TOSKA | Sihtric Kjartansson

𝐈𝐈𝐈.

Somewhere in the West Baltic Sea, 875

THE COLD WIND FOUND ITS WAY THROUGH EVERY LAYER OF clothing that Zvora wore and her jaw began to throb for every minute her body teeth continued to clamour. It had begun to snow three days ago — not the pulver-y one but the heavy kind, the one that clung to clothes and hair and turned everything into a wet mess that froze through the cold winds that ruled the Sea.

One of Jarl Thore's men had brought a pile of old clothing to the corner where the remaining girls had gathered, their greedy fingers reaching for the warm fabrics and almost hissing at each other in their need for something that held their limbs warm. Zvora had snatched herself a cloak out of lambskin and another pair of trousers that were too big on her so she had to make herself a make-shift belt out of the ropes someone had left unattended on deck.

She still wasn't feeling warm, sitting on the ground and pressed together with the other girls didn't bring the warmth she had hoped it would bring .

Additionally, one girl had woken up to her toes blackened and had begun screaming and crying. The medicine girl had slapped her senseless and had brought the news to Jarl Thore.

He had summoned the girl but unlike Zvora, she hadn't come back.

"He throws them overboard," Buna whispered when Zvora had asked where the toeless girl was now. "One of his men told it to Ana."

Ana was one of the older girls on the ship and Zvora knew why one of Thore's men would tell her this information; her own mother had always said how men liked to talk when they were laying in bed with a woman and finished with their needs.

Now there were only four girls left — Buna and one other girl from Vlachia that Zvora couldn't understand properly (and didn't try to), then Ana the girl some of Thore's men favoured to bring under deck for the night and Zvora herself. The medicine girl never slept with them or accompanied them for any other reason than tending to wounds or bringing them more or less eatable food.

She had to be a slave too, but a slave with privileges, similar to the ones the boy had that had translated for Thore when the merchants had come. Zvora hadn't seen him for days, either his body rotted on the ground of the sea or he had been sold when they were still sailing on the Odra River.

"Less thinking more shovelling," a man yelled towards Zvora, who flinched as she was hurled out of her thoughts and turned her head towards him.

He was one of the men that always were close to Thore — Esger, she remembered.

Esger made a shovelling motion with his hand, urging Zvora to continue.

And so Zvora began to shovel the snow that had fallen through the night back into the sea.

At least she began to feel her limbs again from bending and throwing the snow away, so Zvora shovelled and shovelled until her cheeks were red and her back aching in pain.

And then she shovelled some more.

THE DAYS WERE COLD BUT WHEN THE SUN VANISHED behind the horizon, the night brought the true cold with it — the pain inflicting one and the one that made one's throat ache with every breath.

Zvora sat with her back pressed against the wooden walls, her fingers holding Buna's so tight both of them felt their joints aching but none of them said anything. They stayed hurled together, sharing the thin blanket one of the other men had thrown into their direction.