Huddled between the thwarts, Skarfr lay with his eyes shut but that only augmented the intimate stink of men in close quarters. The overlapping planks beneath and beside him had soaked up all the smells, not just the salt water, and the concoction they returned to the air was not conducive to sleep. If he opened his eyes, he saw damp wood, each strake nailed to its neighbour, flexing invisibly as the Surf-rider ploughed a white furrow through the waves. Rows of iron clinker nails kept the hull from falling apart. Each nail had been carefully placed, the tail broken off and the head hammered a hundred times, hardened and water-tight. From the nails to the great sail, every part of the ship was seaworthy and each man must keep it so. Seaworthy and clean.
The bucket privy was rough-sluiced, if at all. Each man was supposed to empty it overboard and rinse it after use with seawater from the companion bucket, but some were more fastidious than others. Identifying excrement and culprit could easily escalate from crude jokes to divisive resentment on a long voyage but on a short trip like this one, the captain let the men sort themselves out without rancour.
‘Hey, Bent-nose, this looks like your sister,’ observed a hoarse voice, followed by laughter and a splash as the offending turd hit the water below.
‘More like your wife,’ was the cheerful reply.
Tuning out the banter was easier than ignoring all the wooden groans and wave-bumps, so different from Skarfr’s usual sleeping environment. The bench in the Bu was hard wood but it was dry and – gods be thanked – didn’t buck around like a bee-stung pony. He longed to stretch out full-length and be peaceful in the dark. Never had he appreciated the comfort of that bench in the Bu until now, tossed on a dragon ship. He’d rather be on watch, with something to do, even looking out for the Swelchie, a whirlpool ‘the size of a whole village, that would take us down to Hel,’ according to Holdfast. The stuff of legend.
Skarfr’s heart beat faster, remembering the old poet’s words.
When the world was not full-made, King Frodi of Denmark came by an enchanted quern called Grotti, which would grind out whatsoever he wished, be it peace or riches. On a ship, in secret, he ordered his thralls, Fenja and Menja, to grind out gold and so they sang the Grotti song, heaping gold upon gold, covering the deck.
‘More!’ cried the king.
‘Are you sure you want more from us and Grotti?’ asked the exhausted women.
‘More!’ cried the king, his greed inexhaustible.
The sisters shared a long look and began singing again, an ominous note darkening the Grotti song.
As the gold petered out, the quern ground out the form of Mysingr, the Sea King, who murdered Frodi and claimed Grotti.
‘Grind salt!’ he ordered the sisters and they did as bid until the ship sank and a svelgr whirled in its place, where the sea swirls frothy white into Grotti’s eye, the quern-auga. And so the sea became salt, thanks to the work of Fenja and Menja, who grind away beneath the sea and take ships as payment.
Skarfr did not want to die but he longed to add Grotti’s song to the verses in his head. If he possessed a magic quern, what would he grind?
Forgiveness.
Foolish Christian answer to a foolish question. He had done nothing that wasn’t justified. He hadn’t been the one who’d killed two men. And the last thing he wanted was forgiveness for others. For Thorbjorn. For Holbodi. They should pay for their crimes. He imagined Sweyn forgiving Holbodi and laughed aloud. What was the point of manbot if so much forgiveness was required by the White Christ? It was a man’s right to decide whether to forgive and the Thing’s work to set a fair price on atonement.
A punch to his shoulder. ‘Your watch, lad, before you drive us all mad with your muttering. We’re in the aft section and that’s where we stay. Check the braces and sheets and don’t get in others’ way. Pass messages on from Lord Thorbjorn or the other helmsman as men in the foreship don’t always hear orders from the stern. The sail itself is not our job, but watch and learn. And if you see the Swelchie I’m already a dead man, so let me sleep.’
With that, Holdfast assumed a foetal position between the thwarts, pulled a cover right over his head and took his turn in sleep – or in writing poetry in his head for four hours. Who could tell what a man did in the privacy of forced rest. Two others in their section were already under their weatherproofs and the two on watch with Skarfr grunted at each other in friendly acknowledgement.
For Skarfr, ‘watch’ literally meant ‘watch’. He watched ropes while his fellow sailors adjusted them, sometimes from instinct, sometimes at Thorbjorn’s orders. He saw how the braces turned the yard. The sheets controlled the bottom edge of the sail. Everything affected the sail so Skarfr watched that too.
When the wind picked up and was too fierce, Thorbjorn yelled, ‘One reef’ and the men midship rolled up the sail to reduce its size. When the wind dropped enough, they unfurled the reef.
