Sweeps creaked in row-holes, driving the ships outward. Aboard his, Lysir unwrapped a carved and painted dragon head. He left it off near friendly shores, lest it anger the land-wights, but now he set it up to snarl at the prow. Thereafter he put Hadding at the helm and showed him how to steer.
Likewise did Hadding take his turns bending his back and tautening his thews to the oar stroke. He won to knowledge of knots and rigging, the care of a craft, the ways of doing things, the signs by which to set a course. There was time for this and more, because the crossing was not as short and easy as hoped. Clouds boiled up from the worldrim and over the sky; wind drove a lash of rain and spindrift; waves ran huge, gray and green and thunderous, beneath a storm-howl so loud that men could barely hear each other bellow and a cold that smote to the bone. Those who did not bail were at the oars, striving to keep the bow headed into the seas. Drenched, their hands blistered where calluses had worn away, skin cracked and stinging from salt, numb with weariness, they fought on.
Well northward were they driven, to claw off the lee shore of Gotland, before the storm waned. After that a fog rolled in. That dripping, silent blindness was in its way still more fearsome. When at last it lifted, the fleet was scattered.
Dauntless, Lysir spent days cruising to and fro in search. By ones and twos and threes he found the other ships. Mild weather cheered the crews. They raised masts to let the wind work for them. When it was not fair, they poled out the sails and tacked across it.
All these skills did Hadding gain, wonderfully fast. “It’s as though you recall what you were born knowing but had forgotten,” Lysir murmured, “and as if our woes came on us for you to do so the sooner.”
Hadding reddened with pride. The swing and throb under his feet, the reach of sight across restless mightiness, tang of salt and pitch and sunlight, whistling wind and rushing water, the ship like a living thing, like a woman clasping him, they were his; here he belonged.
The vikings had suffered no wreck, which seemed to them to bode well, but some hulls needed work and everyone needed quiet, uncrowded sleep. They sought back to Gotland and went ashore. Folk who saw them coming fled inland. Lysir’s men did not give chase, nor sack the steadings thereabouts. This island paid scot to the Swede-king, and though he was now Svipdag, that might change someday. Best not to make bitter foes needlessly. They contented themselves with rounding up what kine they found and holding a strand-hewing. The meat tasted good after nothing but stockfish and sodden flatbread. They filled their water casks, fixed their ships, dried themselves out, and put to sea anew.
And thus they came to Kurland. They made landfall south of the gulf that Lysir sought and bore along the coast until they found it. Far across the land, the smoke of watchfires. lifted. “That is as well,” said Lysir. “To do more than strike and run, we must meet Loker. The earlier the better. We’re late as is—not much time for plundering after the fight, if we’re to be home for harvest.”
They dragged their keels onto a sandy beach well within the gulf. On their left, farmland stretched green, a stockaded hamlet in the offing. All dwellers had gone inside with their livestock. Doubtless a man or two had galloped away to tell the king. On the right, thick with undergrowth, a wildwood loomed, farther than eye could follow. “I chose this landing because of that,” Lysir told Hadding. “Ii we stand in front of it, the foe can’t outflank us.” The young man took the fore-thoughtfulness to heart.
Lysir likewise held his crews back from trying to take the stronghold. “We’d spend lives for scant gain,” he said. “Once we’ve beaten Loker, we’ll grab it off readily enough, and everything else we want.”
Still, they grumbled, and quarrels flared in the three dreary days afterward. “This too is part of warcraft,” Lysir taught Hadding: “how to wait.”
Then at last iron blinked, horns dunted, feet and hoofs thudded, shouts rang raw, as the Wendish host arrived. It stopped a ways off, hundreds of men. A few leaders went on horseback, banners afloat overhead, and at the middle were ranked a few score in helmets and byrnies like the riders, the king’s Northern troopers. Otherwise the newcomers were tribesmen. Some of them had kettle hats and might wear a leather coat besewn with iron rings, but most owned merely cap, breastplate, and leggings of boiled hide, and maybe a shield. Their weapons were axes, spears, knives, and clubs that might or might not have stone heads. Such short bows as the vikings saw among them were better fitted for hunting than battle, and none of them was a slinger. Though outnumbered, Lysir’s folk bragged that what lay ahead would be more a reaping than a fight.
First, while men growled and glared across the ground between and shifted bristling from foot to foot, he sent one forward bearing a white shield and his word. The vikings would go peacefully home on payment of ten marks of gold to each and a hundred to himself, or the value in furs and thralls.
Loker spat and ordered the man back. As he left, the king flung a spear after him, soaring over his head.
“He learned that from his Northmen,” Lysir muttered. “It means he’ll slaughter us all for the gods.”
Hadding gulped. “It’ll go the other way,” he answered. He heard his voice waver. Anger at that burned unsureness out of him.
“We’ll try for it,” said Lysir,
