The Sea Dragon (Bjornssaga, Book 1)

The Chronicles of Anuru

Bjornssaga, Book I:

The Sea Dragon

by

D. Alexander Neill

Smashwords Edition

© D. Alexander Neill, 2012

ISBN 978-0-9880653-4-5

♦

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

(After Charles Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis à nu, 1864)

Table of Contents

Foreword

Maps

Chapter 1: Mórtas

Chapter 2: Flight

Chapter 3: Valborg

Chapter 4: The Eater of the Slain

Chapter 5: Deep Winter

Chapter 6: Kofalls

Chapter 7: Terror of the Storm

Chapter 8: The Vault of the Ebon General

Chapter 9: The Ruined City

Chapter 10: True Battle

Chapter 11: The Lord of the Waters

Chapter 12: The King of Winter

Chapter 13: The Law of Black Vengeance

Chapter 14: Wedded to the Sea

Appendix 1: Poems and Songs

Appendix 2: Dramatis Personae

Other books by D. Alexander Neill

Foreword

You are about to enter a story in medias res. The Sea Dragon – the first book of the Bjornssaga – is the account of a single episode in a larger drama: the search by a diverse group of companions for the surviving shards of an ancient tool of dark magic. At the outset of that quest, Bjorn Guthbrandr – a man of the northland earldoms of Jarla, a one-time reiver and pirate who gave up the oar for the hammer and cassock of a priest of Esu, the Power of Light known as the Great General, the Allfather of Men – fell into their company through a compound of happenstance and fate. He joined them, and journeyed with them in pursuit of their shared goal, until a falling out convinced him that their joint cause might be better served if they went their separate ways.

That tale is elsewhere told, in full measure.* The present tale concerns where Bjorn went, who he met, and what he did after the parting.

As with the previous histories, The Sea Dragon, and for that matter the whole of the Bjornssaga, takes place in the mortal realm of Anuru. In brief, the universe – the World Made – came into being when Ana and Uru, the forces of light and darkness, hived off a small corner of the infinite and ever-changing Void, surrounding it with walls of order.† Though loremasters, magi and philosophers speculate, often at great length, there are none alive today know who Ana and Uru were, nor why they chose to differentiate the Made from the Unmade. Some theorize that the Making was in the nature of an experiment – a contest designed to determine which of the two, the light or the dark, was the stronger; and that the whole of the universe, therefore, was intended to be nothing more than a tranquil spot where the trial might take place. This hypothesis is rooted in the fact that shortly after the Making, Ana and Uru created the Powers of Light and Darkness, seven of each. Bræa Lightbringer was eldest of the Anari, the Powers of Light, and had two sisters. Tian, the epitome of justice and order, was made the guardian of the walls of the universe; and Vara exemplified the compassion that must balance law, lest it turn to tyranny. They had four brothers, who came later into their own. As for the Powers of Darkness, they too were seven in number, and were called the Uruqua; and Bardan Eyðar, , the Ender, the Lord of Shadows, was their master.

Almost as soon as they were made, the Powers went to war.

All contests necessitate a means of keeping score, and wars therefore require someone to do the dying. Because the Powers were immortal, they created the Servants to act as their generals, and the Minions to be their soldiers; and because battles require a battlefield, Bræa and Bardan joined their thoughts and created Anuru, the place of light and darkness. For countless eons, the Anari, their servants, and their minions strove with the Uruqua for mastery of Anuru, littering its war-torn wastes with fallen heroes and villains. With each battle, Anuru grew bigger; for in death the remains of the minions of Bardan became the stones of the earth. And it grew brighter too, for the sielii, the immortal remnants of the fallen minions of Bræa, became the lights in the hitherto unlit heavens.

The War of the Powers continued for countless eons, for in this endless time before time there was no means of marking the coming and going of ages. And it continued without decision or issue, for the Powers were evenly matched. Though one might gain a brief ascendancy over the other, such victories as were achieved were brief and unenduring; and the defeats suffered, though costly and stained with loss and regret, were never lasting. Worse, it gradually became clear that no lasting victory could ever be achieved, for the Servants and the Minions were expressions of the volition of the Powers, and as such could never grow beyond their intended form and function, nor ever deviate from the will of those that had made them. Even the Powers themselves, as the material manifestations of the will of Ana and Uru, were constrained by the intent and limitations of their makers. Light and Dark were equipotent, locked in stalemate and perfectly balanced; condemned to remain at an impasse, to endure suffering and torment without surcease – until finis inflammari, the prophesied End in Fire; and Veróldbrast, the Breaking of the World. Neither could ever hope to attain the ascendancy – unless something were to change.

Though Bræa and Bardan both perceived the nature of their dilemma, it was the Lightbringer who first envisaged a solution. Because Light and Dark were in flawless equilibrium within the bounds of the universe, Bræa conjectured that the answer could only be found beyond the walls. So she created a new breed of underlings, forming their bodies from the stuff of the World Made, but weaving into their sielii – their immortal part – the tiniest shreds and strands of the chaos that roiled beyond the walls. This, she reasoned, would enable them to grow beyond the limitations that constrained all who descended from the Making wrought by Ana and Uru. In time, she hoped, her children might grow to surpass the Minions, the Servants, and even the Powers themselves.

