Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Then came a muffled order from the galley and the oars dipped again to the water, pulling strongly in a manoeuvre that won my admiration even as I marvelled at its strangeness. Five times the oars dug deep before the rope that joined us to the galley became taut and pulled us into motion, and then four times more, so that we surged forward in its wake. Then some of the oars rose vertically again, while the remainder on one side pulled forward and on the other backed water. The huge galley swung on its own centre, all oars shipped now, and came to rest facing back towards us, parallel to our course, between us and the invisible land mass as the momentum of our continued forward motion brought us alongside. Men stood ready to fend us off with long poles, but the judgment of the manoeuvre had been so exact that they were unnecessary. We glided perfectly to rest beside the larger vessel and Logan himself leapt effortlessly down to our deck. Until he opened his mouth to speak to me, no one had uttered a sound.

Well," he said, holding his voice low, "we're here. Welcome to Eire. You can't see it yet, but the shore is less than half a bowshot from us now. The tidal drift will take us in closer, but I want to take us out again until we know exactly where we are. I merely wanted to warn your people to keep all noise down. Don't let those horses make a sound."

"Why not, if we've arrived?"

He raised one eyebrow at me and glanced at Donuil. "Because we don't know where we are exactly. The fog has seen to that. If we are more than three leagues south of where we should be, we could attract attention we don't need. We have no friends to the south of us. Feargus went farther north during the night, to find our anchorage, the spot we should have reached if not for this damned fog. He should be back soon, and then we'll know."

I had looked over his shoulder as he spoke, and now I saw the top of a massive tree emerging through the tendrils of fog that wreathed its branches. "We may be closer to the shore than you think," I said, nodding towards it.

He turned to look, uttered an oath and ran, using the low side of our barge as a step and launching himself upward to his own vessel, where waiting hands pulled him aboard. Thereafter all became confusion. The oars on the side nearest us levelled towards us from above like spears and pushed us away, forcing us sideways in a sluggish, wallowing, ungainly dance, moving their own galley as much as our heavy barge, so that its high mast rolled drunkenly. As soon as we had drifted apart far enough to give them room, the oars dipped again into the sea and began to pull, but not soon enough. Their gathering impetus was immediately aborted, the sweeps stilled in the water amid chaos as the central oars on the right of the galley dug into a rapidly shelving bottom, lodging there and throwing their rowers off balance. We did not discover what had happened until much later, but we clearly heard the violent cracking splinter of at least one oar and a chorus of shouts and screams mingled with the sound of falling bodies as the prow of the galley, propelled by the partial, yet powerful, thrust from the unfouled oars on the landward side, began to swing back violently towards us, its high, pointed nose towering over us until the heavy, reinforced beam crashed slowly, but with amazing power, into our side, splintering our heavy vessel's timbers as though they were made of eggshell. I saw the barge's side bend inwards like a colossal bow and shatter with a noise that almost deafened me, and at the same instant the planking of the deck closest to the side and running from prow to stern heaved upward, splitting into fragments, some of which flew whirring viciously through the air, spinning like wind-blown leaves. Beneath the planks, within a fraction of a heartbeat, I saw the lateral struts to which they had been nailed give way, sprung apart like the sides of a log beneath the axe that was the galley's thrusting prow.

The violence of the collision threw all of us, including the horses, to the deck, where the animals immediately began screaming and whinnying in panic, scrabbling and flailing vainly to regain their footing. I landed hard on my buttocks, my shoulders slamming against the side of the deck farthest from the point of impact, and Dedalus immediately fell sprawling on top of me, his elbow ramming sickeningly into my crotch and blinding me momentarily with pain and nausea. By the time I could drag myself to my knees again, reeling and gasping for breath, everything around me had degenerated into chaos. Dedalus was gone, but Quintus lay squirming close by me, his face ashen, bleeding copiously from the nose again and clutching his right thigh in both hands. That much I saw in the first glance, but then I saw him flinch again, struck by one of the wildly flailing hooves of my own big black, Germanicus, and I knew what had happened. I reached him in a lurch, still on my knees, and grasped him by the armholes in his cuirass, hauling him clear of the horse's reach. "Broken!" he hissed in my ear, and then I was on my feet again and looking all around me. The deck beneath me was tilted steeply towards the point of impact, where the prow of the galley still thrust through our shattered side as though locked in a vise. Where the two vessels joined, sea water lay deeply pooled, its level creeping upward even as I looked. And then I saw a pair of legs sprawled on the deck, its owner's head and torso lost beneath the water. I threw myself forward and down, barely avoiding being kicked by a horse myself, and grasped the ankles, dragging the drowned or drowning man out and up the sloping deck. It was Metellus, who had not fully regained his senses since falling from his horse on the wharf in Glevum. I had no time to check him for signs of life. The silence of only moments before had been obliterated by a Hadean chaos of noise, with men and horses adding their voices to the tortured shrieks and groans of splintered, twisting timbers, and suddenly I found myself looking up at Logan, perched on the very point of his galley's prow and shouting down at me. As I stood there, trying to decipher what he was telling me, Donuil appeared at my side.

"Can't hear you!" he yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth.

Logan heard him, and did the same with his own hands, funnelling his voice towards us. "We can't backwater to free ourselves! Too close to shore. Stern's aground. We'll have to push you like this. Donuil, come aboard!"

"I'm staying here! Do what you must. Push us out if you can, then turn us.

Logan hesitated for a moment, high above us, and then turned and disappeared. Donuil grasped me by the arm and leaned closer, shouting into my ear. "Did you understand what he said?"

"Aye, he's fast aground. I heard that. But how will he push us out, if his men can't row?"

"They'll push, until they have enough water beneath the keel. It shouldn't take long. Only the stern's aground. Once they're clear, they can throw their full weight on the oars and push us around. They hit us aft of centre, so we'll swing fairly easily. The motion should break our hold on them and allow them to break free of us."

"Aye, and what then?"

"We'll sink, once they've pulled free. The barge is broken well beneath the waterline. We'll have to swim ashore." As he spoke, the motion of the barge changed suddenly, and with the change came an agonized groaning of wood from the junction of the two craft. I glared around me at my men, my mind in a turmoil.

"Damnation, Donuil, we're all wearing armour. We'll sink like stones and drown!"

He had anticipated me. "We'll swim with the horses. They'll carry us, but we have to get them on their feet. Come on!"

I ran immediately towards my horse Germanicus, feeling the barge's deck lurch again beneath my feet as Logan's men thrust their long oars against the sea bottom, poling both vessels away from the land. "Up!" I yelled to everyone. "On your feet and get the horses up! Quickly, or we all drown."