Robert Howard: Tigers Of The Sea

Marcus, leaning on the rail, glanced at the wolfish warriors beside and below him, and glanced across the intervening waves at the fierce, light-eyed, yellow-bearded Vikings who lined the sides of the opposing galley-Jutes they were, and hereditary enemies of the red-maned Danes. The young Briton shuddered involuntarily, not from fear but because of the innate, ruthless savagery of the scene, as a man might shudder at a pack of ravening wolves, without fearing them.

And now there came a giant twanging of bowstrings and a rain of death leaped through the air. Here the Danes had the advantage; they were the bowmen of the North Sea. The Jutes, like their Saxon cousins, knew little of archery. Arrows came whistling back, but their flight lacked the deadly accuracy of the Danish shafts. Marcus saw men go down in windrows aboard the Juttish craft, while the rest crouched behind the shields that lined the sides. The three men at the sweep-head fell and the long sweep swung in a wide, erratic arc; the galley lost way and Marcus saw a blond giant he instinctively knew to be Rudd Thorwald himself leap to the sweep-head. Arrows rattled off his mail like hailstones, and then the two craft ran alongside with a rending and crashing of oars and a grinding of timbers.

The wolf-yell of the Vikings split the skies and in an instant all was a red chaos. The grappling hooks bit in, gripping keel to keel. Shields locked, the double line writhed and rocked as each crew sought to beat the other back from its bulwarks and gain the opposing deck. Marcus, thrusting and parrying with a wild-eyed giant across the rails, saw in a quick glance over his foe's shoulder Rudd Thorwald rushing from the sweep-head to the rail. Then his straight sword was through the Jute's throat and he flung one leg over the rail. But before he could leap into the other ship, another howling devil was hacking and hewing at him, and only a shield suddenly flung above his head saved his life. It was Donal the minstrel who had come to his aid.

Toward the waist of the ship, Wulfhere surged on through the fray and one mighty sweep of his axe cleared a space for him for an instant. In that instant he was over the rail on the deck of the Fire-Woman and Cormac, Thorfinn, Edric and Snorri were close behind him. Snorri died the moment his feet touched the Fire-Woman's deck and a second later a Juttish axe split Edric's skull, but already the Danes were pouring through the breach made in the lines of the defenders and in a moment the Jutes were fighting with their backs to the wall.

On the blood-slippery deck the two Viking chieftains met. Wulfhere's axe hewed the shaft of Rudd Thorwald's spear in twain, but before the Dane could strike again, the Jute snatched a sword from a dying hand and the edge bit through Wulfhere's corselet over his ribs. In an instant the Skull-splitter's mail was dyed red, but with a mad roar he swung his axe in a two-handed stroke that rent Rudd Thorwald's armor like paper and cleft through shoulder bone and spine. The Juttish chief fell dead in a red welter of blood and the Juttish warriors, disheartened, fell back, fighting desperately.

The Danes yelled with fierce delight. But the battle was not over. The Jutes, knowing there was no mercy for the losers of a sea-fight, battled stubbornly. Marcus was in the thick of it, with Donal close at his side. A strange madness had gripped the young Briton. To his mind, distorted momentarily by the fury of the fray, it seemed that these Jutes were holding him back from Helen. They stood in his way and while he and his comrades wasted time with them, Helen might be in desperate need of rescue. A red haze burned before Marcus' eyes and his sword wove a web of death in front of him. A huge Jute dented his shield with a sweeping axe-head and Marcus flung his shield away, ripping the warrior open with the other hand.

"By the blood of the gods," Cormac rasped, "I never heard before that Romans went berserk, but-"

Marcus had forced his way over the corpse-littered benches to the poop. A sword battered down on his helm as he leaped upward, but he paid no heed; even as he thrust mechanically, his eyes fell on a strangely incongruous ornament suspended by a slender, golden chain from the Jute's bull neck. On the end of that chain, glittering against his broad, mailed chest, hung a tiny jewel-a single ruby carved in the symbol of the acanthus. Marcus cried out like a man with a death wound under his heart and like a madman plunged in blindly, scarcely knowing what he did. He felt his blade sink deep and the force of his charge hurled him to the poop deck on top of his victim.

Struggling to his knees, oblivious to the hell of battle about him, Marcus tore the jewel from the pirate's neck and pressed it to his lips. Then he gripped the Jute's shoulders fiercely.

"Quick!" he cried in the tongue of the Angles, which the Jutes understood. "Tell me, before I rend the heart from your breast, whence you got this gem!"

The Jute's eyes were already glazing. He was past acting on his own initiative. He heard an insistent voice questioning him, and answered dully, scarcely knowing that he did so: "From one of the girls we took… from the… Pictish boat."

Marcus shook him, frantic with a sudden agony. "What of them? Where are they?"

Cormac, seeing something was forward, had broken from the fight and now bent, with Donal, over the dying pirate.

"We… sold… them," muttered the Jute in a fading-whisper, "to… Thorleif Hordi's son… at.."

His head fell back; the voice ceased.

Marcus looked up at Donal with pain-haunted eyes.

"Look, Donal," he cried, holding up the chain with the ruby pendant. "See? It is Helen's! I myself gave it to her-she and Marcia were on this very ship-but now-who is this Thorleif Hordi's son?"

"Easy to say," broke in Cormac. "He is a Norse reiver who has established himself in the Hebrides. Be of good cheer, young sir; Helen is better off in the hands of the Vikings than in those of the Pictish savages of the Hjaltlands."

"But surely we must waste no time now!" cried Marcus. "The gods have cast this knowledge into our hands; if we tarry we may again be put upon a false scent!"

Wulfhere and his Danes had cleared the poop and waist, but on the after deck the survivors still stubbornly contended with their conquerors. There was scant mercy shown in a sea-fight of that age. Had the Jutes been victorious they would have spared none; nor did they expect or ask for mercy.

Cormac made his way through the waist of the ship where dead and dying lay heaped, and struggled his way through the yelling Danes to where Wulfhere stood plying his dripping axe. By main force he tore the Skull-splitter from his prey and jerked him about.

"Have done, old wolf," he growled. "The fight is won; Rudd Thorwald is dead. Would you waste steel on these miserable carles?"

"I leave this ship when no Jute remains alive!" thundered the battle-maddened Dane. Cormac laughed grimly.

"Have done! Bigger game is afoot! These Jutes will drink blood before you slaughter them all and we will need every man before the faring is over. From the lips of a dying Jute we have heard it-the princess is in the steading of Thorleif Hordi's son, in the Hebrides."

Wulfhere's beard bristled with ferocious joy. So many were his foes that it was hard to name a Viking farer with whom he had no feud.

"Is it so? Then, ho, wolves-leave the rest of these sea-rats to drown or swim as they will! We go to burn Thorleif Hordi's son's skalli over his head!"

Slowly, by words and blows, he beat his raging Danes off and, marshalling them together, drove them over the gunwales into their own ship. The bleeding, battle-weary Jutes watched them go, leaning on their reddened weapons in sullen silence. The toll taken had been terrific, but by far the greater loss aboard the Fire-Woman. From stem to stern dead men wallowed among the broken benches in a welter of crimson.