Jack Whyte: The Saxon Shore

My chest constricted and I retched again, moving at the same time to ease the discomfort caused by the ring and gasping against the agony of the convulsion that racked me, and as I gulped for breath another image came into my mind: a tall, young man with long, bright golden hair; a champion who perhaps, even now, would be in Camulod, and into whose hands I had commended Excalibur should I not have returned within the year; Ambrose, my own half-brother, absent from my mind since my discovery of the boy.

A heavy foot kicked my elbow and I snatched it away, falling face downward into the bile I had just voided. I lay helpless as my wrists were snatched and bound together at my back, the rough rope burning my skin. When I reared my head back and tried to look around me I saw only legs. At least a dozen men surrounded me, and I saw now that I was on the big galley, not the birney as I had supposed, and that I was lying at the bottom of the well that held the rowers. They hauled me to my feet again and thrust at me, turning me around and pushing me forward until I saw what they required of me.

There was a lateral bench of some kind at the level of my knee, pressing against me. Above it, a narrow wooden step descended from a planked walkway that ran the length of the galley, front to back. Urged onward by the point of either a spear or a sword at the small of my back, I climbed upward, making heavy going of it with the rocking of the vessel and the awkward weight of my arms, tied tightly as they were behind me. I managed the ascent without falling, nevertheless, and stood swaying on the causeway.

I was somewhere approaching midway along the boat, facing the rear. Below me, ranged in rows on either side, a sea of faces glowered up at me in silence. The men were resting on their oars, evidently waiting. At the end of each row, closest to the centre of the keel and within their owners' reach, were piles of axes, swords and spears. Barbarians. The expressions on those faces I could see varied from wild-eyed hatred to dull disinterest. I ignored them, refusing to acknowledge their presence, although I had time to estimate their strength at close to a hundred. A hundred in one galley! That bespoke great wealth on the part of its owners and great skill on the part of their shipbuilders. I looked straight ahead to where the massive mast reared, thick as a horse's barrel, from the bottom of the ship, beneath the planks of the central causeway, which parted around it, leaving enough room for one man to pass on either side. A great cross-spar, half the thickness of the mast itself, was attached to it about head height, though I could not see how because of the billows of dense, saffron-coloured sailcloth that lay draped across the spar.

Prodded roughly from behind again, I made my way rearwards, passing the mast and dipping my head to avoid the overhead spar. The rearmost part of the ship, I estimated about one sixth of the vessel's total length, was decked over completely at the level of the causeway, fronted by a solid wooden wall with a single doorway leading to the enclosed space below. A group of men huddled on this platform, their backs to me. I counted eight of them as I approached, and their armour, such as I could see of it, was mainly toughened leather of the kind our own Celts wore, bossed with iron and bronze, although one wore overlapped iron strip armour in the Roman fashion and another wore a shirt of ring mail. Three wore long cloaks, so I could see nothing of what they wore beneath. All eight wore helmets; conical iron caps, two of which were horned. Alerted by some signal, they swung around as one to look at me, then stepped back to form an open, wedge- shaped grouping that reflected the taper of the vessel's stern and directed my gaze to the man they had concealed.

I stopped short, trying to absorb what I was seeing, and no one pressed me further. The man himself was, of course, the first thing I perceived, but immediately after that I saw the device in which he hung suspended, and my eyes devoured it, attempting to define what it was and how it operated, disdaining its occupant temporarily despite the fact that he obviously held the order of my dying.

Four thick beams, each a handspan square, had been erected from the body of the ship, mortised into the rail that ran around the deck and cantilevered inward at a uniform angle, supported from the deck by other, smaller struts. I saw instantly where they should have met to form a pyramid, but each had been truncated short of that to provide a corner support for a heavy, rectangular frame that hung thus suspended, level with the deck. I had a vision of the great catapults and siege artillery depicted in the books of Publius Varrus, and as my eye took in the workmanship I knew instantly that the craftsman who built it had been the same man who designed and built the galley. The device was a natural extension of the ship. Below it, suspended by ropes and pulleys from strong hooks attached to each corner of this frame, hung a seat, apparently made from strong leather, stitched and shaped and strung from an open-fronted girdle of iron as thick us my thumb. Thin hempen ropes, three of them, hung from this metal chair rim to the floor, whence they passed through a ring bolted into the deck and separated to three other rings, where they were stoutly knotted, one in the back and one on either side. They looked for all the world like reins, and I realized that they were nothing less. The person seated in that chair might ride the turmoil of the waves in comfort, suspended above the deck and able to master all but the wildest motion of the seat by pulling on these ropes.

All of these thoughts had coursed through my mind in less time than it takes to speak of them, and I grew conscious of the silence that hung around me. I looked then at the leader of this crew.

He sat slouched in his hanging seat, wrapped in a great, long cloak of thick, green wool embellished with red symbols unknown to me. Beneath him, one long, booted leg stretched indolently to the deck; the other jutted out horizontally, seemingly rigid beneath the cloak, pointing at me. I gazed at him, looking square into his eyes, holding my own head high.

He had the look of a Celtic chieftain, saturnine, swarthy, with long, dark, flowing moustaches and a small beard that covered his chin but left his cheeks clean shaven. His nose jutted, fine edged and arrogant over cleanly shaped, narrow nostrils, and great black-browed blue eyes, so bright they seemed to glow, swept me from head to foot, taking my measure. I saw the breadth of his high forehead and the long, dark, curling hair swept back behind his ears, the line of it forming the suggestion of a peak exactly at the centre of his brow. He wore a heavy, ornate golden tore, the collar of a chieftain, about his neck, which was thick and strong, hinting of a deep chest and broad shoulders, although these were concealed in his cloak. We faced each other mutely, neither allowing any trace of emotion to paint his features. I was aware of the tension of the men who surrounded me. A wave smacked against the side of the galley, setting the deck atilt beneath my feet, and hemp ropes creaked in protest.

And then he threw aside the cloak, exposing the baby that lay nestled, sleeping or dead, in the cradle of his right elbow. The sight, the unexpectedness of it, caught me off guard and I sprang forward, uttering a cry that was cut off in my throat by a heavy blow across the neck and shoulder that felled me to the deck. As I lay there, struggling for consciousness against the sudden violence that had clamped my eyes tight shut and the roaring of my own blood that filled my head, I heard their voices speaking the tongue of Donuil, the prince of the Eirish tribe we called the Scotii or Scots, whom I had held hostage against his people's good behaviour. They were discussing me.