Bræa’s plan exceeded even her own expectations. The children of Bræa, though frail and ephemeral in comparison to even the weakest of the Minions, grew swiftly, multiplied rapidly – and most importantly, they changed. They changed so speedily that even she, the mightiest of the Powers of Light, omnipotent and omniscient, could not keep abreast of them. She began to feel hope that, through them, she might one day be able to break the stalemate with the Uruqua, overthrow the Powers of Dark, and win the eternal victory that Ana had formed her to achieve.

But then her children rebelled. To Bræa’s horror certain of them, duped by the blandishments of Bardan, or by act of their own free will, elected to side with the Uruqua, throwing over the service of the Light to cast their lot with the Darkness. She could not have known that by mingling their mortal essence with the void-stuff of the world beyond the walls of the Universe, she had given them not only the potential to grow beyond the limits that constrained the Powers, but also the freedom to disobey their maker’s commands. She had unwittingly given her children choice, and some of them used that choice to defy her. Enraged, she lifted up her hand to strike them down; but she was stayed by none other than Ana herself, who forbade the slaughter. To punish Bræa for her presumption, Ana took the light from the Lightbringer, and Bræa became as one of her own creations, frail and subject to all of the woes and trials of mortality. In time, she went to live among them, and mingled her blood with theirs – with many and varied consequences.

As for the Children of Bræa, Ana divided them by their natural proclivities, and gave them over into the care of the brothers of the Lightbringer. The people of the wind, who loved wisdom and the green places of the earth, were placed under the stewardship of Wise Hara, and became the Haradi. Those who adored making and who were as stolid as the earth underfoot became the children of Lagu; they built their realm deep underground, calling it Lagud, and themselves the Lagudi. The sons of Nosa had spirits that changed and shifted swiftly, like water, and had no realms, but like water, were welcome everywhere; and those who, like fire, leapt from conquest to conquest, a boon one moment and a danger the next, became the sons of Esu, calling him the Great General, and revering him as the Allfather of Men. The tale that follows concerns the deeds of one of Esu’s sons.

Aided by Hara (and by Bræa, who in mortal guise wed one of their kings, founding the Houses of the realm of Ancient Harad), the Haradi struggled to unravel the mysteries of the universe, laying in great stores of knowledge. They made many beautiful things, and were the first to master the Art Magic. The sons of Lagu became master builders and artisans, crafting cities of splendour and glory, bending the bones of the earth to suit their desires. The children of Nosa learned little and built less, but were great travelers and skalds, and their easy and comradely ways ensured that the Kindred – as Bræa’s children came in time to be called – did not grow too far apart. And the sons of Esu, following the example of their Allfather, built armies and used them to carve kingdoms out of the wastes; and they took the knowledge and wisdom and lore of their brothers, and with them wrought wonders – high towers and shining cities and works of majesty.

All of that, of course, happened a long time ago. Strife and evil blighted the great works, toppled the towers, tore the cities down, and cast the whole world into darkness. But the darkness ended, and peace and plenty healed the wounded lands, and in time the cities rose again. They fell again, and rose once more; and with each rise and fall, the tides of time washed away a little more of memory, and the wonders and horrors of the ancient world receded a little further into the mists of legend.

As this tale begins – the tale of Bjorn Guthbrandr, reiver and pirate and would-be priest of the Allfather – that old world is long gone; little of it remains, save those myths and tales that were strong enough to endure the weathering of ages. But while its shape and substance may be forgotten, the old world was built by those who came before, and their deeds, for good and for ill, are the foundation of the new. Like all that has been buried, the remnants of the past, the memories and the myths of things thought to be lost, may rise again, unleashing tremors that echo down through history, transported by the currents of time to unsettle, shake, and even shatter the glowing splendours of today.

Sometimes, all it takes to conjure up the ghosts of history and set the past into motion once more is a restless man.

♦

* See The Brotherhood of Wyrms, Book I – The Road Into Ruin (forthcoming).

† The tale of the Making is told in part in the appendices found at the end of Kaunovalta, Book I – The Running Girl.

Chapter 1 ♦ Mórtas

Bjorn slapped and rubbed his hands together, then blew on them fiercely. Night was coming, early as it always did in the northern latitudes in winter, and there was a shiver of sleet blowing. If the wind freshened any further, he was going to have to go below and root around in his cabin for the sealskin mittens he had purchased at Néahéa.

He glanced aft, the whistling wind ruffling his moustache and biting into the corners of his eyes, bringing swift tears. The ship – Himinnhrapnr, a three-masted carrackoe built in the Eastrisles of hard red timber – pitched wildly on the following sea, racing north-eastwards under three-reefed topsails, a pair of hard-worked quartermasters struggling wearily with the wheel. The fact that it was crewed by his blonde and bearded countrymen instead of its original owners explained why they were still making headway in the storm. There were no finer sailors anywhere on earth. Nor any more foolhardy, he reflected with a nervous swallow. The presence of so many seasoned seamen of northern extraction also suggested how the vessel might have come to change hands. He doubted that the ship’s papers included a bill of sale.

