One King’s Way. Chapter 14, 15, 16, 17
Chapter Fourteen
An hour later, Karli tucked his single oar cautiously between his thighs, straightened up on his precariously rocking craft, and stretched his overworked shoulder muscles. As soon as he started he had realized how different the sea was, even the sea of a landlocked fjord, from the shallow muddy waterways of the marsh. The gentlest of waves made the door pitch and toss. To keep his balance at all he had to straddle as near as he could to the center, which meant that his sculling-platform was behind him, not where he needed it. By trial and error he had found a way to stand, one foot far forward, one braced against the edge of the wooden tray. Fortunately he had made the oar long enough to reach the water even so.
There were two ways for a Ditmarsh fowler to scull, an easy way and a hard way. The balance problem ruled out the easy way—standing upright on one leg with the oar in the crook of the other knee, swinging it with both hands. He had had to switch immediately to the hard way, oar under one arm, other arm swinging the oar up and down, left to right in a continuous figure-of-eight. Karli had unusual balance, unusual strength in the arms and shoulders for a man of his weight. He could manage. Only just, and only slowly.
Still, no-one had picked him out. At the beginning he had poled his way out into water deeper than the length of his oar, then with relief pushed the dead body off the front edge and felt his wooden plank rise. The mail took the body down. It would rise again soon, but by then Shef would be rescued or Karli gone to join Stein in the next world.
Then he had sculled away from the island in a straight line towards the black shape of the Eastfold hills across the fjord. Five hundred weary strokes, fighting to keep his balance all the way. Then he had turned, looked cautiously behind him to Drottningsholm and the islands. He could make them out, but with no detail. He did not think that in the clouded, moonless night anyone from the guard-posts could see a crouching man on an invisible raft against the black sea.
He had turned and started to make his way towards Kaupang harbor to the north. Wind and tide were behind him. He kept changing arms as the weariness grew. It was discouraging to be able to see nothing, no lights, no sign of progress. He could have been on a shoreless sea, paddling from nowhere to nowhere.
As long as there was nothing out here with him. Over the hiss of the wind and the surge of the sea, Karli realized he could pick out something else. A steady creaking, something rhythmic, something chopping the water. He looked behind him, full instantly of terror at some strange water-hag swimming behind him for its prey.
Worse than that. Against the black sea and the sky Karli made out a shape, a fierce head lifted high, like a monster questing for swimmers. The dragon prow of one of King Halvdan’s giant warships, out rowing his endless summer blockade. Karli could see the white splash of the oar-thresh, hear the rhythmic creak of the rowlocks, the grunting of the rowers as they put their weight on the oars. They were rowing very slowly, not going anywhere special, conserving their strength. Lookouts stood at prow and stern, alert for skippers trying to evade King Halvdan’s taxes, for pirates sneaking by to raid Eastfold or Westfold. Karli lay down immediately on the plank, careless of the water soaking him. He dropped his face, pulled his hands back into their sleeves, trapped the oar beneath his body. On a dark night, he knew from much avoidance of husbands and fathers, nothing showed up more than white skin. He tried to look like a piece of floating wreckage, skin crawling as he imagined the bowmen taking aim.
The oars thundered in his ear, the door pitched and heaved as the bow-wave of the great warship went by. No challenge, no shot. As the stern-tail crawled past the corner of his eye he heard the lookout call something, an indistinct reply. Still no challenge. Nothing to do with him.