“Ambushes usually are,” Wallach replied.
A third Huegoth ship was soon spotted rowing in hard from port, and a fourth behind it, and the first vessel put up one bank of oars and turned about hard.
“We do not know how they will play it,” Luthien was quick to say. “Perhaps now that the longship has its allies nearby, the Huegoths will agree to the parley.”
“I’ll allow no more than one of them to get close,” Wallach insisted. “And that only under a similar flag of truce.” He called up to his catapult crew then, ordering them to measure their aim on the lone ship to starboard. If a fight came, Wallach meant to sink that one first, giving The Stratton Weaver an open route out to deeper waters.
Luthien couldn’t disagree, despite his desire to end these raids peacefully. He remembered Garth Rogar, his dearest of friends, a Huegoth who had been shipwrecked at a young age and washed up on the shores of Isle Bedwydrin. Luthien had unintentionally played a hand in Garth’s death by defeating the huge man in the arena. If it had been Luthien who had gone down, Gahris would never have allowed the down-pointing-thumb signal that the defeated be vanquished.
Logically, Luthien Bedwyr held no fault in Garth Rogar’s death, but guilt was never a slave to logic.
And so Luthien had determined to honor Garth Rogar’s memory in this trip to Gybi and out onto the waters of the Dorsal Sea by resolving the conflict with the Huegoths as peacefully as possible. Despite those desires, Luthien could not expect the men and women who crewed The Stratton Weaver to leave themselves defenseless in the face of four longships. Wallach and his crew had been brave beyond the call of duty in merely agreeing to come out here alone.
“We could be in for a fight,” Luthien said to Katerin and Oliver when he returned to their side at the forward rail.
Oliver looked out at the longships, white froth at their sides from the hard pull of oars. Then he looked about the galleon, particularly at the catapult crew astern. “I do so hope they are good shots,” the halfling remarked.
With the odds suddenly turning against them, both Luthien and Katerin hoped so as well.
A call from above told them that a fifth longship had been spotted, and then a sixth, both following in the wake of the ship to starboard.
“Perhaps it was not so good an idea for the king’s closest advisor to personally come out this far,” Oliver remarked.
“I had to come out,” replied Luthien.
“I was talking about myself,” Oliver explained dryly.
“We’ve never run from a fight,” Katerin said with as much resolve as she could muster.
Luthien looked into her green eyes and saw trepidation there. The young man understood completely. Katerin was not afraid of battle, never that, but this time, unlike all of the battles of Eriador’s revolution, unlike all of the real battles that either she, or he, had ever fought, the enemy would not be cyclopian, but human. Katerin was as worried about killing as she was about being killed.
Captain Wallach verily raced the length of the deck, readying his crew. “Point her to the forward ship,” he instructed the catapult gunners, for the longship coming straight at the galleon was the closest, and the fastest closing.
“Damn you, put up your flag of parley,” the captain muttered, finally coming to the forward rail alongside the three companions.
As if on cue, the approaching longship’s banks of oars lifted out of the water, the long and slender craft quickly losing momentum in the rough seas. Then a horn blew, a note clear and loud, careening across the water to the ears of The Stratton Weaver’s anxious crew.
“War horn,” Katerin said to Wallach. “They’re not up for parley.”
Horns rang out from the other five longships, followed soon after by howls and yells. On came the vessels, save the first, which sat in the water, as if waiting for the galleon to make the first move.
“We cannot wait,” Wallach said to an obviously disappointed Luthien.
“Three more to port!” came a cry from above.
“We’ll not run out of here,” remarked Katerin, studying the situation, seeing the noose of the trap drawing tight about the galleon.
Wallach turned back to the main deck, ordering the sails dropped to battle-sail, tying them down so that the ship could still maneuver without presenting too large a target for the Huegoth archers and their flaming arrows.
Luthien turned with him, and noticed Brother Jamesis approaching, his expression as grim as ever. Luthien matched the man’s stare for a short while, but in truth it had been Luthien’s decision to parley, it had been Luthien’s doing that had put the crew in jeopardy. The young Bedwyr turned back to the water, then felt Jamesis’s hand on his shoulder.
“We tried as we had to try,” the monk said unexpectedly, “else we would have been no better than those we now, it would seem, must fight. But fear not, my Lord Bedwyr, and know that every longship we sink this day . . .”
“And there will be many,” Wallach put in determinedly.
“. . . will be one less to terrorize the coast of Bae Colthwyn,” Jamesis finished.
Wallach looked to Luthien then, and motioned to the nearest longship, as if seeking the young man’s approval.
It was not an easy choice for a man of conscience such as Luthien Bedwyr, but the Huegoths had made it clear that they were up for a battle. On the waters all about The Stratton Weaver horns were blowing wildly and calls to the Huegoth god of war drifted across the waves.
“They view battle as an honorable thing,” Katerin remarked.
“And that is what damns them,” said Luthien.
The ball of flaming pitch soared majestically through the afternoon sky, arcing delicately and then diving like a hunting bird that has spotted its quarry. The longship tried to respond—one bank of oars fell into the water and began to churn the ship about.
Too late. The gunners aboard the galleon had taken a full ten minutes to align the not-so-difficult shot. The longship did a quarter-turn before the missile slammed in, catching it square amidships, nearly knocking it right over.
Luthien saw several Huegoths, their furred clothing ablaze, leap overboard. He heard the screams of those others who could not get away. But the longship, though damaged, was not finished, and the oars fell back into the water and on it came.
Shortly thereafter, the Huegoth leader showed himself, rushing up to the prow of his smoking vessel, raising his sword in defiance and shouting curses the galleon’s way.
To Luthien, the man’s pride was as evident as his stupidity, for the ten other longships (for two more had joined in) were still too far away to offer support. Perhaps the Huegoth didn’t understand the power of a war galleon; more likely, the battle-lusting man didn’t care.
Wallach turned the galleon broadside to the longship. Another ball of pitch went out, hissing in protest as it crunched through several oars to fall into the water. On the longship came; the barbarian leader climbed right atop the sculpted forecastle, lifting his arms high to the sky.
He was in that very position, crying out to his battle-god, when the ballista-fired spear drove through his chest, hurling his broken body half the length of the longship’s deck.
Still the vessel came on, too close now for the catapult, which Wallach ordered to move on to another target. Both ballistae opened up, though, as did a hundred archers, bending back great longbows, sweeping clear the deck of the Huegoth ship.
But still it came on.
The ballistae concentrated on the waterline near to the oars, their spearlike missiles cracking hard into the Huegoth hull.
“Move us!” Captain Wallach cried to his helmsman, and the man, and all those helping with the rigging, were trying to do just that. The Eriadoran crew couldn’t believe the determination of the Huegoths. Most of the barbarian crew was certainly dead; the Eriadorans could see the bodies lying thick about the longship’s deck. But they could hear the drumming of the slave drivers, the rhythmic beat, and though the slaves now surely outnumbered the captors many times over, the slaves didn’t know it!