Runes and Red Sails (Queenmaker Book 1)(74)

Vidar was chanting to himself; the words were hard to make out, but the tone was pleading. Kolbrun crouched with her hand atop one of the coiled running lines and waited for a signal. Geir and Jarngrim did the same. Their eyes did not drift from Eyvind.

Aelfhild sat beside Ceolwen and Bercthun. She had no prayers for the Gods. Instead, she reached out and held both of her companion’s hands. Her mistress did not look up. Bercthun merely nodded.

Rain began to fall, a pitter-patter at first, but building as the sky above blackened.

Thunder crashed around them in ear-shattering clamor, and the sea boiled under the assault of rain and wind. Hail pummeled Unn-marr, drumming at the wooden boards and tearing at the stitches of their woolen shelter.

The deck heaved. Aelfhild wedged her feet into the hull and pressed her back against a sea chest.

“Line away!” She could not tell if Eyvind or Rolf had yelled it.

Kolbrun dropped her coil overboard, and the boards of the railing creaked as the rope snapped taut in the waves.

Twilight engulfed them beneath the shroud of storm clouds. Lightning flashed, illuminating Rolf and Eyvind as they wrestled the steering oar into place.

It was too loud to speak, or at least too loud to be heard; Vidar’s lips were in constant motion. Wind, surf, hail, and thunder roared over any words. Aelfhild kept a tight grip on her friends. In the flickering light, she could see white eyes.

“Line away!”

Geir tossed his rope over the side.

A splintering crack shook the deckboards, felt as much as heard. The mast bent and snapped, breaking halfway up and ripping away the awning as it careened out into the waves. Torn from its moorings, a cord scythed past Aelfhild’s face with a high-pitched wail. All of the crew dropped facedown into the water sloshing the deck as debris whipped overhead.

Unn-marr lurched to starboard. Ropes still bound to the mast dragged the ship over, and Kolbrun sprang to the railing.

“Cut it free!” she howled to the Earnfoldings.

Aelfhild fumbled for her beltknife and sawed into a nearby line thrumming with tension. It frayed and snapped beneath her blade, and she was flung sideways as the anchor dropped away and the ship rocked upright once more.

She had lost her hold of Ceolwen and Bercthun.

Hail pelted her face and shoulders, and the rain was numbing cold down her back. Her feet and fingers were frozen.

Lightning spread searing cracks through the clouds and left her blind and blinking in the murk.

“Line! Line!” came the cry from the stern.

In another burst of light, she saw Jarngrim scrabbling to get his coil of rope over the rail.

There was no end to the storm in sight. The darkness sprawled toward both horizons.

The ship’s prow dipped wildly into a trough and hooked the back of the next wave. A wall of water roared across the deck. Aelfhild watched as a man’s body, she could not tell who, was swept over the railing and out into the sea. Water slammed against her chest and pulled her feet out from under her. She hooked an arm through one of the ropes across the deck and pulled herself out of the wave’s clutches.

Unn-marr shuddered, her hull screaming as it bent beneath the added weight. Aelfhild could feel boards fracturing beneath her.

Lightning. This time it shimmered through the air at a snail’s pace; the glow skittered across the water’s roiling surface.

The world was suddenly still.

Rain drops hung suspended in the air.

Aelfhild looked up.

Another wave towered over the prow, paused in mid-break.

She took a deep breath.

Then she was in the sea.

She thrashed to stay afloat beneath the sopping weight of her clothing. The waves drove her forward. There was no controlling direction, so she kicked and flailed just to keep her head above. Light and thunder, and she saw a beach. The waves that crashed upon it were mountains. She tried to turn, but the current was stronger. She was borne onward in the dark.

The sea lifted her body into the air before slamming back down against the shore. Sand scraped at her face and arms. As the surf rushed back, it seized her legs to drag her out once more.

She gasped air whenever her head broke the water and cast around for a handhold in the shifting grains.

Teeth sank into her shoulder. Jaws closed, vice-like, around her arm. Something was pulling her up from the waves, the tear of fangs a welcome relief from the battering tide.

Embla. A single thought raced through her mind. Embla has me.

She had paid no mind to the dog in all the chaos.

Aelfhild tried to stand but was knocked once more from her feet by the waves. Embla kept dragging her bodily up the shore toward rocks above.

It took Aelfhild a moment to clear her lungs once she was out of the water. She clutched at Embla’s sodden fur.

Another lightning flash revealed a struggling form in the surf not far away. Barking wildly, Embla ran toward it.

Eyvind, battered bloody beneath his torn clothing, staggered up from the waves behind his faithful hound. He grabbed unsteadily at Aelfhild and they stumbled up the shore in the darkness, unable to speak over the waves and howling wind. He retched seawater and sagged onto her shoulder.

In the lee of rocks higher up the beach they sheltered, clinging to one another in the gale as they shivered and shook.

Embla huddled close for warmth.

The storm raged on outside their cave.





41

Aelfhild’s eyes were crusted with salt and swollen shut.