One King's Way

turning back. Then all the boats moved in together, shouting and splashing, herding the whales towards the rocky shoals they feared.

Brand was relying also on panic, Shef realized as he got them moving again. And he had a particular place in mind. It was not enough to drive the whales on to the rock-bound coast. If it came to that they might turn and break through the line by sheer force. They had to be driven on to a killing-ground: a beach, for choice, but anyway an inlet or cove that they would be prepared to swim into but whose mouth could be firmly blocked. Best, too, if it could be done at high tide so that the ebb would leave the beasts stranded.

Slowly Brand jockeyed boats and whales till he had them where he wanted. The whales in a frothing mass just outside the entrance to the bay he had marked, the boats in a semi-circle from point to point of the bay. Then Brand waved his lance in one wide sweep and the boats moved in.

Brand himself made the first kill, his boat coming up alongside a slow-swimming cow-whale, while he leaned out, one foot on the gunwale, and drove home the long lance with its barbed head just forward of the low dorsal fin. From their position fifty yards behind Shef and Cuthred could see the instant flow of dark blood into the water— water whipped up instantly into a frenzy by lashing flukes.

The dying whale must have emitted some underwater bellow of agony, for the rest of the pod seemed to panic immediately, leaping forward away from the terror in their rear. Instantly they found themselves in the shallows, bellies grinding on gravel, tails rising out of the water as they fought for room. The other boats came in as one for the kill, a headsman in each prow looking for a place to plant his barb, the men shouting each other on.

As he watched Shef saw the first man leave his boat. It might have been the young man they had ferried, clutching his grind-knife, but he was followed by a dozen others, plunging recklessly into the turmoil of heaving bodies, seizing fins and trying to straddle their prey. Knives raised, plunged, plunged again as the men tried to find the vulnerable spot between vertebrae, where the hooked knife, hauled upwards, could sever the spinal cord and cause instant death. The whales twisted and thrashed, unable to fight back, unable to swim out, trying only to keep their tormentors from the kill.

“Looks risky,” muttered Shef.

“But it isn't.” Cuthred's voice had a note of disgust in it. “No more than killing sheep. Those things don't fight back, I don't think they have any teeth even. You could get squashed between two of them, but they're not even trying to hurt each other.”

A group of men had hold of one whale and were running it up the beach as far as they could, seizing it by its fins and by the spears and blades protruding from it. They left it squirming weakly and ran down into the water for another. Already the whole surface of the bay had turned red from the streams of arterial blood pumping into it from the whales' punctured hearts. From the melee Shef saw a calf whale struggling free, having abandoned its dying mother. Barely six feet long, it floundered out of the shallows and made towards them for the open sea. A boat steered in front of it, a man leapt on to its back, grind-knife flailing. The spurt of blood that rose leapt into the boat, splashing his oar-mates. Shef heard them roar with laughter, saw another group on the shore already starting to flense the blubber from a dying whale, cramming handfuls into their mouths, and shouting with manic glee.

“I think we've seen enough of this,” said Cuthred. “Nobody ever called me squeamish, but if I hurt people it's because I don't like them. I've got nothing against whales. I don't even like whalemeat.”

He began to pull away from the cove of butchery, with Shef's silent agreement. The Norsemen, intent on their work, ignored them. By the time Brand thought to look up, they had gone.

Outside the cove, Shef was surprised to see how fat the sun had gone down. At this time of year in a latitude as high as theirs, there could hardly be said to be a nighttime. The sky remained pale continuously. Yet the sun did drop below the horizon for a short while every day. It was now close to it, the low red disc beneath the clouds sending long shadows across a placid sea. Cuthred bent to the oars and urged the boat along what would be a long trip back to a bed and fire. Shef became aware that it was hours since he had eaten or drunk; and he had begun the long boat-ride dehydrated from the steam-bath.

“Have you anything to eat in the boat?” he asked.

Cuthred grunted, “I always keep something in the cuddy there in the stern. Butter and cheese, a crock of milk, fresh water. Let me get us going and we can take turns to row and eat.”

Shef found Cuthred's provision box in its compartment and hauled it out. It was well stocked, but for the moment Shef was content to drink water, chew on a wrinkled apple stored from the autumn before.

“You know,” he remarked between bites. “This is the place Brand warned you away from. Inside the skerries, north of the island. I guess none of them come here much, from what he said. But with the grind out they wouldn't take any notice of where they were. And if there was anything dangerous it probably wouldn't want to mess with the grind boats. Not all of them together, all worked up.”

“But it might just fancy two men on their own with the sun dropping,” concluded Cuthred. His teeth showed in a snarl. “Well, just let it try.”

Shef threw his apple-core overboard, squinted into the long shadows, reached forward and put a hand on Cuthred's brawny arm. He pointed silently.

Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, a giant fin showed above the water. It seemed almost man high, stuck straight up at right angles to the water. A black back showed beneath it, and then more of them, fins coming up out of the water, backs swirling and then dipping down like the top of enormous wheels.

“Killers,” said Cuthred positively. They had seen several schools of them on the journey north in the Walrus, and each time Brand had gone to the side and regarded them speculatively. “Never heard of them attacking a ship,” he had said. “Never heard of them attacking a boat either. But then, you wouldn't. If one of them decided to attack a boat there wouldn't be anyone left to tell about it. Seals are their meat. People must look pretty much like seals to them. I never go in the water if there's any of them about.”

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