Raven of the Waves (7 page)

Lidsmod scrambled over sea chests and lounging bodies. The bowline was fastened at the base of
Raven
's prow. Lidsmod tugged at the rope, and a yellow grin appeared at his shoulder. “Don't pull it like that—you'll snap it in two.” Gorm shoved Lidsmod aside. “Many a good line's been broken by a clumsy hand.”

Lidsmod said, “Njord wants it tighter.”

“He wants it tighter,” scoffed Gorm. “Njord knows everything about a ship, doesn't he? So if Njord wants a tighter line, that is exactly what Njord will get.”

Gorm's words were fit enough, but his manner turned something in Lidsmod's heart.

“We tighten it like this.” Gorm stretched the line, untied and retied the knot in the space of three breaths. It was an expert knot, quickly executed. “Tighten the tack line on your way back,” Gorm said with a tight-lipped smile.

The tack was fastened through an oar hole, and at first it looked easier than the bowline had. But the hide rope was stiff, and Lidsmod's fingers were clumsy with the cold and wet. Lidsmod stepped on a hand, and Eirik's eye opened.

“There's nothing wrong with that knot, friend Lidsmod,” said the saga teller sleepily. “Leave it alone.”

It was too late. Three things happened at once.

Njord called out, “What are you doing?”

The tack line popped out of the oar hole and whipped into the wind.

And Gorm laughed.

The ship faltered, the sail flapping like a great white blood-splashed wing. The tack line slashed Lidsmod on the mouth, and his hands could not grab it as it blinked past him again.

Ulf bulked close to Lidsmod and soothed the sail down. Eirik stood and reached out to the canvas, gathering in the snaking line.

“That happens to everyone who ever sailed,” said Ulf reassuringly. “A man can stand all morning trying to snatch a loose line from the wind. Loop it through the oar hole and use a surf knot. Tug it tight. That's all you have to do.”

It hadn't needed to be done at all, Lidsmod realized. Eirik had been right. Lidsmod was flushed with humiliation and stumbled over sea chests and huddled bodies, back toward the helm. He stared into the wind so that the hard breeze would seem to have caused his tears.

“Grab the bailer,” Njord ordered, matter-of-fact. “Get that water over the side.”

Lidsmod bailed. He had bailed since his infancy, as had any boy, in skips, small shore boats, with his friends. He could do it at least as well as most of the men, and even better, if he worked hard at it, than Torsten the berserker. He knew how to fling the water so it vanished into the wind, and he was quick.

Gorm steamed inwardly, keeping his own counsel.

Was there no other way to gain gold in the world than to endure these clumsy dimwits? he thought. Every one of them was stupid in some way. Torsten, with his bear shirt and his dull eye, who had to concentrate to swallow his spit so he didn't drool. Floki, with his slick, smug expression, because he had won Gorm's thirty sheep. Njord with his skull-cracked glee in the ocean, like a little boy in a fishing cog. And Gunnar with his pretense of not hearing what was said around him.

Gorm said nothing. It was important to endure these men, because he needed gold more than ever. Gorm bit his lip and turned away. The sea rose up; the sea fell away. It did not interest Gorm.

“This is a good wind,” Njord said, explaining why wet and chill were good things, blessings from Odin. Lidsmod was willing to believe it, and was thankful he wasn't seasick. That would have been deep humiliation indeed. But already his old neighbors from the village looked different; the cold made the men look gaunt and unfamiliar. Even Gunnar looked cruel and watchful, and the poet Eirik drowsed sullenly, arms folded against the salt spumes.

But the ship's weather vane was, indeed, stretched straight as a black knife. “Three days and we'll kiss land,” said Njord.

Lidsmod allowed himself to feel a flicker of optimism. “We'll surprise the Westland, like snow out of a summer sky,” he said, using the old saying hopefully. “Especially with a berserker like Torsten.”

“Give me men like Trygg,” Njord confided quietly, “with his beak like two noses where a Dane sliced it. He's left-handed as well as even-tempered. Sometimes a lefthanded man has an advantage in a battle. Men like Ulf are good shipmates too, and Eirik, whose mood is steady and whose poetry can ease even death. But a berserker …” Njord could not bring himself to say more.

Gunnar stirred. The wind freshened, so he sent men to shorten the sail. But if Gunnar had said nothing, the work would have been done soon enough. These men needed no sea lord.

