"02 - One King's Way" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Brand nodded, stepped back, pulled from round his neck a long red silken scarf. Stepping to the leeward side he let it stream in the breeze.
Instantly the ships behind him lowered the sails they had half-reefed and began to surge ahead, spreading into line abreast as they did so. A volley of orders from Ordlaf and the Norfolk began to check her already sluggish pace, while her consorts also began to range up on her, not moving abreast, but forming a close line, so close that the prow of each battleship almost overlapped the stern of the one ahead. Steersmen watched with anxious care as the clumsy craft edged up on each other.
At a wave from Cwicca, the catapult-crews lowered their throwing bars to the deck, fixed them with the well-greased sliding bolts, began to throw their weight on to the winding-handles to bring the stout ropes to maximum torsion. "Wind both sides," called Cwicca, looking at his master. "We might get a shot either way, God be good to us. I mean Thor be good to us." He pulled his hammer-pendant out to swing free.
Slowly the Wayman fleet edged into its agreed battle-formation, like an inverted T thrusting at the enemy. In front, lined up abreast, Brand's forty ships, sails now furled and masts stepped, moving forward at easy pace under oars aloneЧShef could hear the men grunting as they put their weight into the easy swell of the waves. Behind their center, in line ahead and still under sail, the ten English battleships.
As the formation took shape, Shef felt the familiar sense of relief. All battles to him, he realized, had come to feel the same. Terrible, gnawing anxiety before they started, while he thought of the hundred and one things that could go wrong with a planЧskippers not understanding, crews not moving fast enough, the enemy coming up unexpectedly, before they were ready. Then the relief, followed instantly by a desperate curiosity. Would it work? Could there be something he had forgotten?
Brand was bellowing from the stern of his ship, breaking off to point forward urgently at the Ragnarsson fleet, now a bare half-mile off and closing quickly, oars threshing. What was he shouting? Shef heard the words and realized for himself at the same moment. The enemy were coming on to battle just as predicted. But their masts were still standing, though the sails were furled.
"...he's smelled a rat!" came the tail-end of Brand's bellow.
Smell it or no, thought Shef. The rat is in range now. Now all it has to do is bite. From his neck he pulled a long blue scarfЧGodive's gift, he remembered with a pang, given him the day she had told him she would marry Alfred. He streamed it to leeward, saw the faces turning as the lookouts saw it. Not a good luck memory, he thought. He loosed his grip on the silk, let the wind carry it into the yellow turbid sea.
Sigurth Ragnarsson, standing in the prow of his ship, noted the strangely-cut sails at the rear of Brand's thin line. Noted, too, the giant figure of Brand standing directly opposite him, waving an axe in ironic salute. Up to something, he thought again. Only one way to find out what it is. With elaborate care he stripped off his long scarlet cape, turned, threw it into the bottom of the boat. At the same instant a man stationed by the mast jerked a rope. From the top of the mast, above the yard, there flew free suddenly a great banner, with on it a black raven: the Raven Banner of the sons of Ragnar, woven it was said all in one night, with magic in its weft for victory. No man had seen it fly since the death of Ivar.
As the watching fleet saw it break out, each oarsman put his back into five mighty heaves, then simultaneously tossed oars upright and hurled them clattering into the longships' wells. Over the din, they gave one short cheer and seized up shields and weapons. Each steersman swung his suddenly accelerated boat so as to close on its next neighbor, boatswains swinging grapnels so as to lash them fast. As was always the custom, the fleet would gain momentum and then drift down on its enemies lashed together, to lock prows with the opposing fleet and there fight it out with spears and swords over the half-decked forecastles, till one side or other gave way and triedЧusually unsuccessfullyЧto break free.
Brand saw the banner fly, saw the men bracing themselves for their last sudden spurt. Even as the oars bent under the first fierce stroke, he bellowed, in a voice fit to carry over an Atlantic gale: "Back oars and turn!"
The Wayman front line, carefully rehearsed, split instantly in the center. Brand's ship and all those to seaward of it swung hard to port, starboard oars pulling madly, port oars backing water. All those to shoreward swung hard the other way. Then, as the helmsmen struggled to keep from running foul of their fellows, the oars swung again, the fast maneuverable boats leapt away.
