The lead fin suddenly changed course, angling sharply towards them. Without hesitation Cuthred swung the boat and headed for the rocky shore a hundred yards off. There was no chance of landing on it, it ran straight down into the water, but any kind of shoal or rock projection would keep the great beast off. It had certainly seen them, or sensed them. The fin was coming straight at them, a white wave cresting in front of it as it tore through the water.
The orcas had sensed the blood spilled in massive quantities into the water. They might have been following the pod of pilot whales themselves, intending to close in and make a kill. Could such a creature feel frustration at being forestalled? Resentment at the snatching of so many potential prey all at once? Anger against the land-apes, for so easily and ruthlessly destroying the whale-kind? It might just have been excitement from the blood, and a sportive urge to even the score against men moving so confidently out of their native element. The bull orca raced down on the small boat with menace in his very line. Shef felt instantly that he meant to toss the boat in the air, catch the men as they came down, and chop them to bits in the water with snaps of his great cone-toothed mouth.
“Head in,” he called to Cuthred. “Right against the rock.”
The boat glided along a sheer rock face, the two men reaching out for handholds to pull it closer in, uncomfortably aware of the deep water still only feet away. The fin lowered, rose up again till its tip was higher than Shef’s head, sitting on the thwarts, and the whale surged alongside, almost rasping the boat’s seaward gunwale. Shef saw the white markings under the black top, heard the sharp exhalation from the blowhole, saw its cold and careful eye on him. The tail slapped the water, the whale sounded, turning for another pass.
Shef seized an oar, thrust it against the rock, drove the boat a few yards along. Only feet away was the dark opening of a cove, a rocky inlet too small to call a fjord. Inside that the whale would be cramped, might turn away. The rest of the school were here now, sweeping past less closely than the bull-leader, filling the air with the spray from their blowholes.
Cuthred pushed too hard and the boat swerved away from shore. The bull was there instantly, boring in head first. Shef swung an oar, jerked the boat’s bow back towards the inlet shore. As one man they thumped the oars into the rowlocks, heaved furiously, two strokes, three, rocketing into the quiet water of the inlet.
Something beneath them, lifting them irresistibly, the boat almost out of the water, starting to tip. If he fell in the water, Shef knew, the next thing he would feel would be great jaws about his middle. He hurled himself sideways, kicking with all his strength, and landed with one leg in the water and the other foot on a tiny rock ledge. A thrust, a heave and he was scrambling on to a tiny flat place, a hearthrug-sized patch of shingle on the rocky shore.
The boat turned over completely as the whale shook its body. Cuthred was launched out like a diver, turned in the air, a shower of objects coming down with him as the boat spilled its contents. His spiked shield, the one made of case-hardened steel, landed a foot from Shef’s hand. He watched numbly as Cuthred splashed into the water and the whale turned.
Cuthred trod water for an instant, then seemed to find footing under him. He stepped backwards towards the land, only six feet from where Shef crouched, still thigh deep. Somehow, his sword was in his hand, he leveled it at the great black-and-white jaws boring in. The whale swerved and as it did so Cuthred thrust forward in a classic “long point,” arm and body rigid.
A thump of contact, a sudden flurry, a slap of water from the tail. Then the whale was gone, leaving a thin trail of blood in the sea, and shattered planks where the boat had been.