Straining, Karli and Cwicca lifted the trail, walked the machine round from its first position covering the harbor entrance to bear on the Crane now slowly sweeping away from the jetty.
“Round half a pace more,” grunted Cwicca. “Back a hand’s breadth. Right. Tip her forward, hammer in two wedges, no, three.”
They tipped the machine forward so it pointed, now, down at the water. The ropes were wound, the throwing bar straining at its retaining bolt. Cwicca fitted a thirty-pound rock into the sling, drooping from the bar, checked the very precise angle of the hook from which the sling’s catch had, at the right moment, to fly free.
“Ready. Stand clear. Shoot.”
The bolt was pulled back, the bar shot up with inconceivable force, the sling whirred round, adding its own vector to the force of the twisted ropes. The boulder shot across the water in a flat hard line.
And missed. The crew had wedged the machine down as far as it would go. But it was a hard business altering for range downwards. The rock skimmed narrowly over the decks of the Crane and splashed into the water in the center of the widening gap between ship and jetty. The plume it threw up hurled spray into Kormak’s face, as he turned back from the won skirmish on the jetty.
“Thor aid me,” he said. “What happened to the pinnace? They were supposed to secure that machine.” Then he began to bark orders. A threat to his ship was the most serious thing, everything else trivial, winning the battle, securing prisoners, even appeasing Ragnhild.
As the queen realized Kormak meant to turn back from sacking the settlement, the settlement she was sure contained her son’s bane, skulking somewhere away from the fighting, she flew at him with teeth and nails. He shook her off as she clung to his arm, shrieking her demands.
The important thing to do, he saw straight away, was to get the Crane over on the other side of the harbor, where the catapults could not train down far enough to shoot. The ship needed more men, and in a hurry. There were still a dozen skiffs and dories lying round the jetty and the shingle by it. Quickly Kormak detached fifty men to hold the foot of the jetty, ordered the rest into the boats, jamming in as many as they could carry. At the last moment he stopped, ordered two men out of the nearest, replaced them with the still groggy Brand, hands lashed firmly behind his back.
“Let’s get him safely stowed,” he remarked, stepping into the same boat. He thrust a furious Ragnhild away from him again. “Lady, we’ll come back for you. If the man you want is anywhere, he’s on the shore. I suggest you go look for him yourself. Give way,” he added to the oarsmen.
As a second stone thumped into the sea, aimed this time at the first boats creeping out, and missing once more, fifty men set out to cross the intervening hundred yards of water.
Shef brought his group hurdling over the stream and into the blazing village by the landward end of its one muddy street. As they moved down it, jogging now, men moved out of the flames and shadows to join him, adding themselves to the line, eager to support the first sign of concerted resistance. Shef felt the wolfish force of their anger sweeping him along. There was no way to halt them now. They were going to hurl themselves on the invaders whatever he said or did.
Yet the Halogalanders had no armor, and the only shield in the party was Cuthred’s. The enemy were fully equipped, Shef could see them standing in a solid rank across the base of the jetty, unshaken and unafraid. In seconds he would have to lead the charge. What chance had he of surviving it? Standing in the center of the front rank, a target for every spear? This was the way of the world. Shef poised his lance. There was no way he could see of altering it. He tried to call up within himself the fighting urge he had felt when he killed Hrani the Viking on the sandbank. There was no response. The lance in his hand seemed to drink it, to send out an urge instead to delay. To pity, not to strike. The men on his right and left were looking sideways at him, expecting the word to charge. Something made Shef sweep the lance out sideways, holding them back.