Bergen flashed Rune a grin.
“Father always did warn mother she was too soft on you,” Bergen said, tossing a flask to Rune, intentionally forcing him to catch it with his impaled shoulder.
With a wince, Rune stifled a groan and pulled off the stopper with his teeth. A second later he downed half the flask. Exhaling through the incessant pulsing in his shoulder, Rune delivered a swift vexed kick to the collection of furs he had dumped into a pile against the stern-side trestle where the men had stored the roller logs.
“Kallan.” He spoke gently, dropping himself into the pile of furs with a groan.
Grateful for the chance to ignore Bergen, Kallan kneeled on the furs behind Rune and quickly, gratefully, went to work. Rune was already talking to her over his shoulder when she rolled up her sleeves, withdrew her seax, and positioned the flat of the blade over the broken end of the arrow in his back.
“Alright, what you’ll need to do—”
Rune howled as Kallan slammed her palm into the blade, driving the arrow through the Rune’s shoulder. Happy to be busying herself with her hands, Kallan shuffled herself around to Rune’s front and took hold of the arrow’s tip, pulling the rest of the arrow out. The wound bled freely.
A second helping of curses rambled free from Rune’s mouth as Kallan proceeded to tear up strips of cloth she used to dab at the wound, saying nothing as she focused on her work. Throwing his head back, Rune gulped down the rest of Bergen’s mead. The sweat on his forehead beaded as he dropped the empty flask to his lap.
“You couldn’t use an apple?”
Kallan raised a hateful eye to Rune and ripped another strip of fabric.
“Where did you find the cloth?” Rune asked dragging his tongue through his stupor.
Again, Kallan met Rune’s glossed eyes as she ripped off another strip. Behind her, Ottar led a wave of grins that passed through the ship and ended with Bergen, each warrior understanding what Hel Rune was in for as Kallan made rags of Rune’s tunic.
Throwing back the empty flask before remembering it was empty. Rune suddenly realized the severity of his drunken state.
“Hey, Bergen,” Rune slurred, “What’s in this stuff?”
Kallan sat herself down against her pile of furs as Bergen flashed a grin that matched the gleam in his eye.
“What happened to your shirt?” he asked dropping himself at the tiller as Rune examined the frayed ends of his tunic.
“Move out!” Bergen bellowed content not to answer.
One by one, with gangplanks raised, the ships pushed off from shore and several men waded waist high in the water, passing the logs from shore to the rowers. With fluid precision, the rowers passed the logs overhead and laid them into the trestles. After climbing on board, the last of the men settled themselves into their places along the hides and floorboards.
Thirty rowers lined each side of each ship. Those who climbed from the water slogged to their sea chests and settled in place as the rowers took up their oars and pushed off the land while the seaside oarsmen began rowing. They found their rhythm and, within minutes, the river’s current carried them. The wind picked up and shortly thereafter, they found a favorable wind.
“Drop the sails!” Bergen shouted from his seat at the side oar.
In unison, a handful of those who had raised the roller logs proceeded to untie the sail fastened to the yardarm. They took up the halyards and, together, hoisted the yardarm to the tip of the mast, where the flag of Gunir, encrusted with the boar’s head encircled with runes, snapped in the wind.
Before they could finish tying off the lines and securing the sheets, the sails billowed. The increased speed was instant and, for the moment, Kallan forgot Rune’s drunkenness, his bloody shoulder, or the Dark One sitting behind her, coddling the tiller like a boy happy with a new stick.
With a newfound eagerness, she studied the ships behind them. Each followed suit and one by one, their sails unfurled, catching the wind that pushed them with ease through the water. In the far distance behind her ship, she found Astrid unconcerned with the sea voyage as he happily buried his head in his bucket of grains. She watched Gunnar with peeked interest as the old horse master inspected a fjord stallion. Giving Gunnar a playful swat, the horse whipped his black and white tail as the old codger averted his interests to the unusual strands of Freyja’s coat.
After patting the stallion’s hindquarters, Gunnar walked to the charcoal gray, courser mare. As tall as Astrid, she radiated with a black sheen that matched her sleek tail and long mane. Kallan lost herself in the serenity of that ship, where only the rowers and a man at the side oar were present with Gunnar and the horses.
She exhaled, slowly releasing her breath through her nose in an attempt to remain unnoticed by Bergen’s men. The wind whipped her hair about as she looked to the vibrant greens of Alfheim, almost within an arm’s reach along the banks of the river. Ahead, the Raumelfr captivated Kallan’s attention. The lands rose and fell with the river, moving and twisting with it as the winds carried them through the water.
“You’ve never been to sea before,” Rune said as drowsiness, pain, and liquor took the better part of him.
The interruption brought her dazed dreams back to the boat, reminding her of the company she kept aboard her enemy’s vessel. Quickly, she slunk back down into the pile of furs.
With the sails billowed, the rowers pulled in their oars and deposited them onto the floorboards, filling the ship with a collection of thuds and clunks. Stretching out among the barrels, sea chests, and ropes strewn about on the deck, Kallan watched, horror-stricken, as the Ljosalfar men on board proceeded to scratch, amuse, and relieve themselves overboard.
Quickly, Kallan readjusted her seat, settling for a view of the stern, where Bergen sat, relaxed and bare-chested. Rune’s head bobbed about sleepily as Kallan shifted her gaze from Bergen to the gunwale, to the hem of her skirts, and to Rune, who gave a sudden jerk of his head to force himself awake. The gnawing awareness of her enemy’s presence nagged at her consciousness.
At last, with much hesitation, Kallan raised her eyes to Bergen, who had fixed his full attention on her like a mountain cat stalking a lone, limp deer. The massive black of his eyes glared, loathing her presence there on his ship, as much as she hated being there. Despite shifting her position to better face Rune, Bergen’s dark eyes continued to dig into her.
