Where Loyalties Lie

Chapter 53 - North Gale

The fools weren’t even changing course. No doubt they believed their soldiers were more than a match for a few poorly trained pirates. The Five Kingdoms bastards would soon realise just how wrong they were.

“Shields,” T’ruck roared. Two dozen of his crew rushed forwards, circular shields in hand, and formed a wall on the port side of the ship. Another dozen pirates formed behind them with spears and grapples and little gourds full of black powder. T’ruck’s people may be called savages by the citizens of the Five Kingdoms, but they were far from stupid, and T’ruck had long since learned the devastating uses of black powder.

The ship’s boy stumbled forwards carrying T’ruck’s own shield, a giant, curved rectangle of wood and metal, painted all in white and stained with blood and deep-rent scars. The shield was as tall as most men and most men struggled to lift it, but T’ruck was stronger than most men. With his right hand he drew his sword from over his back and paced along behind the shield wall.

There was some nervous shifting in the wall as those at the front tried to get themselves into comfortable positions. Soon comfort would be the least of their worries. They were mere moments from the Five Kingdoms ship and still on course to sail alongside her.

“Archers,” T’ruck screamed, and men and women both in the rigging and some standing behind the shields drew their bows and waited. The Five Kingdoms ship was just a handful of yards ahead of them now, with a gap of maybe ten yards between them. A hopeful archer from the enemy ship loosed an arrow, and to be fair to the man, his aim was true. But T’ruck saw the attack coming, and caught the arrow on the top half of his shield, where it stuck. Still he waited to give the order.

A few more arrows crossed the gap, thudding into the hull, the deck, or the shields. None found their mark and none of T’ruck’s crew went down.

Still T’ruck waited, knowing full well most of the crew on the other ship would be hiding until it came time to board. Some of T’ruck’s crew were tall, but he was the tallest of them all and, even hidden behind his giant shield, he could easily look over their heads to see the enemy ship approaching. It slipped alongside North Gale, and the first wave of men stood to throw their grapples.

“Loose!” T’ruck roared, and the archers behind the shield wall stood, picked their targets, and let their arrows go. From above, the archers in the rigging did the same; they had orders to rain down death upon the enemy until they had no more arrows.

T’ruck heard the evidence of his archers’ skill in the screams of those who didn’t die straight away, but he wasn’t watching.

“Now,” he said to the three men just behind him, and they crowded around the lantern to light the fuses on the gourds, waited a few seconds, then launched them over the heads of the shield wall even as the first grapples gripped hold of North Gale.

“Tightly now,” T’ruck shouted, and the shields held fast as the first gourd exploded, followed quickly by the second and third. The sound was deafening, and T’ruck grinned as the din faded into a cacophony of screams from the other ship.

He risked a glance over the shield wall to see a ship in disarray. Splintered wood, burning canvas, dismembered bodies. One sailor was stumbling around the deck, his right arm off at the elbow and dripping blood. The man looked lost, as though he couldn’t tell where he was or why. An arrow thudded into the poor fool’s chest and he collapsed.

T’ruck saw little resistance left on the ship and was about to order his own boat under way when soldiers began pouring out of the hatches. From below decks and from the captain’s cabin, men in armour started swarming onto the deck. Some stopped and emptied their stomachs at the carnage before them, but most ignored it, charging over to the railing and forming up under the command of their superiors. T’ruck looked upwards, but it appeared his archers were running short of arrows.

“Captain?” Yu’truda called; she was one of the first ranks of the shield wall, and T’ruck could see her staring back at him.

“Prepare to repel boarders,” T’ruck howled, and started banging his sword against the metal boss in the centre of his shield. Many of his crew took up the example, and in only moments the noise coming from North Gale was so vociferous it could have scared a storm.

Some of the bravest or most foolish attempted to jump across before the ships had come together, and most of those were thrown back by the shield wall only to drown or be crushed as the ships collided. Some managed to scramble their way up the shields and were quickly killed by spear thrusts from the rank of T’ruck’s crew behind the shields. Not one man from that first attempt at boarding survived the crossing.

North Gale and the Five Kingdoms ships slammed together with a jolt that rattled the shield wall and knocked some men from their footing. There was a scream from up above and a loud thud as one of T’ruck’s crew dropped from the rigging to their death, but he had no time to look at who it was or mourn their passing. The next wave of soldiers from the Five Kingdoms vessel was attempting to board, and they were accompanied by others swinging across on ropes.

T’ruck cut his sword in a slash that near chopped one swinging soldier’s leg off. The soldier fell to the deck screaming, and T’ruck finished him off with a stab to the face. He looked around for another fool thinking to come aboard.

Now the soldiers from the Five Kingdoms ship were attacking the shield wall, hacking at it with axes and stabbing with spears, trying to find gaps through which to kill or injure. In other places, where the wall was thinnest, soldiers had started to board North Gale, and T’ruck’s crew were engaged in half a dozen small skirmishes. They were outnumbered, that much was clear, and the soldiers were only keeping his crew busy by attacking the wall while they swarmed over in other places and eventually surrounded his smaller crew. A glance over the shields gave T’ruck a better idea of numbers, and he could already see this was not a fight they were likely to win with a wall.

“Break and form up on me,” he shouted.

As one the shieldbearers started moving backwards step by step. A couple of over-reaching soldiers fell into the gap left by the retreating pirates and were quickly dispatched by the spears behind. The soldiers from the Five Kingdoms ship didn’t wait for orders; they saw their enemy retreating and surged forwards with a cheer.

T’ruck’s crew closed around him, a new wall forming with him at the centre. Some of his crew were still fighting elsewhere on the decks, but they were quickly outnumbered and cut down. Before T’ruck could think of a way to save them, the first wave of soldiers hit the newly formed wall and men started dying.