The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (5 page)

  “I’ll go, father!” Harald shouted just at the same instant that Thorgrim called, “Starri!” It was Thorgrim’s plan to position the folded lee cloth over the fractured planks, on the outside of the ship, to hold off the pressure of the seas and to slow the intake of water. That would require that a man be lowered on a rope over the side to see the cloth placed just right.

              Harald wanted to go, of course, because Harald, with all the enthusiasm of youth, wanted to do anything that smacked of daring and heroics. The others might not want to go, but every man aboard would if so ordered, of that Thorgrim was certain. If any were not that sort of man, Thorgrim would not have had him in his company. But of all the men aboard Starri most perfectly combined strength, agility, and heedless courage.

  “What is it, Thorgrim?” Starri shouted. Unlike Harald, he had not divined what Thorgrim was about.

  “Will you go over the side on a rope and position this cloth over the shattered planks?” Thorgrim asked, shouting over the wind, his throat raw from the yelling and the considerable salt water he had ingested.

  “Over the side…?” Starri called back.

  “On a rope. To position the cloth, then we’ll haul you back aboard!” He waited for a reply but none came. He thought perhaps Starri had not heard him. He swallowed and prepared to shout the question again when a flash of lightning lit the deck and illuminated Starri in its harsh yellow light. It was less than a second, but time enough to see in Starri’s face something he had never thought to see there, something he had never seen before.

  Fear.

Gladsheim is the fifth, where the gold bright

Valholl lies widely situated;

And there Hropt chooses each day

Weapon-dead men.

                                                                       Grímnismál

For the briefest instant Thorgrim forgot about the wind, the breaking seas, the great rent in the side of his ship, so surprised was he by Starri’s reaction. He was not sure what to make of it. He wondered if the others had seen it. Even if they had not, Starri’s hesitance was clear.

  “Father! Let me go!” Harald shouted again, reaching out for the cloth, but at the same time Starri stepped forward.

  “Night Wolf…” he said, trying to speak low and still be heard over the storm, no easy feat. “What…what would the gods think, do you suppose, if I were to die in the sea? With no sword in hand?”

  Then Thorgrim understood. Starri had no fear of death. What he feared was the wrong sort of death.

  Starri Deathless was not a brave man, not in the conventional sense. Harald was. Harald was willing to risk his life in any way that might bring glory or gain to him and his comrades, of to defend the men with whom he sailed. His enthusiasm was augmented by skill, strength, and a youthful exuberance that was unencumbered by experience or deep thought. He was bold, and he was willing to die, but not necessarily eager to do so.

  Starri was not like that. Starri was not so much brave as insane. He threw himself into battle with a berserker rage unlike any Thorgrim had ever seen. Far from fearing death he courted it. But alas for him, his madness and preternatural fighting ability led to his slaying all comers, and the end of each battle always found him still among the living. And when that happened he wept bitterly that he had not been lifted by the Valkyries up to Valhalla, there to fight and feast until Ragnarok and the end of the known world.

  There was nothing on the earth that frightened Starri, save for a dishonorable death that would not please the gods.

  Thorgrim was still trying to think of an answer to Starri’s question when Harald grabbed hold of the lee cloth and pulled it from his hands. But as he did Starri seemed to conclude that refusing to put himself in danger might be worse than dying at sea and not in battle, so he snatched the cloth back and pushed his way to the larboard side. Thorgrim saw Harald open his mouth to protest, then he apparently thought better of it and followed Thorgrim forward. Harald knew when his father’s patience was near its end.

  Starri was forward of the shield rack with one leg over the larboard rail when Thorgrim reached him and pulled him back inboard. “You need a rope around you, you damned idiot!” he shouted. A second more and Starri would have been over the side and swept away, the lee cloth with him. Starri nodded dumbly and held his arms up as Godi wrapped a stout walrus hide rope around his chest.

  Thorgrim handed Harald the other end of the rope. “Take this forward, run it through the forward-most oar hole!” he instructed. Harald nodded, pushed his way forward through the inches deep water, fed the line through the oar hole from outboard in. He hauled it until it was nearly taut, then turned to watch Starri’s progress. With the line led forward, Harald would be able to slack it as the seas swept Starri aft until he was even with the injured planks. Thorgrim did not have to explain this process to the boy; at sixteen he was already seaman enough to understand what to do.

