Raven of the Waves

by Michael Cadnum

  Even to run a farm a man needed slaves, but who in Spjothof could afford such people? The folk of the village were warriors, and proud. No one would laugh in the port halls of the north if a man said he was from Spjothof. It was a village that carried its name well. But it did take slaves to work a farm properly. Three slaves for a farm of twelve cows and two horses—this was what a man needed. But no one in Spjothof had the gold to buy slaves from the Swedish traders, and no one in Spjothof would suffer a Dane for a slave.

  Without gold, how could a man pay bride-price? And without bride-price, there would be no bridal ale. A three-year ox would not be slaughtered. There would be no feast. There would be no wife. Gold was the cure to all the ills of every man in Raven. Every shipmate sailed in an attempt to solve the problem of poverty or the curse of being the youngest son.

  Lidsmod huddled. He coughed water. The inside of his nose burned with salt. He did not know if he huddled against the planks, or against Ulf’s sea chest, or against Trygg’s leather sole. He did all of that at once, flung from bottom to side to foot, and back again. He was soaked and icy cold. His fingers were wrinkled. He kept himself rolled like a sea snail, so that he would not bump his head.

  This was not a storm, thought Lidsmod. A storm was waves and wind and rain, perhaps even lightning. No, this was the constant sinking of a ship. Raven plunged into the wall of water. The men were all underwater, their shoulders hunched. Then the ship was in the sky. It was out of the water entirely, a thrown spear.

  Lidsmod was not afraid of drowning. He had something more important to fear. He was going to vomit! These warriors would never be seasick. They had all been through worse. This was probably not a storm to them at all, Lidsmod felt. They were probably asleep, most of them, bored by what was to them slightly choppy water.

  Njord wrestled with the steering oar. His face streamed water so that it seemed the beardless white-haired man had a long beard of sea. He blew sea from his mouth. And he looked joyous! Lidsmod wondered if his good friend was suddenly mad. Of course, Lidsmod reminded himself, a salty helmsman like Njord would love a storm like this.

  And Lidsmod was about to throw up. He had been on boats since he was an infant, but never a great ship like this, and never in a storm. Lidsmod clenched his fists. He would not be sick! He willed it. I, Lidsmod, he thought, son of Leif and Fastivi, sharer of the Raven’s glory, will not be sick. I will not vomit. I will not bring shame to myself and to my mother.

  The plank at his nose had a golden pattern. The details of the wood, the little blond currents of it, were composed, he saw for the first time, of even slighter details, like the hairs of a golden woman. Like the secret hair of Hallgerd, the jarl’s daughter, tall and high-breasted, that night under the last fat moon of spring. Lidsmod tried to fight off his nausea by recalling vividly that one coupling, his only such experience, at the edge of the sheep meadow.

  When all the young women threw spears in a yearly contest after the harvest, Hallgerd’s went farthest, buried deep in the green earth. Why was it that such a gifted young woman would take Lidsmod in, and lie quietly with him afterward, listening to promises of bride-price, of a future home with a fine birch-and-poplar loom?

  Raven fell, and this time the ship descended forever. Ropes rose into the air, and drops lifted like snow and stood suspended. Men floated, their bodies light, even weightless, as Raven found the hole through the earth and fell. It was not falling. It was downward flight.

  And then it was not downward. Raven was suspended in midflight.

  Without seeming to touch water, the ship flexed, arched like a seal, and began to ascend. Raven climbed fast. Men were flattened to the planks, feeling two or three times their normal weight. The water in the hull was flat and leaden, and even the air was heavy, scooped into the ship.

  Like a man walking at the bottom of the sea, Trygg stood up, swayed to the side, and let out a terrible sound. What sort of coughing curse speech was that? Lidsmod wondered. And then he knew.

  Trygg had vomited! Trygg Two-nose, a man out of song, a warrior whose strength was doubted by no one, had vomited over the side of the ship! Lidsmod was deeply relieved. There would be no shame upon his mother. There would be no humiliation upon Lidsmod’s long-dead father. If Trygg had to vomit, then anyone could.

