Robert Low - The Prow Beast

Austrgotaland , 975AD

The sun stayed veiled behind lead clouds streaked with silver. The rain hissed and the sea heaved, black and sluggish as a walrus on a rock, while a wind dragged a fine smoke of spray into my eyes.

‘Not storm enough,’ Hauk Fast-Sailor declared and he had the right of it, for sure. There was not enough of a storm to stop our enemies from coming up the fjord with the wind in their favour and that great, green-bordered sail swelled out. On a ship with a snarling serpent prow that sail looked like dragon wings and gave the ship its name.

The oars on the Fjord Elk were dipped, but moving only to keep the prow beast snarling into the wind that drove the enemy down on us; there was no point in tiring ourselves — we were crew-light, after all — while the enemy climbed into their battle gear. When we saw their sail go down would be the time for worry, the time they were ready for war.

Instead, men kept their hands busy tightening straps and checking edges, binding back their hair as it whipped in the wind. All of Jarl Brand’s lent-men from Black Eagle were here, save six with Ref and Bjaelfi who were herding women and weans and thralls away from Hestreng hall and up to the valley, with as much food and spare sail for tentage as they could carry. Away from the wrath of Randr Sterki and the snarlers on Dragon Wings.

I hoped Randr Sterki would content himself with looting and burning Hestreng, would not head inland too far. I had left him wethers and cooped hens and pigs to steal, as well as a hall and the buildings to burn — and if it was the Oathsworn he wanted…well, here we were, waiting for him at sea.

Still, I knew what drove Randr to this attack and could not blame him for it. I had the spear in my throat and the melted bowels that always came with the prospect of facing men who wanted to cleave sharp bars of metal through me but, for once, did not wish to be elsewhere. This was where I had to be, protecting the backs of mine and all the other fledglings teetering on flight’s edge, from the revenge of raiding men.

Men like us.

Gizur, swinging down from stay to stay through the ranks of men, looked like a mad little monkey I had seen once in Serkland, his weather-lined face such a perfect replica that I smiled. He was surprised at that smile, considering what we faced, then grinned back.

‘We should ship oars, Jarl Orm, before they get splintered.’

I nodded; when the ships struck, the oars on that side would be a disaster to us if we left them out. There was a flurry and clatter as the oars came in and were stacked lengthways; men cursed as shafts dunted them and now I saw the great snarling prow of Dragon Wings clearly, heard the faint shrieks and roars, saw the weapon-waving.

I was watching them flake the sail down to the yard when two of Jarl Brand’s lent-men shoved through our throng, almost to the Fjord Elk ’s prow, nocking arrows as they went, stepping over bundled oars and shoving folk aside. They shot; distant screams made our own men roar approval — then curse as an answering flight zipped and shunked into the woodwork. One of the bowmen, Kalf Sygni, spun half round and clutched his forearm where a shaft was through, side to side.

‘Missed that coming,’ bellowed Finn, hefting his shield as he moved to the prow, clashing ring-iron shoulders with Nes-Bjorn, who was headed the same way; they glared at each other.

‘I am Jarl Brand’s prow man on the Black Eagle ,’ Nes-Bjorn growled.

‘You are not on the Black Eagle ,’ Finn pointed out and, reluctantly, the big man gave way, letting Finn take his place. Across on Dragon Wings his counterpart, hero-warrior of his boat, stepped up, mailed, helmeted and carrying a shield, but nothing better than a ship-wood axe.

They had the sail down and the oars shipped, leaving Dragon Wings with enough momentum to crash on us, rocking the Elk sideways to the waterline, staggering men who had been unprepared for it. Randr’s crew howled and axes clattered over our side, causing men to duck and raise shields — the axe-owners hauled hard at the ropes ringed to the shafts, pulling the hooked heads tight to the inside of the Elk with their iron beards, clinching us close as lovers.

A man screamed as his leg went with such a pull, trapping him like a snared fox against the side while he beat and tugged. Holger, I remembered dully as he screamed his throat out in agony. His name was Holger.

An arrow skittered off the mast and whipped past my head; I wore no ring-coat, for I was not so sure I could wriggle out of it in time if I fell overboard. Botolf, who stood on my right, heard me curse and grinned.

‘Now you know what it feels like,’ he yelled and I laughed into his mad delight, for it was a long-standing joke that Botolf had never found a ring-coat big enough to fit him. Then he threw back his head and roared out his name; Randr Sterki’s men shrieked and howled; the sides of the boats clashed and men flung themselves forward while the locked ships groaned and rocked.

The worst thing about battle, after a few bloodings drive away the first fears of it, is that it is work. The stink and the horror, the belly-wrenching terror and savage hatred of it were all things I had grown used to — but the backbreaking labour of it was what always made me blench. It was like ploughing stony ground, where the stones rise up and try to hit you and the whole affair leaves you sick and tremble-legged with exhaustion. The one good part about being jarl was that you did not sink into the grind of it, at least not all at once — but you had to stand like a tree in a boiling flood and seem unconcerned.

I stood rock-still and guarded by Botolf’s shield, watching the Dragon Wings crew pile forward in a rush, dipping both ships almost into the water with their weight. They struggled and hacked and died on the thwart-edges, my picked men darting in to cut the ropes that bound us together, or shoot out the men on Dragon Wings whose task it was to haul us tight.

They were red-mouthed screamers, Randr Sterki’s crew, waving spears and axes, garbed in leather and some in no more than makeshift breastplates of knotted rope. They had helms of all kinds, none of them fine craftings, and waved blades as notched as a dog’s jaw — even Randr Sterki’s ring-mailed prow man wielded no better than an adze-axe. Yet they had the savagery of revenge in them and that made the arm strong and the edge sharp.

Randr stood and roared out unheard curses in the middle of his ship, in the middle of a group as unlike the men round them as sheep-droppings in snow. They made my knees turn to water, those men whose eyes stared and saw nothing, who wore only thick, hairy hides over their breeks, who champed flecks of foam onto the thicket of their beards and hefted weapons with an easy skill and arms blood-marked with strength runes. Some of them, I noted, had swords, well-worn and well-earned.

‘Bearcoats!’ yelled Botolf in my ear. ‘He has bearcoats, Orm…’

Even as he spoke I saw them, all twelve of them, stir like a wolf pack scenting a kill. Bearcoats — berserker — had been no part of Randr Sterki’s crew before. Where had he got them from? My mouth went dry; I saw them snarling and howling, slamming into those of their own side who did not see them in time to get out of the way.

The first of them, tow-haired, tangle-bearded, reached the side and howled out to the sky, then hurled himself over on my men before the cords of his neck had slackened; they hacked at him with the desperate fury of those too trapped to run. The rest of the pack began to follow and Randr Sterki urged them on with bellows from the middle of his ship, his face red and ugly with rage and battle.