The Outcasts (8 page)

Read The Outcasts Online

Authors: John Flanagan

Tags: #Fantasy, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #General

THE
HERON
chapter
five
B
earclaw Creek began as a mere trickle, forcing its way out between a jumble of rocks in the high country above the coast. It joined with a dozen similar rivulets as it wound down the mountains and eventually widened into a respectable body of water as it came closer to the sea.
In the final stretch of its journey, the creek crossed a small meadow a few hundred meters outside the town limits of Hallasholm. At this point, there was evidence of a considerable amount of recent activity. Offcuts of wood and cordage littered the ground. There were work trestles and benches and a tarpaulin shelter had been rigged to provide protection during wet weather. The smell of sawdust and sawn timber permeated the air. A small, ramshackle jetty stood on the bank of the creek close by the work site.
The
Heron
was moored alongside this jetty, her mooring lines creaking gently as they stretched then slackened with the movement of the water.
She was a sleek craft, some fifteen meters long—or about half the length of a standard wolfship. She was pierced on each side for four oars, whereas the newer wolfships could carry ten oars a side. Even moored alongside the small jetty that led out from the bank, she gave the impression of speed.
She was Hal’s boat, and the result of an enormous stroke of luck the previous summer.
When he had turned thirteen, he applied for a job at Anders’ boatyard.
Anders was an irascible, middle-aged man who was generally intolerant of teenage boys. He considered them to be flighty and unreliable. But he saw that Hal was different from the general run of boys in Hallasholm so, with some misgivings, he agreed to give the boy a trial. It didn’t take him long to see that Hal was a skilled and meticulous worker. His attention to detail and the precision of his work was impressive in one so young and Anders hired him immediately. Hal took to spending most of his spare time in the boatyard.
Two years after Hal came to work for him, Anders took on a commission from Gunter Moonstalker, a retired sea wolf. Gunter, too old and arthritic now to serve on a wolfship, still yearned for the old days and wanted a boat for cruising. He stipulated a boat that would be similar in lines to a wolfship, but small enough that he and a few friends could handle it. Anders drew up a plan, aided by Hal, who was fascinated by the project. Over the winter months, they worked indoors in the boatyard workshop, carving the prow and stern pieces, splitting logs to form the planks, shaping the frames for the hull and selecting a section of timber for the keel. As the materials were made ready, they were stacked along one side of the boat shed in a steadily growing pile of finished components. Then, unexpectedly, Gunter Moonstalker died.
Anders was faced with a problem. The boat had been specifically designed to Gunter’s requirements. It was too narrow in the beam for a fishing boat and too small to be a trader. It was not a boat that Anders would be able to sell easily, and in the meantime, the frames and planks and spars were taking up valuable room in his workshop.
Hal solved the problem for him.
“I’ll buy it,” he said. It had long been his ambition to have a boat of his own and he had saved virtually every kroner Anders had paid him against the prospect of buying one. This seemed like too good a chance to miss. They negotiated a fair price—Anders had already received half the agreed fee from Gunter, after all—and the boat was Hal’s. Anders added one stipulation.
“You’ll have to move it out,” he said. “I can’t have it taking up room here.”
Hal agreed readily, and he had enlisted Stig and Thorn to help him move the boat to the ramshackle jetty at Bearclaw Creek.
Knowing that when the boat was complete he would need a crew, he had also approached three other boys to help.
Ulf and Wulf were identical twins. Nobody could tell them apart, not even their mother, and that made other boys wary of them. In addition, they traded on the fact that nobody could identify them, often swapping identities at will to confuse people. Hal had always believed that twins had a special bond between them, but Ulf and Wulf seemed to be exceptions to this rule. They fought all the time, like cat and dog—or rather, as Thorn once said, like cat and cat.
Ingvar helped as well. He was a massively built boy whose muscles were greatly appreciated when it came to moving the heavier items, such as the bags of river stones that would be used for balance.
Ingvar would have had the makings of a mighty warrior, except for one failing. His eyesight was so poor that he could barely see details past a meter away. The prospect of going into battle beside Ingvar was a daunting one. Once the battle began, there was no way he would be able to distinguish friend from foe. He would be just as likely to decimate his allies as his enemies. But he was a good-natured boy, philosophical about his disability and always willing to help. And when it came to carrying heavy weights over long distances, he had no peer.
As the summer wore on, the boat had taken shape. The twins and Ingvar worked on the project from time to time, although they didn’t share the same dedication as Hal and Stig. In Ingvar’s case, it was often in response to a summons when there was heavy lifting to be done—when the keel needed to be placed in position on the trestles, for example, or when a plank had to be bent in against its will so that they could fasten it to the bow section.
As the boat progressed, Stig had noticed a subtle change in his friend. Although Hal was usually reticent and avoided drawing attention to himself, when it came to building the boat, he became far more assertive. He knew what he was talking about and he knew what he wanted, and this knowledge gave him the confidence to take control and direct the others in their tasks. He gave clear and understandable directions and would not tolerate shoddy work from them, often insisting that a job be redone so that it was up to his standards. Now, in the final week of summer, it had become a race against time to get the little craft finished before brotherband training began.
Once that happened, there would be no time for shipbuilding. Hal and Stig and the others would be fully occupied, training in the skills they would need to master if they were to be accepted into the ranks of Skandian warriors and sea wolves. They would work from dawn till dusk, studying and practicing weapons craft and battle tactics—although the latter were relatively simple in the Skandian world, usually consisting of a headlong charge in response to the command, “Let’s get ’em!”
They would practice seamanship, ship handling and rowing. They would study the techniques of navigation, both by coastal landmarks and sailing instructions—which they would have to commit to memory—and by the stars. All in all, it would be a busy time.
Which was why Hal and Stig were now working feverishly get the ship ready for its first sea trial. The last major project was the mast and sails.
Hal had devised a new and revolutionary sail plan for his boat. The traditional wolfship had a tall mast. The cross yard, a wooden spar that supported the large square sail, was set at right angles. When the wind was directly astern of the ship, the square sail provided a great deal of power. Even with the wind from the side, it could still drive the ship along, although at a reduced pace.
But the square sail’s weakness came when the ship was facing the wind. A wolfship could only tack, or sail into the wind, at a very shallow angle. Past that, the unsupported sides of the sails fluttered and lost shape and power.
Hal had noticed how seabirds, particularly the graceful heron, could glide forward into the wind, and he designed a triangular sail shaped like a bird’s wing. Instead of a cross yard, he designed a long, flexible yardarm fastened at the bow of the ship. When this yardarm was hauled up, the front end remained fastened to the deck, so that the yard swiveled up at an angle to the ship’s hull. The wind would fill the triangular sail to form a powerful, smooth curve of canvas. A system of ropes could tauten or loosen the sail and the yardarm that supported it, moving them in or out depending on the strength and direction of the wind, so harnessing its power to drive the ship along.
Because the front of the sail was kept rigid by the curving wooden yardarm, it could face much closer to the wind than a traditional square rig without collapsing and losing its shape.
Hal had tested the design on models and estimated that his ship would be able to sail three times closer to the wind than any wolfship.
What made the design even more revolutionary was that he fitted the boat with not one but two sails and yards, one on either side of the mast. If the wind blew from the right-hand side, he would raise the left-hand sail. If the wind was from the left, he would raise the right-hand sail. If the wind was from the stern—the rear of the boat—he could raise both sails at once and let them right out so that they formed a giant letter
M.
The two sails could also be connected by a pulley system, so that as one was lowered, it helped raise the other.
In a tribute to the seabird that had inspired his radical sail design, Hal named his ship the
Heron.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Stig asked. He’d never seen a rig like this. In fact, he’d never seen any rig other than the standard wolfship’s square sail.
“Of course it’ll work. I’ve already tried it on models and it works perfectly.”
“There’s no small detail you’ve overlooked?” Stig asked.
Hal eyed him balefully. He’d worked late the night before, cutting and shaping the left-hand sail, to be ready for today’s sea trial. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“You don’t think you’ll need reef points on both sails?”
Hal was ready with a crushing reply when he realized that Stig was right. In his haste to finish the left-hand sail, he’d forgotten to fit reef points—cords set about two-thirds of the way up the sail. In heavy weather, they could be tied around the yardarm, gathering the top third of the sail in against the yardarm so that the area exposed to the wind was reduced. He hesitated, looking at the sky.
“I doubt we’ll need them today. Weather looks fine.”
He tried to ignore Stig’s steady, cynical look. He was grateful when he heard a voice calling a greeting and was able to change the subject.
“Here are the twins and Ingvar,” he said. “And just in time,” he added under his breath.

