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Jofrid and I search through their belongings while Ingun stands with ax raised. I pick up an iron fork for roasting meat and thump it against my palm. I count six axes, and that's just what I can see lying about the deck. Jofrid and I exchange glances. She nods.

“All right,” I say. “Here's what's going to happen.”
Everyone looks at me—men and women alike. “For the moment, you all stay where you are. Stand still, while my crew comes into this boat.” I look at the women. “Gather your cloaks and anything else you want, and come across. And you”—I point at Ragnhild—“bring my cloak and the old skin satchel in my personal chest. You”—I point at Grima—“bring my bow and arrows.”

“I'll bring your cloak,” calls Matilda to Ingun. “Anything else?”

Ingun shakes her head.

“And I'll bring yours,” Unn calls to Jofrid.

The shouter grabs his sword handle and looks around, confused. But he doesn't draw his sword. His face lights up. “Good thinking. We can be one big crew. Hurry up, men.”

But the women need no encouragement; they're already climbing into the pirate ship.

“You two,” I say to the men at the mast. “Go into the other ship. Look around for what's useful.”

The two men quickly climb into our boat.

I look at Jofrid and Ingun and nod. They untie us from the other boat.

“Hey!” shouts the sword man.

But I have my arrow in place. “Don't move or I'll shoot. And I'm accurate. We're exchanging boats.”

“What! You can't take our ship,” says the shouter.

“Use your brain, if you have one,” I say. “The four of you couldn't manage this big boat in a storm. You're better off with ours, and even that will be hard for you.”

“No! Joining forces is a better idea. You can be the captain. I have no taste for it, and you're good at it. Eight of you, four of us, we can beat anyone.”

“You'd just be in our way.” I wipe at my nose with the back of my hand like I always saw Beorn do. It seems a manly gesture. “If you head due south, you'll wind up in Trusø.”

“Trusø? Who the hell wants to go to Trusø? They don't even speak Norse there.”

“You're right.” I look around at the women. “Does anyone have a message they'd like these good men to carry back to Heiðabý?”

“Heiðabý's far away!”

“Seven days, if the wind is with you.”

“Tell the queen that Grima drowned,” says Grima. “But that she said good things about her, even as she went under.”

“Matilda drowned too,” says Matilda. “She couldn't even swim in the first place.”

“And tell Igor that Ragnhild loves him,” says Ragnhild.

I look around. “Is that all?”

“For now, it seems,” says Thyra.

The shouter stands glaring at us as the boats drift apart. “Why should we deliver any messages at all?”

“Because if you don't, we'll tell every ship that passes how you let a boat full of women outwit you.”

“Women!”

Matilda and Ingun already have the sail up. Grima is back at the helm. We are off and away.

“Pirates? Incompetents, I'd say.” Ingun passes out loaves of stale bread. She chomps, rips off a piece, and smiles as she chews. “But at least they had bread.”

“I wish you hadn't told them we were women,” says Thyra. “Imagine how surprised they would have been when all they found in our wooden chests were shifts!”

We're all laughing.

“Look at this stuff,” says Unn. “Iron plates for baking flat bread. Grill pans and griddles. All these wooden vats of pickled foods. They must set up a regular hearth whenever they stop on land. Why, they're more domestic than we are!”

“I feel bad about leaving them with just the two swords and no other tools,” says Jofrid. “It's going to be a hungry ride back to Heiðabý.”

“They probably had dirks on them,” says Unn. “Right?”

“And they have our fishing nets,” says Matilda.

“Don't feel too sorry for them,” says Ingun. “They were dishonorable cowards.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Nothing's ruined on this ship. There are twelve chests, for twelve men, and they're all full. The food vats are full. Only weapons are missing.” She holds out a hand, as if reasoning with us. “Each man had a sword, an ax, a spear, and a shield to start with. Some of them had to have bow and arrows, too. What's left of all that are seven axes, four shields, one bow. The pirates must have jumped on another ship—to commandeer it, like they tried to do with us, carrying with them most of their weapons. And all took shields, of course. But the other ship's crew fought and they were winning, so the four cowards jumped back on their ship, with their shields, and whatever weapons they still had. They escaped when they saw their captain and crew members had died.”

