clawing fast in the gunwale. Crew members strove to free their ship of the barbs. Spear-silver flashed and a sailor staggered backwards and collapsed, his task incomplete, his chest pierced. Mauger stepped over him to take his place, but it was already too late. The two hulls ground together, and a helmeted warrior hauled himself aboard the Draca.
Mauger thrust with the spear and the man died. He wrenched the shaft from the body with a snarl and leaped to tackle the next raider. But although Mauger held his own ground, he could not hold the entire length of the ship, and the pirates swarmed aboard.
The Draca lost her momentum and began to pitch and roll beneath the onslaught of violent activity and an untended sail. Julitta staggered and fell against the wine casks, losing the spear with which she had been keeping an amused raider at bay. He straddled her, and hauled her to her feet by a fistful of her gown.
'What have we here?' he said in Saxon, and dragged off her head covering. Her bright hair blazed free, and he whistled in admiration. 'Irish red,' he said.
'Take your hands off me!' she spat, using her mother's native tongue to reply rather than the Norman French of her daily usage.
For a moment, surprise blinked in the hard eyes. 'English,' he said. 'You should not be on a Norman trader.' The gaze narrowed. 'I will put my hands where I want upon my captives.'
She kicked him in his unprotected shins and swooped to bite his hand. He yelled and snatched it away, cursing; his sword came up. A spear thrust from behind gouged his side. Impaled he staggered on the pointed tip, swivelled, tried to beat it away, but Mauger leaned into the shaft and pushed the point in deeper. The raider screamed and swung his sword in a wild arc, catching the black stallion's halter rope and severing it in two. Mauger wrenched out the spear with a grunt of effort, and as the raider fell across the wine casks, clambered across him to secure the horse.
Her belly a vast, empty pit, Julitta swooped upon the dead man's sword. The weight hurt the tendons in her wrist and it felt unwieldy in her hand, but she braced it, holding it across her body in defence.
Mauger had reached the stallion, but he could not grasp the shorter, loose end of the halter rope attached to the headstall. The black whipped his head from side to side and snapped and fought. Such were his struggles that the rope hobbling his forelegs broke, and suddenly he was free to rear. Mauger dived to one side, but was not fast enough, and a red gash opened along the line of his temple. Julitta screamed her husband's name and leaped onto the wine casks to try and help him. He sat up, blood pouring from the wound.
'No, stay back!' he roared. 'Julitta, in Christ's name… ' His words were never completed, for a gust of wind slammed into the untended sail, sending it hard aback and, with the same slow grace as a diving whale, the Draca curved over into the water.
Julitta was thrown backwards onto the canvas-covered wine barrels. The raider Mauger had downed was still alive. She heard the air rattling and sucking in his lungs, before the rush of cold, green sea took away every other sound. Too dazed to scream, she was rolled under with the ship. The water was as icy as the fingers of death and it invaded her clothing, weighting her down. She kicked violently for the surface and broke through the heaving barrier to draw the pain of air into her starving lungs. Sea water slapped into her mouth, making her choke and gulp. Her garments dragged at her legs. Death smiled, biding its time.
Other heads bobbed in the water, shouting and choking, members of both crews now victim to the sea. She could not see Mauger and screamed his name. Wine barrels, sea chests, oars floated past her. Before her eyes a raider gave up the struggle to swim in his armour and sank. 'Mauger!' Julitta shrieked, casting desperately around. Sea water filled her open mouth and she choked violently. A wave slapped over her head, and when she broke surface again, struggling for air, scarcely able to draw it in for coughing, she knew that she was going to drown. Waves pushed at her in rapid succession. Her eyes were so salt-stung that she could not keep them open. Nor did it matter. The forces of wind and tide carried her away from the Draca and the raiding vessel. Death opened its arms and said Welcome.
