02 The Invaders (23 page)

“Of course!” Hal said apologetically, realizing that they hadn’t shown her the normal basic courtesy a castaway might expect. They’d all been distracted by her beauty, and then by her reference to pirates. He indicated the small stool by the steering platform. “Sit down, please. Edvin, fetch something to drink, would you?” He looked back at the girl. “Are you hungry?”

She smiled gratefully at his sudden concern and made a negative gesture. “Not right now. But I really need some water. I didn’t have any in the skiff.”

Edvin returned with a large beaker of cold water. She took it from him, smiling her thanks, and drank deeply, finally lowering the beaker with a sigh.

“Oh, that’s a lot better!” she said, and sank gratefully onto the stool, still holding the half-full beaker. She sipped again, more slowly now that her initial thirst had been slaked.

“Now, where was I?” she said.

“Limmat,” Hal prompted her. “You said it was attacked by pirates.”

And she nodded, her eyes clouding as she remembered the scene, the smoke pouring from the burning buildings, the screams of the townspeople. For the hundredth time, she wondered if her grandfather was all right.

“They must have forced their way through the boom,” she said. “There was a small ship moored against the quay, so the boom couldn’t close. Two others had got inside the harbor. A dark green ship and the biggest of the three—a black ship.”

There was a stir of interest among the crew.

“Black, you say?” Hal said. “Are you sure of that?”

She nodded emphatically. “I’m sure. It was sighted the day before, cruising past. For a while we thought she was going to try to break through the boom. Then she turned and sailed away. Rowed away, actually,” she corrected herself. Again, the Herons exchanged glances.

“We’re hunting a black ship,” Stig said. “She has fifteen oars a side. Did you notice how many oars this one had?”

But Lydia shook her head. “I didn’t see her then. I heard people talking about her. When I saw her, she was moored alongside the quay, so I had no way of seeing how many oars she had. But she was big. She could easily have that many oars.” She looked at the faces surrounding her, saw the level of interest, saw how her mention of a black ship had aroused it, and realized this might be her chance to return to Limmat.

“My grandfather is still there,” she said. “I have to get back and make sure he’s all right. Can you take me?”

“Of course we can!” Stig said impulsively. But Lydia looked at Hal. He was the skipper, young as he might appear. The decision would be his. Stig, too, turned to look at his friend. Hal was rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“I think we have to see if this is the ship we’re looking for,” he said. “We’ll take you back there. But you might not like what you find. And it will be dangerous.”

She shrugged aside the mention of danger. “I can look after myself,” she said. “As to what I might find, I have to know, one way or the other.”

“If these pirates are still there,” Thorn put in, “we can hardly sail into the harbor and wave hello.”

Lydia thought for a moment. “There’s swampland to the southwest of the town. We could go ashore there out of sight and take the skiff to get closer.”

Thorn, Hal and Stig exchanged a look and came to a decision.

“Can you draw us a chart of this swampland?” Hal asked, and she nodded eagerly.

“Of course.”

“Then let’s get to it,” Hal said.

They made good time back to the coast, then swung south toward Limmat. Long before the town itself came in sight, they could see the heavy pall of smoke that still hung over it.

Lydia’s eyes filled with tears as she saw it. Her grandfather’s chances, she knew, were getting slimmer and slimmer. He likely would have resisted the pirates, even though such resistance would
have been futile. She moved to the bow and stared at the smoke on the horizon. The crew left her to her thoughts.

Finally, she came aft again. Her face was composed and her manner was calm. She indicated the low-lying shoreline.

“We should beach your ship here and go on in the skiff,” she said. “Once we round that next point, we’ll be in sight of the town.”

Hal angled the ship into the shoreline. Lydia watched with interest as Thorn withdrew the fin, allowing the ship to run through the shallow water and gently onto the beach. Stefan and Jesper jumped ashore and made the ship fast with the beach anchor. They had been towing Lydia’s skiff astern. Hal unfastened the line that attached it and dragged it along the side of the ship to the beach.

Lydia indicated the low headland to the east of their position.

“If we row round that headland, we can head into the marshes. A small boat like this will be pretty well invisible among the reeds and grass islands.”

Hal nodded. “You, me and Stig,” he said to her. “The boat won’t take any more.”

He looked at Thorn. “You stay in charge here, Thorn,” he said, and the older man nodded.

“We’ll be here,” he said. “If you get into any trouble, just come running.”

Hal smiled at him, grateful that Thorn hadn’t remonstrated over being left behind.

“Get the ship turned round, facing out to sea,” he said. “Just in case we have to leave in a hurry.”

They boarded the skiff. As they had sailed toward Limmat,
Hal had quickly fashioned another oar for the skiff from a small spar. It was rough but it would serve, he thought. Stig set the oars in the oarlocks, testing their relative balance, and nodded that he was satisfied. Then he began to stroke smoothly, moving the skiff easily toward the promontory.

As the skiff gradually pulled away, the rest of the crew busied themselves shoving the
Heron
off the beach once more and turning her, dragging her stern first onto the beach. Hal looked back after a hundred meters and saw Thorn’s heavyset figure a little away from the ship. Thorn raised his left arm and waved. Hal waved in return.

Once round the point, there was nothing but low-lying ground for several kilometers. Beyond, they could see the two watchtowers and the higher buildings of the town, rising above the marsh grasses and low bushes. A small creek ran into the marsh and Stig sculled them into it. Once they were among the drifting grass islands and tall reeds, they were virtually out of sight from the town. They had only occasional glimpses of the towers.

