The Navigator's Touch

by Julia Ember

  Yarra trotted through the sand toward us. Her beige wool dress was soaked and stained with kelp. She stopped next to Lief and tugged on one of his dark braids. They were only a year apart, but couldn’t have been more different. While Lief was tall with deep-brown hair and a dreamer’s soft, blue eyes, Yarra looked like a miniature version of me. She had a slight build, all angles, that people who didn’t know her called delicate. She wore her white-blonde hair shaved on one side and braided tightly on the other. We had the same warm, brown eyes.

  Yarra picked up the practice sword and spun it in her deft, small hands. She pursed her lips and whistled. A few seconds later, a high-pitched whinny answered. His head held high, a golden stallion cantered toward us.

  She’d called him Mjolnir, for the thunder god’s hammer, and already the horse was living up to his fearsome namesake. He stopped in front of us and pawed the beach before pinning back his ears and squealing at Lief. My brother stumbled back, but Yarra stepped forward and stroked Mjolnir’s black muzzle. She had raised him from a colt and now she was the only human who could touch him without fear of his teeth.

  “Boost me up,” she commanded Lief, who obeyed the little tyrant without delay. She settled onto Mjolnir’s back and pointed the practice sword at me. “See if you can hit us,” she dared. “That’s real practice.”

  “I’m not going to hit you, Yarra,” I began, thinking of what Mama would say if she ran home crying, but then she smacked me across the arm with the wood, hard enough to leave a red, stinging welt. I growled. Mjolnir sprinted away, carrying the sound of Yarra’s laughter with him.

  I knelt and rummaged through my pack until I found two more wooden staves. Gripping one in each hand, I sank into a fighting crouch. Yarra whirled Mjolnir around. She circled me, and I lunged for her, but the horse pivoted as if born to battle, always keeping Yarra just beyond my reach. My cousin rode as if Mjolnir were an extension of her own body. I never saw her hands or legs move, but the stallion danced for her. It was as if the warhorse and the little girl conspired in a silent language the rest of us weren’t invited to understand.

  A flutter of jealousy rose in my chest. No matter how I tried, I would never ride like that. If Yarra had wanted to train as a warrior, no jarl would have refused her after they watched her ride.

  After ten minutes of sparring, I dropped to the beach in exhaustion; my face was red and sticky. Lief knelt by my side and pressed my waterskin to my lips. I drank greedily, then announced, “She’s killed me.”

  Two black hooves stopped beside me. Yarra dismounted and handed over the practice sword. She smiled widely, revealing a gap where her front teeth were missing. “A worthy battle,” she said formally, then tackled Lief into the sand.

  When the sun had disappeared, I’d brought Yarra home to my uncle’s cottage. Uncle Bjorn had shaken his head at the sand in her hair and Mjolnir’s sweat-streaked coat, but I could see the smile twitch behind his pursed lips. “The two of you,” he said to me as he smoothed a broad hand over Yarra’s head. “Such a pair. Poor Lief.”

  He gave me a basket of salted herring and a loaf of brown bread. “For your breakfast. Your mother’s been in the barn all day.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be grateful for the food,” I said.

  Bjorn ruffled Lief’s hair, then said to me, “I saw you practicing with Astra the other day. If you come by the forge tomorrow afternoon, I’ll give you some pointers on your grip.”

  Lief and I trotted across the courtyard that separated Uncle Bjorn’s cottage from our larger house. Inside, the house was already quiet; the candles had been extinguished. Sun-drained, I stumbled to my room and fell into my bed.

  It was strange to sleep alone. Until a month ago, I had shared a sleeping space with my sister. But she had accepted a marriage proposal and had moved into her new husband’s house down the road. The room was still filled with the echoes of our laughter. I drew the wool blanket up to my chin.

  I was sound asleep when a thin scream pierced the night. My first thought was to turn over. Lief often had night terrors, but Mama always went to him. I lay in the dark, staring at the thatched ceiling and waiting for the sound of Mama’s footsteps in the hall. When they didn’t come, I sighed and grabbed the flickering candle from my bedside table. The air tasted faintly of smoke. Uncle Bjorn must have started early in the forge. My legs shook from sparring in the sand, and I wished that, just once, Lief could comfort himself.