  But Lidsmod was not sick. The wind tired, as quickly as it took to be aware of it. The waves shook and threatened on all sides, like a struggling crowd, but the new silence stunned Lidsmod.

  Men stood and blinked up at the sky. They searched the ocean around them. Far off, Crane took a wave peak and then slid easily down a slope of sea. Sunlight spilled onto the ocean. The sound of Ulf’s bailing was loud, a splashing, grunting struggle with water. Opir the boaster, silent now, took the bailer from Ulf, and Floki took the other one.

  Landwaster was nowhere. It could not be seen.

  The men could not say the name of the dark ship. To talk about it would be a mistake—to mention a possible misfortune practically guaranteed it would take place. But every man looked back, again and then again. The sea was busy, like an army of gray shields. But it was true—Landwaster was gone.

  11

  Lidsmod gazed back, until he told himself it would do no good to worry. Either the ship was afloat or it was not. Nevertheless it would be very bad if Landwaster was gone. All the men they had known since childhood, all the blood brothers and cousins—Lidsmod could not think about such a bitter loss.

  Gunnar would not meet the eyes of his men. He knew they were looking at him for a clue as to how they should feel. Calm? Worried? Should they turn back and search? A mark appeared on Gunnar’s cheek, a scar that showed only on rare occasions. As a youth, the story went, Gunnar had slipped on the first ice of autumn and cut himself on the head of a harpoon he’d won in a wrestling match. Lidsmod knew that if Landwaster had capsized, every man was gone. There was a song about a man saved by a large seal on a stormy night, and Lidsmod had half believed a man could be saved that way.

  But this cold morning was real—it was not a song.

  “Lidsmod,” said Gunnar at last. “Climb to the top of the mast.”

  He did not hesitate, not with every man watching. He climbed. One side of the mast was already dry from the wind; the other was icy wet. His legs and arms wrapped the pine mast and were nearly not strong enough for the task. Until he was about the height of the tallest of them, the robust Ulf, it would simply be a struggle to climb at all. The weather vane twitched and fluttered high above.

  The very top of the mast was too far away. But Lidsmod struggled upward, the mast pressed against his ribs, his legs wrapped around it. Every man on Raven was either watching, or watching with his thoughts. Gradually the mast tapered, and it was easier to get a grip.

  But now the mast pitched and shivered. The ship wobbled far below, and Lidsmod gasped at how strange it looked, how crowded with men, and how small. It was a fifteen bencher, and not as big as some ships. But from this height it looked too frail to protect thirty and more human beings.

  Don’t look down, thought Lidsmod. Don’t look anywhere. Just hang on. Close your eyes and climb and ignore the cold and the drunken stagger of the ship.

  The ship fought and dodged. The weather vane snapped just above Lidsmod, then just at his ear. This was the very end of the mast, and he opened his eyes.

  He slipped.

  He closed his eyes and hung on tight. He imagined hearing the even voice of his mother, the tone she used when a fishing boat was late during a squall, saying that their faith would balance the harm and keep it from happening. He pictured Hallgerd’s gray eyes, believing Lidsmod when he said that some day he would bring gold and glory to the table of her father.

  Climb again, he told himself, and he did, very slowly, until once again the salt-stiff weather vane was at his ear.

  He glanced down.

  A mistake. Opir’s pale face gazed upward, his smile offering silent encouragement. Opir’s father had failed to wake one morning last
summer and had gradually drifted away into a deeper and deeper sleep, until he stopped breathing altogether. Opir had been all the more reckless ever since, his voice louder than before, but Lidsmod guessed that of all his shipmates Opir was the one who knew sorrow and anxiety best.

  At a word from Njord, Opir looked away, fussing with a knot. To show support for the young man’s effort, each shipmate pretended to ignore Lidsmod, every man a study in preoccupation. Lidsmod hung on in wind that was cold and strong and swept his hair back and filled his eyes with tears. He couldn’t see if he looked into the wind, and he couldn’t see if he looked away from it. The mast tossed.

  Water stretched to the horizon, its surface gleaming copper and silver with the sunlight. There was Crane, skimming the waves, spearing them.

  No sign of Landwaster.

  12

  It was a long night.