A rogue wave burst over the stern, flooding the deck momentarily. The ship rolled sluggishly until the mass of surging green water drained out of the scuppers. One of the men at the wheel lost his footing and struggled for a moment before regaining it. Bjorn could see that they were exhausted and spray-soaked, and he nodded approvingly when Nisse, the master’s mate, hauled them bodily away from the helm and pushed two fresh crewmen into their place.

As the newly relieved pair staggered across the heeling deck towards the shrouded charcoal brazier that burned fitfully near the scuttlebutt, the priest decided that it was time to intervene. Maybe past time. He recalled more than a few long, chilly nights spent on an exposed deck. Clutching the sodden bearskin cloak more tightly around his shoulders, he stepped carefully across the sleet-slicked boards, raising his voice so as to be heard over the howling of the winds. A long watch!

Aye! said the nearer of the two men, a wizened, white-bearded salt with arms like gnarled oak. His younger companion, pallid with fatigue, merely nodded.

Perhaps I can help, the priest suggested.

Gotta keg o’mead under that cloak, heya? the oldster chortled. He wiped his face with a corner of his oilskin cape, waiting patiently whilst his shipmate took a long draught from the wooden piggin chained to the rail. Then he turned back. Sorry, Fist, he shouted into the gale. No disrespect. Long watch, like you said!

Bjorn shook his head, dismissing the man’s apology. Laying one hand on the head of the hammer jammed into his belt, he shouted a brief prayer: "Valfjoðr, veitta virðar afl svalr bera!"

A brief thrum of power gathered in his chest, the merest hint of the General’s might; just enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck. He extended his other hand from under the dripping cloak, and touched the wrinkled crewman lightly on the arm.

The fellow shifted slightly in his seat. A change came slowly over his ashen, winter-whitened face as he realized that, although the wind still howled, it no longer bit, and blessed warmth was flowing back into his limbs. Glancing up at Bjorn, the old man grinned uncertainly; and then he raised his clenched fist, pressing it to his forehead with a nod of thanks.

The salute of the sallasøvir, Bjorn thought tiredly, the sons of the salt; a sailor’s gesture. It seemed a lifetime since he’d seen it, and two since he’d offered it himself. He nodded, acknowledging the man’s homage, then placed a similar enchantment on the junior helmsman, receiving a smile of thanks for his pains.

As he turned to go, the elder of the two men put a hand on his arm. Bjorn paused, raising his eyebrows. Why’d’ye shout? the fellow asked.

Bjorn frowned. What?

The sailor waved a finger, presumably indicating the blast of the storm. D’ye really have to yell like that? he called. For the Allfather to hear you, I mean?

The priest grinned. Well, you have to get his attention, he said at last, raising his voice against the wind. He might be busy!

Doing what?

Bjorn pointed at the turbulent sky, the raging waves. The Allfather is master of sea, sky and storm, he replied. This is his gift. It means he’s keeping his eye on us!

The younger sailor shook spray from his oilskins. Or maybe he’s off doing what we should be doing, heya! he shouted. Fighting, drinking and wenching, praise his name!

Bjorn laughed. He would have said more, but he was tired of shouting into the storm. He clapped the fellow on the shoulder and turned back to the companionway. With a high sea running, the planks would be working, the caulked seams opening and closing like doors, and the bilge would be full; indeed, the mournful clanking of the pumps could be heard even over the maniacal howling of the wind. Better see to the men at the pump-handles, the sailor in him advised. And then, the water casks.

He felt the numbness of exhaustion settling into his bones, and struggled to banish it. He was a passenger, but even passengers had duties at sea.

It was going to be a long night.

♦

More than a month had passed since Bjorn had bade farewell to his former colleagues in Ellohyin. He’d left the city the same day with nothing more than a horse, a pair of heavily-laden saddlebags, and a sketchy blessing from Patron Wellgar, his ecclesiastical superior at Ellohyin’s Great Hall of the Allfather. His full report, detailing all that had happened during his sojourn with Breygon, Joraz and the others, had been duly copied out by temple scribes, who’d been forced to ply their quills furiously to keep up with all of the horrors and wonders of the tales he’d had to tell. Bjorn had made certain to include all of the myriad details of the company’s encounter with the Secrecy, the servants of the so-called Lover-in-the-Darkness – especially their rescue of the minion of light, the divine herald Eliastralee; and the escape of the Secrecy’s high priestess, who had somehow managed to elude fist, blade and shaft to make good her escape.

As reward (or penance – Bjorn wasn’t quite sure whether he was being praised or punished), Wellgar had ordered him to report to the Álgoði, the prelates of the Allfather’s Great Hall in Kofallshavn, and to bear thither the relics that had been in his care since he and Lyra had come upon the half-elf and his cohorts at the broken temple of Karg, just south of Ganesford. The journey home would be a long one, and all too familiar to Bjorn, as he had only just finished making it – and during the summer, at that. He would be heading north, and this time in winter, never a pleasant prospect. And because none of the magi in Ellohyin – or at least none that hadn’t tried to kill him, and that he and his friends had roundly trounced – had the skill to leap the flux, it was going to have to be by horse. The sooner he reached salt water and traded saddle for sails, the better.