  A gang of men carried the lines from two corners of the cloth forward and passed them under the bow of the ship, then led them down the starboard side. Others took up the lines that would be hauled on to larboard. Starri gave a tug of the rope around his chest, gave Thorgrim a smile, grabbed the cloth and plunged overboard.

  Thorgrim looked forward. He saw the rope in Harald’s hands take up the strain. He looked over the side. In the dark he could just make out Starri twisting as the water rushed over him, tossing him like laundry being dragged in the ship’s wake. But then his powerful, spidery arms and legs found the ship’s side and he steadied himself and his head appeared above the water that roiled along the length of the ship.

  “Ease away, all of you!” Thorgrim shouted and gestured with his hand. Harald began to ease the rope holding Starri, and the men holding the ropes made fast to the cloth began to ease those, and inch by inch the cloth and Starri moved aft to where the planks had been stove in by the floating tree. Thorgrim followed the progress down the deck, bumping into Godi who stepped back, made room, then hurried further aft.

  Starri was five feet from the stove planks when Thorgrim pointed to the weak place and shouted, “Here it is! Starri, do you hear?” He shouted again and Starri shook the water from his face, hair and scraggly beard and looked up.

  “There!” Thorgrim shouted again. Starri raised his hand and Thorgrim hoped that meant he had heard. “Be careful! If you press on the stove planks you’ll push them right in!” he shouted again, as loud as his battered voice could shout. Starri waved once more and again Thorgrim hoped for all he was worth that Starri had in fact heard and understood.

  Forward, Harald eased the rope away and foot by foot Starri was swept slowly aft, tugging the cloth with him along the hull. His foot came down on the injured plank as he steadied himself against the side. The plank flexed, water shot through like a frigid geyser, and before Thorgrim could shout a warning Starri jerked his foot away. He spread his arms and legs to either side of the planks. Harald eased the rope, and crab-like Starri came down over the broken strakes. He tugged the cloth and the men who held the lines made fast to the corners eased a bit, and inch by inch the thick, waxed linen was pulled over the injured hull. Thorgrim could see the rush of water ease as the cloth was tugged into place.

  He leaned far over. Starri was aft of the hole now, pulling the cloth along, smoothing out the edges where it had become folded over. It was right where it needed to be, right over the smashed planks, taking the brunt of the pounding seas, staunching the leaks.

  “Good! Good!” Thorgrim shouted to Starri and to Harald and to the men at the corner lines. “Make those lines on the corners fast, tie them well. Let us have some men here to haul Starri aboard!”

  Forward, men reached over the larboard rail and snatched up the walrus hide rope that held Starri alongside. They heaved it inboard and worked their way aft, hauling more and more of it in over the row of shields. Thorgrim grabbed the shields mounted just above where Starri was pinned alongside, pulled them free and tossed them onto the deck. He leaned far over and as the men on the rope pulled Starri up from the sea he reached a hand out and Starri reached up to take it. Then the rope around his chest snapped.

  It was so quick, the night so dark and the wake so turbulent that Thorgrim did not even realize what had happened. One second he and Starri were just inches apart, Starri’s long arm reaching up from the dark water, and then there was a moment’s look of shocked surprise and Starri was gone.

  “Starri!” Thorgrim shouted as the realization came, fast and urgent as lightning. He pushed off the rail and charged aft, leaping the sea chests. As he did he understood the impossibility of the situation; they could not turn the ship in those seas, it would be the death of all of them to try. Could Starri swim? Thorgrim realized he did not know. But even a strong swimmer would have no more than a minute or two before he was overwhelmed by the cresting waves.

  He passed the row of shields on the rack, aft to where the sheer strake began to sweep up toward the stern, eyes fixed on the water. He could see nothing in the black night. But there was something on the upper edge of the ship, some irregularity on the run of smooth oak and as he closed with it he realized it was a hand, a hand clutching the top of the ship’s side, and an arm disappearing down toward the water.