“I knew this ship would fly!” cried Njord. He had augered the holes and driven the pegs. The steering oar, a broad wooden paddle fastened to the side of the ship, was held like a large sword into the water. It was always on the right side of the ship, the steer-board side. The oar sliced the water cleanly. Njord told Lidsmod that the feel of it in his hands was the best feeling in the world.

The blue-black waves fell away. White foam skeined the face of the water. The timbers and the rigging groaned like great god-women under the thrusts of god-men. Njord spat salt water. The wool sail did not flap or billow. It stayed hard, pregnant-woman full. “Maybe two days,” said Njord, “at this speed.”

Lidsmod glanced back.
Crane
was keeping up, he'd give it that. At this distance it was a twin to
Raven
, but Lidsmod knew that
Crane
could not beat against the wind, if it came to that, like this new
Raven
could.

Landwaster
was far behind, a black gnat on the water. But it did not have to be fast. Five hundred men had died because of that ship, and the five hundred Danish death agonies seemed to weigh it down. It was an ugly ship, and nearly crank, tending to lean sideways into the water.

A wave ran under
Raven
, pattering underfoot like mice, rolling forward. The stern lifted with the overtaking wave, and the prow nodded. Now not only the wind was pushing
Raven
, but the sea too, blue cliffs rising behind them, urging them forward.

That night, the invisible spray stinging lips and eyes, Eirik sang. His song was of the broad loom of slaughter, the human web. The Fates crossed it with a scarlet weft, and the warp was made of human entrails. Human heads were the loom weights.

Lidsmod wished Eirik had sung another tale. Ulf, however, grunted with satisfaction when the saga was done. Like most of the men, he took solace from these cold stories, cold and true. Such stories helped a man endure real weather. There was solace for the fallen, but first they had to fall.

The men ate salt herring. Eirik sang another song, and this one Lidsmod liked. It was the
Saga of Landwaster
. The ship fell from the north, and the Danes in their mead halls did not know it had gathered them until the oak halls burned. They ran, sword in hand, through the death gates, and the men of
Landwaster
, the sons of Spjothof, cut them one by one to the bone. Then came the counterattack, the attack of the wolf king, lord of the Danes, failing badly, and the surf splashing thick with the blood of the spearmen, the Danes all killed.

Give me men to kill, thought Gorm, listening to the tale. He would have prayed to the One-eyed, but Gorm had no god. For him there was nothing beyond this world of black sea, black sky. But still he thought, Give me men to kill. He hungered for a circle of death around him.

When every man was asleep or trying to sleep in the cold and wet, and Ulf was at the helm, the sky changed. The stars dimmed and vanished. The wind slackened.

No one had to wake the men. They stirred, dim shapes in the dark. The sail was lowered, furled around the yard, and lashed to its supports. Men wrapped sea blankets around their shoulders, and Njord took the steering oar. He gripped it with both hands. It was not surprising this time of year, a storm out of the east. Now they would see how strong
Raven
was.

Lidsmod knew not to ask. He scowled the same way Torsten scowled, and Trygg, because it was essential to have a manly look on his face. But soon he slipped to the helm and whispered to Njord, “What will happen?”

The white-haired helmsman chuckled. “We'll see what our fine
Raven
can do in a storm!”

10

Lidsmod had never been so afraid.

Raven
went under again, and then bounded into the air. Beards streamed water. Men hung on to sea chests. Lidsmod took his turn with the bailing scoop, and then clung to the side of the ship, half blind with flying spray.

Trygg, his scarred nose streaming brine, bailed. It did no good. Eirik took another bailer and shoveled water too. No one spoke. It would have been useless. The wind raked the ship. Lidsmod tried to take heart in the knowledge that every man had experienced this before—some of them had been in ships that had capsized in storms, or in ships that had burst like rush baskets against rocks. The men held on, eyes tight against the sting of salt water.

Opir hooted once when
Raven
stood nearly on end and then fell back. But now Opir was quiet too.

Ulf checked the line around Lidsmod's waist. He put his face against Lidsmod's ear. “Don't worry!” he called. “
Raven
will play with the wind!”

