Corban went to find a bailer. The air was blustery and warm, so that he was sweating under his cloak. In the stern, leaning on the long arm of the steerboard, Ulf was muttering to himself. He looked up into the sky and Corban saw his brow furrow and his lips purse. Corban sat just forward of him and bailed steadily; whenever he stopped his stomach began to heave, so he kept himself working. The other men crouched together amidships in the narrow space where there was no cargo and played dice and dozed. The rain pelted down, and the wind rose.
The rower in front of Corban twisted to look over his sunburnt shoulder. “Ulf, take us in! Something’s blowing up!”
Ulf snarled something under his breath. He cast a look landward, where white waves crashed against the shore. He caught Corban watching him and said, “We should have stayed where we were last night.” The sail fluttered abruptly, and the wind fell out of it. Ulf leaned on the steerboard and the ship creaked and heeled over and the sail filled again, but now they were headed straight away from the land, out to sea.
Corban gave up fighting his stomach, and bent over the side and threw up.
The rower in front of him was big and brawny, his shoulders humped with muscle, so that his head looked too small. He twisted his head around again, and again he shouted at Ulf. “Take us in! You’re a damned fool! Take us in!”
“We can’t go in,” Ulf said, under his breath. He cast a look up into the sky again.
The rain pounded them, and although it was hardly midday the sky turned dark, and the wind rose, keening off the rigging of the ship. The ship churned along, driving through the waves. Dark and splashed with foam, the seas were mounting steadily higher, slapping up over the bow and pouring down into the hull. Corban bailed; the other men bailed; Ulf clung to the steerboard, keeping the ship before the wind and bow to the waves. Nobody spoke. The land was out of sight now, far behind them.
The wind was rising. The ship thrashed and struggled up the lifting flanks of the waves, lurched and thrashed down the other side. Corban was sick again. The ship was taking on water faster than he and the other men could bail it out. The brawny man began to shout at Ulf again.
“You fool! You’re no captain, Ulf! You got us into this!”
Ulf bit his lips, his eyes narrowed, and said nothing. Corban, exhausted and sick, crept into the bow and curled up on a heap of fleece to sleep for a while.
He woke in darkness. The ship was pitching under him so that he could not gain his feet; hanging onto the side of the ship, he dragged himself aft. As soon as he got out of the shelter of the bow the wind blasted him, icy and salt-laden. The ship was lumbering along before it, the sail taut and all the rigging singing; he saw the next wave rise before them like a snow-capped mountain and the breath went out of him. He clutched the gunwale and shrank down and the ship rose, climbing the wave’s steep face, until it seemed to stand on its stern. He heard someone screaming. Clinging to the gunwale he pressed himself to the curved hull of the ship, desperate for its scant shelter. The wave topped over them and broke and dark water thundered down into the ship. The torrent wrenched and hauled at him and he buried his face against his arm and held on, his fingers biting into the wood of the gunwale, his arms aching, and the ship dropped suddenly, pitching forward, shuddering all its length, and he lost his grip and slid feetfirst back into the bow again.
He got his legs under him, sobbing, every muscle quivering. Overhead, the sail swelled out in a great taut drum full of wind; knee-deep water sloshed back and forth in the hull. At the far end of the ship he could just make out Ulf, his beard and hair streaming, clinging to the steerboard. The other men were huddling by the mast. The ship angled down into the trough of a wave and the bucket came floating up the hull toward Corban. He began to bail again, scooping with the bucket and flinging the water over the downwind side.
Then they were laboring up the side of a huge wave and the ship drove its bow into the side of the wave and Corban’s breath stopped; he felt the sea beating them down, bearing over them, ready to plunge them like an arrow down to the bottom of the sea. But the ship broke free, shipping dark water over either shoulder, thrust its bow up into the air again, and staggered on.
