It was afternoon, with the sun already dropping from its peak. It wasn’t hot. I had the feeling it never really got hot around this place.
Nevertheless, out on the boats I saw Viking crews stripped to the waist, trouser legs rolled up. They were coiling ropes, checking the caulking between the strakes, shinnying up the masts to check the seating of the single spar. They hauled on stays and went over the oars looking for cracks. They attached new sails and supervised the slaves who were manhandling pallets of bread, entire sides of beef, live sheep, live chickens, and barrels of what might be water or beer down into the shallow holds.
It was a picture of purposeful, serious, directed activity.
“Wow. Mass confusion,” Christopher said.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Only if you don’t know what you’re looking at. I’ll tell you something: These boys have done this before.
These guys are pros.”
The ships, on closer examination, came in several sizes, and no two were identical. Each had the almost-matching stern and prow that would allow the boat to reverse without turning around, the same single mast and square sail. But on some, the figurehead blazed with silver and gold. And some were quite long and large: I could count twenty-five oarlocks a side. That presupposed fifty rowers, when needed, plus petty officers, officers, and at least one guy to handle the big starboard-mounted steering oar.
I did not see the longboat with Loki’s symbol, the one that had carried the old man to make the ritual sacrifice. But it would have been easy to overlook in the crowded harbor.
“That is our ship,” Thorolf said, pointing to a boat of average size lying well out in the water. “She is called the Dragonshield.
She is one of Harald Goldtooth’s ships. He has three, and the Dragonshield is his flagship. Her figurehead was carved and inlaid with gold by dwarves.”
“Of course. Dwarves. Had to be dwarves,” Christopher muttered. “What looney bin is complete without dwarves and elves?”
“There are very few elves around these parts,” Thorolf said sadly. “Elves are found to the south, though once they lived nearby in greater numbers. Much has changed, and not for the good. We were fortune to be given a bench on Harald’s ship.
Since Loki came and strangled Earl Jens, may that good man have been carried swiftly to Valhalla, we have been allowed no ships in this land. No ships but the tribute ship.” He spit on the ground. It was a statement of his feelings about the tribute ship and Loki more generally.
A rowboat nosed up to the pier and Thorolf jumped in, moving like an experienced sailor, taking the roll easily. He reached up a hand to me.
I ignored it and jumped across, landing on a vacant bench, catching my balance almost as easily as he had. I saw an eyebrow rise. A sailor knows a sailor.
Together we got Jalil, April, and Christopher into the boat.
The slave oarsman rowed us out into a thicket of small boats that reminded me of the Dan Ryan Expressway at rush hour.
“We saw a unicorn back on your farm,” April said.
“Yes, yes, we see unicorns there from time to time. They say that unicorns may only be handled by virgins,” he said with a sly wink at April.
“Kind of makes you regret that homecoming dance, huh, April?” Christopher said brightly.
April batted her eyes. “You shouldn’t listen to rumors.”
“You know what they say about rumors: They’re always true.”
At that point we came around the sheltering point out into more open water. I saw the castle. The very wall where we’d been hung by the wrists. I had a dark, nasty feeling about those massive stone walls. I had seen a small part of the horrors contained in the castle and in the tunnels that cut deep into the black cliffs.
My blood was on those walls.
“Thorolf,” I began, as casually as I could, “have you ever heard of a girl named Senna? Some say she’s a witch.”
Thorolf glanced over his shoulder up toward the castle, a nervous reaction. “Don’t talk to me about witches! Do you want to curse this entire voyage?”
Jalil shot me a look. “You know, we may have enough on our hands without worrying about Senna.”
“We’re getting ready to sail away, who knows how far?” I said. “She may be here. We may be abandoning her.”
“She may be there,” Jalil argued. “After all, if Lo… if the Big Creep lost her, what’s to say she’s anywhere around here?”
“If he’s looking for her, maybe we should stick close to him.
He finds her, we find her.”
Jalil shook his head. “That’s fine, except for one little problem: He finds us, we’re dead. Dead, we aren’t much use to Senna.
Or anyone else.”
April said, “You know, David, maybe things aren’t as random as you think. Maybe we’re doing exactly what we have to do.”
“Yeah, the Great Cosmic All is guiding our steps,”
Christopher said, mock-serious. “Karma, dude. It’s all, like, karma.”
I looked again at the castle. And then at the village. I was looking for something. A sign, maybe. Hoping for an intuition to guide me.
But all I had was a memory of a dream. Senna, calling me names that made her angry. Names that might someday be mine.
Maybe a hand was guiding me, and all of us. Maybe, even, it was Senna’s own hand. Life’s so much easier if you think that way. So much easier to blame some unseen force.
I closed my eyes and felt the last of the dream, the moment when she had softened, become warm, and pressed her body against mine.
That was the Senna I would find. But Jalil was right: I’d have to live to do it.
Chapter
XXVI
We reached the ship. The sides were not much higher than our rowboat, but it was still a chore getting the three landlubbers up and over.
“Harald Goldtooth and his sons, Sancho and Sven Swordeater,” Thorolf said. He nodded to midship, where the crew was rigging a striped tent.
