The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (30 page)

  “It will be a close thing,” Sandarr said, “to get up with that ship before the sun goes down. We will have to tack once more. Turn the ship, like we did before.”

  Lorcan scowled. “Why must we turn the ship?” Ronnat translated his words. “Then we will be heading out to sea again. Why not sail toward them?”

  Sandarr sighed. Slowly, patiently, in words familiar to Ronnat, he explained the concept of leeway and points of sail, and how they could not, if fact, sail right at them. He made it clear that if the Norwegian ship worked too far to windward,
Water Stallion
would never catch her in time.

  Lorcan listened. He nodded. And then he smiled.

When we parted, flaxen goddess,

my ears rang with a sound

from my blood-hall’s realm…

                                                                Gisli Sursson’s Saga

“That,” Thorgrim Night Wolf said with certainty, “is
Far Voyager
.”

  The two of them, Thorgrim and Starri, had rowed the curach for twenty minutes, until the shadow of the land no longer made for a fluky and unpredictable breeze, and then they had stowed the oars and set the sail and let Njord, the god of wind, whisk them south.

  Thorgrim was happy to give over the effort of rowing. The effects of his all-night vigil were wearing on him and the wounds across his chest were throbbing. One, he was sure, had opened up, just a bit. He could feel the warm, wet blood on his skin. But now he had exchanged a rowing oar for a steering oar, and he still did not have a hand free to tend to his injury.

  “You’re right, Thorgrim,” Starri said, after having looked some time at the distant ship, just now appearing around the headland to the south. “I am happy to see your eyesight is not failing as fast as the rest of you.”

  “My eyesight has not been slashed and stabbed and left for dead as the rest of me has,” Thorgrim said. “Now, would you take the steering oar so I might patch myself up once again?”

  Starri shuffled aft and Thorgrim passed the handle of the steering oar to him, then moved to Starri’s place on the weather side. He undid his belt, pulled up his tunic and saw where the blood was running down the right side of his chest. He pulled a knife from its scabbard, cut a strip from the bottom edge of his tunic and bound the wound as best he could.

  Starri was shaking his head. “Not good, Night Wolf, not good.”

  “Humph,” Thorgrim said. “When I start looking to you for advice on well-being that’s when I will know for certain that things are not good.”

  They were sailing a shallow angle away from the shore, taking the seas on the larboard quarter and beam. The swells were rolling the curach with an unpleasant, corkscrew motion, the kind that would soon have had them heaving over the sides if they were prone to such things, which they were not. Happily, the sail was full and it dampened the motion somewhat and drove them along at a respectable clip.

  Thorgrim, anxiety barely suppressed, wanted very much to take the steering oar again, but on reflection he had to admit that Starri was holding the course and working the boat through the swells as well as he could have done, or nearly so.

 
Rest,
he thought to himself.
Rest. There will be work enough soon.
A good rest, Thorgrim knew, was like a good meal; something to be taken when it could be had, a necessary part of being ready for action. So he did not take the steering oar, but rather leaned back against the side of the boat and closed his eyes.

  “This is odd,” Starri said thirty seconds later. Thorgrim opened his eyes again. “The way these ships are sailing, one to the other, is very odd,” Starri elaborated. “Would you not think they would sail in company?”

  Thorgrim looked over the side, surveying the position of the distant ships relative to one another. “I would think that,” Thorgrim agreed. “And I would think Ornolf, or whoever commands
Far Voyager
, would want to get further off shore, not hug the land so.” They were silent for a few moments, watching the two vessels.
Far Voyager
was perhaps a mile and a half away.
Water Stallion
, which had made her ugly tack and was standing out to sea once more, was a bit farther away than that. They seemed to ignore one another, as if each were sailing on his own separate sea.

  “Here…that other one,
Water Stallion
, is tacking again,” Starri said. From his position aft it was easier for him to see both vessels at once.

  Thorgrim twisted around and felt the pull of the wounds in his chest. Just as Starri had said,
Water Stallion
was coming about once more, turning from larboard tack to starboard, which would have her closing with the shore again.

  “She’s in chase,” Thorgrim said, suddenly understanding what he was looking at. “
Water Stallion
stood off to gain sea room, and now she is tacking so she might head
Far Voyager
off. She’s chasing her.”

  Thorgrim looked back at Starri and Starri nodded, slowly. “You’re right, Thorgrim,” he said. “The two of them would have kept company if they had been sailing together, would have both sailed off shore and then tacked around.”

  Thorgrim looked back toward the two longships.
Water Stallion
was not Grimarr’s ship, but it might as well have been, since Bersi was Grimarr’s man. He shook his head. Whatever had motivated Grimarr to order him, Thorgrim, killed, was now driving him to see
Far Voyager
run to ground. Thorgrim still had no idea what that might be.

  “We must reach
Far Voyager
,” Thorgrim said. “Quickly.”

  “Quickly,” Starri agreed.