  Another scream came, half-muffled, as if Lief held his pillow to his face. He was sometimes embarrassed by being scared, and I felt ashamed for begrudging him. I sped down the hall. Papa often slept through loud noises, but Mama had to be exhausted not to hear Lief’s screams. She’d been asleep already when we’d returned from the beach. I’d left Uncle Bjorn’s basket of food on the kitchen table, ready for her whenever she awoke.

  When I reached Lief’s room, firelight flooded in through his open window. I covered my mouth with my sleeve as smoke reached into the room like a clawed hand.

  “Lief?” I called, striding across the room and fanning smoke.

  My brother was missing. Turning on my heel, I raced for my parents’ bedchamber. But a hand reached from the shadows to grab me and cover my mouth. A sword, dripping with blood, pressed against my belly. My candle dropped, extinguished when it hit the ground.

  “Roll up her sleeve,” a gruff voice barked.

  My captor pulled me tighter against his chest and ripped the sleeve of my wool nightdress. His breath smelled of ale and teeth rotting from scurvy. Another sailor, gray-bearded and wearing a blood-red tunic, stepped in front of me. A few months ago, a man wearing the same livery had come to buy a horse from Mama. I recognized it as belonging to Haakon, Jarl of Bjornstad.

  The man seized my arm. His eyes traveled the shifting blue navigator’s marks on my forearm. A slow, feral grin spread across his face. “Finally. Take her.”

  “Where is my brother?” I demanded, struggling as the sailor hoisted me over his shoulder. The blood on the sword… I suppressed a cry. They’d come from my parents’ chamber. That was why Mama hadn’t come. Numbness spread from my stomach up my throat, making it hard to breathe. My parents were gone. They had to be, or my stepfather would be flying at these invaders, his hammer raised. But I hadn’t seen any blood in Lief’s room. It might not be too late for him. I couldn’t leave him behind, alone.

  The sailor wiped his sword on his trousers. “Our orders were to take the young ones who showed the marks. Kill the rest.”

  Lief had been born without the moving, magical tattoos that covered most of my torso and arms. The magic travelled in families, linking back to the god, Heimdallr, or so we were taught. My magic had come from my mother’s side, inherited from a distant relative that Mama never wanted to talk about. The outside world was dangerous for the gods-touched, and my grandmother had left the city behind when my Uncle Tor had been born with the marks, hoping to keep her children hidden, safe.

  I’d never met Tor. He had been a styrimaðr and had left the village, despite my grandmother’s protestations. He had been a great captain—the leader of a hundred men and five ships—until the sea claimed him. Mama never forgot his death, and whenever I talked about leaving the village and joining a jarl’s household to fight, it hovered in the space between us.

  No one knew why the power showed up in some and lay dormant in others. None of my cousins showed any sign of the navigator’s marks either, though Papa often said that Yarra’s will was a force all its own.

  “It doesn’t show up in everyone at first!” I twisted in my captor’s hold and tried to scratch his face. “Some people don’t show until they’re adults!”

  It was a lie, small and desperate. The markings showed up in our first weeks of life or not at all. I had been born with small blue storm clouds on my arms; the clouds had birthed continents in the succeeding weeks. Lief was good at hiding. Maybe he had scre
amed when the men had first come in but run while they attacked our parents. He could be in the stable now. My uncle’s cottage was just a stone’s throw from the barn. Lief could have reached it. He could have warned them. Uncle Bjorn worked the forge all day. He had muscles like a bear and could wield a war-axe better than any man in the village. He had taught me to fight, against my mother’s wishes. They might all be safe.

  The warrior’s hard eyes took on a thoughtful glow. Jerking his head toward the door, he said to his companion, “Get this one on the ship. Change of plans. I’ll get the others to round up the rest of the children.”

  “My brother?” My stomach lurched.

  “Too late for him.” The man’s hold around my waist tightened. “Don’t worry. We made it painless.”