  Crane stayed so close to Raven that Lidsmod could hear the voices of men across the water. They did not speak often, though—words were powerless. What could Odin give them in exchange for the loss of these men, and this famous ship?

  Eirik told the song of the Last Battle, when the gods themselves would bleed. Nothing escaped. Even the immortals suffered.

  Njord would not let Gunnar take the helm, nor Ulf, who was an able steersman. It would not be right for him to abandon his place at a time like this. Every man should do exactly what he did best. That, Njord explained to Lidsmod, was one good way to help the Regin, the deciding powers of the universe, spare lives. If each man did what was proper, and followed his skill, it was possible that all would be well.

  All night the ship creaked and the water rolled under the keel. The Norns could not be beaten. But sometimes—almost never, but sometimes—they grew inattentive.

  In first light Gunnar had the sail lowered and told Lidsmod to climb the mast again.

  Men paid no notice. What Gunnar did, and what Lidsmod did in turn, could not be acknowledged. Eirik mended a rope. Trygg honed a knife with a black stone. Opir worked a new leather thong through the seam in his shoe.

  It was easier now. Lidsmod’s arms and legs were sore from the first climb, but he knew he could do it, and the sea was calm. It rose and it fell easily, like a horse’s breathing. When he reached the mast top, the weather vane was slack. It twitched, fell, and lifted restlessly.

  The sea was like a vast glacier, wrinkled, dead. Crane parted the water, leaving a slick wake. A gull, hungry for fish scraps, gazed at Lidsmod from just out of reach. Its yellow beak was bright, and its black eye was tiny and knew exactly what it was doing, studying this ship full of men.

  Gray water. Nothing more.

  Lidsmod clung to the mast, searching the horizon. He should climb down soon, he knew, before the cold worked into his sinews.

  Then: something.

  At the very end of the sea, as far away as Lidsmod could perceive, a shape like a sheep fly. It was there for half a breath, and then it was gone.

  “What do you see?” said Gunnar. His voice was far away, from another world.

  Lidsmod held tight and looked down. He gave a doubtful look: he didn’t know.

  Trygg slapped the mast with his big hand, and Lidsmod could feel his strength all the way to the top. Trygg couldn’t bear it—what did Lidsmod see?

  The fly lifted and fell. Lidsmod blinked, trying to clear his eyes.

  Nothing. And then there was something again, a fleck, a dark shape. The ship—because it was a ship—had a white sail with red stripes. The sun caught the sail.

  “I see them!” cried Lidsmod. “I see Landwaster!”

  It was important to use the right speech, the right tone of voice. Gunnar called upward. “Are you sure?”

  Was Lidsmod sure? He strained. Red stripes. A black ship, winking in and out of the distant sea.

  He spoke clearly, sounding, he hoped, like a seasoned seafarer. “To the north, in a line off the helm. Landwaster!”

  Men slapped him on the back when he was down from the mast, and Opir called him Lidsmod the ship spier, the man with eyes nearly as keen as Trygg’s—Trygg, the man who could count the wrinkles on a whale.

  Landwaster came up slowly. Gunnar called out, asking what was wrong, and the answer came back, a voice in the wind, that nothing indeed was wrong, and why were Crane and Raven so far off course?

  It had taken them a day and a night to find them, said Egil from Landwaster, his voice tiny in the wind, but sharp too, hoarse with the cold.

  Men laughed and groaned. Even Torsten smiled, and it had been a long time since the berserker had shown happiness.

  “Thank you for rescuing us!” called Opir.

  A shearwater played across the waves. It was a land bird that flew well over water, and usually alone. Njord showed Lidsmod how to read the horizon, what clouds were sea clouds, which might be land mist. Lidsmod could smell it. They all could.

  No one spoke. Every movement was tense, deliberate. The golden time, the day they had lived for during the long winter, might be taken from them by the immortals at this last moment.

  Njord squinted. “Almost a sad sight,” he said ironically. “I wish we could keep sailing to the edge of the world.”

  “No gold at the edge of the earth,” said Opir. “Only giants to squash crazy helmsmen.” His voice was higher pitched than usual.

