The mist rose just before dawn. At first, thin tendrils coiled up, then banks lay across their path. As the sky lightened, they voyaged through an opaque cloud. Beads of moisture stood on the men’s hair and clothes. The pine of the prow was damp to the touch. The trees floated above, unconnected to the earth.
‘We are there,’ the pilot whispered.
The boat shifted as it quickened to the patterns of the wider waters.
The familiar presence of the enclosing treetops faded astern. They rowed in silence through the clinging whiteness. Everyone was taut, straining their senses against the enveloping fog.
A skein of geese flew overhead, wings whirring, calling their eerie calls. After their raucous passage, the oars were loud in the surrounding quiet.
Off the starboard bow, above the mist was a tree that was not a tree. Tall, straight, with a crossbeam, shrouds hanging down. With no order, Wada the Short at the steering oar swung them to the left away from the mast.
With infinite caution, they rowed on.
Another mast, dead ahead, no more than fifty paces. They curved back to the right.
If the gods were kind and the mist held, they might yet pass undetected between the ships.
Maximus could hear nothing but the gentle slop of the oars and the harshness of his own breathing. They crept forward. Slowly, slowly, the masts fell behind.
The wind came out of the north. It snatched the fog away. They were alone on a sparkling sea. The great wall of fog was retreating towards the land.
‘Pull!’ hissed Ballista. ‘Full pressure.’
Suddenly, as if formed from the fog itself, the two longships appeared astern, their carved, painted figureheads turning towards the fleeing vessel as the wind swung them on their sea anchors.
The deck lifted under Maximus’s feet as the boat surged forward. Foam creamed up from under the bow.
The Bronding warships had striped awnings, red and blue, bright in the sun, furled sails in the same colours aloft. Two men stood on the prow of the nearer one, no more than a hundred and fifty paces away. But their backs were turned. They were watching the fog bank recede towards the land. It would be a fine thing, Maximus thought, if they escaped unseen after all.
A hoarse shout. A man on the further ship had half climbed the prow. He was pointing, hallooing. The sentinels on the nearer one spun around. They stood as if unable to comprehend the apparition of the ship to seaward. Then pandemonium broke out. Men swarmed over the Bronding decks. Horns rang. The awnings began to be hauled down. It would take them a time to get ready, win their anchors, but Maximus knew their lead would be slight.
Ballista was calling orders. The Warig was a ship with twenty benches. The thirty-two remaining Roman and Olbian crew had filled only sixteen of them. Now Ballista sent the Vandal Rikiar, Wada the Tall, Tarchon and the five slaves to take the empty places. As they unshipped their oars — some of the slaves with no great dexterity — Maximus joined Diocles in doubling up on the two bow oars.
Beyond the rising and falling stern, Maximus could see the Brondings. While the further one had yet to move, the nearer had already run out its oars and was getting under way. The improvident bastards must have slipped their anchor. It was a big vessel, probably thirty or more benches. If they had additional warriors aboard, they could put two men on some of their oars. Most of the Brondings would have slept. The crew of the Warig had been rowing all night; not hard, but they would soon tire. Pulling into the wind, the chase could not last long.
Over his shoulder Maximus could hear both Zeno and Amantius muttering prayers where they huddled among the stores in the bow: ‘Athena … Achilles … Zeus … Poseidon.’ Hieroson, the injured Olbian guide, who had been with them, hobbled past, and settled to give what help he could to another oar. Maximus had been right to judge that he was a man of some account, unlike the Greek and the eunuch.
At the prow, Ballista and Castricius were talking to the Rugian. The urgent invocations and promises in Greek prevented Maximus hearing what was being said. ‘Grey-eyed Athena, hold your hands over me. Swift-footed Achilles, turn your anger aside. To Zeus, an ox for my safety.’ Sure, all gods liked to be offered things, but Maximus thought they were more likely to aid those who helped themselves. And it would be good if Zeno and Amantius sought divine intervention on more than just their own behalf. Actually, a local deity or two might be more use. It could be the Greek gods did not spend much time up here in Hyperborea. From what he understood, they spent most of their time drinking, fucking and squabbling among themselves anyway; all that, and abducting pretty boys and girls. A feckless crew from which to seek salvation.
The man next to Maximus on the larboard bow oar was the Egyptian Heliodorus, the mutineer Ballista had nearly killed. Once Maximus had got into time, he looked down the boat, out past Wada the Short on at the helm. The big Bronding longship was not much more than a long bowshot away, maybe three hundred paces. It was coming on in unpleasantly fine style, its banks of oars rising and falling all together, like the wings of a grey goose.
If there were any comfort to be drawn from the view, it was the other Bronding. The yet bigger warship — fifty benches at least, a huge vessel — had still to move. The useless fuckers must have fouled their anchor. Unless they cut or slipped the rope and abandoned the thing, they would soon be out of the reckoning.
Ballista walked the length of the boat to stand next to the steering oar. He stood, feet wide, hands hooked in his sword belt, riding the rise and fall. His long blond hair streamed out from under his helm and his black cloak whipped around him. His dark mailcoat shimmered in the sun. He looked a proper warleader, the sort men would follow.
‘Boys’ — Ballista spoke in Greek. He shouted into the wind but his voice carried easily over the noises of the boat — ‘there are some islands up ahead, about a mile. The Rugian says there is one small channel through them. The Warig has a shallow draught. We should make it. The Bronding will have a tougher time. If they cannot follow us, it is a long way around. Either they get stuck fast, or they give us a lead of an hour or two.’
Ballista repeated the news in the language of Germania.
Despite their efforts in rowing, the crew gave a low cheer. Maximus hoped it carried to their pursuers. No one cares to know that their enemy are in good heart.
‘The pilot says the prevailing wind here is easterly. When it shifts later in the morning, we can hoist the sail and test my foster-father’s claim that the Warig can out-sail anything in the north, and you delicate girls can take a rest.’
Again, Ballista repeated it for those who did not have Greek. Again, it was well received. Maximus thought the crew in good spirits. If only the two Graeculi would shut the fuck up, things might not be too bad.