Chapter 18 The Price of Command

The funeral pyres burned on the hillside through the night. Eleven men. Eleven pyres, arranged in a line along the ridge, their flames visible from the shore, from the longhouses, from the deck of every ship in the king's fleet. The smoke rose in dark columns against the stars, carrying the ashes of men who had pulled oars and gutted fish and sat by the fire and told stories in voices that would never be heard again. Aldric stood among the pyres and watched the flames. The rain had stopped, and the air was cold and clean, and the smell of burning timber and burning flesh mixed with the salt of the sea and the damp of the earth. It was a smell he would carry with him for the rest of his life. Vondra moved between the pyres, speaking the old words, casting rune-stones at the base of each fire. His voice was hoarse, worn thin by the hours of ritual, but steady. The dead deserved steady voices. Edda stood at the edge of the ridge, looking south, toward the king's fleet. The lanterns on the ships were visible, a necklace of yellow lights on the dark water. The fleet had not moved. They were waiting for dawn, for the tide, for the signal to attack again. "We cannot hold another assault," Haldor said. He stood beside Aldric, his arm in a sling, his face drawn with pain and exhaustion. "We lost eleven. The wounded cannot fight. We have perhaps ten men who can stand in the wall." "Ten men against two hundred," Aldric said. "The ditch is gone. The wall is broken. The longhouses are burned. There is nothing between the ships and the settlement but open ground." Haldor's voice was flat. "We are finished, jarl." Aldric said nothing. He looked at the pyres, at the flames, at the smoke that rose toward the stars. He thought of his father, steady and silent, holding the line. He thought of Sigurd, dying on the stone, naming him jarl with his last breath. He thought of Yrsa, telling stories in the dark about the drowned god who spoke through the water. He thought of the dream. The ocean floor. The kelp cathedral. The stone beneath his feet, pulsing with blue light. *The debt is not finished.* "I need to go to the shrine," Aldric said. Haldor stared at him. "The shrine? Now? The king's ships block the fjord. We cannot sail." "I will not sail. I will go overland. The cliff path on the eastern side leads to the coast. From there, I can follow the shore south to the strait, and from the strait to the shrine." "Alone?" "Alone." "That is madness." "Perhaps." Aldric looked at Haldor. "But the god demands it. The debt is not finished. The sacrifice is not complete. If I stay here, we all die. If I go to the shrine and pay what is owed, the god may act." "May." "The god does not promise. The god acts." Aldric turned from the pyres. "Hold the settlement. Keep the wounded alive. If the king's men attack before I return, do not fight. Surrender." "Surrender?" "If I am not here, there is no jarl to hold the oath. Without the jarl, the oath dissolves. The king will take the settlement, but he will not destroy it. He needs Sortholm — the fjord, the shore, the position. He will not burn what he means to keep." Haldor's face was tight with doubt. But he nodded. Aldric found Edda on the ridge. She was still looking south, her face turned toward the fleet, her eyes reflecting the lantern-light on the water. "I am going to the shrine," Aldric said. "I know." "How do you know?" "Because the god told me. In the tide. In the silence of the stones. The god has been calling you since the night of the attack. I have felt it." She turned to him. "I will come with you." "It is dangerous. The path is—" "I have walked paths you have never seen. I have crossed shores where the tide takes men and does not return them. I will come with you." They left before dawn. The eastern cliff path was steep and narrow, cut into the granite by centuries of feet and weather. Aldric led, his axe at his belt, his cloak pulled tight against the wind. Edda followed, her steps sure on the rock, her hands free, her body balanced with the ease of a woman who had lived on stone and tide. They descended the cliff in darkness, feeling their way by touch, pausing at the steeper sections to lower themselves by rope. The sea was below them, black and roaring, throwing spray against the rocks. The sound was enormous, filling the narrow space between cliff and water, drowning all other noise. At the base of the cliff, the shore stretched south — a narrow strip of rock and black sand between the cliff face and the sea. They walked it in silence, their feet finding the dry ground, their bodies pressed close to the rock when the waves surged. The night was starless, the sky covered with cloud, and the darkness was so complete that Aldric could not see his own hands. Edda walked behind him, and sometimes she spoke — not words, but sounds, low and rhythmic, the old tongue of the shrine-keepers, words that had no translation but carried the meaning of patience, of endurance, of the tide's slow insistence. They walked through the night. The dawn came grey and cold, and they were still on the shore, the cliff rising behind them, the sea before them, the land curving south toward the strait. The shrine was still two days' walk. On the second day, they reached the strait. The water was narrow here — perhaps half a mile across — and the shrine's island was visible on the far side, a dark shape against the grey sky. The standing stones were barely visible, thin lines against the cloud. Edda stopped at the water's edge. She knelt and put her hand in the sea, and she was still for a long time. "The god is here," she said. "Beneath us. In the deep water. Waiting." "Waiting for what?" "For you. For the sacrifice. For the debt to be paid." Aldric looked at the water. It was dark, the color of iron, the surface broken by small waves that caught the grey light and held it. Somewhere beneath that surface, the drowned god waited — in the ancient silence of the deep. "I will cross," Aldric said. "There are no boats." "I will swim." Edda looked at him. Her face was weathered, her eyes pale, and in them Aldric saw something that was not surprise and not approval but recognition — the look of one who had seen a man make a decision that could not be unmade. "The water is cold," she said. "The current is strong. The distance is far." "I was born on the water. I have swum since I could walk." "The water of the strait is not the water of the fjord. This is the drowned god's water. It will test you." "Then I will be tested." He stripped to his tunic, wrapped his axe and arm-ring in an oilcloth bundle, and tied it to his back. He walked into the sea until the water was at his waist, and then he pushed forward and began to swim. The cold hit him like a wall. It took his breath, seized his muscles, turned his limbs to stone. The current caught him and pulled him south, toward the open sea, and he fought it, angling his body toward the shrine, stroking with long, steady pulls that drove him through the dark water. He swam. The island grew closer. The standing stones rose larger against the sky. The waves broke against the rocks, sending spray high into the air, and the sound of the surf was the voice of the drowned god, calling him home. When he reached the rocks, his body was numb, his strength gone, his vision blurred. He pulled himself from the water and lay on the black sand, gasping, trembling, alive. The stones rose above him, dark and silent, their carvings filled with rain. He had reached the shrine. The god was waiting. ---