Shef, standing by the mast of the Norfolk, saw Brand's ships swerve away to left and right with the unanimity of two flocks of migrating birds. With a stab of fearЧnot fear for himself but for his planЧhe realized the Ragnarsson fleet was closer than he expected and coming on fast. If those veteran warriors laid aboard him there could be only one ending. In the same moment he felt the Norfolk surge forward as Ordlaf spread sail to its fullest extent. Slowly the battleship swung round to port, presenting her starboard beam to the dragon prows not a hundred yards off. Behind her, her nine consorts swung round in close line ahead. Again the Norfolk picked up a yard or two of speed as the wind came more directly over her stern.
Shef heard Ordlaf shouting encouragingly: "The wind's rising! We'll get round in time."
Maybe, thought Shef. But just the same, they were too close. Time to check them. He nodded to Cwicca, crouched expectantly by the release.
Cwicca hesitated for only an instant. He knew the plan was to sink the lead center ship, the one with the great gilded snake's head on its prow. But his mule was still not bearing directly on it. Impossible to train it round. Waiting a split second for the heel of the waves, he jerked free the release bolt.
A flash of motion, a violent thud against the padded beam, a thud that shook the whole ship and seemed for an instant to check her way. The black streak that was a thirty-pound boulder lashing across the water. A streak that ended just behind the prow of the ship immediately to port of the Frani Ormr.
For a second or two the advancing line of ships seemed to roll on as if nothing had happened, sending Shef's heart leaping into his mouth. Then tiredly, irresistibly, the ship fell apart. The flying rock had smashed the stem-post to matchwood. The planks carefully fitted into it sprang from their notches. Below the waterline the sea rushed in, forced on by the ship's own motion. As it shot through the well the sinews holding planks to ribs and ribs to keel sprang apart. The mast, its keelson pulled from under it, swayed forward, held for an instant by its stays, then swung wearily to one side. Like a giant's club it scythed through the gaping crew of the ship next alongside.
To the watchers in the English line it seemed as if the ship had suddenly vanished, been pulled under by one of the water-hags of Brand's stories. For a moment or two they could see men apparently standing on the water, then fighting for their footing on loose planks, then down in the sea, or struggling for a hand-hold on the gunwales of the ships alongside.
And then the Suffolk too brought her mule to bear. Another streak flashed into the heart of the Ragnarsson fleet. And another as the third ship in line swung round.
Suddenly, as Shef gaped, noise seemed to be added to the battle. All at once he was aware of the snap of the crossbows, the song of the rope as Cwicca's handlers frantically wound their machine, the crash of rock on wood and waves of cheering as Brand's ships swung round to come in on the Ragnarsson flanks. At the same time Shef felt a sudden lash of rain and the ships opposite blurred for a moment. A rain shower passing over the sea. Would it soak the ropes and at this worst moment take his artillery out of action?
Out of the blur came three dragon prows, shockingly close. Not the snake's head of the enemy flagship, now a hundred yards behind them, but some other alert enemy skipper, who had cast his grapnels free and re-manned his oars, realizing his foe had no intention of closing to fight fair. If they managed to lay alongside...
Cwicca raised a thumb. Shef nodded. The bone-jarring thud again, the streak of movement that ended this time almost before it had begun, at the very base of the center ship's mast. Again, suddenly, no ship, just a flurry of planks and men gasping in the water.
The other two were still coming on, only yards away now, men in each prow with grapnels swinging, fierce bearded faces staring over their shields, a simultaneous deep grunt as the oarsmen took one last stroke to drive themselves over the gap.
A storm of cheering almost in Shef's ear and a great bulk like a whale shouldering past only feet in front of the Norfolk's bow. One of Brand's ships driving in under oars to intercept. Its prow swept along the starboard side of the Ragnarsson ship at a closing speed of twenty miles an hour, snapping the oars, hurling their butt-ends back to cave in the ribs and shatter the spines of the rowers. As the two ships ground past each other Shef saw the Wayman rowers rising from their benches to pour a storm of javelins over the side at point-blank range. The third Ragnarsson ship saw the carnage, swung away past the Norfolk's stern, picking up speed for the open sea.