They followed winding, erratic channels through the marsh, diverging at times but always managing to return to their basic course. After an hour’s rowing, Lydia indicated to Stig to head for a low spit of sand, covered in stunted trees and marsh grass.

“We’d better leave the skiff here,” she said. “We’re getting close and the odds are that it might be seen if we take it any farther.”

They beached the boat and, at her suggestion, stood one of the oars upright in the sand.

“They won’t see it from the town,” Lydia said. “But it’ll mark the spot where the boat is for us.”

They crossed the sand spit and waded into the marsh water on the other side. It was waist deep, although Lydia warned them that there were occasional deeper pools. She led the way, probing ahead with a long branch Hal had cut for her.

They forged on, and gradually they could see more and more of the town. Aside from Lydia’s occasional curt directions, they didn’t speak. The effort of pushing through the water and the soft, oozing mud bottom of the marsh precluded idle chatter. Finally, Lydia signaled a halt and indicated a humpbacked island, covered in low vegetation and rising higher than the surrounding marshes.

“We’ll be able to see the harbor from there,” she said.

Hal shook his head admiringly. Even with his instinctive sense of direction, he knew he would have become hopelessly lost in this featureless tangle and the myriad twisting waterways.

“You certainly know your way around here,” he said, and she flashed him a quick smile.

“I’ve been hunting and fishing in these marshes since I was nine years old,” she said briefly.

They waded ashore, their clothes clinging soggily to them, and climbed to the low summit of the island, dropping to hands and knees as they approached the top. Before them, they could see the harbor of Limmat. Smoke still rose in several parts of the town, although the larger fires seemed to have been brought under control. The smell of burned wood was thick in their nostrils.

Hal scanned the harbor, noticing the smaller ship moored just inside the boom. He frowned. There was something familiar about her. Then he had it. She was the
Sea Lion
, one of Arndak’s small trading fleet that had gone missing from Hallasholm some months
before. He had worked on her in the shipyard the previous year, when she had needed several planks replaced after an unfortunate encounter with a whale. He indicated the little ship to Stig and saw a look of recognition on the other boy’s face.

“So now we know what happened to the trading fleet,” Hal said, pointing farther down the harbor.

There, moored against the inner jetty, was a long, black shape that both of them recognized.

“The
Raven
,” Stig said.

Hal said nothing, staring at the evil-looking ship with a sudden hatred in his heart. After weeks of searching and hoping, here was their quarry, less than a kilometer away. Almost reluctantly, he dragged his eyes off her and studied the rest of the town.

The watchtowers on either side of the harbor entrance were the principal points of interest. They were simple timber platforms, each with a chest-high wooden balustrade on all four sides—probably pine planking, he thought—and a flat roof on top. A small enclosed room was in the center of the platform—the guardroom, he assumed. The towers were obviously designed as observation posts and as defensive sites from which arrows could be rained down on an attacker. Each of the platforms stood on a timber framework—four large uprights tied together by a latticework of smaller diagonal pieces. In the center of the support structure, a ladder ran from the platform to the ground.

He’d seen what he’d come for. Now he had to come up with a way for his small crew to take on and defeat the fifty-odd pirates who manned the black ship. Up until now, he’d avoided making any concrete plans. There didn’t seem to be any point until they
found the
Raven
. But now the problem had to be addressed. And quickly. There was no telling how long she’d stay in the harbor. He edged back from the low crest on his elbows.

“Let’s get back,” he said. “We’ve got some thinking to do.”

They splashed their way back through the muddy water, Lydia leading the way once more. After half an hour, Hal saw the blade of the oar standing above the reeds on a nearby island and headed toward it. He glanced at Lydia approvingly. She was a handy person to have around, he thought. He never would have recognized that particular island again. They waded ashore, and while Stig heaved the skiff into the water, Hal retrieved the oar.

“Want me to row for a while?” he offered. But Stig shook his head.

“I’m fine. And I’m a faster rower than you. We’ll get back to the ship sooner.”

“You might,” said a voice behind them and they swung round, startled, as a dozen men rose from the rushes and reeds, moving quickly to surround them. “But right now, nobody’s going anywhere.”

chapter
twenty - one

H
al and Stig had left their weapons at the ship, knowing they would be wading through the marshes. But they both wore saxe knives and as they whirled to face the speaker, their hands dropped instinctively to the hilts of the heavy knives.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the man warned, and his followers brandished weapons of their own. Some of them had swords. The others had a random collection of clubs, maces and short spears.

“Forget it, Stig,” Hal said softly. There was no point in fighting. They were too badly outnumbered. He rose from the crouch that he had fallen into, and moved his hand away from the saxe. Stig, looking angrily round the circle of men who faced them, came to the same decision a few seconds after his friend.

Hal studied the man who had spoken. He was a few years older than the two
Heron
shipmates, possibly twenty or twenty-one. He was average height but stocky, with shoulder-length dark hair and a broad face. He was clean shaven and at some stage his nose had been broken and badly reset, so that it was slightly offline, with a
small bump in the middle. He was armed with a short-bladed sword and a small, round metal shield. He held the weapons easily, obviously accustomed to using them.

Most pirates were, Hal thought bitterly.

Which made the man’s next words a little confusing.

“Well, men,” he said, smiling briefly at his followers, “looks as if we’ve caught ourselves some pirates.”

Puzzled, Hal opened his mouth to reply. But Lydia beat him to it. She had been standing behind Hal and Stig when the men sprang their ambush. Now she shoved between the two friends and stepped forward to face their captor belligerently.

“Pirates my foot, Barat!” she snapped. “You always get the wrong end of the stick, don’t you? Now put your weapons away. All of you!” she added, glaring round the half circle of men facing them.