  I jabbed my thumbs into his eye-sockets. He dropped me with a howl; his hands flew to his face. As blood poured down his cheeks, I ran from my house and into the stable courtyard. I thought of Astra, stirring the dwindling embers of a cookfire in her grandmother’s battered cottage by the sea, and of Yarra, sleeping in her bed, unaware of what might be coming. I swallowed hard. It would be too late for Astra. Her cottage was the closest dwelling to the docks. I had to warn Uncle Bjorn. I thought of Yarra meeting the same fate as Lief and grief took away the ache in my legs. I sprinted.

  Beyond the wall of our stable courtyard, more men in the same dark red tunics scurried like rats from house to house. They moved silently, never giving the occupants time to wake. They carried war-axes and greatswords, crusted in blood. A few people reached the streets. They tried to shout warnings, but were cut down as they fled their burning houses.

  “Uncle Bjorn!” I screamed. Ahead, the cottage was dark, with no light seeping under the door. Scrap metal and stones cut my bare feet; the smoke rising from our neighbors’ roofs made me gasp. The horses in the barn squealed and kicked at the boards of their stalls as fire lit the hay around them.

  Strong hands seized my arms and hair. I had no weapon, so I bit and clawed. Two warriors dragged me between them, through the streets of my blazing town, to the dark warship that bobbed in our once-quiet harbor.

  Three

  Sólmánuður

  The Sun’s Month

  July

  They threw me into the ship’s belly, an unlit chamber filled with sacks of dried fish, kegs of fresh water, and piles of bloody clothes. I screamed curses at them until they slammed the door. A gangly boy huddled in the corner; his long legs were curled up to his chest. I recognized him. Vidar was the son of the town swordsmith and was a few years younger than my seventeen. He was the only other child in our generation to bear the navigator’s marks, which made him a kinsman of sorts, however distant. He had his hands pressed over his ears and he rocked back and forth in time with the ship’s sway.

  I stumbled to his corner and sank to the floor beside him. I was still breathing hard. My feet were lacerated, with small stones sticking to my heels. I wore only a nightdress and a blue pendant my grandmother had given me, which I never took off.

  Vidar glanced at me with swollen eyes. I had known him for years. He and Lief had been friends, and my mother had taught him to ride after his father bought a roan gelding with one eye the color of a sunlit sky. Vidar had never been much of a rider, nor much of a swordsman. If we were going to get out of the ship alive, it was up to me to lead us.

  I scanned the ceiling, looking for any weak points or cracks. For any chance of escape, we needed to get off the ship before it sailed too far from the coast. I was a strong swimmer, but no one could survive long in the freezing Arctic waters that separated our island from the continent. The cold water made even the best swimmers disoriented, until they couldn’t tell if they swam toward the surface or into the depths.

  Vidar wiped his face on his torn sleeve. “They killed everyone. Even my father, who has the marks…”

  I nodded and bit my lower lip. It didn’t surprise me that the sailors had killed Vidar’s father. Unlike his son, Floki was a formidable warrior, as skilled at using a sword as he was at forging them. And he was rumored to have a will as unbreakable as his tempered steel. Mama had always complained about his stubbornness after the town met for council. Jarl Haakon would have struggled to coerce him.

  The warrior who had grabbed me had said they were looking for children. They only wanted the weak, those they thought they could compel. I scoffed. I would show them what a mistake they had made. Haakon’s fighters had probably imagined that they’d be stealing babies from their mothers’ breasts. They’d missed that opportunity by a decade. Only one baby had been born in the past few years showing the navigator’s marks, and she had died while still an infant. Vidar and I were the youngest they would find.

  I wondered where Yarra was now. There had been no sound from my uncle’s cottage. She could be dead, a small corpse lying cold on her bed, fragile in death in a way she had never been in life. The thought made my stomach cramp so hard I nearly vomited. I would have to believe, as much as I could, that she was still alive, that my lie had saved her.

  “We have to get out,” I said. “As soon as we can. Once the ship rows away, we’ll have less of a chance. If we can get off, we can swim to shore and run for the mountains. I know the caves.”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Vidar demanded and sniffled hard. “They’re killing everyone. There’s no one for us to go back to.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Ragna,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “It is.”