“Or worse,” says Matilda. She moves closer to Ingun. “Maybe they escaped when they saw they'd be defeated, and left their fellow crew members to die. They should be condemned to freezing Hel.”

We're all silent a moment.

“Well, good,” says Ragnhild at last. “I can sleep guilt free.”

“Me too,” says Matilda. “And I'm going to laugh a bit more, remembering what Alfhild said: ‘You let a boat full of women outwit you.' ”

“It should become our parting call with pirates,” says Jofrid.

“Well, I, for one, hope we never meet up with pirates again,” says Ragnhild.

The sails are down, and we're anchored in an island's bay. I bet it's that Borgundarholm the pirates talked about, because it rises a great height—
borg
—from the sea, like a mountain of rock. We haven't seen any settlements on this side of the island, but it's a big island, and the settlements are probably on the coast that faces Skáney, anyway.

Skáney. That's where Ástríd was stolen from. But she wouldn't envy me being close to it now; she wouldn't want to go home. Her home is with Beorn.

I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them. What if we really do find Mel, and she feels like Ástríd and doesn't want to go home? She might not. She might love the people she lives with. But she is almost certainly a slave. She'll want her freedom; at the very least, she'll want that. She deserves to choose where and how she lives. So it isn't pointless that I've brought these women away from home and that we're out on a sea full of pirates with nothing to protect us but our own wits. It can't be pointless.

Mel.
What do you look like now, sister? Your hair should still be the same—and those highlights are special. Your nose, I'll recognize your nose. The color of your eyes. But your mouth . . . oh, a person's mouth can change with experience. A mouth can grow grim and taut. But Mel, I promise you, if only you'll smile at me, I'll know you. I will definitely know you.

The sun sets later these days. I look at the burning orange ball and the scudding clouds, and my head empties. The women are bedding down. It's Unn's turn to stand guard, and she's pushed a wooden chest against the mast and taken her post. Grima calls out in her sleep and turns over swiftly, with the sound of cloth tearing. I remember my under shift tearing when Alf climbed into the tower room. I reached for him—I threw myself across his back and grabbed under his arms—I pulled with all my might. For a split second, I felt the weight of him. The heft. The heft of that man in these hands. My palms tingle.

*  *  *

In the morning we bathe and eat fish Unn cooks and then decide to skirt the island and travel north, staying close to the coast of Skáney. The very first day we set sail, I taught everyone Beorn's rule of staying within sight of land. So when we left Trusø and headed out into the open sea and were out of sight of land for an entire day and night before meeting up with the pirates and then the whole rest of that day, we were so tense we breathed shallow. We gave a whoop of joy at finally spying Borgundarholm. We won't easily give up sight of land again.

We have been sailing for a few hours when we see the first ship. It's traveling south, and even closer to the coast than we are. And it has two sails. This is the first ship we've seen so far that has two sails. I go cold.

The Russian slave ship that stole Mel and me had two sails. Probably all Russian slave ships do. Maybe all Russian trading ships do. I don't know. In my time at Heiðabý I stayed away from the foreign ship dock. Deep in me nestled the fear of being snatched again. It was crazy, for if a slave ship left and a local girl went missing, I have no doubt the king would have sent a ship in pursuit. The slave dealers had to know that too. But the fears you learn as a child are different; they stay, no matter what.

I stare at the ship.

“Well?” asks Grima, standing at the helm again. “Who's going to lift the flags?”

“I will,” says Jofrid. “All the rest of you are taller than me—everyone but Grima and Unn—and Unn's sleeping. So you'll look more impressive holding the axes and bow until we find out if they're friendly.” She grabs the two white flags we've made from the shifts that Matilda gathered from our old ship at the last minute. Jofrid stands at the bow and waves the flags.