Shef caught Ordlaf by the shoulder, pointed across a half-mile of sea filled with shattered ships, drowning men, and desperate combats of single ships and groups. Through the showers of rain and spray picked up by the rising wind he could see the Raven banner still flying. But already turned and moving east. The Frani Ormr, masterfully handled, had swerved its way unscathed through the English line, swung about and was already in full flight. As the two men watched her sail swept down from the yard, bellied out, and began to glide easily to safety.
"Follow," said Shef.
"She sails two yards to our one."
"Cut her off from the open sea while you have a chance. Drive her inshore."
"But that's the Elber Gat," protested Ordlaf.
Shef's fingers tightened commandingly on his shoulder.

Chapter Four
Sigurth Ragnarsson stared thoughtfully over his ship's port quarter. Significantly, he had not picked up his long scarlet cape, but had left his arms free for action. He braced himself against the Ormr's heel on a long spear, iron-shafted, with a heavy triangular head. His brothers stood with their backs to him, also seeming relaxed but with weapons drawn. Discipline was savage in the Ragnarsson fleet. But the men in it were savage too, and these were picked veterans. They had no liking for turning from a battle, were already imagining what men might say about them later. Wondering if the Snake-eye had gone soft.
No point in trying to explain. Just keep them wondering a little while longer.
"What do you make of our friend behind?" said Sigurth to Vestmar, indicating the Norfolk laboring a long mile in their rear.
"It's a clumsy rig, but he can sail it," replied Vestmar briefly. "One thing, though. He doesn't know his way. See the lookout on the yard, and the skipper leaning over the prow looking for shoal water?"
"Plenty of that around," said Sigurth. He turned to look inland. A coast nearly featureless. The two small islands of Neuwark and the Scharhorn already passed. The silty current of the Elbe stirring beneath the keel, and then nothing till the base of Jutland and the fought-over lands between Denmark and the Empire of the Germans.
"All right. Strike sail. Get the men to the oars. And get someone in the bow with a lead-line."
Vestmar gaped, almost voicing a protest. A lead-line, he thought. But I know the Elber Gat like I know my wife's backside. And if we strike sail those bastards back there will be hurling their iЎtunn-rocks at us while we break our backs to get away. He swallowed the words and turned on his heel, calling hoarsely.
"We're gaining on them," called Shef. "Cwicca, stand by the mule!"
Ordlaf did not reply. He looked tensely at the sky, looked again at the ship they were pursuing, took the lead which his crewman in the bow had passed to him. Sniffed the mud sticking still to the wax at the end of the lead cylinder on the five-fathom rope. Stuck a tongue out, tasted it.
"What are you doing that for?"
"Don't know," muttered Ordlaf. "Sometimes you can tell if there's shellfish, what kind of sand it is... If there's a shoal coming up."
"Look," snarled Shef. "He doesn't know where he is either, he's had a man in the bow swinging the lead this last two miles, just like you. Keep behind him, and if he doesn't run aground you won't."
Not as easy as that, young lord, thought Ordlaf, not as easy as that. There's other things, like the currentЧsee him sliding through it like a snake while it grips our keel. And the wind, and these blasted squalls of rain coming down. And the tide. Is it still making? Now if I was at home in Yorkshire I'd feel it in my bones when we got to the full. But here in foreign parts who's to know when it turns? Can't be far off.
"Another quarter-mile and we're close enough for a shot," called Shef. "Get the oars out bow and stern. Just leave space clear round the mule."
As the grinning men heaved awkwardly in the short chop of the waves, the Norfolk picked up another trifle of speed, began visibly to close on the long dragon-shape ahead. Shef stared, estimating range and bearing.
"Right, that'll do. Take a good aim, Cwicca. Ordlaf, swing her to the right, no, to starboard, so we can shoot."
As the Norfolk swung to the steering-oar, the sail canted round. Yells of rage from Cwicca as its lower edge blocked his view. A scurry of sailors hastily heaving the ropes to brail up. Ordlaf cursing furiously as the oarsmen faltered in their stroke and the prow swung further, steadied, lurched back. As the sail finally jerked up out of their way Shef and Cwicca gaped for a moment, wondering where their quarry had gone.