Page 2 of Shield Sworn

The shore had sprung closer as if by magic. The magic of a good sail, of course. But they suddenly wrenched to the side, Ragn taking the ship hard over, and Revni got a solid view of what had made her mother pause:

The cliff towered in front of them, but there was no ramp, no beach, only a hard, sheer scar of fresh stone, a hashmash of jagged rubble at the bottom stemming the crashing waves. The barest peak of a building at the top poked its nose to sniff their coming.

“Will we not raid?” Revni’s voice came out more choked than she intended, and she tried to bite it back. “Is this not the place?”

Her mother only kept her hard eyes on the shore, and the cold sweat returned to Revni’s armpits. Ragn steered the ship around more unexpected wreckage, and more bodies thumped to right themselves, oars and ropes creaking their own annoyance.

“Shields!”

Revni tightened on instinct along with all the rest, the scrape of sliding poles steadying her nerves. Over the top of the bow, she caught a glimpse of the little cove Ragn was clearly aiming for.

“Ragn!” her father shouted, but Ragn was busy yelling orders, and the pounding of blood in Revni’s ears had grown so loud both men seemed muffled. She tried to breathe, to remember her father’s teachings, but the twang of a bow made the hair on her neck jump. It was only Sten Halfbeard, sending an arrow into the treeline to see if anyone was waiting. Another soft breath of fletching arced above her—someone from the Fang behind them sending another. It reminded her of a bird, flying and falling, and Revni shuddered.

“Madness,” Ulf muttered.

Why madness? Revni wanted to ask, but her throat had closed up. Nothing stirred in that distant treeline. But still…there was a tension Revni couldn’t place.

“What’s wrong?”

Revni’s mother answered under her breath. “It doesn’t make sense to land now. If we’re to raid, surprise is all we have.”

Ragn turned their horse-headed ship towards the shallows. Revni’s heart thundered, waiting for the inevitable attack, someone jumping out to face them—but they safely scratched up on the rocks and paused, the wind off the ocean too loud to hear beyond it, no one quite willing to be the first to lower their shields. Sten sent another arrow, a discordant song. The stale smell of sweat and grease thickened to overwhelming, but Revni held.

The Fang and Serpent rasped into place, and only after more arrows safely snicked into the forest did a collective breath seem to go out of everyone. Ragn jumped down, strutting towards their sister ships like a king. Oars were pulled back in, unused, some people grabbing axes or swords before they leapt over the edge to confront the steersmen, others taking their stumbling time getting items shifted.

Revni couldn’t reconcile the feelings rattling through her. She re-stocked her shield, then made her way to the bow. Revni’s parents and Ulf had stormed off the ship more quickly than most. It was one thing to take a small delay to bring home riches. It was something else to beach them in a cove unnecessarily, when they could be sailing on. Revni couldn’t resist giving the horse’s head a friendly pat as she jumped down, then paused in the lapping tide. She didn’t have her legs yet. That was all this shaky feeling was. Niall had disembarked from the Fang, and he called something teasing, but it was lost under the noise of sea and arguments. Sulvi tumbled off the Serpent on Revni’s other side. Her skin was the color of a snake’s underbelly: pale and green all at once, and looking just as much like she was ready to shed it. Sulvi didn’t see her, only stumbled up the rocky rise and vomited.

The tide sucked at Revni’s heels, and Revni suddenly felt the magnitude of this threshold between rock and water, everything stretching in front of her foreign and vast and hidden behind too-tall trees, everything she knew at her back. The long knife at her belt seemed so unexpectedly, irrationally heavy that she had to resist the frantic urge to fling it off, as if its gravity was what was pulling her down. Almost every adult from three ships were hot-faced and spitting anger, grouped around Ragn, and one warrior she didn’t recognize drew his ax under Ragn’s chin and had to be pulled away. Should she have joined them? It had only been a short angle of the sun since she’d been so eager—but now her youth mawed before her, swallowing her whole, and she could no longer ignore the shameful lick that was still squirreling up her spine:

Relief.

It squeezed her heart like a fist. She didn’t know how to pry it off. This wasn’t the way of a soti. She was no coward. It was her sea legs, that was all. They’d been at sea for nine days, and it was normal to want a good meal first, a long drink of water. These were normal things to wish for. Wise, even. What kind of warrior charged in unprepared?

The group peeled off soon after.

“What’s happened?”

Her father stomped into the tide. “The cliff-face fell, that’s what. We can’t approach by sea.” He joined Ulf and the others in dragging the Flyer out of the water. They’d all done this too many times to need conversation—anchoring it down, tightening and adjusting the lines, opening the mast lock to slide the giant trunk to horizontal, leaving the massive wool-and-walrus sail unreefed and unfurled. Revni stayed where she was, until her mother’s presence made her jump.

“We’ll raid at first light.” Revni couldn’t read her mother’s tone.

There was a way to approach the monastery by land, but it was too unfamiliar to attempt in the dark. They’d raid in the morning by foot, leap back into their ships weighed down with new riches, row hard against the wind to get around the jut of land the veterans called The Muzzle, and then slip into the wide, long river that would carry them towards another, following the twists and turns Revni’s grandfather had charted until they came to the new lands they would call their home.

A second chance. Revni would still get to prove her worth, still show the gods the person she would have become.

The thick forest was full of good firewood. Revni was sent with the others, and she tried to ignore the distant conversations as she bent to gather branches. A bad omen, to have the gods block their path. A stupid decision, to wait out the night on land. Revni had faith. She ran her fingertips down rough, strange bark and rolled pine needles between her fingers. The needles were longer than her palm, three times the size of the ones back home. When she returned to the beach, she fed them one by one into the newly-lit flames, mesmerized by each sudden flare, until Brevna shooed her away to put the pot on.

The gods had chosen this land for them, the way they’d chosen Revni to be a soti. The gods knew what they were doing.

A few people were chosen to keep watch, Sulvi among them, but Revni and her parents and the others that would join the raid in the morning scrubbed their faces in the ocean’s salt and re-boarded the ships, tucking into oil-soaked woolen bags and piling together like puppies beneath the protection of the sail. Sulvi warmed her hands by one of the two small fires they’d left burning above the tideline, and Revni gave a regretful glance before settling down next to her mother. She’d rather have spooned with her friend, whispering in each other’s ears about what they’d seen on the journey, find out more about the rumors about her and Niall. But Revni would need her rest before tomorrow’s excitement—the legendary battle she’d been waiting for, strange people on strange terrain instead of Isfolj in-fighting, going for gold she’d get to keep rather than goats and revenge. Revni’s father settled behind her mother, then his strong hands drew all three of them together like furs stacked on a shelf. In sleep, her mother’s muscles softened, her breasts and stomach pressing comfortably into Revni’s back.

Revni exhaled happily and closed her eyes. She dreamed of horses leaping waves, a quick wind pushing them north, north. Her hands sunk into the soil they’d only heard about, soft and musky and brown, and they sunk deeper and deeper until the dirt began to swallow her up, growing warmer and warmer in the summer sun—too warm. She pulled and pulled, but she was choking on the dirt in her throat and couldn’t escape. Too hot, too deep. Revni thrashed herself awake, trying to kick off the wool that ensnarled her legs, gasping and coughing.

The ship was on fire.

TWO

Revni sprang into action as if her body belonged to someone else—one hand closed around her shield, the other around her ax. A flaming arrow popped a hole behind her, but Revni barely noticed. The acrid pinch of burning pitch filling her nose, the shock of cold water as she leaped the side, the sharp rocks jabbing her soles—these were nothing compared to the thrum of the gods in her body.