  Thorgrim grabbed hold of the arm, just at the wrist, an arm he had assumed was Starri’s, but even as his fingers wrapped around it he knew it could not be. This arm was too thick by half, and even as he gave the first tentative tug he knew he would not be lifting whomever it was at the far end of that limb by himself.

  And then there were others around him, the men of the
Far Voyager
, crowding around the rail, reaching out and taking hold of the arm wherever they could find a grip. Together they pulled, heaving up, and from the darkness in the turn of the ship’s hull came Godi, sputtering and gasping. They heaved again and Thorgrim could not believe how heavy this man was. They heaved again, and Godi came half out of the water and in his other hand he held the wrist of Starri Deathless, who was also sputtering, gasping, and blinking water from his eyes.

  “Heave! Heave!” the men pulled together. More of Godi and Starri came up from the sea and more hands grabbed at clothing and arms and legs and pulled them in over the side, depositing them on the deck like fish brought up on hooks, and there they lay, gasping, coughing and spitting.

  Thorgrim knelt down beside Godi. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Well?” he said.

  “I saw the rope break. Thought to try and catch him as he went by.”

  Thorgrim nodded.
What courage, what a damned lot of courage
, he thought, but he would not embarrass Godi by saying such a thing out loud. “Well done, Godi,” Thorgrim said instead. It was enough.

 
Far Voyager
continued to plunge on through the dark, the storm building, the wind whipping up to such a degree that it blew the tops off the waves and filled the air with water blowing sideways. The lee cloth seemed to hold, to slow the intake of water, but it was a poor and temporary fix. On the inside Thorgrim and his men carefully positioned shields against the fractured wood and short boards over those. They took the beitass, a heavy spar eight inches thick and twelve feet long, and jammed it against the boards and the shields to shore the whole thing up.

  When the ship was under sail, the beitass was run out forward over the rail, and the leading corner of the sail pulled down to it. But there was no chance they would be setting a sail in the near future, and there was no need greater than strengthening the patch over the injured strakes so the beitass was put into service to serve that end.

  Thorgrim stood and wiped the rain and spray from his eyes. Somewhere behind thick clouds the moon was lighting the sky a bit, but most illumination came from the occasional flashes of lightning. When they came Thorgrim took advantage of the light to examine the repairs they had made, and to see how the ship was faring. The lee cloth and the lash-up of shields and boards seemed to offer some degree of structural integrity to the compromised strakes. Agnarr had found the rhythm of the seas, and was working the ship well through the waves, twisting the helm as she mounted and back as she plunged down into the troughs. As a result, less water was breaking over the sides, and the bailers were able to all but keep up with the influx.

  It was like a pause in a battle, a moment when both sides by unspoken agreement stop to catch their breath, a brief respite from mortal danger. How long it would last, Thorgrim did not know. The collision with the log had reminded him, as if he needed reminding, that circumstances could change in a blink of an eye at sea.

  But for the moment, at least, they were as safe as they could make themselves. Thorgrim turned and headed aft and only then did he realize how very tired he was. He stepped up beside Agnarr, who held the horizontal bar of the tiller in both hands.

  “Agnarr, would you like me to relieve you?” Thorgrim shouted. In those seas the helmsman would be him or Agnarr. He would trust no other.

  “No, if you trust me to remain I can keep steering yet!” Agnarr shouted in reply. Thorgrim nodded. “How is the damage?” Agnarr shouted next.

  “The repairs are ridiculous, but I believe they’ll hold for now. The water comes in much slower, and I think the planks are in no danger of being stove in!”

  Agnarr nodded at this, fell silent as he worked the tiller. The bow rose up high and Thorgrim had to shift his stance to avoid falling backward. Then the bow fell with a sickening plunge and twist, struck the front of the next on-coming wave, and green water broke over the rail and cascaded aft. Agnarr brought the rudder amidships again.

  “We cannot continue with the strakes damaged as they are,” Agnarr said hesitantly, his voice low. Thorgrim knew this perfectly well, but Agnarr seemed to understand, correctly as it happened, that Thorgrim would not want to hear it. Hateful as that truth was, however, Thorgrim also knew it was the only reasonable conclusion.