God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (28 page)

Yes. She was.

Vali leaned against the prow of their little boat and stared out at horizon. In every direction, the world was exactly the same: solid dark grey above, and solid, darker grey below. For days, that had been true. The sky lightened in the day, but not enough to discern where the sun illuminated it. In the night, the world was a perfect, limitless, impenetrable black.

With no clues anywhere about the way they were headed, with nothing to see beyond but the same solid wall, one felt almost as if one were spinning while standing still, and standing still while spinning. It made the mind shift restlessly in its moorings.

Vali bent his head and closed his eyes, forcing his mind to make a picture it could focus on. When the vertigo subsided, he kept his eyes closed and his imagination intent on the vision of Brenna in the Estland woods, sitting at the stream bank, on the day they’d first spoken.

In the peace of that image, he could think.

They had been afloat for days—too many days. They should have struck the homeland already. Instead, there was no sound of bird, no sign of land.

They were lost on the open sea, as Orm had predicted. Even strictly rationed, their stores of food and water would not last beyond a few days longer.

The gods had abandoned them. He would not come for his wife, would not save her, would not see her again in this life.

He thought of the night their son had lived and died. Leif had told him he’d tempted the gods when he’d stood in the storm and called out their cruelty. Perhaps he had.

Leif. Vali’s stomach turned at the thought of the man he’d called friend, whom he’d given his unflinching trust, who had betrayed them all—and Brenna most.

Though Vali understood that he would not be the agent of justice for Leif, he hoped that justice would somehow be had.

He turned and sat on the floor of the boat, resting his back against the stem. Before him sat nine beleaguered and disheartened souls, all of whom knew what he knew: they now merely waited for the sea to take them.

They had lost two of their number to the simple price of the sea: Eha and Anna had both succumbed when the toss of the waves had again and again forced even their meager ration of fresh water from their bellies.

Of those who were left—five raiders and five villagers; two women and eight men—all but Olga were experienced sailors of one kind or another, raiders or fishermen. Olga had struggled like Anna and Eha, but she was resolute and far stronger than her slim frame would suggest, and she rallied just as Vali began to lose hope in the voyage.

The boat was small, and had only three sets of oarlocks. When the sea and air were calm, they moved slowly, and even the raiders were beginning to lose the strength to row. Too small a boat, too few rowers.

Not that it mattered any longer.

In this moment, though, his crew was livelier than they had been, resting and even chatting together. Earlier, Orm had thought he’d caught a glimpse of sun behind the opaque drape of clouds, and, though Vali had not seen it, they had put up the sail in a good wind, hoping they sailed westward. They ran now at a strong clip, straight and true, and that at least had the power of delusion, elevating the spirits of their motley band.

Orm stood and crossed the boat, crouching near Vali. He offered him a water skin. Vali shook his head.

The old man would not be dissuaded. “You have not had your water yet this day. Nor is this the first time you’ve gone without. I see you giving up your ration and know you think it a sacrifice for us. But you are mistaken. You must remain strong, Vali. Any hope is lost should we lose you.”

Hope was already lost, and he knew Orm knew it. But a true warrior fought until he died, hope or no hope. So he nodded and took the skin.

As he let the water drizzle onto his parched tongue, Vali saw the sail drop, from full to dead in an instant. The boat eased to a stop. He handed the skin back to Orm. “Bring the sail down. Now.”

Orm nodded and stood. “SAIL DOWN!” he called as he moved to the center of the boat.

While his crew hurried to furl the sail, Vali stood and turned, searching the blank sky for the storm.

There—in some direction, he knew not which, the inky dark of the sea appeared to leach into the grey sky. As he stood there, he watched it move, bringing night on too soon. And then he smelled it, the churning of rain bringing the salt up into the air like a cloud.

He turned and jumped in to help. They had little time to fix the sail as their shelter. For all the good it would do in their tiny vessel, at the whim of gods who did not care.

~oOo~

Until that day and night, they had been spared Ægir’s drunken wrath; it had been the one mercy that gods had shown them. But with one storm, that mercy was wiped away. Vali and his small crew huddled under the paltry shelter of their sail, which had of necessity been too quickly crafted and dressed. While the wind and rain howled around them and the storm sank its claws into their vessel, Vali knew the true end of his hope.

Cursing his selfishness, he could not help but entertain one last shred of a wish: that he would find Brenna waiting for him in the next world, holding their son. His wish should have been that she would yet live; it was wrong to wish her dead. But in Åke’s ruthless, angry clutches, with no help coming, he believed she would be better off dead.

A wind howled low, through the tunnel of their shelter, and then caught the sail, heaving the boat up, nearly clear of the water. Then the sail was rent from side to side, and they were dropped back into the churn.

