Tim Severin - King's Man

Harald's men made pretence of settling down for the night aboard the two ousiai, but many of us were too nervous to sleep, and I worried that the night guard would become suspicious. Their patrol was random, and there was no way of anticipating their visits, so I told the young officer in charge that we would post our own sentries, as this was our custom, and persuaded him that his own men needed to come no closer than the foot of the jetty.

Everything now depended on the timing of our next move.

At the first glimmer of dawn, Harald quietly gave the order to unmoor our vessel from the quay. Astern of us, the second ousiai followed us. As silently as possible we pushed off from the pier and began to row out into the Golden Horn. We could feel the ripples slapping against the thin wooden hulls of the lightly built dromons. A fresh breeze from the north was raising waves in the straits outside, but in the sheltered waters of the great harbour the waves had little effect.

We were a long bowshot from the shore when a trumpet sounded the alarm from the Neiron behind us. The nightwatch had discovered we were missing.

'Put your backs into it!' roared Halldor, who was at the helm. 'Show those Greeks what real rowing is like.'

Each ousiai had a single bank of oars, identical to a longship, and Harald's Norsemen, two men to each oar handle, were relishing the return to their old ways. Harald himself was not too proud to seat himself on the oar bench nearest to the helm and row alongside his men.

'Row your guts out, men!' urged Halldor. From astern we could hear the shouts of the helmsman of the second ousiai following in our wake. Further in the distance was the clamour of alarm bells and more trumpet calls.

We picked up speed. The light was strengthening, and soon we would be in full view of anyone watching from the harbour walls. If the alarm was passed quickly enough, the signal mirrors on the harbour wall would begin to flash a message to the guard boats in the bay.

Halldor grabbed my arm and pointed ahead. 'Look!' he said. 'The chain is still in place.'

I squinted forward through the grey light of dawn and knew that my plan was in ruins. Directly across our path stretched a line of wooden rafts, evenly spaced, about fifteen paces apart. Low in the water, so that even the smallest wave broke across them, they bobbed and gleamed blackly. Hanging below them was the chain which closed off the Golden Horn each night and turned it into a lake. It was supposed to be removed at first light so that the harbour was open to traffic, and our way to the straits should have been clear, but I had failed to anticipate that, on the feast day of the Nativity, the chain-keepers would be slow in carrying out their duties. We were trapped.

Seeing my dismay, Harald left his oar handle to his neighbour on the bench and stepped up to the stern deck. 'What's the trouble?' he demanded.

There was no need to explain, I pointed at the line of rafts.

Coolly he surveyed the obstacle. 'How deep does the chain hang?' he asked.

'I don't know. The shoreward end is fastened to land, and it is floated out with the rafts each sunset.' In the days when I had stayed in Pelagia's house overlooking the bay, I had often seen the teams of workboats struggling out with the chain at dusk and closing off the harbour.

Harald looked up at the sky. There was enough light for us to see the links of the chain where they crossed each raft. 'What do you think, Halldor?' he said, turning to the Icelander.

'Can't say to be sure,' Halldor replied. 'Must sag a bit between each raft. Stands to reason.'

Again we heard alarm signals from the shore. A fire gong was being beaten, its clangour carrying unmistakably across the water.

Harald stepped to the edge of the steersman's platform and looked down the length of our ousiai. Ahead of him forty or more Norsemen were rowing steadily. They had the vessel moving sweetly through the water, so they had dropped the rhythm of the oar strokes to a measured beat. To an observer it might have looked as if they were relaxing their effort, but every man aboard knew that it was a waste of effort to tug dramatically at the oar handles. What was needed now was disciplined, powerful rowing to keep our vessel cruising forward.

'When I give the word,' called Harald, 'every man takes twenty oar strokes with all his strength. When I shout a second time, the oarsmen on the first five benches drop their oars, leave their benches and run to the stern. The others are to keep rowing. Is that understood?'

The labouring oarsmen looked up at their leader standing on the deck above them and nodded. Every last one of them knew what Harald had in mind.

The line of rafts was very close now. 'Get ready,' Harald warned.

I jumped down from the stern deck and took the place at the oar bench that Harald had vacated. Next to me sat a Swede, a scarred veteran from the Sicilian campaign. 'So they've finally got you at an oar handle, rowing and not scheming,' he grunted at me. 'That's a change worth waiting for.'

'Now!' shouted Harald, and we began to count our twenty strokes, roaring out the numbers before Harald shouted out again, and behind me I heard the clatter of oar handles as the men in the forward benches dropped their oars and ran back down the length of the galley. I felt the angle of the vessel alter, the bow rising as the weight of the extra men came on the stern. Three strokes later there was a grinding, slithering wrench as the keel of our little dromon struck the chain with a crash. In a few paces we came to a complete stop. The force of our collision had sent the galley sliding up on the hidden links; we hung there, stranded on the chain.

'Now! Every man forward!' yelled Harald, and all of us left our benches and scrambled into the bows. Slowly, very slowly, the galley tilted forward. For a moment I feared the vessel would capsize, as she teetered half out of the water. Then the added weight in her bows pulled her forward, and with a creaking groan the ousiai slid forward over the chain and into the open water on the far side. We all lost our balance, trod on one another, and grabbed for oars that were sliding overboard as we cheered with relief. We had forced the barrier, and now the open sea lay ahead.

As we settled again to the oar benches, we looked back to see our second galley approaching the chain. She followed the same technique. We watched the ousiai accelerate, heard the shout of her helmsman and saw the men jump up from the forward benches and run towards the stern. We could clearly see the bow lift, then the sudden tilt as the vessel struck the hidden chain and come to a halt, straddled across the links. Like us, the crew then ran forward and we held our breath as the vessel rocked forward, only this time the ousiai did not slip clear; she was too firmly stuck. Another command, and the crew, forty or more men, scrambled back towards the stern, then turned and threw their weight forward, striving to break the grip of the chain. The ousiai rocked again, but still stayed fast.

'Guard boats!' Halldor shouted, and pointed. Close to the shore where the chain was attached to the land, five or six harbour guard boats were putting out to intercept us.

Once more our comrades on the stranded ousiai tried to rock their vessel clear. This time their frantic effort brought disaster. As the crew applied their weight, first in the bow and then at the stern, the strain proved too great. Like a stick which breaks when overloaded, the keel of the ousiai snapped. Perhaps the vessel was older and weaker than ours, or less well built, or maybe by ill fortune the chain lay directly under a joint in her main timbers where the shipwrights had scarfed the keel. The result was that the ousiai cracked in half. The long narrow hull broke apart, her planks sprang open, and her men fell into the sea.