Harald Goldtooth was easy to spot. When he grinned —which was not often — you saw two flashes of gold right where his canine teeth had been. I’d seen him the night before at the feast. He glanced at us, decided we were not important, and went back to discussing business with his two sons. One of the sons was the young Viking with the stab wound through both cheeks.
I was guessing he was the one called Swordeater.
“Sancho?” Christopher asked. “That’s a Norse name?”
“There has obviously been some intermarriage, Christopher,”
Jalil said. “You did happen to notice that King Olaf was a brother, didn’t you?”
“You sure he’s not just really tan?”
Suddenly, a horn blast. It echoed through the harbor. Then again. And a third time.
A roar went up from a thousand threats. On shore, women waved good-bye. But there were women aboard, too. Evidently some Vikings brought their wives, or at least their close personal friends.
Harald Goldtooth stepped out of the tent just long enough to give a curt, businesslike nod to the officer who must have been his captain.
The captain in turn nodded to the guy I assumed was the mate. I had no clear sense of what ranks and functions there were aboard this ship. No one was wearing a uniform and I saw no insignias of rank.
“Man the oars!” the mate bellowed, and there followed a wild tramping and pushing and shoving as men ran to their appointed posts.
Thorolf left us standing, feeling stupid and out of place. Four dorks from a different universe.
“When does the steward show us to our cabins?”
Christopher asked.
I walked over to the empty bench, sat down, and worked the long, heavy oar into the oarlock as I’d seen the crew do.
The mate strode over. “You’re cargo. You don’t need to row.”
“I’ll row,” I said.
The man laughed. “You’ll foul the other oars. Go away.
Stand with your woman and the
other minstrels.”
It was a test. At least that’s how I saw it. “If I foul another rower, I will stand with the others,” I said.
“Up oars!” the mate yelled in response. All the oars came up out of the water. A sense of anticipation filled the air. Excitement.
This wasn’t a crew being driven against its will. There were grins and nods and exchanged winks.
“STROKE!” a new voice hollered, and all the oars hit the water at the same moment. I kept my eyes glued on the man in front of me. He wasn’t big, but his bare back was nothing but rippling muscles.
He moved, I moved.
“Up and STROKE!” The bos’n — for lack of any better term
— called the rhythm. The ship began to make way, amazingly easily. Not that the rowing would be easy after an hour. But for now it was more a matter of catching the precise pace, the exact flow of synchronized movements.
The cry of “stroke… stroke” was replaced by a drum, pounding hard on the start of each pull, tapping gently on the return stroke.
I pulled hard, putting my back into it. Thorolf was three benches up from me on the other side, doing the same. There were fifteen of us to a side, thirty men pulling in unison.
And all around us, visible as I rolled forward at the end of a stroke, were ships. Some larger, some smaller, all cutting the water, all moving. It was an awesome sight. An awesome spectacle that I was a part of. Something no one had seen in the real world for centuries: a Viking fleet putting to sea.
STROKE with the drumbeat, pull, pull, pull, then lift, roll forward, stretch out, way out, then STROKE and push with your legs, thigh muscles burning, and the narrow, shallow-draft ship would leap through the water.
“Harald Goldtooth!” a rowdy voice called out from off the port side. “Harald Goldtooth! Do you have women rowing that slow, diseased-pit of a boat? Should I send some of my true, hearty men across to help you before those weak-limbed, venereal-diseased old women you calla crew faint from their exertions?”
His crew gave him a roar of approval, followed by shouted obscene suggestions relating to all of us.
Harald yelled back, “Edrick, you senile, effeminate dog, Thor himself could not blow the wind that could speed your filthy wreck of a ship faster than the Dragonshield.”
This, of course, was the signal for our crew to taunt and ridicule Edrick’s crew.
“My white mare against your best bull!” Edrick shouted, laying out the bet. “First to pass the line of the point!”
Yeah, it was all juvenile. Like junior high school with swords.
But it worked. We’d only been pretending to row. Now we rowed. The drumbeat accelerated and we hauled oar, yelling like idiots on each pull, the Vikings egging one another on.
My hands were soon blood-raw. My back was screaming.
My legs were on fire. My arms were lead. I’d probably never be able to unbend my fingers again.
But all second thoughts, all doubts, all dreams and memories of dreams were set aside as my world honed down to the rhythm and the strain.
It was a dumb, energy-draining race. I was on my way to a battle that was none of my business, surrounded by simple, illiterate men who were no part of my universe, on a mission from a lunatic mythical god.
And it occurred to me then that at that moment I was as happy as I’ve ever been in my life.
Chapter
XXVII
Just beyond the point we caught a following breeze. The Viking ships were great for their time, but they weren’t much good at sailing close to the wind. They could tack — move back and forth at angles to a wind that was against us — but only slowly and clumsily. Any weekend sailor in the real world could have sailed circles around these ships.
And the Viking ships had no weapons, aside from the men.
A ship like the Constitution, a War of 1812-era ship armed with cannons, could have blown an infinite number of Viking ships out of the water.
