“How do we get across?” he asked.
“Swim?” suggested Echegorgun.
Shef hesitated. A quarter of a mile was not so far. But this water, he knew, was always bitter cold. And besides—he could not forget the threat of the whales.
Cuthred nudged him and pointed. Lit up now by the red glow in the sky, they could see the black dot of a whale-boat, with more behind it, pulling frantically down from the grind-beach. Men carrying a load down, or coming back for water.
“More Thin Ones,” said Echegorgun. “We go now. Do not speak of us except to my cousin Brand. If you go on the water in a boat, you will speak to no-one again.”
“Wait!” said Shef sharply. “Can you tell where the whales are?”
Echegorgun nodded. “Hear them in the water. I know already. They are outside the harbor, watch the strange ship. Unhappy. They want small boats to tip over, not big ship to ram. Don’t go in boats.”
“Can you tell us if they go into the harbor? If it’s safe for a few minutes just to row across?”
Echegorgun sniffed doubtfully. “You hear a noise like a walrus sounding, you row across. Make it quick.” An instant later he had vanished, his great bulk disappearing seemingly into a rock.
“Noise like a walrus sounding?” muttered Cuthred. “Might as well be an angel belching for all the good…”
Shef ignored him. He had stepped on to the highest point he could reach, waving the lance he had recovered in wide sweeps over his head. Moments later the leading whale-boat saw him, hesitated, pulled over.
“Stop the other boats,” said Shef. “No, do as I say. I know the place is under attack. We have to go in together, not a few at a time.”
Slowly the dories gathered, nine or ten of them, maybe forty or fifty men, fierce and skilled seamen, but unarmored and unarmed except for the long whale-lances some of them carried, their flensing-axes and grind-knives.
“You’re going to have to listen very carefully to what I say,” said Shef. “First, there is a school of killer whales out by the harbor, and we don’t want to row into them. Second, we will know when they have gone into the harbor…”
As a buzz of incredulity greeted his words, he thumped his lance-butt on the rock and raised his voice commandingly over it.
Kormak was doing to the men of Hrafnsey much as they had done to the whales. Deliberately, he kept up the pressure to make them panic, though he knew their form of panic would be a headlong assault. As the Crane moved up to the jetty, stones whirred from her mule, each one smashing a house. Fire-arrows thumped into wood and oil, turning the whole settlement into a conflagration. Few were killed, few were hurt, the fighting strength of the defenders was hardly diminished. But they had no time to think. Besides, as Brand saw his beloved Walrus a wreck, saw his winter store and his warehouses going up in flames, his heart swelled till it seemed to burst his jerkin. No time to fetch his mail, no time to array the men. Between the flames he stood, his face working, clutching his axe ‘Battle-troll’ and waiting for the despoilers to set foot on land.
As the side of the Crane touched the jetty, the men Kormak had detailed off sprang ashore, forming an immediate armored front six wide. At the same time Kormak bent, said a quiet word to his boatswain. Two men slipped ashore, walking along the jetty’s side struts, one each side. At the right place they heaved a rope across, made fast.
Kormak pushed forward to the center of the front rank, stepped on two more paces, arranged the men in the Viking wedge. Then they began to move forward, shouting in unison. Kormak waited for the furious charge he expected.
It came. Seeing the confident figure striding towards him, Brand, the doubts and fears that had afflicted him since the duel with Ivar entirely wiped out by fury and loss, ran forward, axe raised. Behind him, in a ragged wave, came the men of Hrafnsey with what weapons they could snatch up.