Brandewyne, Rebecca (36 page)

The
wind was with him, at least; but that was of little help, for it was also with
Ragnar, whose own longship was as swift as the
Siren's Song.
It would be a
race, then, between the two vessels and their captains, a test of skill,
seamanship, and cunning; and Wulfgar had not Ragnar's years of experience at
the tiller of a longship to draw upon. It was time for Flóki to spell Wulfgar
at the tiller, but Wulfgar knew he could not relinquish the tiller now, when
Ragnar was in sight. So he stayed where he was, his fatigue dispelled all at
once by the sudden surge of adrenaline that pumped through his body, setting
his pulse to pounding.

"
'Tis he. 'Tis Ragnar. I would know
his Dragon Ship anywhere," Flóki
stated grimly as he stared at the red sail in the distance. "He has come
after us, as the hunter pursues the hare, and is bent on driving us into some
snare, I am thinking."

"Aye,
so I fear." Wulfgar's voice was grave and had a hard, serrated edge at the
thought of how Ragnar had outfoxed him. "That is why I will keep the
tiller for now, Flóki, until I am too weary to stand. Till then, do you rest
and conserve your strength; for although Ragnar may have won this round, the
battle is not over, and I do not mean to make it any easier for him. 'Tis a
long race we shall run, and with a fight at the end of it, I am thinking. So
'twould not be wise for us both to be exhausted then."

"Nay,
you are right, lord. Ah, Wulfgar!" Flóki cried with remorse. "I rue
that I have with my rash action brought us to this terrible pass! But I could
not just ride away and leave my lady to Ragnar's mercy. She, who is a virgin
and the princess of Usk!"

Almost,
Wulfgar was tempted to tell him that Morgen was neither, but in the end
remained silent about how the two women had switched identities. If Ragnar
should catch them, it might be that Flóki would blurt out the truth under
torture or in a vain attempt to save Morgen against the attentions
of Ragnar and
his sons. Not even the fulfilling of Flóki's love and desire for Morgen was
worth putting Rhowenna at such risk, Wulfgar told himself fiercely as he gazed
at her pale, sleeping form curled up on his wolfskin in the stern, her own
white bearskin cloak, for which he had traded a fine scramasax, wrapped around
her. He thanked the gods that for the moment, she still slumbered, blissfully
unaware yet of Ragnar's bearing down upon them. Would that she need never know,
need never confront the threat the dawn had brought to them all, Wulfgar
thought. She was weary to the bone, had endured too many grievous blows for one
woman to suffer. Yet, with courage and conviction, she had borne them all,
telling him, once, that God never gave anyone a burden too heavy to bear. This,
however, Wulfgar did not believe. The Christ might be merciful, as Rhowenna
claimed; but the gods were not, as he had good cause to know— and perhaps the
Christ was angry with her for marrying him, a pagan. It could be that all of
her Heaven and his Asgard had turned against them.

Yet,
despite the adversity they faced, Wulfgar still could not repress the thrill of
excitement and exhilaration that shot through him as the
Siren's Song
lifted and
surged
beneath his feet, driving forward across the waves, the wind filling her sail
so that it billowed and whipped against the grey dawn sky. She was his vessel,
just as Rhowenna was his wife. Come what may, nothing on earth could change
that, he told himself fervently. The thought filled his heart to bursting. He
would do whatever was necessary to protect them both, he vowed savagely, even
if it meant dying in the attempt and spending his whole afterlife not in the
Valhöll, but on the Shore of Corpses, forever at the mercy of Nidhögg, the
bloodsucking monster of Hel.

The Fish Hooked

For
long days and nights, the
Siren's Song
played a cat-and-mouse game with
Ragnar's own mighty longship, neither gaining nor losing leagues, but always
running, with Wulfgar and Flóki both forced to call upon every ounce of
shrewdness and strength they possessed to maintain the distance between the two
vessels. Down the coasts of Caledonia and Britain, the
Siren's Song
fled, zigging
and zagging in an effort to throw off her relentless pursuers, to no avail.
Ragnar's knowledge and experience of the sea were much greater than that of
Wulfgar. Like a sly fox, Ragnar seemed to anticipate Wulfgar's and Flóki's
every move.

