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“Put your captives on the shore and leave,” I shout.

Two spears fly at me. A man is pulling up the anchor.

“Drop that anchor or I will shoot you.”

He continues pulling.

I aim and shoot. The arrow lodges in his arm, sticking out on both sides. The air is nothing but screams now.

“Shut up!” I shriek. “Put the captives on the shore and leave!”

“They're our slaves,” shouts one of the uninjured men.

“No longer.”

“Are you alone?”

“All your captives—on the shore—now!”

“You're alone!” A spear flies at me.

I have to duck this one. I aim. “Time is up. If you don't put those captives on the shore now, I'll shoot you. All of you. It will be easy.”

The five uninjured men toss slaves into the water. Gagged and bound!

I aim and shoot. A man screams, with an arrow embedded in his ribs.

“Jump in and save them,” I scream. “If any of them drown, we'll hunt you down and kill you all!” And I drop my bow and dive into the water.

The sea is clear and the sun comes brightly through the water, and I have my hands on a child in an instant. I swim with her to shore and drag her onto the pebbled beach and run back into the surf, expecting a spear to pierce me at any second.

To my amazement, three men are dragging women
onto the beach. I don't understand. I am without a weapon now. I am in easy range. They could kill me and leave.

“Fast!” comes the shout. It's Unn, standing on the shore with her arrow aimed. “We will kill you—all of you—if a single captive dies!”

The crew race back to the surf and jump in. We are all searching for the fifth one they threw in—a child.

“You,” shouts Unn to the one man onboard who isn't injured. “Jump in and help!”

The man looks panicked. He mimes swimming and shakes his head.

A man in the water shouts. He hauls the body of a child onto the shore.

“Now the rest of the captives onboard,” shouts Unn to the nonswimmer. “Unbind and ungag them. Then get them to shore. If anyone drowns, you die.”

The man unbinds and ungags women and children. One child climbs over the side, jumps in, and swims to shore. The man hands the others over the side of the ship to the men waiting in the water. They bring the slaves to shore.

Unn stands with arrow ready while the slaves on the shore are caring for one another. One woman holds the body of a girl upside down while another slaps her on the back. It's chaos, but no one cries or screams. No one but the wounded men onboard.

“Leave,” I shout.

The crew in the water climb the hanging rope into their ship and pull up the anchor.

One of the crew members points at me. “You're the women pirates!”

And I realize my hat is gone; my braid hangs over my shoulder.

“You cut off a man's hand. The medicine woman in Birka talked of it. You stole that ship's slaves too. But you don't have red hair. You're supposed to be the red maidens.”

Red hair? How did that start? “I'm the exception,” I say.

“The women pirates! You're like the wild women, the
valkyrja
, who fly over battle scenes, choosing who will get to go up to Valhøll and who will die ingloriously.”

Die? We've never killed anyone. But the more frightful our reputation is, the better off we'll be. “The terrors,” I shout. “Get out of here. Give up the slave trade.”

It's late August, and we've been hunting for news of Mel constantly. The slave market at Birka closes this week. Already the days are colder than winter nights in Jutland. We have come to this market every two weeks all summer long. This is the last time.

Birka feels funny to me, as though it should be familiar. The Christian monk Ansgar, the same one who came to Ribe years ago and whose church was eventually burned to the ground, also came to Birka. He lasted only six months there. Nevertheless, I feel I should sense his Christian steps in the earth under my feet. But I don't. This is a totally Norse city.

Thyra, Matilda, and Sibbe, our latest crew member, walk ahead of me. Whenever we come to Birka, four women go into town. Two vary. A third is always someone with a local accent, who can speak for the rest of us without drawing suspicion. The fourth is me, since I'm the only one who could recognize Mel or the Russian crew that stole us. Which is a fancy, no matter how much I wish it weren't; I don't know
if I could recognize either. My sister could look more like my mother by now—and I haven't been able to imagine my mother's face for years. When I try, it merges with Queen Tove's.

