One King's Way

had no weapons, and no impulse to fight in defense of the settlement. In the dark beyond the firelight, they rallied, gasping, round Cwicca.

“Shouldn't never have taken us away from the mule,” said a voice in the darkness. “We knew they were coming, we told him, but no, he would have…”

“Shut up,” said Cwicca. “Thing is, if we get up there now we can train round and shoot up that ship of theirs, no bother. That'll get them back aboard her in a hurry.”

“No good,” said Osmod. “Look.”

He pointed to the Crane's pinnace, loaded with armed men, now pulling across the harbor in the direction of the two untended catapults. Kormak had thought of that too.

Kormak had not thought of the whales. The orcas had been shadowing the Crane all the way in, eager to attack. Yet the bull leader had held off. He had an accurate sense of the Crane's bulk, knew she was the biggest man-thing he had ever come across. Maybe if he rammed her head on, she would fill and sink. Maybe not. The scratch he had received from Cuthred irritated him, but at the same time gave him caution. The sport he wanted was to tip a boat like an ice-floe, to snap up the men inside like unwary seals. So he hesitated, and his school with him, cruising up and down at the harbor-mouth, half an eye on the Crane and the commotion, half an eye on the interesting but shore- sheltered whale-boats he had sensed lying under cover of the mainland a quarter of a mile away.

Then he heard the regular thumping oars of the pinnace, and hesitated no longer. Filled with the cruel urge, more than hunger, of the fox in the hen-roost, he swept down the harbor channel, with his school behind him.

“No good,” said Osmod again. “Great holy suffering Christ.” Driven back to childhood, he made instinctively the sign of the Cross to ward him from evil, over the hammer still slung round his neck. No-one corrected him. Staring at the pinnace, they saw all together the great fin that rose man-height behind the boat, the black-and- white body that reared beneath it.

Boat and men went over with hardly a cry. For an instant, bobbing heads. Then fin after fin cutting through the water as the killers went into their established ritual for striking at a great whale, a blue or a sperm or a finner, swinging in in turn, snapping with the great jaws and swinging out of the way of the next. But where a bite from a full-grown orca would merely wound a sixty-foot blue, it snapped a man in half. The flurry was over in seconds, the whales sounding again to hide their presence.

“I met one of those things out on the water,” muttered Karli, his face white. “I told you it could have turned me over as easy as winking. The fin's as tall as I am. What are its teeth like?”

Cwicca roused the others from their paralysis. “Well, Thor help them, but look. The road's clear to the mules. Let's get up there.”

Still gaping at the threatening fire-lit water, the catapulteers started to run round the harbor to their machines.

On board the Crane, all attention was concentrated on the charge and fall of Brand. No-one saw the pinnace go under except the two fishermen, still prisoner and lashed to the outer gunwale. They looked down at the water under them, trying to estimate its depth. Slowly, looking over their shoulders, they started with new determination to work their hands free.

On the mainland coast, Shef saw the flames leaping again. The men in the boats were grumbling, reluctant to believe in a threat from orcas, desperate to see what was happening at their homes. Behind him came a strange sound, a kind of long violent blowing snuffle, followed by a slap like a tail striking water.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Sounded like a walrus going down,” said one of the men in the boats. “But it can't be, not…”

“All right,” snapped Shef. He raised his lance high and called out to all the boats. “It's safe now, maybe just for a few moments. Row right across as fast as you can go, beach on the shore right opposite and get out. Don't go into the harbor. Do you hear, don't go into the harbor. Now row.”

He sat down in the prow of the lead boat, Cuthred in the stern. The whale-men bent to their oars, sent the boat skimming over the calm sea. Shef twisted from side to side, fearing at any moment to see the fins racing again towards him. The boats reached the mid-point of their passage, raced on. As they closed on the island shore, outside the harbor entrance, maybe half a mile still from the main settlement and hidden from it by a hill, Shef felt the speed slacken.

“Why don't we just push on in?” called one of the oarsmen.

“Believe me,” said Shef. “You wouldn't like it.”

His boat grounded her prow on shingle, followed by most of the others. The men scrambled out, heaving their boats higher, snatching out their makeshift weapons. One boat ignored Shef's shouts, skimmed on towards the harbor entrance, disappeared from sight round the point. Shef shook his head in disgust.

“I still don't see why…” began another dissident. Cuthred, patience exhausted, clubbed him on the side of the head with a sword-pommel, seized him by the throat, dragged him again on to his feet.

“Do what he says and obey your orders,” he snarled. “Got it?”

Shef waved the fifty men he had into a double extended line and led them off in a broad arrow formation. He kept them at a swift walk, curbing any impulse to run. They would need their breath if they had to fight armored men. His plan was to swing wide round the hill at the harbor mouth, and come out of its cover down the stream on which the main settlement stood, to drive the invaders back into the water. Maybe by then they would have dispersed to rape and loot. He hoped so. Surprise was his only chance now.

The catapulteers reached the first mule and paused for a moment. Man one, or man them both? Even with Karli added, they had less than two full teams.

“Just the first one for now,” Cwicca decided briefly. “Get winding.”

They had slacked the twisted ropes off before leaving. It was never good to keep them under torsion for too long. The winding levers were still stacked in their place, though, and the men sprang to it. At the same time Cwicca called Karli to assist him. One improvement they had made in the weeks of waiting. They had never before been able to train their machine round more than a few inches. On a ship, one had to aim the ship rather than the mule. However, by trial and error Udd had solved the problem. They had put the heavy machine on small iron- rimmed wheels of its own, not so that it could be drawn overland like the lighter dart-throwers, but so that those small wheels could rest on a larger one, placed flat on the ground and flanged to keep the smaller ones in place. Two strong men could tip the whole ton-and-a-quarter forward on its unmoving axle and train it round by a balancing trail.

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