  Gorm smiled, panting openmouthed like a wolf.

  Eirik sang a song softly, mostly to himself. It was about a magic ring that made its wearer invisible. It was about a traveler who, while invisible, could steal gold from sleeping dragons.

  Gorm thought of gold and fire: let a Westland dweller or two try to stop me from gathering the treasures. Let them try, he thought. He looked forward to killing as much as he looked forward to gold.

  Lidsmod wished he could be more sure of what lay ahead. He was certain a strong spear king would challenge them, and that Opir would call out a joke or mime the king in an insulting way, or that Gorm would hurl a spear into the air and kill the king’s son or brother, and all the men of Raven would be slaughtered. Lidsmod hoped the sailing would continue for a while. He did not want to walk on unknown land just yet—foreign, dangerous soil.

  The land seemed to back up, recede, and melt away. Even with the sail up and full of the steady wind, the ship made hard progress.

  It always took a long time to reach just-sighted land, Lidsmod had heard. Perhaps it was a trick of the eye, or of the mind. But it seemed this coast was actually departing from them.

  Gunnar stepped back to the helm, where Njord and Lidsmod manned the steering oar. Gunnar had explained all winter that he had passing familiarity with this foreign coast from sealing expeditions; he knew it, but not well. “We’re more south than we wanted to be,” Gunnar said.

  “I remember this river,” said Njord, “from summer voyages in my youth. We never went ashore, or bothered sailing up such water.” No seafaring man took serious interest in river currents—dull, earth-colored waters.

  Gunnar had hoped to strike the shore a day’s sail north of here and work his way along it. That’s how men navigated, by roughly guessing at their destination and hitting deliberately wide of it so they could follow the current and the winds down. But it didn’t matter, Lidsmod believed. A river meant towns, and towns meant treasure.

  The men did an inventory of weapons. Only now were shields unstowed and displayed along the side of the ship. Some men preferred an ax to a spear. But of all the weapons, the swords were most prized. Each had a special history. Each sword was an heirloom and had a name and a legend.

  There were many famous swords on Raven. Torsten the berserker slipped Gramr—Fierce—from its sheath, and let it take the sun for a moment. Ulf held Langhvass—Long and Sharp—into the wind, admiring the steel that had belonged to generations of his father’s fathers, ever since a dwarf had forged it, shortly after history began. In a dream once, this sword had killed a giant. Ulf had told the dream to Eirik, who had made a famous song about it. Gunnar’s sword, Havati�
��Keen—was famous for having cut off a Dane’s arm at the shoulder in one blow.

  The most famous sword of all was probably Opir’s, Fotbitr—Leg Biter. This sword had belonged to one of the first men in Spjothof, a distant uncle who had lived generations ago. A stranger in sky-gray clothing who had been seen walking up a glacier, like a fly crawling up and out of sight, had left it plunged into the side of an immense walrus.

  Lidsmod had no weapon, and no shield.

  The men worked out the oars and rowed for a while. They were glad to be able to expend their excitement. The rowing felt good. There were smiles, bright teeth, and weather-reddened cheeks. They met the river current, where the wide freshwater flattened the sea swell.

  Lidsmod took his place beside Ulf and gripped the oar.

  Along the distant riverbanks birds rose and darted. There was nothing else—no watchmen, no sword-bearing hordes. The smell of the river filled the air. This was a broad, deep current. Njord and Gunnar had seen such rivers, but Lidsmod had never dreamed of such a quantity of sweet water. The land beyond was flat and green, and Lidsmod was sure he could smell the faint perfume of livestock and house smoke.

  And more than once Lidsmod thought he caught sight of a guardsman, sun glinting off the point of his spear.

  13

  They pulled Raven ashore onto a flat beach. It had not been easy to find a place where the bank was low, so it was late in the day when Raven left the water, shoved along by the men. Again there was a keel scar, only this time it was on foreign land.

  Lidsmod knelt and pressed his hand into the river sand. It was a rich dirt, dark and silty. It held his handprint well. The feel of it was strange. The land was flat and full of water here, Lidsmod thought. He sniffed the wind. The land was full of grass and years of fallen leaves.