To trust in the ship was to trust in the ship's ancestors, in the pine for the mast and the oars, and the oaks that stood into the storms as they grew. It was to trust in earth and rain. The powers of the sky were in
Raven
as she shouldered upward from the sea.

Raven
plunged back, but the waves had fallen away, so that she fell farther, down so far that Lidsmod could see the cliffs of water high around her. Water swallowed ship and crew. Through the dark they ascended, higher and yet higher, beyond what had been the surface of the waves. And still higher yet. The sky was made of water now. The earth was gone.

Lidsmod had seen a god once. This was not something he would tell just anyone—when a god showed himself, it was not a secret you always shared with other men. Climbing into the highlands to carry a cheese to his uncle, who had scruffy sheep up where it was always winter, Lidsmod had seen a man standing at the crossing of two trails, a one-eyed man who did not speak but only watched. When the youth lifted a hand in greeting, this figure lifted his, in turn. Lidsmod stood in the path and waited as the unfamiliar man climbed the hill path and vanished.

He mentioned this to his mother one night beside the fire; she did not answer for a long time. When she finally spoke, she said that Odin might take something from Lidsmod—a finger, or perhaps an entire limb. “This will be his way of keeping you safe, and accepting a fee in turn.” She said this without joy, and Lidsmod regretted telling her about the gnarled traveler by the stony path.

Maybe now, thought Lidsmod, is when Odin will crush a thumb, or blind one of my eyes. He tried to stay close to Ulf, because the broad-shouldered man was known to be good luck—years ago Ulf's grandfather had caught a dwarf.

This was a famous incident, and everyone knew about it. Dwarves could make marvelous things of gold. They were cunning with their hands, and if a man waited near the earth cracks where they lived, and caught one in a net, he could make the dwarf carve or mold something for him before he was let go. Dwarves live in the ground like elves, and are notoriously cautious. Ulf's grandfather had been a clear-headed freeman, widely known for his intelligence. He trapped the dwarf on Midsummer night, when there was no darkness at all, so that the dwarf was overconfident. Odin loves the sly.

The dwarf, snagged and bound, agreed to make a cloak pin of gold; this was the brooch Ulf's father wore on feasting days. It was a simple piece, and not as intricate as much dwarf work, but it was heavy with its richness, being pure gold, with a copper pin. Ulf's brother would inherit it, and this was all the gold Ulf's family had. He had a proud family, much admired, and they worked hard and feared no man.

Even to run a farm a man needed slaves, but who in Spjothof could afford such people? The folk of the village were warriors, and proud. No one would laugh in the port halls of the north if a man said he was from Spjothof. It was a village that carried its name well. But it did take slaves to work a farm properly. Three slaves for a farm of twelve cows and two horses—this was what a man needed. But no one in Spjothof had the gold to buy slaves from the Swedish traders, and no one in Spjothof would suffer a Dane for a slave.

Without gold, how could a man pay bride-price? And without bride-price, there would be no bridal ale. A three-year ox would not be slaughtered. There would be no feast. There would be no wife. Gold was the cure to all the ills of every man in
Raven
. Every shipmate sailed in an attempt to solve the problem of poverty or the curse of being the youngest son.

Lidsmod huddled. He coughed water. The inside of his nose burned with salt. He did not know if he huddled against the planks, or against Ulf's sea chest, or against Trygg's leather sole. He did all of that at once, flung from bottom to side to foot, and back again. He was soaked and icy cold. His fingers were wrinkled. He kept himself rolled like a sea snail, so that he would not bump his head.

This was not a storm, thought Lidsmod. A storm was waves and wind and rain, perhaps even lightning. No, this was the constant sinking of a ship.
Raven
plunged into the wall of water. The men were all underwater, their shoulders hunched. Then the ship was in the sky. It was out of the water entirely, a thrown spear.

Lidsmod was not afraid of drowning. He had something more important to fear. He was going to vomit! These warriors would never be seasick. They had all been through worse. This was probably not a storm to them at all, Lidsmod felt. They were probably asleep, most of them, bored by what was to them slightly choppy water.

Njord wrestled with the steering oar. His face streamed water so that it seemed the beardless white-haired man had a long beard of sea. He blew sea from his mouth. And he looked joyous! Lidsmod wondered if his good friend was suddenly mad. Of course, Lidsmod reminded himself, a salty helmsman like Njord would love a storm like this.