Tireless, vigilant, watching over the whole ship from his position by the steerboard, Thorbjorn had taken no rest and his confidence was the wind in his men’s sails. Although Sweyn in the Death-bringer had taken the lead from the harbour, the five ships were now neck and neck, edging ahead and falling back according to the skittish currents of the Pentlandsfjord and their captains’ adjustments. The Death-bringer and the Surf-rider were the only two with sculpted dragons at the prow and serpent tails, easy to distinguish. The other three longships had sleek curves, curling at the tips of prow and stern, functional and anonymous.
Thorbjorn watched Sweyn’s ship as closely as his own, hurling instructions, finding the course to maximise the wind power until he yelled, ‘Let’s take him!’ and with one final adjustment to the sail, the Surf-rider stormed ahead of the other four, raising shouts of triumph from the crew.
From that moment on, Sweyn and Thorbjorn competed to find the edge: a gift from wind or tide, an adjustment to sail or steerboard. The two ships played leapfrog, their crews roaring each time their ship took the lead. The other three ships’ captains took a staid, less tiring course and let the two dragon ships compete.
Whenever Sweyn pulled ahead, Thorbjorn swore loudly and a rapid volley of instructions spread tension from the serpent’s tail screwed to the stern of the ship to its dragon-head prow.
‘Land!’ yelled the watchman in the foreship and the call was passed back to Thorbjorn, to make sure he’d seen the long run of cliffs, five times the height of Orkney’s. He felt the changing currents where the seas clashed with the headland.
‘Cape Hvarf!’ yelled Thorbjorn.
Skarfr’s heart raced like the tide, knowing that the Cape of Turning was the furthest point west before they turned into the shelter of the Suðreyjar and headed south to Tiree. But the Cape also meant a lethal conjunction of conflicting currents, sending cold death out miles from the shore. In a strong wind there was no passage at all but today’s prevailing blow was moderate, although it was the unhelpful westerly that usually prevailed here.
Expert captain that he was, Sweyn had already adjusted his course to give the Cape as wide a berth as possible and three longships followed his. But not the Surf-rider. Not while the Death-bringer was in front.
Black hair flying wild in the wind, Thorbjorn shouted, ‘Hold fast!’ The seas swirled in angry turbulence, crashing in white stallions, foam at their mouths.
Sleepy-eyed, Skarfr’s fellow sailor emerged from his blanket, looked over the port side to the swoops of terns and guillemots clearly visible on the knife-edge cliffs and his eyes quickly returned from dreams to a waking nightmare. He swore long and low but quietly. The captain was still the captain.
‘Now! All hands to starboard! Tack north!’ The men in the second section, behind the foreship, went into frenzied activity, controlling the front of the sail as it swung.
At Thorbjorn’s command, the men all moved starboard, human ballast to take the ship away from its dangerous course too near the Cape.
Lurching at the sudden change of direction, the ship shipped some of the bigger waves and the sail faltered.
A rocky outcrop rose above the crashing waves to starboard and it was the wayfinder who shouted in jubilation, ‘Duslic Rock,’ as the ship was steered south of the twin crests showing above the water. Skarfr glimpsed two cormorants glistening black as the rocks where they perched, watching over him. Or saying goodbye. He clutched his hammer amulet, praying to any gods who’d listen
The midshipmen bailed water, men readied themselves to reef and row, and the gods declared for Thorbjorn.
Aegir the sea-god gave them a westward current. The sail stopped fidgeting like a nervous horse, filled and accepted the new direction. The ship sped away from the land and, with careful adjustments, zigzagged on its tack around the cape, far ahead of the other four ships which fought the eastward currents further north. Slower but safer.
‘Back to your positions.’
Shaking, Skarfr saw that the men who’d jumped from rest to action were taking over and that his watch was ended. And that they were all still alive.
‘What about the Swelchie?’ he asked Holdfast, controlling the tremor in his voice.
The seaman looked at him and laughed. ‘Thorbjorn’s not daft enough to go anywhere near Stroma. We passed the whirlpool by miles during first watch, following Sweyn’s lead. He knows this route like the back of his hand, does the sea-rover.’ He glanced backwards and added hastily, ‘As does Lord Thorbjorn.’
Relief flooded the crew as they rounded the dangerous Cape. Thorbjorn handed the steerboard to the second helmsman now they were heading south and in calm waters, sheltered between the Suðreyjar islands and the Skottish mainland.
‘He knows well enough,’ he repeated in a whisper, ‘but the mad bastard will kill us all to be one up on Sweyn. No good will come of this.’
For all ears, he continued loudly, ‘We’re on the best ship with the best captain. Look at them, following us like wee doggies.’
The men around him laughed and passed the joke up front to the dragon’s head. And they were proud of outsailing the greatest sea-rover in the world. But Skarfr too felt no good would come of it. He also wondered where the lash would have landed if Thorbjorn had lost his race. He would not want to be the shroud-pin that broke.