Bjorn was doubly annoyed at being ordered back up into the Dragonspine Mountains, having quit them barely a month before. He rode hard through the Trollfells, and whether as a result of his size, the speed of his passage, or the enormous, two-handed hammer that he carried strapped to his saddle, he was left mercifully alone by the denizens of the eponymous swampy hills. The weapon caused him more trouble than any other item of his kit. He would have preferred to keep it close to hand, ready for emergencies, instead of rendering it inaccessible; but it was too big either to carry comfortably in one hand, or to balance across his saddle-bow. Torsvarad had been a help to him in his quest, and he had no doubt that it would serve him well in the months and years to come; but he could have wished that the men who had wrought it had made it a little more compact. In the end, he settled for tying it down during the day, and keeping it close at hand when he spread his blankets for the night.

The autumn rains had not yet begun and the roads were still hard, allowing him to make swift progress. A single night and a soft bed at the Allfather’s house in Bitterberg had been a welcome respite from the rigours of the roadside, and after dinner, a badly needed bath, and a night of mercifully dreamless repose he was once again a-horse. His saddle-sores screamed imprecations at him as he struggled northwards into the Whitestone Pass, an early frost already crunching beneath his mount’s hooves. Pushing himself hard, and taking care to wield the Allfather’s warming, healing blessings to the benefit of his mount at every opportunity, he managed to traverse the pass in less than a week, shaving two days off his earlier time. With the pass and Ravens Peak comfortably in his wake, he was able to set a less punishing pace, and addressed himself to the long downhill slope.

He reached Menyra and the headwaters of the Isfald River in the rolling hills north of the Dragonspine range just as black snow clouds began to gather. Two more days brought him to Rolling River, the farthest-flung trading city of the Halfling homelands of Dunholm. A month in Gwen’s company had proven instructive, and he kept one hand on his purse while riding through the diminutive, chattering throngs. At the river’s mouth his mount’s trial ended. Bjorn sold the beast with an affectionate slap, and after paying a few pennies to the master of a team of stevedores, he boarded a barge bound downstream for Laperys, a larger town at the mouth of the Dunvale River. Two days spent alternately sailing and poling the craft down the great, slow river brought him into tidal waters. Despite his fatigue, the smell of the salt air galvanized him, calling up innumerable memories – and a few nightmares as well.

At Laperys he learned that the great ships, the vessels whose captains braved the deep oceans, rounding the continent’s most desolate corners in pursuit of profit, were more likely to be found across the mouth of the bay, at Néahéa. This was the furthest-flung outpost of the Zaran polity, and he grinned at the irony of having left the north westernmost reaches of that realm days before only to return to it now in the northeast. A brief jaunt aboard a ferry landed him in the bustling harbour, and left him standing bemused, with his shield and saddlebags over one shoulder and Torsvarad clenched in his fist, in the midst of one of the busiest ports on the sunset shores of Erutrei.

Bjorn liked the crowded, bustling town immediately. As with the Red River Barony far to the west, Néahéa was a semi-autonomous fiefdom bound in loose alliance to the Zaran king in Sanalin, but owing him neither fealty nor scutage. All manner of vessels crowded its harbours: clumsy but capacious Zaran coasters; shallow-drafted barge canoes of the jungle tribesmen further to the north; sleek, flush-decked sloops of the Eastrisland confederacy, at least half of them privateers sailing under false colours; and even a graceful, towering, brightly-painted caravel, obviously the pleasure craft of some miscellaneous noble out of the elven realm.

Outnumbering them all, though, and standing out like a welcoming salute to his weary eye, were the well-remembered carrackoes of his homeland: square-rigged at the fore and maintop, with lateen rigging at the mizzen, and the red-and-white striped sails that announced their point of origin more surely than any paint or pennon could. And interspersed among them all, slipping here and there between larger vessels like wolves wending their way through the legs of caribou or kine, were the longships; the predators of the seas, narrow and forbidding, each with a snarling dragon at the prow, and serried rows of bright-painted shields hung above the oar-ports that dotted the gunwales.

Bjorn still had the calluses he had built up over the days, the weeks, and the long, weary months that he had spent ‘wooing the pine’ – plying the long oars. He clenched his fists reflexively, feeling a sharp twinge of remembered pain in his lower back – a reminder, as if he needed one, of why he had left the boat-benches to take up the Allfather’s hammer. The oars had been only one of the reasons, of course, but it was the one that his body remembered. It returned to haunt him every time the weather turned to cold and damp.

Ship-wise, Néahéa offered him the pick of the litter. He wove his way between the netted heaps of cargo, mule-carts and wagons, and throngs of hurrying messengers and idle dock- and deck-hands like a man who knew where he was bound. In a way, he did know. Gaudy galleons, bright with gold leaf at the rail and gold lace at the wheel, caught his eye, as they would have done in his old life, when he would have seen them as prey; but here, now, he ignored them. They were comfortable but slow, and he had need of speed. But not too much speed; he was going home, rounding the hook of Monodin to dare the Sundering Sea in winter-time, and so the shallow-drafted, heavily over-sparred brigs that plied the coastal trade...these he passed without a second glance. In his own mind, it was as if two men accompanied each other through the crowd, arguing about the choice of craft: Bjorn the priest, grizzled and weary with travel, searching for safe and speedy passage home; and Bjorn the reiver, young, fresh and eager, with a shield and a sea-bag, seeking what the men of the Northlands called a søorm – a sea-dragon. A corsair, fleet and furious; a ship fitting out and in need of extra hands and extra swords to go a-viking.

