“Huegoths?” Shamus asked.
Aran Toomes couldn’t find the will to answer.
“What are they doing so far to the south and east?” Shamus asked rhetorically.
“We don’t know that they’re Huegoths!” Aran Toomes yelled at him.
Shamus went numb and silent, staring at Toomes. The captain, who could laugh at a dorsal whale, seemed truly unnerved by the thought that this approaching vessel might be a Huegoth longship.
“Huegoths be the only ones who run so swift with oars,” remarked another of the crew. The long line was forgotten now.
Aran Toomes chewed at his bottom lip, trying to find some answer.
“She runs with beauty,” Shamus remarked, his gaze fixed on the longship. It was true enough; the design of the ships of Huegoth barbarians was nothing short of beautiful, finer than anything else on the northern seas. The graceful longships, seventy feet in length, were both solid and swift and cut the swells with hardly a ripple.
“Empty the hold,” Aran Toomes decided.
The expressions of the other seven ranged from eager to incredulous. For several of the crewmen, this command seemed impossible, ridiculous. They had risked much in coming out this far to the southwest, so long from port, and those risks had been accepted precisely for the prize of fish in the hold. Now the captain wanted to throw away their catch?
But the other four men, including Shamus McConroy, who had dealt with savage Huegoths before, agreed wholeheartedly with the call. Laden with several tons of fish, The Skipper could not outrun the longship; even empty, they could only hope to keep ahead of the Huegoths long enough for the oarsmen to tire. Even then, the Huegoths could put up a sail.
“Empty it clear!” roared Aran, and the crew went to work.
Toomes studied the wind more carefully. It was generally from the south, not a good thing considering that the Huegoths, who did not depend on the wind, were coming down from the north. If he tried to turn The Skipper about, he’d be running into headwinds, practically standing still on the water.
“Let’s see how good you can turn,” the captain muttered, and he angled back to the north. He’d go in close, cut right by the Huegoths. If The Skipper could survive that single pass, and avoid the underwater ram that no doubt stuck out from the front of the barbarian ship, Toomes would have the wind at his back while the longship turned about.
A few hundred yards separated the vessels. Toomes could see the activity on the barbarians’ top deck, huge men running to and fro. He could see the tall, curving forecastle, carved into the likeness of a wolf.
Then he saw the smoke, rising up suddenly from the longship’s center. For an instant, the captain thought the longship had somehow caught fire, thought that perhaps one of the galley slaves had sabotaged the Huegoth raiders. But Toomes quickly realized the truth, and knew that his dear ship was in worse trouble still.
“Get you behind a wall!” the captain yelled to his crew when the ships were less than a hundred yards apart, when he could make out individual Huegoths leaning over the rail, their expressions bloodthirsty.
Shamus ran forward with a huge shield that he kept in the hold. He placed it to cover as much of the captain at the wheel as possible, then crouched low beside Toomes.
Toomes had meant to go much closer, to practically dance with the Huegoth boat before executing his sharp turn, to port or to starboard, whichever way seemed to give the most light between the jockeying vessels. He had to commit sooner, though. He knew that now, with the black smoke billowing high.
He turned right, starboard, and when the longship’s left bank began to drag in the water, pulling her to port, Toomes cut back to port harder than he had ever tried to turn The Skipper. The good ship seemed to hesitate, seemed to stand right up in the water, beams creaking, mast groaning. But turn she did, and her sails dipped for just an instant, then swelled with wind, racing her off in the new direction, which by comforting coincidence put The Skipper straight in line with Bae Colthwyn.
A barrage of flaming arrows soared out from the longship, a score of fiery bolts trailing black lines of smoke. Many fell short, most missed widely, but one did catch on the prow of The Skipper, and another found the starboard edge of the mast and sail.
Shamus McConroy was there in an instant, batting at the flames. Two other crewmen came right in with buckets, dousing the fires before they could do any real damage.
At the wheel, eyes locked on his adversary, Aran Toomes wasn’t comforted. Now the longship’s left bank pulled hard, while the right bank hit the water in reverse, pivoting the seventy-foot vessel like a giant capstan.
“Too fast,” old Aran muttered when he saw the incredible turn, when he realized that The Skipper would have a difficult time getting past that devastating ram. Still, Aran was committed to his course now; he could not cut any harder, or try to pull back to starboard.
It was a straight run, wind in the sails of The Skipper, oars pounding the waters to either side of the longship. The little fishing boat got past the longship’s prow and started to distance herself from the still-turning Huegoths. For an instant, it seemed as though the daring move might actually succeed.
But then came the second volley of flaming arrows, crossing barely thirty feet of water, more than half of them diving into the vulnerable sails. Shamus, still working to repair the minor damage from the first volley, took one right in the back, just under his shoulder blade. He stumbled forward while another man swatted his back furiously, trying to douse the stubborn flames.
That fire was the least of Shamus McConroy’s problems. He reached the wheel, verily fell over it, leaning heavily and looking close into Aran Toomes’s grim face.
“I think it got me in the heart,” Shamus said with obvious surprise, and then he died.
Aran cradled the man down to the deck. He looked back just once, to see The Skipper’s sails consumed by the flames, to see the longship, straightened now and in full row, banks churning the water on both sides, closing in fast.
He looked back to Shamus, poor Shamus, and then he was lurching wildly, flying out of control, as the devastating ram splintered The Skipper’s rudder and smashed hard against her hull.
Sometime later—it seemed like only seconds—a barely conscious Aran Toomes felt himself dragged across the deck and hauled over to the Huegoth ship. He managed to open his eyes, looking out just as The Skipper, prow high in the air, stern already beneath the dark canopy, slipped silently under the waves, taking with it the bodies of Shamus and Greasy Solarny, an old seadog who had sailed with Aran for twenty years.
As he let go of that terrible sight, focused again on the situation at hand, Aran heard the cries for his death, and for the death of the five other remaining crewmen.
But then another voice, not as gruff and deep, overrode the excited Huegoths, calming them little by little.
“These men are not of Avon,” said the man, “but of Eriador. Good and strong stock, and too valuable to kill.”
“To the galley!” roared one Huegoth, a cry quickly taken up by all the others.
As he was lifted from the deck, Aran got a look at the man who had saved him. He wasn’t a small man, but certainly not of giant Huegoth stock, well-toned and strong, with striking cinnamon-colored eyes.
The man was Eriadoran!
Aran wanted to say something, but hadn’t the breath or the chance.
Or the clarity. His life and the lives of his remaining crewmen had been spared, but Aran Toomes had lived a long, long time and had heard tales of the horrors of life as a Huegoth galley slave. He didn’t know whether to thank this fellow Eriadoran, or to spit in the man’s face.