“A fish!” Snorri leapt up, rocking the boat. “Thor’s teeth! I caught one!”
He had too, a foot and a half of black slimy fish jerking back and forth in his hands, the line still trailing from its mouth.
“Only took you twelve days at sea!” I’d told him to give it up an age ago.
“I got one!” Snorri’s triumph couldn’t be dented by my jibes.
Tuttugu came over to slap him on the back. “Well done! We’ll make a fisherman of you yet.”
Of course Tuttugu had only to drop a hook over the side and it seemed the fish fought each other for the privilege of swallowing it. He must have hauled a score of them from the waves since we set sail. He’d taken to coaching Snorri and confided to me that the warrior had been a poor farmer too. Tuttugu worried that Snorri had nothing to fall back on—he had a talent for war but in the peace he might find life challenging.
“A fine one.” Kara joined them, standing close beside Snorri. “A blackcod should always be boiled and eaten with winter greens.” The two of them seemed at ease in each other’s company. I watched them with a strange mixture of jealousy and satisfaction. Part of me half wanted Snorri and the v?lva to find the furs together. A good woman was the only hope for him. He needed something other than his grief.
I found it rather worrying that I might be considering sacrificing the pleasure I hoped to take in Kara. That didn’t sound like me at all. Especially after all the hours I’d spent imagining the ways I’d set her rune-charms clicking one against the other . . . still . . . if Snorri found himself a woman he might be able to let go of the madness that possessed him to seek a door into death and recover his lost family. And, whatever my plans, there was always a chance I would get dragged into the insanity. So after all I was giving up Kara in my own interest. I relaxed. That sounded more like me.
? ? ?
In the midst of the Devouring Sea, as far from land as I had ever been, I sat amid the heave and the swell on Kara’s small wooden boat and, with little to fix my mind upon, focused on Snorri instead. I watched him, leaning into the prow now, the wind streaming dark hair behind him, eyes on the southern horizon. As fierce a warrior as I’d ever known, with no give in him, no fear in the face of sword or axe. I knew why I was bound south—to claim the comforts and privilege of my birthright and live to a disgraceful old age. I knew what drew Snorri and, despite what he’d said days before, I couldn’t marry his words to any kind of sense. I’d seen plenty of what came back from the deadlands and none of it had been pretty.
I’d also noticed that since my long sleep he wore the key on a piece of rusting chain—as if he’d read my mind when I considered tearing it free and tossing it overboard. I felt a little hurt by his mistrust, however justified. I considered broaching the subject but watching him there, hunched around the pain of his poisoned wound and the older pain of his loss . . . I let it lie. Instead I followed his gaze to the dark stain on the horizon that held his attention.
“That looks bad.” It looked worse than bad.
“Yes.” A nod. “Could get rough.”
The storm caught us half a day from the shores of Maladon. A cataclysmic war of the elements that even the Vikings called a storm. It made everything that I’d suffered on the sea before seem like mild discomfort. The wind became a fist, the rain its spears, gripped tight and driven into flesh. And the waves . . . those waves will haunt my dreams until the day something worse comes along. The sea changed scale around us. A man out on the ocean always feels small, but amid waves that could overtop and sweep away castles, you understand what it is to be a beetle among stampeding elephants.
The wind drove us, without sails, skidding across foam-skinned behemoths. Turn to face it and the rain made you blind, the wind filling you as you tried to scream. Turn away and it became a fight to snatch a breath, so unwilling was the air to pause long enough to be captured.