The older Bjorn watched the younger elbowing his way through the crowd, grimacing with jealousy tempered by amusement. He envied his younger self the vigour he had once known; the freedom from care, from the aches and agues of battle and privation...and from the heavy weight of knowledge, and the many obligations that came with it. The younger Bjorn had known nothing of Shards or Secrecies; had never been a pawn of prophecies or politics, or a tool of distant, omniscient and omnipotent wyrms. He hadn’t yet been touched by the Allfather’s grace, or seen the welcoming light of Valræddi, the Allfather’s endless board, or been called to the stern duty that had been laid upon him when the spear-maiden had come to him in a vision, commanding him to take up the hammer and stand forth.

The sea-bag has grown heavier over the years, he reflected wryly; not with booty, as he once had hoped it might, but with duty, responsibility, and purpose. How long had it been since he had last prowled a deck for pleasure? He decided to allow his younger self to find a vessel to take them both home. After all, once upon a time the lad had known a thing or two about the sea.

It took an hour – the dockyard was that big – but at last the two Bjorns settled on Himinnhrapnr, one of the Jarlin carrackoes. The nature of the activity around and about her sides suggested both her point of origin, and her next port of call. Her crew, assisted by a disciplined throng of dockside dragomen and stevedores, was hard at work, offloading immense timber beams from the decks and barrels of pitch from the holds, replacing them, insofar as Bjorn could tell, with wine-casks, bales of woolen fabric, ankers of spirits, and sundry other products of the southlands. Beyond her cargo, however, the ship had all of the features his experienced eye had sought: a new vessel, but not too new, she was clean and orderly, standing out like a beacon of calm in the chaotic turmoil of the port. She was bustling, but neat; well-used, but well cared-for too.

And she bears an auspicious name, he mused; and in view of the nature of his mission and his quest, an appropriate one. Once again, the two Bjorns found themselves in disagreement, but it was an old conflict. The younger man, reasoning and rational, would have dismissed such a consideration as the ship’s moniker as base and idiotic sentiment; but the older had seen too many of the oddities that the wide world had to offer to mistake the hand of chance when it slapped his cheek. Fate had cast a healthy dollop of the unexpected into his porridge-bowl far too many times for Bjorn to dismiss a fortuitous coincidence as nothing more than blind luck.

He mounted the gangway with practiced ease, raising a hand to the quarterdeck, and approached the officer of the watch, ready to negotiate. To his surprise, the man held his clenched fist to his brow and sketched a bow. Welcome, Fist, he said, polite and respectful –

– and Bjorn was yanked back into himself, chuckling ruefully as he recalled that he was no longer a callow youth seeking a bench and an oar, but a seasoned veteran, well-caparisoned, very much the picture of an itinerant Hand of the Allfather. He snorted in amusement at the depth of his reverie, dropped his duffel on the deck, and slapped the seaman on the shoulder. Up you get, son, he said gruffly. May the General’s grace be with you. Is your captain aboard?

To a philosophically-minded observer, the two men that stood on the deck would have offered a compelling study in the formative effects of experience. They had come from the same part of the world – both scions of the northlands, who might have been brothers. The priest was the older of the two, but much of the seeming difference stemmed from the fact that the lad’s beard was still a scraggly scrap, while Bjorn had had the time to grow a respectable crop of chin-thatch, and did his best to keep his moustaches in good order. They were of a size, both of them tall men from a land that bred the tallest men in the world; and of similar form, with muscles forged by long labour at the oar, the halyard and the capstan. Both men knew arms, too, and it showed in the size of their shoulders, the thickness of their waists – and, more importantly, in the set of their eyes. In fact, the greatest difference between them appeared to be their attire. The sailor wore a simple tunic and trousers, labouring barefoot on the sanded deck. The priest, in stark contrast, wore mail and heavy plated boots and a light helm, and had a round-shield slung over one shoulder, and a long-hafted, wicked-looking hammer over the other.

Both his shield and his worn, tattered surcoat bore the same signs: the raven standing astride the anvil, the sigil of the Allfather’s faith. In this part of the world, these marks alone were sufficient to identify Bjorn to all he met.

Now that his eyes had cleared and his age had reasserted itself, Bjorn realized that the boy had probably seen about nineteen summers, and thus wasn’t much younger than he was. The difference in their demeanour, he grinned sourly, was not so much one of age, but rather of experience.

No, Fist, the youth replied. He’s ashore. Ought to be back at nightfall. We’re to sail at dawn tomorrow, with the land breeze.

Bjorn nodded thoughtfully. Homeward bound?

Aye. Valborg first, then Gotehavn, Helgrindr and Ingólfsfell.

I’ll take passage as far as Valborg, Bjorn decided. I can pay my way. Do you think you’ll have room for a countryman?

The boy’s face split in a grin, then sobered again instantly. The captain’ll say thee yea or nay, Fist, as he will, he replied. But I can tell you that we’ve no healer; nor have we had a weather-worker since Magister Heitherek died of the black pox off the Ålspori three months back. I think ye’ll be welcome.

