A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

‘A man’s fate finds him out. The Norns weave the thread of his life and –’ he shrugged – ‘so it goes.’ That was what folk told each other in the north anyway – to mellow the bitterness of life’s cup. It had always seemed cold comfort to him. But he had nothing better to offer.

Once at sea, their course swung west, then south, following the coastline. The ship, though sturdy enough, was no sea-wolf bounding over the wave-tops. Heavy with its precious cargo, she wallowed through the swell like a pregnant sow, and Ramedios dared not stray too far from shore.

Erlan had never much liked the sea but in spite of that, he felt calm. When he thought back over the vast distances they had journeyed, the endless forests and plains, the apparently never-ending rivers that had now ended, to be here on the open sea seemed nothing short of a marvel. The horizon whispered with promise. Miklagard – or Byzantium as he now thought of it – the king of kings, the unbinding of the Witch King’s curse. Disparate things perhaps, and yet they all seemed to weave together in his head into one desire. Into one destiny.

Yet even as his own spirit felt buoyed with these thoughts, he noticed something had set the crew on edge. He asked Ramedios about it. ‘It’s this coastline,’ the captain explained. ‘It is dangerous. Peiratés.’

Thieves of the sea.

The same unease settled on the slaves who, till then, had been docile as cattle. There were nearly three dozen of them, about half were women and children, and all cramped into a space that would not have served even half a dozen oxen. The men were chained neck and wrist to benches below the deck and when the wind slackened or took against them, they were forced to row. One night some of them wouldn’t settle and took to wailing, keeping the crew awake. Soon enough the slave-master had silenced them with his whip.

But maybe these poor souls possessed the far sight, because next break of dawn the lookout cried alarm.

The crew on duty rushed to the steer-board rail. Erlan prodded Leikr awake. Before the boy had rubbed his eyes, the hull was groaning as the helmsman swung the bows eastward away from shore. It was a few seconds before Erlan saw it, coming round astern now – a sail black as a raven’s wing on the distant rollers.

‘Well, Northman.’ Ramedios’s dry rasp sounded at his shoulder. ‘Time for you to pay your passage.’

The black sail drew closer all morning. Had the helmsman had the sea-craft of Thor himself, it would’ve made no difference; they were bound to be caught. At least the crew was ready, and Ramedios was ready, seeming all the calmer as he yelled orders up and down the ship.

‘Stay close to me,’ Erlan told Leikr. ‘Back to back if you can.’ The prospect of a fight had at least focused the boy’s attention. Some life had come back into his eyes, some fire in his blood.

‘Will there be many?’

‘I don’t know. But use those long arms of yours. None of ’em will be as tall as you.’

Erlan untied Aska. He had no idea how the dog would fare if it came to a fight but he figured he stood a better chance unleashed.

He readied himself. A shame his shield was smashed to splinters and his mail shirt somewhere at the bottom of the Dnipar. But he had something else. Something he had discovered on the plains of Bravik.

The shouts grew urgent. The wails of the slaves swirled like the gales in the north.

‘Ready!’ screamed Ramedios, cloak hitched into his belt, a short, broad blade in his hand.

‘Stay close,’ Erlan murmured again, eyes fixed on the onrushing prow. He could see faces in the bows now, shorn heads, curved beards, men half-naked with skin tanned dark as old hall-beams, bristling with steel.

Erlan tightened his belt. The leather was coarse as bark. It came from a dark place, and carried with it a dark power. The same power he had borne in his blood. He snorted. If Vassili was to be believed, it was the power of demons. Whatever its source, he needed it now. So he pushed up his sleeve, unsheathed Wrathling and then, laying its wicked edge against his forearm, he cut into his flesh.

Blood welled, but there was no pain. Instead he felt a kind of pleasure, released into his body in a rush. He put the cut to his mouth, tasted blood and swallowed it down.

Leikr’s gaze was welded on the other ship. The Greek crewmen were screaming war-cries to the wind. Grappling hooks arced into the air. Erlan’s ears filled with the groan of yawing wood and cries of terror.

Suddenly a dark heat ripped through him, his own thoughts and fears burning up like dry leaves in a fire. In their place his mind filled with other ancient thoughts, of rage, of blood-hunger, of terrible violence, rising up out of him like Jormungandr, the World Serpent, bursting from the deep. He felt an inhuman strength pouring into his limbs like liquid iron. His vision grew sharp as the fury engulfed him and the first sea-thief leaped aboard. . .

In the north they called it the berserker madness. Yet when it was on him, he felt there was a beautiful clarity to it. Flesh and bone became a harvest to be reaped. Faces flashed for long enough only to be cut down. Fear became a palpable thing, a wave to ride, radiating out from him. He could not run. Nor could they. And so they fell under Wrathling’s thirsty edge. A dozen. Fifteen. Maybe more. Dark faces. He heard a voice crying terrible curses, screaming to the Slain God to see his work.

And then something changed. His own mind began to slip back into his head like a returning tide, and suddenly there was a man he had