Grima steers us. She likes steering. She likes using the bow and arrow, too. She seems to revel in every opportunity
this new life offers her. And her skills are getting sharp. I send her an encouraging smile, but she doesn't even notice.

The wind is in our favor, so the rest of us can grab axes. I put a bow and arrows beside Grima's feet just in case, and another bow and arrows beside Unn, who is still asleep. I have no idea if she's a decent archer, so I put an ax beside her too. I grab my own bow. I wish we had spears, but we're lucky there's something in everyone's hands.

We go straight for the ship, flapping those flags. Then we take down the sails, and they pull in their oars. It seems peaceful enough, so far.

“We'll throw across ropes,” I yell.

Jofrid scrambles with the rope at the aft, and Unn has woken and holds the rope at the forward. They toss them across. The men in the other ship loop them through oar holes so Jofrid and Unn can bind us together.

“What's the problem?” asks a mustached man in heavily accented Norse. I am sure I've never seen him before. The other men are looking at us, but it's clear that one is the captain. I count five. Five men to our eight women. All of them perfect strangers. But the thing that's driving me insane, the thing that's screaming in my head, is that they have a woman and two children gagged with hands bound in the center of the ship.

“Are they for sale?” I ask.

The man's eyes widen. “What price could you offer?”

“How much are you asking?”

“I normally trade in Miklagard. I get the highest prices.”

“You go all the way to Miklagard with a crew of five to sell just three slaves?”

“Of course not. I pick up the rest of my crew in Gotland. That's where I'm headed as soon as I finish a little business here. Then we'll pick up more slaves along the way and take a full ship of slaves to Miklagard.”

Gotland. Everybody talks about the big island of Gotland. It dominates Baltic trade these days. It has the best natural harbors, especially for boats that ride shallow, like ours.

“Miklagard is far away,” I say. “Anyone could get sick and die by the time you get down there. A dead slave goes for nothing, if I'm not mistaken.”

The captain nods. “You still haven't told me what you're offering.”

I have no idea what to offer.

“The woman isn't a beauty,” says Thyra with authority. “And the children are too small to be useful yet.”

The captain nods. “A price?”

“I need information first,” I say. “I'm looking for a slave
girl. I want to know where she is now. She was taken from Írland years ago. Seven . . . I think.”

The captain frowns. “Lots of girls are taken from Írland every year. Who could possibly know about a particular girl?”

“She's special. A beauty.”

“Lots of girls are beauties.”

“A mute.”

The captain blinks. “I heard talk of a mute. Probably drowned in a bog by now.”

“What! Why do you say that?”

“Well, she was a witch, right? You're talking about the famous witch.”

The witch? Did Mel make them believe she was a witch? I shrug.

The captain shakes his head. “A dealer took her all the way to Miklagard . . .”

My heart cracks.

“. . . but she had cast such a spell over him, he didn't sell her there. He took her back up north and finally managed to break free of her.”

“What do you mean ‘break free'?”

“He gave her up—sold her. Finally.”

“Where? What city?”

“I don't know that. But someone in Birka might know.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I look at Unn and Grima. They were slaves—they've got to be thinking what I'm thinking. In an instant we all three hold up our bows with arrows fitted into the bowstrings.

“What?” The captain steps backward, and his men quickly grab spears. “What do you think you're doing?”

“If any of your men hurls a weapon, we will all three shoot at you. Only at you, Captain. And we don't miss. You'll be dead.”

“My men will throw their spears and you'll be dead.”

“That doesn't affect my point. I assume you don't want to die, captain. You will die if anything goes wrong. That is a certainty. Tell one of your men to gather the spears from all the others and hand them over to us.”

“And if I don't?”

“Then we will kill you. Precisely you.”

“Without our spears, you can kill all of us.”

“But we won't. We will take the woman and the children and the spears. You will leave. Alive. All of you.”