A cold fear clutched him. He was going to die and no one would ever know. Benna would never know. Mav would never know how he had searched for her. The wind shrieked past his ear like horrible laughter. His fingers were numb; as fast as he bailed he was still to his knees in icy water. The ship bucked and threw him hard against the side, and he nearly went overboard. He could hear somebody praying, or cursing. A wave broke over him and clubbed him down against the bottom of the boat. Water closed over his head. He wrenched himself up again, gasping for breath. The ship was wallowing, helpless, broadside to the waves; overhead, the sail streamed out from the yard in tattered ribbons of cloth.
Ulf was shouting in the stern, calling orders and waving his arm. Corban crept toward the mast, clinging to the gunwale, and found an oar, stowed against the ship’s planking. There seemed fewer of the other men than there had been. Two of them were struggling to get their oars out but he saw no sign of the brawny man, and some others also were missing. The roar of the wind and the sea together made a sound so huge it was like no sound at all, as if he were deaf. The ship yawed and pitched under his feet. They were broadside to the waves; when the next one rose it rolled them over onto the starboard gunwale. Corban, braced on the rowing bench, ran his oar out and dug the blade into the sea and leaned all his weight on it, trying to swing the ship to meet the waves; he braced all his strength and weight against the sea itself to turn the ship. Water pounded down over him, slamming against his head and back like a hammer. The other two men had thrust their oars out. The ship answered, heeling slightly over, and labored bow first up the next towering cliff of the sea. Corban flailed with his oar; one stroke bit so deep into the sea it nearly tore the wood from his hands and the next swished through the empty air.
Night came, or he thought it was night: so dark he could see nothing, the rain pelting him, the oar jerking and wobbling in his hands. The sea burst in his face. He got a mouthful of water and choked and coughed. His eyes burned and ached, full of salt, unbearable. He was drowned already, he thought wildly, he was dead and this was hell. Beside him another man groaned and swung at his oar. He could see no one else. Icy water swirled around his ankles. His teeth chattered so hard his jaw hurt.
All that night they rowed, and the storm roared over them. Dazed and weary, he thought he heard voices in the wind, demons or gods, calling out to one another. He strained and heaved at the oar. If he stopped rowing they would all die. The salt crusted on his face, and his lips cracked and bled and his eyes hurt, and he could see nothing, although now there was light; he could see that much, the pale light filtering through the screaming wind. He hauled at the oar, his muscles cramping, his legs like stones.
“Stop,” a voice said, in his ear. “You can stop now.”
“No,” he said, or thought. “No.” And leaned into the oar again, reached for the sea with the blade.
“Yes,” Ulf said, with a grunt of a laugh. “Yes, stop. We’re out of it—for now, anyway. You have to rest.”
Corban shuddered; he lifted his head, blinking. He could see nothing. But the ship was quiet under him. The wind had stopped. He let go of the oar with one hand and rubbed at his eyes. The touch was an exquisite agony, his eyeballs throbbing, and he lowered his hand and shut his eyes tight for a moment and then forced them open.
The day had come. Above him the sky was a cloudy blue. They were lying on the breast of the sea, riding long, slow waves.
He rested on the oar, too tired to move. Ulf handed him a chunk of water-soaked bread.
“Eat.”
“Where are we?” Corban asked.
“I don’t know. Way west of where we should be.” Ulf held out a wooden cup of beer.
“Water,” Corban said; his throat was raw, and the thought of pouring beer down it made him choke. Yet the bread was so
salty he could barely eat that either.
“There is no water,” Ulf said. “Eat the bread, Corban. I think there’s another storm coming up.”
Corban stuffed the soggy bread into his mouth and took the beer. Ulf nodded to the east, and he turned and saw the sky there walled up with clouds, grey towers into the peak of the sky. With some effort he swallowed the bread.
“It could at least be blowing us toward Hedeby.”
Ulf laughed. “Storms never take you where you want to go.”
Corban was trembling with weariness. A lot of the cargo was gone, he guessed swept overboard in the waves. By the mast, two men were curled up sleeping, their heads on their arms. He looked around the ship, and then again, startled.
“Where are the others?”
Ulf shook his head, and shrugged one thick shoulder. “I should have stayed inshore, that other morning.”
Corban swallowed through his dry and swollen throat. He looked suddenly out over the water, as if he could see their heads bobbing, swimming after them through the long sweeping rollers.