Bjorn nodded thoughtfully. Healing was no problem, and he had some small skill with wind and wave. There were advantages to being one of the Allfather’s chosen. Well enough, he replied. Tell your Captain I’ll be here before dawn, and that I offer to bless him and all aboard, and serve the ship as leech and wind-wright to the best of my ability, until you put me ashore in Valborg.

That I will, Fist! the boy said happily.

Bjorn sighed. I’m not a Fist, son, he said. Hardly even a finger of the Allfather, in fact. But I thank you nonetheless. So. He retrieved his sea-bag and slung it once more over his shoulder. Until tomorrow.

He thumped down the gangplank to the dock, but stopped suddenly as a thought occurred to him. He turned back towards the rail. Is there anywhere decent to stay nearby? he called. Something a little better than a penny-hang, without too many rats in the ale-vats?

The boy nodded. "Hyggeflåden, he called, reverting for the moment to the northern dialect. The captain stays there whenever we’re in port. He pointed vaguely toward the jumbled mass of stone and brick that formed the centre of town. Off the Grotemarkt. Ask for the ‘River of Welcome’."

And the baths?

That earned him a blank stare. Baths? the sailor repeated.

Bjorn’s heart sank. Are there no baths in town?

A shake of the head. I wouldn’t know, Fist.

I’m not... He stopped himself, letting the matter drop. Dawn, then.

The boy dipped his head.

Bjorn turned back to the dock. Presumably, he reasoned, any inn named after a river would at least be able to provide him with water for washing. Maybe even a flake of soap.

♦

"…Fist…"

Bjorn’s gummy eyelids snapped open. He fumbled blindly for his hammer, barking a knuckle on one of the ship’s tarry oak ribs before he remembered where he was.

Black as the Earl’o’Hell’s breeks, as usual, he muttered to himself. Clearing his throat, he snapped his fingers, and barked a word: "Ljós!" A silvery gleam sprang into existence, a soft, cheery glow like a chubby star that flickered and dance atop his right index finger. He looked around for a convenient spot to leave the lightball. Seeing nothing, he sighed and touched his finger to the crown of his head. The ball brightened perceptibly. In a moment, it was shining like one of the moons come to earth, silvering the priest’s normally blonde hair and throwing showers of sparks into the air like an Er-sommer bonfire.

In the garish, glimmering light, Bjorn sat up in his bunk, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes. Behind the startled-looking crewman standing in his doorway, the night sky was an unrelieved black. He smelled something on the air; something cold, like a premonition of snow. Not yet dawn, eh? he said sleepily. Is something wrong?

The sailor, a young man whose acquaintance he hadn’t made, stood immobile, silently gaping at the gleaming rays seemingly emanating from Bjorn’s skull.

The priest sighed. First time?

The sailor coughed, clearing his throat. It’s just that…well, it’s very bright, he said meekly. Sorry, Fist. I’ve never seen...that, before.

I’m not a Fist, Bjorn growled. He tapped his head with a blunt finger. As for the light, the Allfather doesn’t do ‘subtle’. You want soft, romantic pastel candlelight, find an elf. Clambering out from beneath his blankets, he looked around for his footwear. Fortunately, he’d gone to bed in his damp tunic and trousers; this simplified the matter of dressing. He pulled his damp woollen sea-jacket over his shoulders, then bent to don his very damp sea-boots.

Is there trouble? he asked again, struggling into his reeking, water-slicked oilskins.

Well...we don’t know, Fi...sir.

That raised Bjorn’s eyebrows. Years at sea had taught him that, aboard ship, one was invariably either at ease or in mortal peril. If the latter, the cause was usually obvious. If it wasn’t obvious, then it was a mystery – and mysteries are not welcomed by men who ply the deeps in frail frames of flesh and wood.

The man seemed nervous enough, and Bjorn decided that it would be unkind to worsen his megrims. All right, you’ve piqued my interest, he said, struggling to strike a note of joviality, as if being awakened in the darkness of a deep night were nothing of consequence. Just in case, though, he doffed the cloak again, shrugged his way into his mail-shirt (its chill and rusty stench led a new, complex layer to his already substantial misery), and out of habit, retrieved his enormous hammer. He motioned to the boy to lead on.

Damn it, he grumped as the sailor led him up the companionway. Ah well. Who needed sleep anyway?

♦

Nisse, the mate, was on the forecastle when Bjorn arrived, peering over the railing and expostulating to himself. Most of the phrases, the priest noted, were in the sailors’ pidgin, a convoluted compote of elf-talk, various northern dialects and the travelling tongue, with a liberal seasoning of profanity drawn from nearly all of the races of Erutrei. Bjorn listened patiently for a moment, one hand on the railing just abaft the bowsprit, the other on Torsvarad’s massive haft, and gave his eyes time to adjust to the crepuscular gloom.

A moment later, he found himself blinking furiously. What he had taken for the loom of land off the starboard bow was nothing of the sort. Nisse was cursing at the sight of an isbjerg – a vast, floating mountain of solid ice, the largest that Bjorn had ever seen. Its sudden appearance was nearly enough to make Bjorn emulate the mate and gape like a fool. Instead, he put a hand on the man’s shoulder. The word you’re looking for, he said quietly, is ‘titanic’.

