Daughter of the Wind (22 page)

With that, she embraced him, and try as he might he was too weak from his wound, and perhaps too loving to wrestle free. And
Strider
, even released from her steering grip, was faster than the
snekkja
. The women lifted sail, following the boat, her father laughing, gently protesting that Hallgerd was foolish. No one could outsail maidens from the Slain Hall.

Forty-six

When she woke, the Danish ships were closer, and the open sea gold and silver in the morning light. She believed that the dream had been a gift from some divine power, and that it warned her that her father was already drinking among the fallen heroes.

It was customary to share an important dream with one's companions, but she could not mention this extraordinary vision. Indeed, she fought hard to put the dream out of her mind. When Gauk saw how close the ships were now he made no remark, but drew Whale-Biter to his side. Hego did not spare them a glance. Anything they said or did might disturb the careful stitchery of fate and cause bad luck.

Hego offered her a last piece of Spjothof flatbread, and Gauk used an oilcloth on his spearhead, cleaning the blade, until Hego took over the task.

Already the drinking water was nearly gone, and what remained tasted salty as the goatskins became weathered and stiff. They took turns at the steering oar now, as Hallgerd's hands became blistered and cramped, but the well-balanced skip needed nothing more than their continuing prayers as it sliced the swells.

All day the Danish ships grew near. By nightfall the shore was close, with its white, rolling surf, and the ships had to stand well away from the rocks, backing oars at times, and shortening sails.
Strider
was able to thread the shoals, losing none of her speed, easily breasting the occasional submerged rocks.

The sheets, the leather ropes that worked the sail, were glazed with salt and sun, and had begun to fray—not at all like the stout rigging of her dream. The vessel's planks, although designed to be flexible, were working loose. Despite Hego's constant repairs, and his steady application of the bailing scoop, the interior of the boat was ankle-deep in cold brine.

But the Danish ships could not keep the pace. At last only
Bison
remained in the chase, the vessel's white eyes relentless in the darkness. White-haired Gudmund himself was easy to make out in the starlight, leaning over the ship's prow. And scarred Olaf, too, the man who had seized her and carried her from her father's house. To her heartfelt relief, Thrand was nowhere to be seen.

Bison
grew so close she could hear the scraping of sea chests and creaking of leather as the Danes armed themselves.

Hego called out a song, his voice ragged. It was the chant of a mountain giant opposed by a Spjotman, the legendary villager Jom, armed with the ax of his great-grandfather. Unable to reach the giant's vitals, the Spjotman attacked the mountain creature's feet. It was a rousing song, one Hallgerd had always liked. Gauk brandished his spear and joined in the singing, his voice a rasp. Hallgerd, too, lifted her voice in the old poem in which the long-departed souls strengthened the hope of the living.

One and by one

his ancestor's iron

sings through the toes of the giant
.

The first Danish arrows lifted high through the stars, and fell just short, splashing in
Strider
's wake. Gudmund stood near the archers, giving quiet directions.

The course
Bison
kept in the early morning light was cunning, parallel to the shoreline, veering wide of the boiling water wherever rocky shoals appeared. Hallgerd recalled well the storied skill of Gudmund's men, how well they could remember the soundings up and down the dangerous coast.

Arrows snapped at the sailboat, and when one clattered against the hull, another splashed ahead of her. Hallgerd took the steering oar from Gauk. She scented a change in the weather—the wind slackening, rain on its way.
Strider
's strakes squeaked, every peg in the sailboat complaining in the surf.

In the abating and sometimes contrary winds, the Danish warship was able to keep speed, while the smaller vessel tacked—sailing at an angle to the fitful wind—across
Bison
's course, and back again. Gauk and Hego worked the canvas and called fragments of ancient song to the Danes.

A spear ruptured the sail.

It happened without warning. One moment the canvas was full-bellied, the rigging taut in the renewed breeze. In the next a black spear glinted and punctured the full sail with a high-pitched, deafening
crack
. Then the shaft fell into the sloppy interior of the boat, leaving the iron head in the fabric.