  Anger coursed through me, hot as fire. “So they killed everyone you cared about, and you’re just going to do what they want?” I stood and paced the hold, kicking clothes and empty sacks aside. “My cousin might still be alive. I have to go back for her.”

  A pair of sturdy leather boots caught my eye, half-hidden behind a sack of pelts. I grabbed them. They were far too large, made for a man, but I shoved my feet into them anyway. I didn’t want to cut my feet when I made my escape.

  “We choice do we have?” Vidar wrapped his arms around his chest again. “I don’t want to die.”

  The memories of the warrior’s sword, dripping with blood as he emerged from my parents’ bedchamber, and my brother’s final scream made me shiver. “I don’t want to die either.” Blinking back tears, I said, with more conviction than I felt, “At least not yet. If I’m dead, I can’t make them pay.”

  * * *

  We were left alone while the ship’s crew prepared to sail. Above us, boots drummed on the deck, the shroud creaked, and the ship’s stryimaðr barked orders. I found a loose plank and ripped it from the ceiling. The hole wasn’t wide enough to crawl through, so I fashioned the board into a weapon. Vidar watched me with wide eyes as I jumped on the plank to break off a shard of wood, then scraped it against a barrel of ale to taper the end into a point. The only way out of the hold was through the door. When they opened it, I would be ready.

  “You shouldn’t provoke them,” Vidar squeaked. While I sharpened my pike, he had made a nest in the corner and used a tattered cloak as a blanket.

  “I’m not just going to provoke them. I’m getting out,” I snapped.

  “Lift the anchor!” A gruff, male voice shouted. “Take your oars.”

  A heavy metal clang sounded on the deck and the ship lurched forward. I swallowed and sat beside Vidar. I clutched my makeshift pike, but covered it with a pelt, out of view. Anyone who came to check on us would be armed. I couldn’t rush at them with a piece of wood when they would have iron axes and hammers. I needed the sailors to come close enough to take them by surprise. I might only get one chance to run.

  Lulled by the swaying motion of the ship, Vidar fell asleep. Tears made trails down his soot-stained face. He twitched in a dream. Suddenly, he reminded me too painfully of Lief. I shifted so he could rest his head on my shoulder.

  While we waited, my mind churned over the raid. Jarl Haakon’s wea
lth was already legendary. It was said that the jarl had built a burial mound just to fill the hillside with his gold. He had hundreds of warriors at his command and hired mercenaries from all over the continent. A man that rich already, why would he need a navigator? What treasure couldn’t he find?

  The door flew open. Vidar woke with a whine. I tightened my grip on my pike. A willowy, dark-haired sailor in a blood-splattered tunic pushed his way inside. He tossed a loaf of bread at us. Vidar caught it, but I kept my hands, and my weapon, hidden.

  Vidar ripped off a piece of the bread. He popped it into his mouth and chewed greedily. How could he be hungry? After everything we’d just endured? I tried not to resent him for his easy concession. He was still a child, and I shouldn’t blame him for trying to survive.

  When I made no move to touch the bread, the man narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong, girl? Doesn’t measure up to your usual? What your mother made?”

  “I don’t dine with murderers.” I lifted my chin and stared him down.

  Vidar made a noise somewhere between a snort and a whimper.

  The sailor stepped forward with a snarl. “You’ll dine when and where I say. Be a good girl and take a bite. Or I can make this nasty for you. Our jarl won’t be pleased if you die on this voyage.”

  “Fuck your jarl,” I said. Vidar tensed.

  The sailor stooped and yanked the pelt away. When his gaze fell on my sharpened pike, he staggered back and raised his sword. He had an inexpert grip on the hilt and a farmer’s calloused fingers. His eyes were bloodshot; his knees still shook with battle fever. I knew that leaders like Haakon, who sent men on continuous campaigns, required an endless supply of new blood to fill their feasting halls. When they were out of seasoned warriors, they turned to the fields for men. It didn’t seem that Haakon spent a lot of time educating his new warriors. This man was new and clumsy.