They could follow the flight of the shot for a few seconds, then lost it against the mass of the galley. But a second later, one of the shouting, gesticulating pirates in the bow suddenly toppled over, folding up like an empty garment. His companions stepped away in shock, silenced for a moment, then redoubled their threats and insults, urging their rowers to go faster and catch this insolent intruder. They were a ragged group, as Will had mentioned, wearing tattered white and coloured robes and dirty turbans. They were generally thin and dark skinned. As they grew closer, Will could see that their weapons were a mixture of curved swords, dirks and knives. There seemed to be no uniformity among them and Will guessed that they were more accustomed to slaughtering helpless crews than fighting trained warriors.
Halt nodded approvingly at Evanlyn's successful shot.
'Interesting. Just two spins,' he said. 'In Arrida you spun the sling round and round a lot more before releasing.'
'I've been practising,' she said. 'Spinning it too much warns your enemy and leaves you exposed to return shots. The ideal is to get maximum velocity in one spin, but I'm not up to that yet.' She reached into a leather pouch slung over her shoulder and took out another of the specially shaped lead projectiles. The days of using river pebbles were long past.
'Shall I do another?'
Halt regarded the oncoming pirates, his eyes slitted against the glare of the sun from the sea.
'No. I think we've stirred up that hornets' nest enough. Once we've grappled them, you can let fly at that group around the tiller as much as you like.' He turned away to Gundar. 'Any time you're ready, skirl.'
Gundar judged distance and the angles and the set of his sail.
'Coming about!' he bellowed and leaned on the tiller. The ship swung neatly, the wind going out of the sail as she turned, leaving the canvas flapping wildly.
'Down sail!' he roared and the boom and sail thundered down to land on the deck. Hastily, two of the sailing crew gathered the flapping canvas in out of the way.
On board the pirate galley there was a sudden silence as their quarry unexpectedly swung round to face them.
'Show yourselves, sea wolves!' Halt yelled and sixteen big, heavily armed men appeared from the rowing benches to supplement those already in the bow of the ship.
The pirates, expecting to attack a dozen or so lightly armed sailors, suddenly found themselves facing at least thirty yelling, hairy denizens, all armed with double-headed battleaxes.
At the same moment, two grapnels sailed out from the bow of the ship and thudded into the woodwork of the pirate galley. The captain, aft at the tiller, started to scream orders to his men to cut the ropes that were now drawing his ship closer to the foreigners' craft. He gesticulated to the rowers to back water and pull them away from this unexpected danger.
Will heard a quick whizzing sound as Evanlyn whirled and cast again. The pirate skipper abruptly reared up, clutching his forehead, then crashed over backwards onto the deck.
There was a grinding crunch as the two ships drew together and the yelling, battle-mad Skandians poured over their own bow and onto the deck of the galley. Most of the pirates gathered in the bow took one look at the huge men and their huge axes and ran for the stern. Some of them took a shorter escape route and dived over the rail into the sea. The few who remained to fight had little time to regret their choice. The boarding party, led now by Nils, who had forced his way past Jens, smashed through them, scattering their limp bodies to either side.
Several of the boarders, directed by Jens, dropped into the rapidly vacated rowing benches and smashed their axes into the hull's planks below the waterline. Seawater gushed in through the massive rents they created. Satisfied with their work, they then busied themselves throwing oars overboard, while their companions hacked at the stays holding the ship's low mast in place. One man swarmed up the mast itself and released the sail, then slid rapidly down again. The sail filled with wind and strained at the mast. Unsupported, the mast withstood the pressure for a few seconds, then there was an ugly crack and it sagged to leeward, taking a tangle of sailcloth and cordage with it.
Gundar glanced at Halt. The Ranger had been assessing the damage to the galley and her crew. Nearly half the pirates were killed or disabled and the ship was already settling at the bow. Time to let the remaining pirates make repairs and take news of this very unwelcome foreign ship back to their lairs on the coastline.
'Bring 'em back,' he said and Gundar bellowed to his men.
'Back on board! Sea wolves! Back to the ship!'
The men began to scramble back to the bow of the galley, clambering from there up to Wolfwill, which stood higher than the pirate ship. Their comrades on board helped them over the bulwark. Nils was the last to come. Initially, he was fighting a one-man rearguard action. Then the pirates seemed to realise that there was no future in coming within reach of that whirling battleaxe and they left the deck to him. Annoyed, Nils spread his feet, brandished his axe and yelled a challenge at them.
'Come on, you raggedy-bum backstabbers! Come face a real pirate!'
But there were no takers and he actually began to advance down the deck towards them again.
'Nils! Get back on board, you great idiot!'
Gundar's bellow cut through the fog of anger and battle madness that filled Nils's mind. He stopped, shook his head, then turned and grinned sheepishly.
'Coming, skirl!'
Will had to smile. Nils sounded like a naughty boy answering his mother's call to dinner.
Nils made one last insulting gesture at the pirates, then turned and ran lightly back to the bows. Disdaining help, he sprang from the pirate's bulwark back aboard.
