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“Jörmungandr!”
Lothar turned his head at the sound of Aric’s warning, and another wave surged over the side of the longboat. The seawater blinded him for a moment.
“Fafnir can’t take much more,” Knut called out.
Lothar opened his eyes, which burned with the salt from the seawater; then the pain was washed away by the heavy rain. The dark sky was illuminated for an instant by a flash of lightning. Lothar glimpsed a dark outline of land in the distance, which vanished while a clap of thunder roared overhead.
“Turn the ship!” he called out to the oarsmen. “Land is near!” He yelled to Starri at the front of the longship, and pointed. “It was there, look for it in the flashes of light.”
“Thor must be angered, to bring about such a storm as this.” Sven commented as he pulled on the oar.
“The God of thunder must be battling Jörmungandr, the great serpent in Midgard. You can tell by the bright flashes of light, when his hammer, Mjolnir, struck the serpent,” Aric told the men as they battled against the turbulent waves to maneuver the ship.
“Enough of the Edda telling,” Ivarr yelled to them.
“What are you doing?” Lothar noticed Ivarr tying pouches onto his belt. “Get back to the oars!”
Suddenly, Lothar heard a loud cracking sound. He pivoted in time to view the side of the longship break into two parts. Men struggled with oars while the waves crashed around them.
“For Loki!” someone yelled.
Lothar heard the voice, turned just as a dark image before him thrust a sharp object into his left shoulder. He reeled back in pain by the force of impact and the rolling waves, and slumped to the ship’s deck. Lothar looked up as lightning flashed, the brightness of the man’s white skin in the light against the dark background blinded him. The dark specter was gone.
Lothar jolted awake. He sat up, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He surveyed his surroundings, the circle fire-pit in the middle of the round hut, and the table and two stools across from him draped with clothing. Dara lay comfortably beside him, asleep.
He tried to recall more of the nightmare, the brief glimpses of the shipwreck. The storm breaking the longship into pieces, a piece of broken oar jammed into his body by one of his shipmates.
He could not make out the face, although all on board were from his village. Who would have used the storm at sea to kill him? Aric had been a friend and Lothar remembered him lying in the sand the next morning. He thought about the others, Sven, Knut, Starri, and Ivarr, he had known each of them since their youth. Then, he thought again about Ivarr. Lothar knew that his brother Ulin and Ivarr had always been close friends.
He rubbed his head with his hands. Over a month had passed since that night and he had not seen any other of the crew alive. “Why am I dreaming about it now?” he wondered aloud.
He recalled when he was a child, and had a nightmare and told his father about it.
“Nott, the Goddess of night, uses our dreams to challenge us, to know the spirit of the man as he truly believes himself to be,” his father told him.
Lothar shook his head, clearing his mind. He was apprehensive about the timing of the dream.
He shifted his body, and gazed at Dara sleeping with her hands together, tucked under her cheek, her auburn hair splayed over her back and the woolen blankets.
He thought about how he spent the night lying with her in his arms. Holding her close to his body was a combination of pure delight and torment. The only separation between him and her silky smooth skin was the loincloth, while her curves tantalized his hands when he brushed over them briefly to warm her. When she moaned into his neck, the sound drove his mind to conjure up images of their bodies entwined.
The brief moment he finally slept challenged his mind with the brutal images from the storm.
Should he go back home and leave her here without knowing her touch? Would she be willing to accept him, a Norseman, like the one who captured her friend? Would she despise him?
Lothar heard the sheep stirring outside, impatient for their morning meal.
Lifting the blanket, he silently rose from the pallet. He turned to observe Dara sleeping comfortably, while he tucked the blanket around her, then crossed the dirt floor to his clothes. He pulled on the dry linen shirt, his chest and shoulders stretching the shirt seams. He tied the belt that held his pouch and sheathed the knife at his waist. Lothar picked up the leggings and boots and opened the door.
Morning frosted the blades of grass as he walked outside, and his feet curled trying to avoid the frozen ground. Hurriedly, he shook dried mud from the leggings. He quickly removed the loincloth, and struggled to haul up the cold, stiff leggings over his thighs, then yanked on his boots. He turned and tossed the loincloth back inside onto one of the stools before he closed the door behind him.
He moved toward the shelter, small clumps of mud falling from his boots as he walked. He grumbled when he glanced at Sinséar’s empty stall. The memory of his carelessness haunted him. He grabbed some dry hay and spread it out for the noisy sheep.
On his way back to the hut, he spotted three small segments of wood from a tree limb. He picked them up and carried them back to the hut.
Lothar lit a small fire with his strike-a-light, and placed the iron cauldron at the edge of the fire to warm the soup again. He set her dried clothing on the chest at the end of the pallet. Next, he carried the clay pitcher outside to the fresh water barrel, filled it up, brought it inside and set it on the table.
While waiting for the cauldron to heat, he removed the knife, and whittled away the bark from the pieces of alder. He thought of what he would tell Dara when she was better.
“Dia dhuit?”
At the greeting call he remembered from his father’s thralls, Lothar rose from the chair, placed the carving on the table while he kept the knife in his hand, and opened the door.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Lothar smiled and re-sheathed the knife while Abbott Sean walked toward the door.
“I heard about what happened in Droicheada yesterday,” Sean started.
Lothar walked outside, closing the door behind him. “Tell me what you heard.”
“Only that the Priestess cast her magic, and made gold appear from nowhere to pay her taxes.”
“More lies,” Lothar stated. “I paid the taxes, with a cuff that matches this one.” Lothar opened the pouch at his waist, then held the cuff out to the monk.
“I thought the story was a lie.”
Lothar watched Sean turn the cuff, then the man almost dropped it when the wolf design was turned up.
“W-w-where did you get this?” Sean stuttered.
“From my father.”
“I’ve only seen the design once before.” Sean handed back the cuff.
Lothar took it and placed it back in his bag. “My father is a trader, you might have seen it before he got it.”
“Perhaps.” Sean cocked his head and squinted his eyes at Lothar.
“Dara’s pony, and cart with mead, was stolen from the marketplace,” Lothar continued.
“How did that happen?”
“I left the cart for a moment to talk to a man named Rolf, about sailing to the mainland. When I got back, the pony and cart were gone.”
“You’re going home?”
“I can’t now. I don’t have enough for passage.”
“I’ll talk to Rolf. If you are willing to work on the ship prior to leaving, I’ll convince him to take you along.”
“I don’t understand.”
“So you can find your way home,” Sean tapped his thumbs together. “What about the Priestess? Does she know about you wanting to leave?”
“In a sense, yes. She’s always known.”
“Why not take her with you?”
“I don’t want to make her choose between her home or being with me.”
“Do you love her?”
“That is none of your affair.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ll ask Brother Michael to bring by some fish, since you’ll be working on the boat.” Sean turned.
“I’ll meet him at the fork in the path near sunset,” Lothar offered. “To save him the trip here.”
Sean nodded “Slán agat.”
Lothar watched as Abbott Sean walked back up the path. He went back inside the hut and found the soup boiling in the cauldron. Using the wooden spoon, he hooked it under the handle of the small cauldron, moving the iron pot from the fire, stirred, then scooped some of the vegetable broth into a clay bowl, letting it cool. He pulled down two roughly woven sacks from the shelf, removed the bread and cheese from each and placed it on the table.
Lothar rinsed the knife with a small amount of water from the pitcher. He cut two slices of the bread and a slice of cheese, put them together, and dunked the edge of the bread into the soup. When he finished eating, he wrapped the bread and cheese into their respective bags.
He walked over to Dara to check on her. Her skin was warm as he stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. He decided to let her sleep, and he went back to his carvings.