Nisse raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar term. If you say so, Fist.

I say so. He smiled narrowly. "I hear it from halflings a lot. It’s what they call me. He cleared his throat. And I’m not a ‘Fist’. Don’t call me that."

Can’t very call you a ---, now, can I? the man grumbled, giving vent to an epithet that Bjorn had only heard once in his life, shortly before the beginning of a tavern-clearing brawl.

The priest grinned. "Not if you want to live to see the Lantern rise. Call me ‘Bjorn’. Or Ái, if you must." Ái was a term from the old Yonar-ri dialect, the forerunner to the speech of the Jarlin northmen. It meant ‘great-grandfather’, or more loosely ‘ancestor’, and was a common nick-name for members of the Allfather’s clergy. Though the word was theologically appropriate, Bjorn hated it. He was nobody’s father, much less grandfather, nor ever likely to be.

Apparently Nisse felt the same way. Bjorn it is, then, he snorted, seeing’s how I’m older’n you by a boat-length.

A boat-length at least, Bjorn laughed. He nodded toward the quarterdeck, where the ship’s captain, a weathered, serious-looking fellow that had introduced himself to Bjorn as ‘Mjød’, stood behind the binnacle, talking in low tones with the quartermasters at the wheel. The man was staring in grim silence at the enormous iceberg blocking their path, a speaking-trumpet clenched in one fist. Though the breeze was light, he had shortened sail at nightfall, a standard precaution, and the carrackoe was running under single-reefed topsails at the fore and mainmasts. As Bjorn watched, Mjød ordered the drummer to beat the crew to stations. The tambour thudded, and half a hundred souls boiled up from below. Nisse, after a cursory salute, vanished into the throng. Bjorn followed, heading for the stern, keeping a weather eye out and stepping lively to avoid getting in the way of the crew.

Men ran up the ratlines, shimming out along the main and foretopmast yards. In a twinkling, the main topsail was furled and two more reefs had been taken in the fore topsail. The helm was put over, and the ship hove to.

Bjorn nodded his approval; that sort of efficiency didn’t come easily, and it justified his original estimate of Himinnhrapnr as a well-managed vessel. He still didn’t know much about her captain, apart from learning his true name, which was Miǫðvitnir – another term from the old Yonar-ri tongue, one that meant ‘Mead-Wolf’, and suggested that fellow had managed to acquire a reputation as champion stein-hoister. He’d also learned that Mjød’s glassy stare was due at least in part to the fact that he’d had his right eye stabbed out with a broken bit of timber during a gentleman’s disagreement in Helgrindr some years earlier.

At the head of the gangway, he caught the captain’s good eye and waited for a nod of permission. At sea, everyone observed the niceties of protocol, he reflected sourly; even priests. Stepping behind the wheel, he remarked, Big.

Mjød had proven himself so taciturn that Bjorn had considered asking him whether he’d taken a vow of silence. The priest was, therefore, a little surprised when the man replied. Big, aye, he murmured, nodding without taking his eyes off of the isbjerg. Bjorn noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten; there was a deep, violet gleam in the west, to landward, and even so little illumination was sufficient to make the sea-surface and the ice mountain glow. The ship was still a mile or so short of the vast, looming mountain; but as the Lantern slowly rose above the horizon, the towering, jagged shards caught its rays like a diamond, scattering them about like droplets of frozen fire. Everything took on a soft, pearlescent sheen – even the thick blanket of low cloud above them, and the deep, blue-green waters that lapped gently at the hull.

It was at that moment that Bjorn noticed that the wind had fallen away to nothing; the air was utterly still. And it was cold, too; bitterly cold. The crew’s breath steamed hotly, and he could see wisps of vapour rising from their clothing. Wind’s dropped, he said, realizing only after he’d spoken patently inane the observation was.

Dropped, aye, muttered Mjød. Been dropping since midnight. Then those started showing up. He pointed first to port and then to starboard. Bjorn, to his immense consternation, saw that in addition to the colossal ice mountain before them, the ship seemed to be surrounded by a veritable flotilla of smaller isbjergr. Some were closer than the monster, some further; but there were dozens of them. In the half-light of dawn, even at a mile’s distance and more, Bjorn could see that they were hemmed in. This isn’t natural, he murmured. His fingers tapped an unconscious paradiddle on Torsvarad’s iron head.

No, that it is not, Mjød concurred softly. Keeping his eyes on the big berg ahead, he half-turned to Nisse, and whispered, Get aloft with the glass. See if you can’t find a way through them, aye?

Aye, the mate muttered, clearly dubious. He took the ship’s far-glass in its leather case from the hook on the binnacle, slung it across his back, and went up the mizzen ratlines hand over hand.

Mjød turned to Bjorn. What think you, Fist? he asked harshly. Is this the hand of darkness?

Bjorn, rather than make an issue of the inappropriate moniker, merely shrugged. Your guess is as good as mine, he replied.

You’ve not brought some ill aboard my ship, aye?

Not that I know of, no, Bjorn shrugged. That wasn’t precisely true, of course, but he didn’t think that an open deck aboard a becalmed ship surrounded by ice a hundred leagues from land was the best place to try to explain the mysteries and legends that had sent him into the north.