The rest of the crew stay with the ship, which we harbor in an inlet to the north of town, so we can come into the market on foot, looking no different from the women in town or those who travel here from nearby settlements. Today I wear a long woolen shift that ties at the neck with a drawstring, and a shorter outer shift on top, dyed pine green. Huge cast-bronze and tortoiseshell buckles the size of my hand fasten my shoulder straps. Jet beads are strung between the two buckles, and they make a nice heavy thump against my chest as I stride along. Suspended from one buckle are a key and shears. They give me a domestic look that announce I belong to a family who might be near, so don't disturb me. I don't wear a cloak, because I always want to be ready to move fast. Thyra, Matilda, and Sibbe are dressed similarly, but in different colors with different beads. We resemble the leaves on the trees these days—a variegated flutter. Combs, knives, needles, keys dangle from them as well. These disguises have come to us as gifts from the families of the women and children we've rescued this summer. We also now have a goat, Cadla, who nibbles toes in a friendly way. It is marvelous to have
a steady source of milk. Cadla is on the boat this morning, naturally.

Our cheeks are ruddy and weathered from being in the wind on the water day after day—but that could as easily be taken as evidence of working the farm fields. Ástríd and I were ruddy in our life together back in Ribe, after all. Our gaze is steady and direct, though we try not to appear challenging. Given the rough nature of the Birka traders, a challenge from a female could incite lust, despite the fact that we wear our hair braided like married women. And a man's lust is at best irrelevant to us and at worst an impediment.

By staying close to shore, we have repeatedly come in contact with slave ships. We have become pirates, indeed, but the only cargo we steal are slaves. It wasn't planned that way—it just happened. We wanted the safety of being close to shore, and slave ships trawl close to shore. They spy children or a woman alone on land, anchor at the next bend, and send back crew to capture them. Every time we meet one that already has captives, we take the slaves, warn the crew off the slave trade, and then cripple the ship. Usually by shredding their sails. We have two swords now, and Sibbe and Hrodny have become expert with them. When a crew has to row back to Birka with shredded sails, they become the target of jeers—beaten by
women! It's an extra humiliation for us to savor—an extra way of warding them off the slave trade. It's as though we were fated to this work.

But in fact, probably we have not diverted anyone from the trade. We learned that lesson the first time we met a slave ship with a crew we had already tangled with once before. They had more weapons and additional crew, but none of them were any better at wielding those weapons. After all, you don't have to be good at fighting when your normal opponents are lone women or children. Slave ships don't even have to protect against pirates; no pirates other than us would choose to deal with the complications of human cargo over ordinary goods. So somehow these crew members hadn't realized it wasn't just a matter of having weapons, but of knowing how to use them. I asked the captain why he didn't take up another trade. He said the slave trade was all he knew. Inflexible moron.

Last week, though, we met a ship that had hired two warriors to come along. Archers, both. If it weren't for their haste in exposing their weapons, we might not have realized till too late. As it was, Unn and Hrodny and I made the others lie flat on the deck, and we shot the two warriors in the shoulder and threatened to make the rest of the crew jump overboard if they didn't hand over the slaves with no more trouble.

We haven't met a ship since, but it's clear that the easy days, such as they were, are past: Slave ships will have more and better protection from now on.

But the slave season in the Baltic is nearly over anyway. Two nights ago we came across a little pond upstream from the shore that was icing up. Ships that trade only locally are disappearing into storage in the boathouses—they have winter boathouses here, unlike in Jutland, because the weather gets so harsh. Ships that trade over far distances are heading across the open water to Trusø now; the trade will migrate south for the winter.

And I'm sick of this, truth be told. Every time we rescue slaves, we have to get them back home, and some of their homes are across the sea to the east. The Russians have no compunction about stealing and selling into slavery their own Slav women and children. We can spend a whole week returning them; once we even spent ten days. It is important work, but it's not what I'm here to do. So I actually rejoice inside when a slave decides to join us rather than return home, even though that usually means her home life was an abomination.