But this was a ship designed eight hundred years or so before the Constitution.
Which made me wonder. How long had Everworld existed?
When had it formed, if that’s what had happened? How many local years had passed without the Vikings ever learning to use fore and aft sails? Or at least multiple masts?
The breeze stayed fair for all that afternoon and evening.
Once under way, there wasn’t much for me to do. I could row well enough, but I didn’t know how to trim a square sail, and no one was going to put me on the steering oar.
Christopher and Jalil and I were given a few inches of deck as a bed. They rigged a tarp that shielded us from most of the spray, but it was going to be a hard, cold, wet night.
April slept under the tent. The back half belonged to the women — wives and mistresses. Harald, his son Sancho, and a couple of the higher-ranking guys slept there. Not much better off than us peasants, but better enough that it made Jalil grumble.
Getting to sleep wasn’t easy. I knew what sleep would mean. So did everyone. We made plans to get together on the other side.
But it wasn’t that easy. I fell asleep, lulled by the rise and fall of the ship under me and by my own deep physical exhaustion.
I slept…
“Grande latte and a no-whip Venti Mocha,” the cashier called.
I stared at her. “What?”
“Grande latte and a no-whip Venti Mocha,” she repeated.
I stared at the espresso machine before me. I stared at the stainless steel container of foamed milk in my left hand. I stared at the customer, who was staring at me.
I reached down and grabbed a handful of my dark green apron.
Starbucks. Where I worked three nights a week. I was at work.
Now the cashier was staring at me, too.
“Grande latte and a no-whip Venti Mocha,” I repeated faintly. I started to make the drinks. The motions were automatic.
Flicking the coffee from the grinder, twisting on the steam, pumping the chocolate syrup for the mocha.
“Is that skim?” the customer asked me. He was a middle-aged guy with a gray ponytail.
“Do you want skim?”
“Yeah, make it skim.”
I changed milk containers and began to steam the skim milk.
What else was I supposed to do? I was at work, and it was a good job for someone my age. I was sixteen and the manager had stretched the rules to let me trains as a barrista.
The guy who makes the drinks.
It paid better than Mickey D’s, and the humiliation quotient was lower. I worked three six-hour shifts, earning eight-fifty an hour plus a share of tips. I needed the hundred and twenty bucks a week I cleared after taxes. I had college to think about.
Not to mention a car from this decade.
This was in my head. All that rational, sensible stuff. It was in my head right next to the crazed voice yelling about Vikings.
“What flavor are those biscotti?” the customer asked me, since the cashier was busy with the next customer.
I felt like screaming, “How the hell do I know what flavor the lousy biscotti are, you ponytailed freak? I’m asleep on the deck of a Viking longboat on my way to a war!”
But I knew the answer. I mean, somehow I knew what flavor biscotti we had.
“Amaretto and chocolate chip,” I said.
The guy turned up his nose.
“Grande iced cappuccino, two tall cappuccinos,” the new customer said.
“One Grande iced cap, two tall cappuccino,” the cashier repeated for my benefit.
I flicked coffee. I tamped it down. I punched the button.
I should call Jalil. That was the plan. Once we were over, we’d all hook up, call one another, get together, try and make sense of everything.
No time now, though. I was at work. You couldn’t just walk out on work. This was a good job. Anthony, my boss, was a good guy. I had a duty.
A duty? A duty to make coffee for snotty yuppies? How was this my life? How was making coffee my li
fe?
As soon as I was done with this next customer, I’d make a call. Jalil first. He’d told me his number. They were unlisted, so I’d have to remember.
This was crazy!
“Here you go, sir. Grande skim latte, Venti Mocha, no whip cream.” I worked the tops on and handed the drinks over.
Ka-ching. The cash register drawer opened and closed with a bang.
People sitting at tables, sipping drinks. The room warm with wood and soft lights. Bags of coffee all lined up, stocked up.
Shelves of cups and coffeemakers. Someone needed to restock the—
I grabbed my head. This was crazy! This was—
A foot tramped down on my outstretched hand. One of the crewmen, moving aft to tighten a stay.
I blinked and looked around. The ship. Snoring Vikings all around. Jalil and Christopher closest by. Jalil snoring.
Christopher, eyes open, looking up at the stars.
I was exhausted. Tired in every muscle, every bone.
I drifted back to sleep.
Chapter
XXVIII
RrrrRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRR.
I released the key. My car. I was in my car. Morning.
Something had just happened here, here in the real world.
I searched my memory. My mom. That was it. She hadn’t done my laundry. No clean shirt. I had to wear some pathetic, raggedy thing from, like, three years ago.
What did I care? Oh. Yeah. We’d all had dinner together the night before. Me, my mom, this guy she was seeing. Eddie.
That was it, Eddie. She wanted Eddie and me to be friends, to get along.
I knew she was thinking about getting married. I knew it, although she denied it. The final step was getting me and Eddie so we could stand each other.
It would be heavy lifting, that would. He didn’t like me, and the reverse. He was an assistant professor of Romance languages at the university.