"We
cannot shake him, lord." Flóki's face was taut with tiredness and worry.
"He is going to keep on until he has run us to ground."

"I
had hoped that Ragnar would grow weary of the chase. But in my heart, I know
that you are right, Flóki," Wulfgar agreed. "Still, somehow, we must
rid ourselves of him. If we put in to some harbor, he will be on us, like a
bear fishing in a mountain stream, clawing us from the water to bite off our
heads! Yet if we continue to sail on, he will chase us until we are too
exhausted to go any farther, or out of fresh water and supplies. We simply
must
find some means
of outwitting him!"

That
night, while Flóki stood at the tiller, Wulfgar discussed their options with
Rhowenna and Yelkei, he holding Rhowenna's hand tightly in his as they soberly
contemplated their dismal prospects, each wondering if they would have a future
at all. Her violet eyes were huge and dark in her white face, and her skin
gleamed like a pearl in the moonlight and the light cast by the flames of the
firepot, which she sat near for warmth. Yelkei's own eyes glittered blacker
than black and, narrowed, were nearly lost in her wrinkled moon face as she
squatted on the deck, listening to Wulfgar's words. When he had finished, she
reached, without speaking, beneath the folds of her fur cloak to draw forth a
small, deerskin pouch that he knew contained her rune stones. An icy grue
chased
up his spine at the sight; for the contents of that pouch had enabled her
earlier to pierce the veil of time and peer into the future, and he did not
know if she had but spoken of what she had seen or if he himself had brought
her prophecies to pass because he had believed and acted upon them. For who, in
truth, had the power to look into the minds and hearts of the gods? If such a
gift were indeed Yelkei's own, truly she was a spaewife to be feared; and for a
moment, Wulfgar nearly snatched the pouch from her yellow, talonlike fingers,
so great was his trepidation that the curse of the gods would fall upon him for
Yelkei's presumption. But as though sensing his sudden, wild desire, Rhowenna's
hand tightened around his own; and seeing in her eyes something akin to what
lay in Yelkei's, he stayed his hand, shuddering again and muttering under his
breath.

"Silence!"
Yelkei hissed, shooting him a censuring glance. "If you are afraid, lie
down on your wolfskin and go to sleep. If you are not, then do you keep quiet
while I cast the rune stones, so I may hear what the gods would speak."

This
was pagan and witchery, Rhowenna thought with a shiver, a blasphemy against the
Christ and the Church, for which she would surely be punished. Yet she could
not
seem to leave the place on the deck where she sat, any more than Wulfgar could.
Some unknown force held her there, as though she could hear in her mind the
chanting of the blue-woad-tattooed Picti and the Tribes who had been her
ancestors as Yelkei added fuel to the firepot, so its flames blazed high. As
she passed her bony hand over them, sprinkling them with a fine powder she had
taken from her pocket, they leaped with such intensity, spitting sparks and
turning the colors of a rainbow, that Rhowenna and Wulfgar both started and
shrank back a little, although they did not move from where they watched
Yelkei's sorcery. She was chanting now, words in some strange language they had
never before heard, clipped and chiming. Such was the spaewife's power to
entrance that Rhowenna was only dimly aware that at the very back of the stern,
Morgen was on her knees, crossing herself and praying, and that at the tiller,
Flóki stood, making the ancient pagan sign against evil.

Now
the stones bearing the nine runes that were the gift of Odinn were in Yelkei's
hand, and she was shaking them so they rattled eerily, like the bones of the
skeletons that hung in the Sacred Groves of the Northland long after the
corpses had decayed, dancing and knocking in the wind, their eyes black
abysses, like
Yelkei's own. From the palm of her hand, the stones tumbled onto the deck and
lay there, some faceup, others facedown. Rhowenna did not know what they meant;
but Yelkei's quickly indrawn breath was sharp, and her eyes glittered. A short
cackle of laughter erupted from her mouth, and then a cawing cry that was like
that of a raven.

