstri lifted the horn from his mouth and said, ‘You’re rowing blind into Aith on the flood? You’re crazy!’ and meant it, for round them the whiteness was absolute: even the horns of the prow and the stern had vanished into the mist, and rowers three benches off were barely visible.
A good man in a calm sea might circumnavigate Tor and Brims Ness by the kick of the eddy and the hiss of the breakers. Roaring down on the tide, lurching, juddering through the cross-currents, hammering into the fall-back, and squealing and grinding as her timbers and rigging complained,
Grágás
deadened the ear with her clamour, so that the screams of her wounded hardly registered, and the voices of helmsman and look-out, crying to one another, had to be carried repeating like elixir from prow to stern and back again.
Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘And you’ve lost your freeboard. You’re shipping water. What’s pulling you down?’
‘We’re carrying seventy dead,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Only half of them mine.’ He shouted something to someone, and they replied: he turned back, holding on with both hands. ‘But still not enough to fight Rognvald with. He thought I was escaping him.’
‘And, my God, aren’t you?’ Thorkel Fóstri said. Aith Hope, bad as it was, offered some prospect of shelter until the mist lifted, by which time the easterly flow would have weakened. There was an eddy, if you knew how to catch it, that ran from mid-firth doubling back into the shore this side of Easter Head. Take that, and they might find themselves safe back in Thurso before Rognvald came hunting. Or run through the firth and turn southwards for Moray. With more dead than living to crew him, Thorfinn could expect nothing at Rognvald’s hands but the vilest of deaths.
On the other hand, out there to the west were the remains of sixty longships, interleaved with the great ships of Rognvald’s command and rowing blind in the mist to hold their own against the sweep of the flood and avoid being sucked through the neck of the firth to destruction. Those who were fully manned still might just manage it. The rest would end, dead men and timbers, in the rocky jaws of the passage. Then the mist would rise, and, baulked of his principal victim, Rognvald and his ships would turn on the longships amongst them and make sure that before they died, their crews cursed their King who had left them.
He waited, then, for Thorfinn’s rebuttal, which meant his death as well as Thorfinn’s, and was confused when instead Thorfinn said, ‘Temporarily, there is no doubt. But have you forgotten the six ships at Longhope?’
‘Longhope?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. It became impossible to sit any longer with dignity, and so, slowly, he stood, legs spread, one hand on the rigging. Then he said, ‘
Kalv Arnason?
’ The longship rolled, and righted herself.
‘As you say,’ Thorfinn said.
‘But he’s on Rognvald’s side. He crossed to Rognvald.’
‘Did you see him fighting for Rognvald just now?’ Thorfinn said.
Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘He doesn’t need to. He’s been promised his farm back in Norway. He has only to stay out of the fighting. He’ll lose Egge if he helps you. He won’t.’
‘Maybe he won’t,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But it would only be civil to give him the chance. He owes me something.’
‘He owes you his skin,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘But then, so does Rognvald. That night in the
haugr
. You had only to walk away.’
‘On my broken leg?’ said Thorfinn.
‘Don’t be a fool. He would have killed you.’
‘Perhaps,’ Thorfinn said.
‘Well?’ said his foster-father. Now that he felt stronger, the full force of his anger was rising.
‘Well,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I don’t think Kalv would care, personally, to drive the knife in my back. But even if he did, there is the matter, isn’t there, of Uncle
Harald’s forthcoming arrival? Magnús may well present Kalv with Egge, but Harald may not be pleased to let him keep it.’
Thorkel Fóstri stared at him. ‘You are relying on that?’
‘Partly,’ said Thorfinn placatingly. ‘For the rest, we must depend on Kalv’s strong sense of family. Remember? You used to complain of it again and again.’
‘O Body of God,’ said Thorkel Fóstri, and gripped the rigging as the timbers heaved and jolted under him and the whiteness hid what was ahead.
To six dragon-ships, fog-bound in a harbour, the ghost of another approaching is a matter for drumbeating and horns, and also for standing to arms, since the newcomer might be an enemy or, even worse, in the hands of a cousin.
To Kalv Arnason, alert on the prow of his longship, it was therefore a matter of relief that the newcomer, far from approaching, merely slid to the side of the little anchorage and there let down her anchor, following this trusting action by lowering two of her skiffs. Watching these, as they passed and repassed to the shore, it appeared to Kalv Arnason that they were unloading something, in quantity, but the mist was too thick to see what.
He sent a man to his furthermost ship to see what a swimmer could make of it, and the swimmer came back, sullen and dripping, inside one of the skiffs he was observing, with two men rowing and a third man, tall as a tree, in the bows.
He knew who it was even before the skiff arrived, bumping gently, and the tall man stood up and said, ‘We have been unloading dead men, eighty of them. And twenty wounded. How are you, Kalv? My wife your niece sends her greetings, and so does your cousin Thorkel Fóstri, who is with me, there on
Grágás
. Are you going to ask me on board?’
‘Thorfinn,’ said Kalv Arnason, with the least flatness in the ebullient voice, and the least pallor in the healthy face. He said, ‘I have not the slightest objection, of course. And I am glad to see that you yourself have taken no harm. But is it wise? With Rognvald behind you, it would be prudent to prepare to make over the firth at the first lifting of the mist. It disappears, as you know, often as fast as it comes.’