Can you not looky-see it, then?

If you mean, can I divine the source of this stay, then no, I cannot. Not at so great a distance.

Your Big Man holds ye in little esteem, then, Mjød remarked sourly.

The Allfather lends us his divine grace when we merit it, Bjorn said evenly, his knuckles cracking on the hammer’s haft. And sometimes, not even then. He shot the captain a narrow glance. You follow a different faith, I take it?

Mjød put a hand to his breast; obviously, he wore some talisman or other beneath his tunic. Vara, for mercy ashore, he replied, and Thanos, for mercy at sea. He spat over the side. Meet gods for a sailing man.

Most sailing men find time to beg the indulgence of the master of storm and skyfire, too, Bjorn prodded gently. He placed Torsvarad’s iron head on the deck and leaned the haft against the railing.

"I’ll happily pray to the Big Man, heya, the captain chuckled morosely, if only he’d swear to keep his storms and his skyfire away from me and my ship. He tapped a gloved finger on the railing. So you’ve no idea what this is, aye?"

The priest spread his hands.

The captain glowered, although Bjorn could see that his ire was directed mostly at their predicament rather than at him. Well, then, he said at last, perhaps you and Nisse ought to take a boat over and have a little look at…

Perhaps not, Bjorn interrupted, pointing. He squinted into the azure gleam of the bjerg. Noting the brightening sky, he quenched the lightball that he had placed atop his head. Darkness fell over the foredeck, and the sea ahead became much brighter.

Mjød stared, then started as he saw what the priest was indicating. Cursing foully, he shouted Crossbows!

Softly, Bjorn counselled, softly. Let’s wait and see what this is.

You wait, Mjød spat. I’ll see to the safety of my ship.

Beyond the prow, halfway to the massive ice mountain, a small floe no larger than a couple of tavern tables was gliding towards their ship at roughly the speed of a cantering horse. To Bjorn’s astonishment, there was a man atop it. He stood still, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on Himinnhrapnr.

The apparition was so out of place that Bjorn could not imagine what to make of him. The fellow was elegantly, even richly, clad – booted, cloaked and bejewelled, the whole topped off with a broad-brimmed hat sporting some sort of unfamiliar plumage. Bjorn found himself chuckling, more in astonishment than amusement; the man was dressed for riding in the company of noble demozels on a summer’s day in Vejborg – not for balancing an ice-floe on a winter’s eve in the Northeast Reach, if there could be said to be a costume appropriate to such an activity.

The whole effect was slightly ludicrous...until Bjorn noticed that, unlike the crew, and for that matter unlike himself, the man’s breath did not steam in the gelid night air. Either he was as cold as the breathless breeze surrounding them, or he wasn’t breathing at all. Or, Bjorn realized suddenly, there might be some glamer at work.

As the sailors raced for the arms lockers, Mjød raised the speaking trumpet. Throughout the bustle, Bjorn kept his eyes fixed on the slowly approaching ice floe and its oddly out-of-place passenger. The man didn’t move at all; he stood stock-still, arms crossed, gazing straight ahead at the ship lying becalmed in the ice-riddled sea. As the range shortened, Bjorn could make out additional details. The man’s raiment was richer than he’d first imagined; an elaborately embroidered tunic with a fur-trimmed over-mantle, thick breeches, and high-topped boots of some unfamiliar leather, the whole crafted in a range of sea-colours, from emerald to azure to pale blue. Water lapped at the man’s booted feet; the floe upon which he stood was nearly awash, and Bjorn could see that it was moving fast enough to leave a rippling wake.

Then he noticed the man’s hair. In the distance and the gloom, he’d first thought it black; but now, closer, and with more light in the sky, he could see that it was nearly the same colour as the fellow’s cloak, an odd, burnished blue-green. Stranger still were his eyes, which were a brighter, almost luminous variant of the same deep, sea-hued shade. Some sort of Elf? the priest wondered. He couldn’t see any ears; they were hidden by the fellow’s thick, shaggy mane. Besides, he looked to be as tall and robust as Bjorn himself – much too tall to be one of the fair folk, the sons of Wise Hara.

An overdressed enigma, the priest mused. Well, I’ll find out who he is soon enough.

As he followed the visitor with his eyes, a hand of sailors lined the rail, their arbalests loaded, cocked and levelled. Bjorn raised his voice to reach them all. Keep your fingers steady, please, he said calmly. Would you shoot an unarmed man from ambush?

"I would, Mjød muttered half to himself. But aloud, he underscored Bjorn’s words. Stand fast, lads. The man who looses without my word’ll swing, aye."

The grisly threat made Bjorn shudder, but it had its intended effect. The jabbering crew calmed down, watching the approaching oddity with trepidation in their faces.

They waited. Nisse slid down the ratlines, returned the far-glass to its hooks, whispered briefly to Mjød, and then thumped down to the maindeck to supervise the crew.

Minutes passed, until at last the tiny ice-floe finally drew near enough for speech. Bjorn was running through prayers and invocations in his mind when the peculiar raft halted a dozen paces from the ship’s bow. Though he was expecting discourse, when its passenger finally spoke, he started. Hail, the ship! May I come up?

The man’s voice was high-pitched and clear – a pleasant, warbling tenor that carried with it a