We now number fourteen. We are skilled and strong. But, good Lord, what a mess our routine has become. I have to change this. I know that. But I have no idea how.

The Birka market is nearly empty because it's mealtime.
This way there will be fewer people to stop us from carrying out our rescue plan for Mel, fewer witnesses, if in fact we ever do get the chance to go through with it, which looks more doubtful every day. Sometimes I think half my women are still with me out of loyalty. The other half, because any alternative open to them is hateful. No one really thinks we'll find a trace of Mel.

Something has to change. And something will, of course. Winter is almost upon us.

Frustration speeds my steps through the market, when I suddenly halt. A slave dealer has set up a tent with a rug on the ground in front. It's set back from the rest of the market, as though the dealer thinks his goods are special. Three women sit there, hair combed, faces washed. They are tied by the waist to a single rope. They are on display, like jewelry. The slave dealer stands off to the side, his back to us, talking with a customer, but it's the women that interest me. They're young and pretty, and they're murmuring.

In the language of Eire.

I'm sure of it. I have to strain to hear over the loud rush of blood in my ears, but I am totally sure of it. One of them tells the other that she's so grateful for the fish and goat after a week of nothing but boiled parsnips. She runs a finger through the now empty bowl beside her and licks it. That's what she said, those exact words: boiled parsnips.

Boiled parsnips are what they fed us on the slave ship seven years ago.

I wander away from my companions and closer to the girls—because that's what they are, really—girls my age. Fifteen years old, maybe sixteen. The girls stop talking. Like wary birds. How quickly people learn the way of animals when they become the hunted, the captured.

“What do you want?” comes from behind me. That voice, that accent.

I turn to look at the slave dealer. It's him. Older and heavier, but him. I sway on my feet. My stomach threatens to pitch. He smells of goat like he did years before. Yes, yes, the girls were just talking about goat, so that might have influenced me, but still I could swear it's him. I force myself to step closer and take a whiff. Clay. He reeks of it. The slave dealer seven years ago reeked of clay. I catch one hand in the other behind my back to stop the trembles. I look at him with as blank a face as I can manage.

“You're not a customer. So get away from my beauties.”

“How much do they cost?”

He raises a thick eyebrow. “One mark of silver. Each.”

“That's a lot for girls from Írland.”

He scratches his throat, and I can tell he wants to know how I found out where they came from. But all he says is, “So?”

“Is that what you got for the witch?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. Years ago. Seven years. The mute. She came from Írland too.”

His face goes slack. “Aist?”

Aist? Is that what he called Mel? I don't remember him giving her a name.

The man leans toward me. “The one with the large gold ring on a leather strap?”

Oh, good Lord, I'm right. It really is him. He's talking about that gold teething ring Mother gave Melkorka from when she was little, to carry it with us so that we could prove we were royal children if we needed to. The ring that was supposed to be part of keeping us safe. But nothing could have kept us safe from this animal. I fall back a step.

His eyes narrow. “She had hair the color of yours. But loose and curling.”

“Where is she now?” It's Sibbe speaking. She presses against me from one side and Thyra presses from the other and Matilda stands with her arms crossed at the chest in a belligerent pose.

“Who wants to know?”

“Alfhild,” says Sibbe. “And what is your name?”

“Gilli.”

“We'll pay,” I say.

The monster looks across us, then settles his eyes on me. “Are you Alfhild?”

“Yes.”

“You remind me of a little girl. A wild one. She jumped into the water and disappeared. Along with a boy. I thought they both died.”

“The boy might have.”

He runs his tongue across his teeth, then picks a bit of meat from the top ones. “She was bought by the Norseman Hoskuld. He took her to Iceland.”

He says the name funny, but I recognize it: Ísland. The very name turns my skin to gooseflesh. “Why?”