'Cut the grappling ropes!' Gundar called and two axes swung and thudded in quick succession, severing the two ropes. No longer fastened together, the ships began to slowly drift apart. Gundar looked down at the last four ranks of rowers on either side – the men who had remained aboard Wolfwill through the brief, one-sided battle.
'Out oars! Give way!' he ordered. As the men reacted instantly, Will realised that the Skandians had done this sort of thing many, many times before. Wolfwill slowly gathered sternway under the thrust of the eight oars, and the gap to the pirate ship widened.
'Hoist the sail!' Gundar ordered and the boom and sail ran smoothly up the mast.
'Sheet home! In oars!' he called and the sail handlers hauled in on the sheets and hardened the flapping sail to the wind. Wolfwill's bow swung downwind and as the skirl leaned on his tiller, she began to gather way.
Behind them, the pirate galley was bow down in the water and her men were swarming forward to repair the massive holes smashed in her planks before she went under.
Gundar nodded in satisfaction. His men had performed well. He jerked a thumb at the half-submerged pirate ship.
'I doubt we'll be hearing from them again,' he said.
Selethen was watching the wallowing ship as her crew worked to stop her sinking.
'You know,' he said to Halt, without any trace of a smile, 'it might have been simpler to have the two girls board her with their practice swords.'
They exchanged a long look, then Halt shook his head. 'I needed to leave some of them alive,' he said.
With each passing day, their numbers grew. As the Emperor's party clawed and stumbled up the steep, muddy mountain tracks, climbing one ridge, descending the other side, then climbing the next, which always seemed to be steeper and higher than the one before it, more and more Kikori quietly joined their group. They would emerge silently from the trees, having travelled secret and dangerous paths known only to the mountain people, make a simple obeisance to Shigeru, then attach themselves to the column.
The leaders of the column learned, without too much surprise, that the Senshi patrol they had defeated at Riverside Village was not the only advance party sent out by Arisaka. There were more than half a dozen other small groups combing the mountains, brutalising the Kikori, burning their villages and torturing their leaders in an attempt to learn Shigeru's whereabouts.
This barbaric behaviour, intended to cow the Kikori into submission, was actually self-defeating. The Kikori were a profoundly law-abiding people and they placed great value on the concept of legal and rightful succession to the throne – even if they had never seen the Emperor himself. Shigeru was the rightful Emperor and their deeply felt sense of morality told them that he must not be deposed by force. Arisaka's depredations only served to convince them that he was a would-be usurper, whose attempts to gain power bordered on sacrilege and must be resisted. And, as a corollary to that, Shigeru must be supported.
So, as villages were plundered and burned, the Kikori joined Shigeru's party, in dribs and drabs, until there were several hundred of them – men, women and children – toiling up the precipitous tracks over the mountains, helping carry the wounded in their litters and bringing much-needed supplies of food with them. It was hard going, even for the mountain-bred Kikori, and the need to carry the wounded slowed them down. Shukin, Shigeru and Horace were constantly aware that Arisaka's main force was somewhere behind them, closing the gap between them each day.
'If only we knew where he was,' Shukin said. He had called a brief halt at noon and the bearers had gratefully set down the litters and sprawled beside the track. Some took the opportunity to eat a little of the food they carried. Others simply lay back, resting and regaining their strength, trying to let a few minutes' respite ease the ache of strained muscles.
Without anything being said, Horace had become one of the small group leading the trek. Shigeru had recognised his worth as an expert warrior and an experienced campaigner and was grateful to have someone share the burden that his cousin Shukin had assumed. Looking at his two main supporters now, the Emperor smiled ruefully. They were far from the idealised picture of a royal party, he thought. Exhausted, mud stained, grimy and soaking wet, their robes and tunics torn in a dozen places by thorns and sharp branches along the track, laden with rough packs of food and blankets, they looked more like a group of wandering vagabonds than the Emperor and his two principal advisers. Then he glanced at the swords the two men wore – Horace's long and straight in the Araluan style, and Shukin's katana, shorter, double hilted and slightly curved. There was no mud there, he knew. Both blades, inside their scabbards, were scrupulously clean and razor-edged – a result of their owners cleaning and sharpening them each evening.
'When do you expect the scouts to come back in?' Horace asked. Two days before, Shukin had asked for volunteers among the Kikori to go back along their trail to look for some sign of Arisaka's position. There had been no lack of numbers willing to take on the task and he had sent four of the fittest younger men back down the mountain.
'It'll depend how long it takes them to find Arisaka,' Shukin said. 'I'm hoping we hear from them later rather than sooner.'
Horace nodded. If the scouts returned this evening, he thought, they would have good cause to worry. Allowing for the fact that the lightly laden Kikori, expert in traversing this country, would travel much faster than Arisaka's men, they would still have to travel double the distance – there and back. If they returned in the next twelve hours, Arisaka couldn't be more than two days behind them.
'How far now to Ran-Koshi?' Shigeru asked.
Shukin shrugged in reply. 'Toru says about five leagues, as the crow flies.'