Ulf said, “I need your help.”
“I’m tired.”
“Yes, you should be. None pulled so long or so well as you, no one else. You rowed us through that, do you know it? But now I need your help. These two aren’t much use even in good times.”
Corban gathered this in. He could not remember anything of the storm but the buffeting, screaming wind and the sight of a tall sea climbing and climbing up over the ship. His arms ached. He levered himself up off the bench, and scrambling over what was left of the cargo followed Ulf to the forecastle, where the captain broke out another sail.
The eastern sky was black with clouds now. As they took the sail to the mast the first drops of rain struck Corban’s back. The rising swells of the sea were pocked with splashes.
He said, “Water.”
“Oh, aye,” Ulf said. “You’re a shrewd one, there, Corban.”
They ripped away what was left of the old sail. Ulf was for throwing it overboard, but Corban rolled it up and stuffed it under a rowing bench. They bent the new sail to the yard; the wind was running across the sea toward them, the long swells breaking into sharper, higher rises, curling over at the tops with foam. Beneath the great black cloud to the east, a flicker of lightning showed.
They hauled the sail on its yard up the mast, and Ulf leapt back to the steerboard and got them around to run before the wind. Corban took the old sail, tore off the biggest whole patch he could find, and hung it in a pouch across the converging wales of the forecastle to catch the rain.
The ship pitched and bucked across the seas. Behind them the storm crept closer, drowning the sky, driving the sun away, and the rain fell steadily harder. It filled up the hollow of the sail across the bow and Corban scooped it up with his hands and drank and washed his face off, groaning in the pleasure of the fresh water in his throat. The other men saw and sprang on him, pulled him away, and wailed to see the water gone. He made his way back to the stern, to Ulf, so they could use the rain as it collected in the sail.
Ulf’s beard was stiffened to a wedge with salt, his eyes bloodshot, his lips peeling. He said, “What did you do, up there?”
“There’s water,” Corban said. “I can do this. Tell me what to do.”
The captain grunted at him, frowning, and glanced forward, where the other men were splashing up the rainwater. He thrust the steerboard bar into Corban’s hands.
“Watch the sail. Keep us headed straight ahead, but if the sail starts to luff, get her around so she’s true to the wind again.” Ulf slapped him on the back and plowed away up the ship toward the bow.
Corban sat down, clutching the wooden bar of the steerboard; it jerked under his hands, as if it wanted to break free and send the ship crashing back to the storm, and he tightened his fists on it. The ship was leaping across the sea like a deer, bounding and jerking along the waves. Even in the rising chorus of the storm he could hear the water singing past the hull. Overhead the dull roaring storm pressed down over them, but far off on the horizon was a streak of blue sky shot through with streamers of sunlight, and he aimed the ship toward it. He hunched his head down into his shoulders, and pulled his sodden cloak up over himself. Ulf came back and took the helm again, and Corban climbed back to the space amidships and lay down and was at once asleep.
The wind blasted fitfully and violently up out of the southeast, and now they were caught in some current of the sea that bore them on steadily northward. With so few rowers they could not move the ship against the wind and the current. Ulf doled the bread out to them and they caught water in Corban’s water trap and fished, and waited for a wind that would take them east again.
The other two oarsmen whined and griped and fought whenever they weren’t rowing. The bigger of them was named Floki; his eyes looked in two different directions at once, one seeing and the other just wild. The smaller, straw-haired and wiry, was named Gisur. He was the one who fished.
He caught a big lump-jawed cod, and they divided it up. Corban chewed the raw meat carefully, picking the bones out of his teeth, trying to make the taste last. Floki gobbled his down, and said, “I didn’t get as much as everybody else.”
Gisur was gnawing on the fish’s head. Ulf, beside him, said, “You got what everybody got.”
Floki’s lips curled back from his teeth; he drew his head down into his shoulders. His wild eye glared out to sea but his good eye was fixed on Ulf. “You lie. You shouldn’t eat anything. You’re the reason we’re lost. We should eat you.”