She was drifting towards oblivion when a hairy tentacle slapped against her arm, and she heard a shout. For a moment, disoriented, she thought she was being dragged down to hell, and thrust out her arms, trying to beat the beast away, only to realise that far from being a sea-monster or a denizen of the underworld, it was a hemp rope. To have hit her so strongly and from such an angle, it could not possibly be a part of the capsized Draca. She seized upon it, clinging to a last hope of rescue upon death's open threshold, and felt the line go taut.
Squinting, almost blind, through the heave of the sea she saw the hull of another vessel, and spidering out from her gunwales, a dozen such ropes, with crew members leaning to pull survivors in to the spread of fishing net against her sides.
Julitta turned her back on death's door, but it did not close behind her. She was weak, more than half- drowned, and the insidious cold of the water was chilling her body beyond functioning. Although she reached the side of the rescue vessel, she had not the strength to let go of the rope and set her hand to the netting. And the climb was so far, the vessel much deeper in draught than the Draca. It was a mountain, and it was a mile too high.
'Julitta, don't let go!' an anguished voice yelled. 'In the name of Christ, hold tight! I'm coming down to you!'
'Ben?' The word croaked out of her, and brought on a paroxysm of coughing. For a moment the world spun into darkness and her fingers loosened on the rope. Then she tightened them with a convulsive jerk, obeying a command that was stronger than death itself.
He seemed to take an age, but it could not have been more than a matter of minutes before she felt his weight on the net above her. Then he was in the sea beside her. She shook her head, she dared not speak lest she begin coughing again.
'Christ, Julitta, don't fail me, don't let go!' he commanded again. 'Not until I tell you. Look, I'm going to put this around you to stop these other ropes cutting in. It's a spare horse sling. We're going to pull you up. Just nod if you understand.'
Julitta nodded and compressed her lips. There was so much she wanted to say, and all of it jailed inside her head. Nor were her thoughts coherent, for she was barely conscious.
Aware that he had very little time, Benedict worked rapidly, passing the sling around her body, tossing the loop to another crew member halfway up the netting, who then threw it to another man on deck. He could tell that Julitta was almost spent. Her face was ice-white, her lips bloodless, and there were blue shadows beneath her closed eyes. It was God's mercy that theConstantine had been close to the Draca. Whether it was God's mercy too that the Draca had been attacked instead of the Constantine, Benedict did not want to explore. God's will, perhaps. A shout floated down from the deck. Benedict acknowledged it with a wave. 'You can let go of the rope now,' he said to her, and laid his hand over hers, where her fingers were clutched in spasm on the dark hemp. She did not respond, and he had to prise away her grip gently.
Carefully, they lifted her from the water, and laid her down upon the deck. A strand of hair lay over her face like a ribbon of dark-red kelp, and emphasised the white coldness of her skin. Her eyelids fluttered.
'Ben?' she whispered.
'I'm here, Julitta, you're safe, you're safe. Nothing can touch you. The raiders haven't the strength to take us on too. In a moment you'll be warm and dry.'
'Mauger, he…' With the last of her strength she rolled over and vomited sea water. The deck came up to meet her, heaving and tilting on the swell of the waves. 'Mauger…' she croaked again, trying to stay conscious.
'Hush, Julitta, it's all right.' A warm, coarse blanket was wrapped around her and she felt herself being raised and carried. The daylight behind her lids darkened and a heavy stable scent filled her nostrils, removing the deadly sea-tang. She was deposited on a pile of hay and a flask was pressed to her lips.
'Drink,' Benedict commanded. 'It's strong mead.'
Obediently she took a swallow and felt the fiery sweetness slip down her throat and burn in her hollow stomach. She opened her eyes and saw that she was in the Constantine port hold among Benedict's horses. The only light was provided by a single horn-sided lantern suspended from a hook – it was too dangerous to have more. She took another sip of the mead and returned the flask to Benedict. 'Mauger… he – I lost him when we went over. He was wounded. The horse; it broke free and struck his head.' She looked up at him with haunted eyes. 'I fear for him.'