The race was over, Hallgerd knew. Hope died in her. If they were within spear shot, they would soon be overrun. Hallgerd was heavy-hearted, but she would attempt to use her mental resources, and her skill in word craft, to spare her companions' lives.

She was not prepared for the squall of arrows.

A dozen shivered in the planks around her, several more hissing through the sudden screen of rain. One snapped through the air beside her head, and she sank into the safety of the hull. Hego was struck across his arm, and Gauk cried out as an arrow nipped him, the projectile glancing away into the wind.

All along Hallgerd had assumed that the very worst Gudmund would do was capture her again, and put her two shipmates to death at his leisure. But the steady onslaught of arrows indicated that the jarl was intent on vengeful butchery, immediate and complete. Arrows splashed and splintered, and another spear hissed through the rain, shattering against the mast.

Hallgerd searched her mind for some appropriate battle verse to chant while her heart's blood ran red.

When Gauk stood, swaying, clinging to the rigging, she thought the young berserker had suffered some sudden, agonizing wound. She cried out, and reached to support him when the brave young hunter fell.

But he remained there, his spear held high, as yet not seriously hurt. Gauk raised Whale-Biter, and gave voice to the sort of cry Hallgerd had heard described in legends, but had never heard in life. It was the bellow of a carnivore, a huge-boned, massive beast, far larger than any man.

That such a sound could be forged by Gauk's frame astonished the jarl's daughter. The approaching Danes leaned over the side of their ship, aimed their bows carefully, and sent arrows into Gauk's body as he rent the air with his roars, three arrows, four, finding his chest as he bellowed.

If I am nothing more than a fool, O God of Cunning
, Gauk prayed,
I am nonetheless willing to die for my friends
.

Odin protect them
.

Gauk hurled Whale-Biter high over the pursuing ship. The spear soared far above the mast top, over the fluttering weather flag above the sail, and vanished in the sea beyond.

Forty-seven

The sunburned Danes, their eyes alight with anticipation, unceasingly mocked Gauk now as the young hunter slumped to the bottom of the boat. Hallgerd saw a certain heavy-footed logic behind their laughter as the shipload of armored Danes loomed over three travel-worn Spjotfolk. The all-but-lifeless young berserker's eyes weakly opened and shut against the falling rain, and Hego's song had died.

The wind strengthened behind them. Hallgerd felt the dimmest shiver beneath the keel as the sailboat grazed a shoal, but barely noticed the sensation as she prayed to the divine ones to spare the lives of her friends.

Then she felt a plan stir in her mind.

Hego knelt beside his fallen friend, his face ashen. Hallgerd kept her grip on the steering oar, piloting the craft through the boiling white water. She glanced back to gauge the Danish ship's approach, guiding the war craft closer to the rocks.

It happened in an instant. One moment the great, two-eyed ship was bearing down upon them. And in the next,
Bison
struck a submerged rock—one
Strider
had just grazed—with so much force the mast snapped, swaying sickeningly in place. The air was shattered by the sound of splitting timbers, the keel fracturing with a watery thunder. The heavy mast—with its sail and rigging and its twin spruce wood spars—crashed forward, crushing the archers in the prow of the ship, along with their white-haired chief.

It did not take long.

The warship's steerboard thrashed as seamen cried out in anguish.
Strider
skimmed the water ahead as the big ship unseamed on the boiling black rocks, strakes parting, broken keel rising up from the middle of the wreck. The big ship was in pieces. Graceful and flexible as the finest warships were, their planks were thin and, in a collision, no match for a jagged ridge of stone.

The armored men sank quickly, a few others crying out for help.

Hallgerd worked to bring the sailboat to, and turned her back toward the few desperate figures. She was satisfied at the havoc she had caused, but at the same time dismayed to see the humanity and the beautiful vessel so swiftly lost. Before
Strider
could alter her course, shields and sea chests careened in the seething water, and oars shattered into blond splinters on the rocks.

Olaf bobbed to the surface, supporting the bleeding, all but unrecognizable form of Gudmund. The white-haired war chief's mouth was agape, life streaming from his lips.

Olaf called out and waved, but after a long moment the two of them vanished beneath the sea.