Corban looked away, his nerves sore. His mouth was dry; they had been out of water for over a day and he scanned the horizon for clouds, for rain. Ulf was ignoring Floki’s jibes, staring off across the waves, his mouth twisted. Gisur collected the gnawed fish head and the guts and bones of his catch and flung them out over the gunwale, and baited his hook again with some saved bit of offal. Floki was still glaring at Ulf.
“You got my brother drowned, Ulf, I won’t forget that. One of these days I’ll—”
He froze, his eyes bugging out; a gurgle escaped his throat. Corban whipped around to look where he was looking, past Ulf, and jerked his hand back off the gunwale. Gisur whispered, “Blessed mother—”
Higher than Corban’s head a great dark fin was gliding by the ship, so close he could have reached out and touched it. He sat rigidly still, not breathing, his belly locked up in fear. The tall fin went slowly the length of the ship, and then silently dropped down below the surface of the sea. For a moment, Corban, his breath stuck in his throat, could see a vast dark shape down in the water, larger than the ship, and with a whisk of its forked tail it dove away.
Gisur whispered, “God have mercy on us—”
Floki shoved an elbow into him. “Shut up! Shut up!”
Tears slid down his cheeks; he turned away, his shoulders slumping. Nobody spoke for a long while.
Another storm was overtaking them. Late the next day Corban went to sleep with the clouds towering black up over the whole sky and woke some while later, soaking wet, in the dark, with rain pouring down on him. The two other rowers were lying huddled up against him, asleep, and they did not waken. He straightened up onto his knees; he could see nothing, only feel the ship pitching forward down the slope of a wave and then catching up sharply, lurching around, and driving forward. Rain sluiced down his face. He began to shiver. His mind locked onto the thought that there was either too much water or not enough. The ship shuddered down another ranging wave and heeled over, and he grabbed for the gunwale. When something touched his shoulder he jumped.
It was Ulf, streaming wet. He shouted, “Take the helm. I have to sleep.”
Corban groped his way back to the stem; Ulf had lashed the steerboard bar down, and the ship was falling off the wind; he wedged himself into the shelter of the high curved stern and brought her back on course. Looking forward he could just make out the swell of the sail stiff as iron in the blast of the wind, and the p
row of the ship, first rising up toward the impenetrable black sky and then down into the high-climbing seas. By the mast Ulf had kicked and shoved Floki awake and made him bail and he sat on a rowing bench listlessly heaving water over the side.
Corban was shivering, his fingers numb on the steering bar; his teeth began to chatter. He wrapped his hands in a fold of his cloak, and pulled another fold up over his head, tucking himself as far as he could back into the shelter of the high curved stern.
The ship drove steadily on before the storm. Twice Ulf woke up and made the other men bail, but when he went back to sleep they quit at once and lay down again by the foot of the mast. Corban could hear Floki sobbing and screaming. The wind was swirling, gusting, now softening down to a whimper, and then bursting up with a roar, and suddenly like a blow from a fist it struck the ship and heeled her over on her beam.
Corban’s head slammed into the stern, and he almost lost the steering bar; dazed, he caught himself sliding down into the hull, and braced his feet and hauled on the bar, but the ship would not answer. Steeply alist it wallowed dead in the water; a huge wave carried them up and up, the ship groaning, and at the peak of the wave Corban saw, against the sky, that the sail was gone.
He heard screaming. The mast had broken off, leaving a waist-high jagged stump; the sail lay all over the sea beside the ship, a mess of ripped cloth, dragging the ship over onto its flank. He let go the useless steering bar and staggered down amidships.
Floki and Gisur were heaving at the sail, which lay half over the gunwale and half in the sea like a great anchor pulling them down. Floki abruptly gave up and sank down on his knees. Ulf reared back, an axe in his hands, chopping at the rigging that held the broken mast and sail all fast to the ship. Corban got his frozen hands under the edge of the mass of icy cloth.
“Wait—wait—” Under Ulf’s axe the rigging snapped apart; Corban and Gisur and Ulf all shoved together, and the sail slid away and the ship righted itself.
The Soul Thief Page 16