Nine
times, Yelkei tossed the rune stones onto the deck, and to Rhowenna's awe, nine
times the stones fell as they had that first time, the same runes showing, the
same runes concealed. Then, at last, Yelkei gathered them up and put them away
in her pouch.

"Tell
Flóki to steer the
Siren's
Song
into
the heart of the North Sea, Wulfgar," she croaked slyly, "there to
hook a big fish worth the sea goddess Ran's hoard of gold from all the drowned
Víkingrs
who have paid
her to journey from her domain to Valhöll."

"Art
mad, Yelkei!" Wulfgar spat softly, angry and afraid. "Art a witch, in
truth, who leads us all to our deaths, I am thinking! Even the boldest of
Víkingrs
would rather
wander the Shore of Corpses to the barred gates of Hel than to cross the North
Sea at its heart, where 'tis most treacherous. We will surely go down to lie in
Ran's watery arms, wrapped in the strands of her seaweed hair!"

"Do
you say that you yourself have not
considered sailing the
Siren's Song
there
to elude Ragnar, Wulfgar?" Yelkei's eyes seemed to pierce his very soul.
When he did not respond, she snorted again with laughter. "Aye, you have;
for within you, you know that even the great Ragnar Lodbrók will think twice
about following us there, where the mist and maelstroms lurk like monsters to
send a longship fathoms deep beneath the sea. Yet even that, I tell you, would
be an easier death for your lady wife, for whom you fear so greatly, than what
she would endure at the hands of Ragnar and his sons."

In
his heart, Wulfgar knew that this, also, was so. Still, he hesitated, recalling
a time, in his youthful manhood, when he had displeased his half brothers Ubbi
and Halfdan for some now-forgotten reason. Seizing him, they had hurtled him
headlong into an open barrel of
bjórr,
holding him
under until he had thought that his lungs would burst from lack of air, that he
would surely drown in the cask of wine. Again and again, they had jerked him
up, only to plunge him back down once more until, at last, they had tired of
the sport and released him. Gasping, coughing, and choking, sodden and dripping
with
bjórr,
he
had stood then, petrified, as Ivar, on his face a cruel, wolfish smile, in his
hand a lighted torch, had stalked him, threatening
to set him
ablaze, all of them knowing that Wulfgar would catch fire like the
whale-oil-soaked wick of a lamp. Now, as he remembered how his lungs had felt
that day, Wulfgar did not know if he could bring himself to condemn Rhowenna to
such a fate, to such a terrible death. But sensing this, she laid her hand
imploringly upon his arm.

"Wulfgar,
please, 'tis a chance, at least— mayhap the only chance for us. And I would
rather die in your arms in the sea than to lie in the arms of Ragnar Lodbrók
and Ivar the Boneless, I swear it!"

Tightly,
Wulfgar embraced her at that, as though he would never let her go, kissing her
feverishly and then burying his face in her hair, sighing so long and heavily
that she felt the raw sob in his throat, which he choked down with difficulty.

"Flóki,"
he whispered hoarsely at last, "take us into the heart of the North
Sea."

For
a moment, inhaling sharply, Flóki seemed poised to refuse and argue against the
order. But then, rising, Morgen moved quietly to stand beside him, slipping her
arms about his waist and laying her head upon his shoulder.

"Please,
Flóki," she murmured; and finally, nodding his head, his face grim, he
headed the longship toward the open sea.

* * * * *

The
dawn came, pale and leaden, and the wind had both winter's icy scent and a
madding storm on its breath. Frost layered the mast, the crutches, and the
deck, and clung to the sail, so that it shimmered like a fetch in the bleak
light. Surely an ill omen, Wulfgar thought as, silently, somberly, he took the
tiller from an equally solemn Flóki. Clouds the color of unpolished silver
scudded from the west across the sullen sky, and mist clung to the dark,
restless, shifting waves that swirled about the hull of the vessel.

"This
is madness!" Flóki broke at last the stillness heavy between them.
"There is a storm blowing up somewhere in the distance. I can feel it in
my bones."

"Aye,
so can I."

"But
still, you do not intend to turn back toward the coast?"