The Northman (The Bloody Hand Saga Book 1) by David Pilling

Author:David Pilling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fiction, war fiction, fiction books, viking battles, action fiction, viking history, war action, medieval war, combat action, book adventure
Publisher: David Pilling

Chapter 10

Howling winds tore up the sea. They drove the ship before them like a child’s toy. Helpless, the crew could only furl sails and pray for deliverance.

The fragile vessel lurched, rose and fell, tossed about at the mercy of Neptune. My guts churned with it. Tied to the mast, drenched and terrified, I could only watch as storm-tossed waters crashed over the deck. Once, twice, the ship was submerged entirely. I thought I would drown, lost amid the clanging depths. Somehow we emerged, the prow breaking through the grey waves and wavering upright, suspended against the night sky, before plunging down again.

Several of the crew were swept overboard. I watched them swiftly carried away, arms flailing, screams fading to nothing. Even as I write, their bare bones lie on the sea floor; condemned to the deep, until the world splits and all is made new again. In my head I still hear the thunder. It boomed and crashed in the heavens, filled with angry black cloud, the rage of the gods. In the distance, far out to sea, forks of lightning lit up the murk.

The giant figure of Gorm stood at the stern, legs braced against the violent shifting of the deck. He held the rudder, grimly determined to steer his ship to safety. Winds tore at him, icy rain lashed at his face. Strong as a bull, he defied the elements, laughing at every fresh roll of thunder. His voice boomed like a horn above the chaos.

“Ha, Thorkell!” he roared, “how does the old song go? Storms there beat the stony cliffs, where the tern spoke!”

“Storms there beat the stony cliffs, where the tern spoke,” I repeated quietly to myself, closing my eyes a moment. “Icy-feathered; always the eagle cried at it, dewy-feathered; no cheerful kinsman, can comfort the poor soul.”

No comfort indeed. Glistening black rocks loomed ahead, like a shoal of giant whales. For all his strength, Gorm could not outmuscle the wind. We were being driven towards the splintered coast.

The men of my family have an unlucky habit of shipwreck. My father was wrecked off the coast of Northumbria, now I was about to be smashed to pieces on the cliffs of East Anglia. As the nearest rocks loomed ever closer, rugged black shapes against the skyline, lit up by sparks of lightning, I readied my soul for death. What would befall me in the next world? Would I burn, or be admitted to the grace of Heaven? I hadn’t committed any grave sins; or been given the opportunity, worse luck.

“There I heard nothing,” Gorm’s voice, cracked and hoarse, rose above the seething gale, “but the roaring sea, the ice-cold wave!”

The crunching of timbers drowned him out. With a final, sickening lurch, the prow of the ship was driven straight onto the rock. It shattered like an egg, bits of wood flying in all directions. Curses and screams filled the air as the crew were flung over the broken deck, which now hung at a crooked angle, spilling men overboard.

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