Forty-eight

Hallgerd leaned into the steering oar, the warm sun in her hair.

She had not always sat like this, two hands around the span of spruce. Earlier in her life she had been a jarl's daughter, without a solemn thought in her head, proud to be seen with her flowing tresses, looking out the window of her bedchamber.

But that was centuries ago, in another life.

Seabirds played in a wide, ragged ring above. Hego recited the way-poem in his leathery voice, singing of the ancient route to safety.

Where the gulls spin

and the white cliffs part
,

there your keel

slices water home
.

Each plunge of Hego's bailing scoop pronounced the syllable
soon
.

“Look!” cried the young man when his song had drawn no response from her. He indicated the birds circling overhead. “We're almost home!”

Her smile was painful, her lips so badly blistered.

But it was true, as Hego had said. It could not be denied. The gulls were flying in a great, beautiful circle overhead.

And yet Hallgerd was afraid to hope, staving off what she knew would be disappointment, and even worse—inevitable grief. No apparition on the empty sea can be trusted. Who was to say this splash of bird lime on the cliffs was the storied entrance to the safe waters of Spjothof, and not a trick of the eyes?

Gauk was wrapped in his travel cloak, sword at his side, as was proper for a dead hero. But despite the final rituals, the farewells, and the promise from Gauk that he would bear their names proudly to the feast in the Slain Hall, the berserker did not quite die. A fever captured him, his unseeing gaze darting from mast to rigging to bare sky, and each breath was long and slow, but the final breath would not come.

Hallgerd had seen too many sick and injured folk to be able to believe that Gauk would survive. Trained by her mother in drawing arrows, she had extracted all but one, an arrowhead that snapped off as she worked it from his ribs. Hallgerd had bathed the young hunter's face with the very last drops of the drinking water, and Hego sang the oldest verses anyone in Spjothof could remember, the story of Thor resting his hammer in the mountains over his favorite village, blessing the place forever.

When the warships from home found them, that is how they were: Hallgerd at the steering oar, weariness blinding her to the golden light of late day, Hego in the prow, continuing in a low voice to sing the stories of hunters and warriors as he shoveled water over the side, and Gauk repeating whispered prayers with renewed strength.

It took her a long moment to realize what was happening.

Hallgerd saw the many prows parting white water, but did not trust what she was looking at. This was yet another fraud spun by petty divinities, in their jealousy of human hope.

Her name sang out from one ship, and another.

Raven of the Waves
she recognized, and
Crane
, and behind those two warships the famous
Landwaster
, weather darkened. But she was puzzled at the other dream visions she beheld, hunting skips and freight boats, perhaps merchant
knarrs
from Ard, the lumbering, strong-timbered vessels outfitted with shields and spears.

Was it possible? she wondered. Had the lowly neighboring village joined in, too, proud and eager to stand with the Spjotmen against the Danes? Hallgerd knew this had to be a sun-pricked, full-fleshed illusion spun by an artful god.

The sailing army met
Strider
at the mouth of Spjotfjord, and from all around rang the chanting repetition of her name. A hallucination. A mockery, the gods teasing her before they stole her mind, dazzling her with phantoms in the guise of Astrid and Hrolf.

But when she set eyes on Lidsmod, she knew that he could only be real.

He was smiling and shouting something in the tumult—a bronze-skinned, sun-proofed Lidsmod, not the lad she had watched sail west earlier in the summer.

Gunnar was there, too, and white-crested Njord, and all the fighting men of Spjothof. If she was indeed among her friends—and there could be no doubt now that she was—a new fear filled her.

She could not bring herself to sound the question.

She took a few heartbeats to steady herself, mindful of her recent dream.

“Where is my father?” she called. Her voice was inaudible with the cheering, echoing chants of her name from cliff to cliff, and she had not been able to give the question any force, half-hoping the promised sad news could be delayed.

Now she wondered—was there a moment of hesitation in Lidsmod's features? Of course there was, she thought. There was a flicker of pain in all their eyes, surely. They had read the question on her lips, and they could not tell her the tidings.