The reefing ropes whipped left and right as though the wind came from all sides at once. My oar's blade struck the white crest of a wave as I glanced over my shoulder at the distant cliffs, before Serpent's bow rocked into the sky. She gave a great creaking sigh that seemed to say, Don't look back, Osric, there's just us now. No land, no safety, just wood and nails and flesh.
'Any further and we'll lose sight of land!' Olaf shouted above the swirling wind that whistled through the oar ports. 'There's no way of knowing which way the storm is heading, Sigurd! We'll have to ride Rán's daughters!' Rán's daughters were the waves, and as Serpent's prow struck, they leapt across her top strakes to slap our faces and sting our eyes.
Sigurd frowned, salt water dripping from his hair and beard. The wrong decision could see his men drowned. But if they were afraid, they showed little sign of it. Some invoked their chosen gods. Black Floki challenged Njörd Lord of the Sea to do his worst, but the men around him cursed and told him to shut his big mouth. We rowed hard, as though muscle and sinew could challenge the might of wind and wave. But water was pouring in at the oar ports and the oars themselves were in danger of snapping under the swell's pressure. Rain and seawater drenched us, my face stung from the salt and I found it impossible to row in time with the others.
A great crack of thunder filled the world. 'Enough, lads! Get the oars in!' Sigurd called. 'Eric, tell Glum we're going to ride this one out,' he shouted, pointing to the oil lamp in its hollow horn sheath. Eric nodded, wiping rain from his brow as he took up the lamp and stumbled over to Serpent's seaward side, grabbing hold of the sheet to steady himself. We stowed the oars, plugged our ports with leather bungs and prepared for Njörd's fury. Suddenly I was jealous of Eric, who had been given a task that would steer his thoughts from fear. 'Take in the shields!' Sigurd shouted, and I stood just as Serpent's dragonhead prow lurched skywards. I stumbled into a chest and was flung back, striking my head on an oak rib.
Beside me Ealhstan made a long guttural sound as another peal of thunder split the night. He clung to Serpent's top strake, already looking like a drowned man. Something hit me in the chest as I lay in a sloshing pool of seawater. It was a length of tar-stinking rope.
'Tie the old man down or his bones will be washed overboard!' Svein the Red shouted as he staggered, unrolling the spare sail to help cover the small open hold at the base of the mast. 'And have a word with Óðin All-Father!' the red-bearded giant added with no hint of a smile. 'I don't swim well.'
The wind whipped the white hair from the waves and the ship creaked and moaned at the sea. I stumbled to Ealhstan, whose legs were trembling with the effort of fighting the ship's roll, and put my arm round him. 'Come, old man, you're not getting off this surf dragon without me,' I muttered in his ear, and he nodded and together we blundered to the mast. I sat him on the keelson, blinking through the stinging spray, and threw the rope around him and the mast. When I had made the knot, the old man put a hand to my cheek. 'We'll get through this,' I shouted and gripped his thin wrist. Bile had risen hot in my chest and my head swam with sickness.
Sigurd had unfurled the great square sail and he and Olaf and three others fought with bowline and forestay and backstay, moving in harmony with the ship so that it seemed they might remain standing even if Serpent capsized. They were trying to harness the wind rather than oppose it, but they were losing. I wiped my eyes against the driving rain, struggling to see Fjord- Elk. She was sometimes thirty feet above us, then thirty below, her crew like wooden figures carved into the ship's deck. She looked like a god's toy.
'No, Uncle!' Sigurd roared into the wind. 'We can't win this one! Get her sail down before we're tipped out like bad mead.'
'Aye, she'll tear to shreds!' Olaf agreed as he fought with the sail. And so, with the sail down and no oars in the water, we were helpless.
'Sigurd's given Serpent to the fate maidens!' a man named Aslak called over his shoulder, clinging to a sheet block. 'The Norns will craft our future now.' Each man gripped his chest of belongings and the ship's top strake, waiting to see what future, if any, the Norns of fate had woven for him. Each man except Sigurd. He stumbled across Serpent 's deck, dipping his hand into a sodden leather bag and giving each man a coin, which they tucked deep inside their clothing with a nod of thanks. He passed by Ealhstan and came to me and I looked up at him as the wind howled and the thunder roared in my ears.
'I give them gold in case tonight we sleep in Rán's kingdom at the bottom of the sea!' he shouted with a grimace that could have been a smile. 'She will only receive those with gold and it seems she is casting her nets today. Rán is a greedy bitch, hey, Asgot!' he called to the old godi, who shouted something back and threw his hands heavenward, causing Sigurd to grin mischievously. Sigurd suddenly gripped the top strake as Serpent rode up a great wave, its dragonhead nodding to the gods before plunging down towards cruel Rán's kingdom and her hall lit by dead men's gold. 'Here, boy.' He removed the amulet of one-eyed Óðin from round his neck and passed the leather thong over my head. 'Now remind the All-Father who you are!' he shouted. 'Tell him to spare us so that we might do great things in his name!' His blue eyes and the white foaming crests of Rán's nine daughters were the only colours in a dark, threatening world. 'If Óðin listens, I will free you!' he shouted. 'If not, I'll give you to Njörd!'