 

For her first voyage, Hal planned to take the
Heron
down the coast a few kilometers under oars before he hoisted the sail. He had asked the other three boys to come to the meadow at noon to help with the rowing. The three of them and Stig would be sufficient to move the boat at a reasonable speed, while he took the steering oar.
The boys had agreed readily. They were all eager to see the
Heron
’s first voyage under sail and there was an air of expectation about them as they boarded the boat. They looked with interest at the twin yards and sails laid out on either side of the mast, then took their places on the rowing benches and looked at Hal.
Hal cast off the bow rope and, as the incoming tide began to swing the front of the boat clear of the jetty, he ran back and released the stern rope as well. The
Heron
was now free and drifting with the tide.
“Oars,” he ordered. “All together.”
The four rowers lowered their oars into the water and heaved.
The
Heron
glided forward, gathering speed under the impetus of that first, powerful thrust. Hal felt a thrill of anticipation as the steering oar came alive in his hands. He pulled it and the ship obediently swung to starboard. The small waves chuckled under the bow and he could feel the boat responding, feel the faint vibrations through her fabric.
“Heave,” Stig called softly, setting the stroke for the other three. He repeated this three times, until they were all in rhythm, then saved his breath for rowing. The boat carved a smooth path through the sheltered waters of the creek. After several minutes, Hal became aware that he was having to keep a gentle pressure on the steering oar, as the
Heron
tried to veer slightly to port. For a moment, he wondered if there was some fault in the boat. Was the keel not completely straight? Then he smiled as he defined the reason.
“Ingvar,” he called, “back off a little.”

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