Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

I nodded. "It still smells ripe," I said, but Connor waved my comment away disdainfully.

"Ah, it's almost nothing now, and growing fainter all the time. I tell you, at the start, it was unbearable. When we won home, to the Isles, we didn't dare take the thing near any of our people, so we beached it again on a sand bar and then spent two months scraping the hull and scrubbing the wood inside it with lye soap to root out the stink. Even then, it was hard to bear. We floated it again and built slow fires of peat along the decks, in braziers, letting the sweet smell of the smoke hang tight inside the walls for two full weeks, and that made things a little better. After that, we filled the space between the decks with fresh mown hay. Soon we'll fumigate the place again with sweet peat smoke, and that should finish it. Now no man shits or pisses between decks, on pain of flogging.

"But what a ship, eh, Merlyn? What a ship! Nigh on five hundred men I have in her right now. Five hundred men! It's cramped—there's no denying that—but five hundred on one ship!" He stopped, then shook his head. "Mind you, that's a lot of men to drown if she ever sank under us." He stood up and strode across his cabin, and the deck above his head was high enough to permit him to do so without stooping. He thumped the sloping wall. "Little chance of that, though. Solid, this is, and iron hard, though I've not the least idea what kind of wood it is."

"What of the other one?"

"The other one like this? I've no idea, nor have I ever seen it. If it's still in these waters, I'll find it one day."

"And then? What will you do?"

"I'll burn it, or I'll capture it."

"You mean you'll fight it, ship to ship?"

His grin was ferocious. "Why not? All the advantages would lie with me. Their ship is crewed by slaves, mine by free men. We'll out row them, out sail them and out fight them."

I glanced at Donuil, to see how he was taking this, and found him grinning at his brother. "So be it," I said. "Where are you headed now, and how did you happen to come by here?"

Connor shrugged his broad shoulders. "I knew you were in Cambria, but I didn't know where. We rode out last night's storm in a small bay two hours' sailing time from here, and now I'm on my way to join forces with Logan. I'll sweep along the coast here, till I reach the river mouth, then turn south and sail back westward along the northern coast of Cornwall. Logan will sail east, from the end of the Cornish horn, to join me in visiting Ironhair's harbour there, the one where we found this beauty. It's defended by a fort, built into the cliff, but like all forts, it's built facing the land, so it offers us no great threat. That's why we were able to sail out so easily. This time we'll sail in, but of course they'll know us as enemies, even before we attack. They'll know this beauty immediately. Her sister may even be there when we arrive, in which case we'll take her if we can, or destroy her if we must. In either event, I intend to make life unpleasant for the troops along that coast, outside the fort and close to the town." He paused. "You've a look in your eye, Merlyn Britannicus, a look I knew well when you were yellow headed the first time. What have you in your mind?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, really. What's this fort called? Is it Tintagel, by any chance?"

Connor nodded. "Aye, that's the name. You know it?"

"I know of it. Lot of Cornwall's father started building it, and Lot carried on with the work. Is it made of stone?"

"Some of it. Some parts of it. They've had masons working on it for years, but it's nowhere near complete. Mainly it's built of wood—log palisades. Would you like to come with me and see it?"

I answered his grin with my own. "I would dearly love to, but my troops might grow confused, seeing me sail off like that. I think I'd better stay right here, in case fighting breaks out."

"Well, then, let me show you my ship, before I have to go. Logan has less than ten craft with him, in the south, so I've no wish to keep him waiting for my arrival. Come."

I was stunned by the spaciousness of his new craft. From the exterior view it looked enormous, but walking between the multiple decks, its real dimensions became awesomely apparent. It stretched fully eighty paces long, from stem to stern as Connor said, while the width of the main deck was twenty five paces. The hatches to the cargo holds ran in a line along the middle of the craft, giving access to the holds themselves, three full decks beneath. The great double banks of oars were handled from a stepped deck in the very centre of the craft, where the rowers of alternate sweeps worked above and below each other, half the height of a tall man separating them. The signs of recent slavery were still apparent there: iron rings set into the floor and smooth worn channels in the wooden deck showed where the chains that bound the rowers had run. At the rear end of the rowing deck , directly at the foot of the companionway leading up to the steering deck, a massive kettledrum sat mounted on a tripod. This, Connor explained, was the post of the oarmaster, the man who dictated the rhythm of the huge sweeps that propelled the ship. From his position just below the shipmaster on the stern steering deck, the oarmaster could clearly hear the commands passed down to him, and the rhythmic pounding of his drum hammers decreed the pace of the rowers’ efforts.

Below the rowing deck was a deck for cargo storage, while another above provided accommodation for the ship's warriors. The original biremes of Rome had been no more than floating platforms from which land trained troops fought land based wars, and that priority had altered little over the centuries. Front and rear, great towers soared above the main deck, giving the vessel an ungainly appearance when seen from either side; these provided viciously effective advantages as platforms for the ship's catapults and other artillery, and also housed the ship's officers and troop commanders. At either end of the deck drawbridges reared high. Lowered by pulleys, they were used to attach the ship to land when the vessel was in port, but they were equally capable of locking it similarly to another ship's side in battle, allowing soldiers to pour across on to the enemy's decks.

Connor, I knew, had good reason to be proud of owning this floating fortification, but his greatest source of pride was the enormous, copper clad battering ram of solid wood, wider than my outspread arms where it formed the prow of the ship. This stretched out a full six long legged strides from the bireme's bows and tapered to a wicked point below the waterline. Heaven help any other vessel that found itself facing this, I thought when he pointed it out to us.

Connor shipped us ashore again, promising to return by the shortest route to visit us after he had sacked Ironhair's harbour in Cornwall. He estimated that it would take him less than a week to go there, do what he must do, and return. I promised him we would still be there when he did return, providing his estimate was accurate, since I was committed to await Huw Strongarm's return, and that would take no less than a week. After that, though, I would be leaving as soon as I had to, in order to meet with Uderic Pendragon.

He walked with Donuil and me to the side of his ship and then braced himself with his wooden leg against the rail before leaning outward, clinging to a rope, to watch with a wide grin of delight as we made our way nervously down a narrow wooden ladder lashed to the side of the great ship. We were suddenly terrifyingly aware of how simple it had been to board this monster from the tiny boat that now bobbed sickeningly on the leaping waves, slightly beyond our reach.

Clinging there above the lurch of the slapping waves, we gauged our time and distance and leaped to where willing hands waited to grasp us and save us from overturning the boat. We both made the transit safely, albeit with a decided lack of dignity. My stomach was still swooping distressingly when the hull of the boat grated on the sand and I leaped out, wading through ankle deep water to the satisfying solidness of the dry beach, carefully avoiding the eyes of any of the watchers who stood there.