  To Thorgrim’s great frustration, however, they were already moving as fast through the water as they could, and his minor adjustments of the sail and Starri’s fiddling with the course he steered had a negligible impact on their speed. But the curach and the longship were on converging courses, closing with one another, and that was good. Whoever had command of
Far Voyager
was holding her course close to shore. He was using the fact that the land tended away to the west, ever so slightly, to keep close to the treacherous rocks and make it more and more risky for
Water Stallion
to close with her. Thorgrim suspected that Agnarr, with his hard-won knowledge of the Irish coast, was at least playing a part in the navigation.

  The curach plunged on. Thorgrim considered the four moving elements at play here.
Water Stallion
,
Far Voyager
, and the boat were all racing to meet on some spot of ocean where their courses would intercept, while the fourth element, the sun, was moving steadily toward the horizon. Who would reach what first he could not tell, but the outcome of that four-way race, which would be determined in the next hour or so, would change everything.

  Three vessels, closing with one another over a gray-green sea, the shadows of their sails growing longer on the water. And somewhere, presumably south of the headland that blocked Thorgrim’s view of the rest of the coast, were two more ships, the rest of Grimarr’s fleet. If they suddenly appeared, then everything would once again be thrown into question.

  “We will reach
Far Voyager
first,” Thorgrim said. He was not wishing it was so. He could see it was so. He could see the distance between him and his ship, the distance between
Far Voyager
and
Water Stallion
, their points of sail.

  “I’m not so sure, Night Wolf,” Starri said. He was rubbing the split arrowhead he wore around his neck between his thumb and fingers.

  “I am,” Thorgrim said.

  He was right.
Water Stallion
was still
a half a mile off and well to leeward when the curach came within hailing distance of
Far Voyager
. Their approach seemed to go unnoticed, or if it had been it did not generate enough excitement to warrant even a shout from the longship. Just two men approaching in an open boat. They were no more than fifty feet away,
Far Voyager
charging down on them as if intent on running them over, before Thorgrim could even be certain they had been seen.

  Someone standing near
Far Voyager
’s bow pointed, but Thorgrim could not see who it was. He saw someone running aft. A shock of yellow hair near the stern.
Harald…
he thought. And beside him, the unmistakable bulk of Ornolf the Restless.

  He stood in the boat and waved both hands above his head. He saw Harald point, saw him run to the side of the ship, pause, and then race for the bow. Thorgrim could hear him calling out to him, to the men of
Far Voyager
he could not tell. The words were lost in the wind and the rush of water.

  “Come right up on the leeward side and I’ll toss a rope,” Thorgrim said to Starri, who was still at the steering oar, and Starri nodded. Twenty-five feet and
Far Voyager
was looming above them now, looking much larger than Thorgrim remembered her, the water rolling white along her side as she parted the seas with her fine oak stem.

  He could see men scrambling along her deck, grabbing up the sheets and tacks of the straining sail, preparing to bring the ship to a standstill, but he would save them that effort. As the elegant, curving sweep of the bow came rushing past, Starri pushed the steering oar over. The boat spun up into the wind and Thorgrim, who was now standing on the curach’s starboard side, sent a rope arcing through the air. It landed across
Far Voyager
’s rail and eager hands grabbed it up.

  The curach swung around and came up hard against the longship’s hull, tossing and bucking in the wake, dragged along like a child’s toy. Thorgrim heard his name called out, and Starri’s as well. The two of them grabbed hold of
Far Voyager
’s rail and powerful and welcoming hands took hold of their clothing and their belts and hauled them aboard, deposited them unceremoniously onto the deck, then helped them to their feet.

  The first thing that Thorgrim saw was Harald’s wide, honest face smiling, his blue eyes bright. Thorgrim opened his arms and embraced his son, squeezed him hard as if he could squeeze all the agony of the past few days out of them both. Ornolf was there and he embraced Thorgrim and Starri as well and there were slaps on the back from the men who pressed around.

  “I knew you were not dead, father, I knew those whore’s sons couldn’t kill you!” Harald shouted.

  “Ha!” Ornolf roared. “Maybe you should be the one we call ‘Deathless’, you cheat death so often. Starri we will simply call ‘the Lunatic’!”

  The men escorted Thorgrim and Starri aft, fetched them blankets, fetched them food and ale. Agnarr had the helm and he smiled and shook Thorgrim’s hand, and Starri’s. Thorgrim saw the Irish girl, Conandil, was there, too.

             
So many tales to tell, so much water under the keel.

  But this was not the time for stories. There were greater considerations, more immediate worries.

   “Ornolf…Thorgrim…” Agnarr said, not certain now who was in command. “We’re getting damned close to the land. I know little of the rocks or ledges here, but I know this is a dangerous coast.”

  Thorgrim looked west. The beaches and cliffs were lost in deep shadow with the setting sun. He looked astern.
Water Stallion
was well to leeward and she would have to tack again, and soon, before she piled up on the Irish shore. That meant she would never overhaul
Far Voyager
, not in the hour or so of daylight they had remaining.