“What did you throw into the molten pool?” Elvar asked her, her voice quiet and low.
The woman blinked, her lips hardening, and she stared back at her.
Agnar appeared over them, looking at the boy’s mother.
“So, you are a Seier-witch, with Snaka’s blood in your veins,” he said, a smile splitting his face. “If the gods were not all dead, I would think they were smiling on me.”
The woman said nothing.
Agnar’s eyes narrowed. “Use your powers on my crew and there will be nothing left of your son to feed a serpent,” he said.
The woman held his gaze and gave a curt nod.
Agnar smiled.
“Dry clothes for them,” he called out, then he turned and strode along the deck, past pools of blood and water as warriors set about clearing pieces of goat from the deck and checking the hull’s strakes where the serpent had crashed into the ship. Agnar approached the Wave-Jarl’s prow, a rune-carved dragon glaring out at the sea, where Kráka the thrall sat, staring up at Agnar.
He pulled an arm back and slapped her face.
“Your task is to protect my ship and crew from sea vaesen,” he growled.
“I am sorry, lord,” Kráka said, blood leaking from her lip. “I was not prepared, was asleep.” She shook her head. “I have sung a protection all the long way here.” Her face was grey as an ash tree, with deep-sunken lines as if her face was melted wax.
The Seier-song takes its toll.
Agnar lifted his hand to strike Kráka again, but paused and lowered his arm.
“Perhaps I have asked too much of you.” He dropped one of the troll’s antlers into her lap, her long, bony hands stroking the soft, velvet-covered prongs.
“Some power for you,” he said. “For the journey home.”
“Thank you, lord,” she breathed.
“See us through these waters,” Agnar said, touching his fingers to the iron chain that bound her, “and keep the serpents from our hull.”
She looked up at him.
“Hlyea og fá verelaun,” he grated in the Galdur-tongue, veins of red tracing the cold iron, a map of fire around Kráka’s throat.
“Yes, lord,” she said, nodding.
Agnar turned and strode back to the tiller, the ship cleared now, the surviving goats penned, and men and women sat at their sea-chests, waiting.
Elvar stripped out of her wet clothes and pulled on wool breeches and tunic, then made her way back to her sea-chest, sat and drew in a deep breath. Her blood was still speeding through her veins, the thrill of standing in death’s shadow, the elation at cheating death, a flood of her senses, the joy of being alive. Grend sat in front of her and gave her one final dark look.
“OARS!” Sighvat cried and Elvar swivelled the oar-plug that covered the oar-hole, threaded her oar through it and sat on her chest, holding the oar hovering above the swell and slap of the waves.
The mooring rope was loosed, and spears pushed them away from the pier, the outgoing tide tugging them into deeper water.
“OARS!” Sighvat bellowed and fifty oars bit into the cold sea.
“PULL!” and Elvar was moving, back and shoulders put to the heave and roll as Sighvat found a knotted line of rope and beat time on an old shield. The drakkar moved sluggishly at first, pulling out into the bay, then picking up speed, cutting a white wound through the green-black waters, an ice-wind from the north carving tears from Elvar’s eyes, though her body was warm in fifty heartbeats, and soon after sweat was steaming on her brow.
They passed through the curling arms of black-granite rock that formed the bay, the seals and puffins still there. And then they were pulling out into open sea, the wind slamming into the starboard, waves abruptly higher. Elvar spied movement in the water, the swell and slither of things beneath the waves as Agnar wrestled the tiller, then the prow turned southwards and Kráka began her serpent-song. It cut through the hiss of the wind and roar of the sea, spreading like a net, and the hint of things beneath the waves faded.
“MAST!” Sighvat yelled, and a dozen warriors shipped their oars and jumped to the deck, slotting the mast into its hole amidships, wedges hammered into place to hold it steady, while others tugged on the halyard rope and raised the yardarm, the Wave-Jarl’s white sail unfurled, hanging limp like an empty mead skin for a few heartbeats as the rigging was tied off, then catching the north-westerly that was ripping through this channel among the islands, and the drakkar leaped southwards like a sea stallion.
“OARS!” Sighvat bellowed, and Elvar lifted her oar from the water, pulling it back in, water dripping, and set it amidships. She sat on her bench and sucked in deep breaths, feeling the burn in her back and shoulders slowly fade.