Lightning flashed and showed Jakob, who’d stood to try to catch the loose piece of sail, going overboard with a cry.

He was barely a man; he’d had no chance to make his story. Without thinking, Vali followed after him, diving into the frigid water. It was too black, too roiling, too loud for any of his senses to help him find the boy, and yet he dove and rose and swam, closing his mind from its need to see or hear, feeling a sense of clarity in the senseless search.

He no longer knew even where the boat was, but he swam, feeling, with each stroke, each dive, the sea weigh him down more heavily. At least his death would be purposeful and valorous.

Then his hands caught cloth. He pulled and had hold of the slim and solid body of a young man. Jakob. Disoriented and unclear which way was up, he went still and allowed himself to float, hoping that his clothes were not soaked beyond buoyancy.

He felt the direction of his rise and swam that way, holding Jakob in one arm and kicking with all his might. As he broke the surface with a great gasp for air, the rain pummeled him about the face, so hard he almost could not tell the difference between the sea and the air. Then lightning lit up the night and showed him the boat. He swam for it, feeling his muscles—weakened from days with little sustenance or sleep, fighting against the weight of the water—trying to fail, and he turned his mind away from physical matters and set his intent on his mission. This was his way in battle: to become something other than human, something beyond the limits of his body. To be Úlfheðinn.

The night was black again, and he felt Jakob being pulled up from his grasp before he realized that he had reached the boat. Once freed from his burden, Vali felt Ægir, the sea jötunn, tighten his grip around his legs and pull.

He gave in to it, closing his eyes against the black night, bringing up the bright image of his shieldmaiden, on the bank of the stream, frowning down at her reflection. Something in her aspect then had told him everything about the depth of her loneliness and the great capacity of her heart. He thought he had loved her since that day.

He knew he had.

Perhaps she would be waiting for him. If not, then he would wait for her, with their son in his arms.

As his lungs would no longer be denied and sucked in water as if it were air, as consciousness left him, he had the feeling that Ægir grabbed hold of his shoulders and dragged him away.

To Valhalla, he hoped.

~oOo~

He woke choking and vomited sea water over the bottom of the boat. Then his lungs forced him to heave in air in rough gulps. When he had his wits about him, he looked around, but the storm still raged, and he could see nothing until a blast of lightning brought his situation into stark relief. Olga had Jakob’s head in her lap. Orm sat near Vali’s head.

“Does he live?” he asked Olga. His voice sounded strange and harsh in his head, and no one responded, so he knew he had not been loud enough over the storm. He tried again, forcing a shout from his aching throat and chest. “Does he live?!”

In another flash, he saw Olga smiling at him. Such a strange thing, to see a beautiful woman smile in the midst of such angry havoc.

“Yes!” she called back. “You saved him!”

For what? he wondered. He had not thought before he’d jumped. Perhaps it had been a cruel thing he’d done, saving the boy for a harsher death.

As he himself had been saved, apparently. “Who pulled me out?” He asked Orm, who was nearest by.

Another bolt of lightning showed Orm frowning. “No one. None of us could have. We thought we’d lost you, and then you pulled yourself into the boat.”

But that was impossible. Even in the storm, the wale was too far from the surface of the water, and he had been in soaked furs and leathers, exhausted and malnourished.

He thought of that moment of release, feeling Ægir pulling him away.

Perhaps it had not been Ægir taking him, but someone sending him back. One of the gods? Brenna?

Vali did not know. But he believed it to be meaningful. He should have died. He had not been saved by his crew, and he could not have saved himself, not alone.

Even as the storm raged, heaving the small boat over a foaming sea, Vali felt hope rekindle in his chest.

~oOo~

The storm ended during the night, and dawn brought the sun. For all the crash and heave of the storm, for every time it picked them up and threatened to slam them upended into the water, the little boat had held. The sail was in tatters, so their prospects remained grim, but they had survived, and Vali took that, and the return of the sun, as good omens.

With the sun, they could at least head again westward with certainty. He no longer had any understanding of where they might be, or if west would even bring them to land, but west was the direction they knew of as home.

Then he heard the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his life. At first, he would have sworn before the gods that it was the soft, husky trill of Brenna’s laugh, right at his ear, but then sense took over, and he knew he’d heard something outside his mind’s fantasy. He froze, with his friends still deep in the exhausted sleep that had taken them over almost as one when calm had returned to the water, and listened hard.

He heard it again, faint and distant: the cry of a gull. Rising to his feet and clearing the remnants of the sail shelter, Vali stood and scanned the horizon, turning all his hope toward the west.