Rune dozed again. His hand clutched tightly to the empty flask as Kallan clasped her hands to contain the urge to attack. Bergen’s scowl burrowed deeper, until the side of her head burned from his glare. Abandoning all regard, and embracing her resolve, Kallan snapped her eyes to Bergen and mirrored his dead, cold stare.
They glowered in silence, their scowls saying so much more than any throng of insults could ever say. Both held their stance, neither willing to break, both daring the other to be the first to weaken, to break the silence, to—
“Enough!” Rune barked, “We have three days ahead of us and I’ll be damned if I spend every bit of this voyage with the two of you snarling at each other!”
Bergen broke his grimace first and Kallan lowered her eyes. Catching a flash of fur and the tip of a tail of a white ship cat, for a moment, Kallan was relieved for the distraction.
Revived from whatever stupor Bergen’s mead had induced, Rune pushed himself up onto the furs, wincing, before settling himself back down against the trestle.
From the corner of her eye, Kallan peered at Bergen, who was suddenly interested on a certain point at the head of the ship.
“Ottar!” he called.
While picking at his fingers with the point of his dagger, a wide-shoulder man glanced up from where he leaned against the fore trestle. Pushing himself upright, he ambled to the stern. A large scar carved into his right shoulder flashed as he moved, holding Kallan’s attention longer than she had intended.
Stopping over Kallan, he turned his hateful eye down with a cold glare.
“What is it, Dokkalfr?” he growled.
“They don’t grow real men in that Mountain City of yours?”
Kallan dug her fingers into her skirts and, with all her will, forced her head low. While scowling, she attempted to calm the sick in her stomach as Ottar continued on toward Bergen. After a quick shuffle, Bergen passed the tiller to Ottar, who took Bergen’s seat.
Glancing away from the side oar, Kallan raised her face just in time to see Bergen unfasten his belt. Heat climbed her neck as she lowered her head and closed her eyes. Anger grated against the resounding laugh that eructed from Ottar.
“Something wrong, Princess?” Ottar jeered with rich vulgarity. “Did they neglect to teach you an appreciation for men?” He released another bout of laughter and Kallan balled her fists.
“Ottar,” Rune said against the trestle. “That’s enough.”
The big brute swallowed mid-guffaw and, with resumed silence, governed the side oar. Confounded, Rune gazed at Kallan’s grimace as the heavy clomp of Bergen’s boots returned.
In a torrent of billowed skirts, Kallan rose to her feet and, slamming her shoulder into Bergen’s, plodded to the front of the ship, paying no mind to the catcalls and jeers as she went.
“What did you do?” Bergen asked, watching the wind whip Kallan’s hair into the folds of her skirts as she came to stand near the ship’s bow.
“I’m not sure.” Rune stared, his brow still furrowed.
Stupidly, Bergen’s face stretched into a wide grin.
“You know how to pick them, don’t you,” Bergen said, shuffling his seat to the furs beside Rune. Exhaling, he dropped to the floor and leaned into the trestle.
“Why not let her go, Brother?” Bergen said, leaning in and dropping the amusement from his tone. “She doesn’t want to be here anymore than she’s wanted here. You could send an arrow to her back or I could pluck her off tonight while she sleeps.”
“She won’t sleep,” Rune said as he watched Kallan hug herself against the chill. “And she has to come with us.”
“Well, of course, she has to come with us.” Bergen scoffed dismissively. “But why take a bothersome prisoner to kill on ceremony when we can just kill her here? It’ll boost the men’s spirits.”
Rune kept his eyes fixed on the fore, watching, guarding, to ensure none of his men stepped out of line.
“There are greater enemies out there with greater happenings than any of us are aware of,” Rune said. “And unless we combine our efforts…” Rune tore his gaze from Kallan. “…we will never see the end of this conflict.”
Bergen leaned closer, eager for the moment to speak privately.
“I know you,” he said with a darkened look to his eye. “You don’t go gallivanting after wenches.” Bergen added a subtle nod toward the front the ship where Kallan stood. “What goes on, Brother?”
Rune shook his head.
“I don’t know. Not yet.”
“The least you could have done is let her sail with Gunnar,” Bergen said. “He hates everyone equally…unless they’re a horse.”
Without a second look to his brother, Rune made his way to the bow, stepping over men who slept and sulked, stretched out on the deck.
Grabbing the mainstay to keep his balance against the jostling ship, Rune came to stand beside Kallan who stared into the cold winds, grateful for the whistling that drowned out most of the comments behind her. She stared ahead, refusing to acknowledge his presence, the wind drying the bite of her tears from her eyes.
The boat’s stern cut into the river’s surface as it pushed on through the waters. The spray of the sea added to the chill, but she didn’t budge against the ruthless winds of the Nordic air.
“I am responsible for their behavior,” Rune said. “They mean no harm, really.”
He shifted his gaze to Kallan and followed the pale curve of her cheek, to her ear and down the lines of her neck. The only movement was of her hair whipping wildly about by the wind. With a sigh, Rune looked back to the river.
“Men aren’t as temperate as women,” he said. “We like our comforts and get crass when we lose them.”
He waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he looked back to Kallan who stared, still idle, still unmoving, distant and dead to the world around her. His jaw tightened as she withdrew, back into the black chasms of her mind where she harbored the remnants of her iron wall. Without a word, Rune trudged back to the stern and dropped himself back onto the pile of furs, ignoring the banter of laughs exchanged between Bergen and Ottar.
At the bow, Kallan stood, giving no sign that she lived or was aware of her surroundings as she sank back into the vacant depths of her mind.
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