Runes and Red Sails (Queenmaker Book 1)(76)

Eddies below them swept around pieces of Unn-marr. Fragments of the deck, barrel staves, ropes, sailcloth; all were evidence of the ship’s death. But mourning the vessel would have to wait until they had found the rest of the crew.

Embla ran to the edge of a deep pit in the limestone and set to barking. Aelfhild and Eyvind ran over.

Rolf looked up from below. He sat along a ledge in the crater, his feet dangling just above the pounding surf. It looked as though he had rescued supplies from the water; beside him sat a barrel along with rope and wood bundled in tattered cloth. But he could not reach the ledge above, and so he had waited.

“Hail, brother.” Eyvind wiped at the corner of his eye as he spoke.

“Brother.” Rolf smiled. It was the first time Aelfhild had ever seen his teeth. “Sister.” He nodded toward her.

He tossed up his equipment first, then shimmied up the rope that Aelfhild and Eyvind anchored. The barrel was packed with dried fish, and they ate as they continued the search.

Aelfhild led the way across a soaring causeway between the island they had washed ashore on and the mainland. The ribbon of pitted white stone looked impossibly brittle between the great cliffs, and she tested her weight on it first before her heavier companions.

She looked out over the shore below as the men crossed after her. To the west, the setting sun cast long shadows along the bay. Unn-marr, or what remained, reared from the shaded water. The scrollwork prow jutted up from the waves, but the broken hull disappeared into sand beneath. Nothing was left of the aft section; everything behind the stub of mast was strewn through the surrounding rocks.

Eyvind and Rolf stood beside her in silence. Their shoulders fell at the sight. It looked as though Eyvind might say something.

Then Aelfhild spotted a speck of fire. It flickered up the beach from the wreckage.

“Fire!” She was already running as she shouted.

Eyvind and Rolf called out to her from behind, but she did not listen. Pebbles scattered beneath her feet as she shimmied along limestone sills and leapt over fissures. She jumped and landed on soft sand, then sprinted toward the light.

Embla dropped down and kept pace beside her, baying the entire way.

Figures shifted at the edge of the firelight at the sound the dog’s barking.

Aelfhild saw Ceolwen. She did not stop her sprint.

She hit her mistress head on and wrapped her arms tight around boney shoulders. They fell to the sand. Aelfhild could feel Ceolwen’s tears on her shoulder, and wept plenty of her own.

“I found you,” she whispered. “They did not win.”

If Ceolwen heard, she never asked what those words meant.

Eyvind and Rolf caught up. Kolbrun and Jarngrim were both there to greet them, standing beside the Earnfoldings entwined on the ground. Embla spun in frantic circles around the reunited group.

Aelfhild stood, eventually, and brushed sand off herself.

The Thrym all gazed toward the shipwreck. Not far from Unn-marr’s grave a damp blanket clung to the outline of a body.

Her smile faded, and she wiped the joyful tears from her face.

Eyvind asked the question. “Who?”

“Vidar,” Kolbrun answered. Her voice cracked.

The captain ran a hand through the hair over his forehead. “Anyone else?”

“Not yet.”

That means Bercthun, Geir, and Onund still have a chance, Aelfhild thought. We will find them, too.





42

We mourn him later.” Eyvind turned his back on Vidar’s corpse. “We have to find fresh water—this is all for nothing if we die here. Aelfhild, Ceolwen, you two keep the fire burning, maybe search the beach for what you can find. Jarngrim and Rolf together, Kolbrun with me, we look for water and dry wood.”

The Thrym set off toward the ridgeline, while Aelfhild and Ceolwen went to work. They used the last few hours of dusk to make a pile near their camp of anything that might prove useful.

The pickings were meager.

Ceolwen levered open the swollen lid of a sea chest. She laid out the sodden clothing to dry, and added the axe within to the stack of weapons. Aelfhild kicked up a bundle from the sand—something thin and heavy swaddled in linen. She unfurled the cloth and found Rolf’s great axe beneath. The long, swept handle bore a hooked blade; she ran her finger along the interweaving knotwork set into the iron. He would be glad to see it.

She laid it beside their two unbroken shields, three hand axes, and solitary spear. It was not much of an armory. The wrapping she measured against her shoulders.

Let the warriors worry about the weapons, she thought. Cloaks and foot-wraps are more use than spears to us now.

Ceolwen, who had been rooting around the north edge of the beach, darted up to her servant. “Someone is coming, Aela!”

“One of ours?’

“I cannot see in the dark! Grab a blade until we are sure!”

Whether it was Onund’s stories of the Thurse, or the effects of too much sun and salt, or just plain fear of the dark, Aelfhild’s heart quickened. It must be one of the crew, she thought. But what if, on some twisted whim of the Gods, it is something else?

She hefted the great axe while Ceolwen grabbed hold of the spear.

A lopsided figure dragged itself along the beach toward their fire from the north. The sun was nearly gone in the west and the cliffs shaded the intruder completely.

“Who goes?” shouted Aelfhild, hoisting the axe over her head.