Winterfire

Chapter Three

Lucan

Lif’s ship headed east; mine, north.

The Danes released our bonds as soon as it was too far to swim back to shore. Seven other captives and I sat crowded in the stern. Ryce and Stedman were just a bit older than I was, friends of my brother Dell, and so, naturally, my tormentors in Beal. I didn’t know Gadd and Colby well; they had only lived in Beal for a month. The brothers had intended to pass through Beal on their way south in search of warmer climes, but were delayed when a cut on Colby’s hand became infected. Brother Wilfred and Brother Bede, both healers at Lindisfarne, treated the wound with garlic poultices and bark tea. All four of the men had been taken from Lindisfarne in the raid. Wirt was older than the rest of us; the same age my father would be if he were still alive. I could not have called any of them friends, exactly, but other than Ryce and Stedman, neither were they enemies. I was the youngest, and by far, the smallest among the captives.

Wirt’s half-closed eyes darted back and forth as he rubbed his wrists. “I say we overpower them while we can still see our shore,” he said. “That sword is on this ship; I saw the one who took it last night hide it on this ship. I can find it. Who is with me?”

The others, except for Ryce and me, nodded in silent agreement.

“How do you know they can’t understand you, Wirt?” said Ryce.

“Because they’re stupid heathens! Of course they can’t understand civilized talk,” Wirt responded.

One of the Danes – I later learned he was called Thorolf – grabbed Wirt by the shirt and shoved him hard. He stumbled backward into me and we both fell.

“I can understand you, though I am but a ‘stupid heathen,” he said. Wirt stood up quickly, but I lay gasping for air on the deck, the wind knocked out of me.

For a moment, I couldn’t pay attention to anything but breathing. When I was finally able to draw in a good breath, I noticed the others, all staring at me as I lay on the deck. Thorolf bent over and spoke to me. “When I knock you down, don’t lay there, taking a rest. Get up! Now!” When I began to sit up, Thorolf kicked me in the ribs, and I fell back down. “Get up,” he said. He turned and walked away. I got up and tried to stand straight, though my side hurt and I couldn’t take a breath without pain.

The other captives stood in a cluster around Wirt. The Danes were all occupied sailing the ship. I stood alone, separate from both groups.

I took stock of my situation. My brother and sisters – if they were alive - would help my mother search for food. It was still early in the summer; perhaps the weather would turn soon and they would be able to plant. It was no use grieving for them yet, and I was not prone to worrying. If they were alive, I knew the only way I’d ever see them again was if I could make it on my own. No one could come for me. 

Lif was on a ship heading full speed in another direction, though, and she was almost surely in danger. I told myself I would be wasting my time if I worried about her because there was nothing I could do to help her. She was never out of my thoughts for long when she was safe, though, so I certainly could not stop thinking of her now. We had always been able to sense each other, to communicate somehow. Now, I felt only silence, a great, yawning void.

The Danes, other than Thorolf,  did not seem especially unfriendly. I feared them, of course; they had just destroyed my village and possibly murdered my family, but if they’d wanted to kill me, they’d had plenty of chances. I suspected their motives for taking us were to sell us into slavery. I hoped I’d get away before that happened.

I studied the ship. I had never been on a ship such as this. It sat low in the water, and though the rough sea didn’t splash over the gunwales, the ship seemed to bend and flex in a way that allowed some water to seep through the cracks. There was one man bailing constantly, but there was still a fair amount of water on the deck. The ship didn’t have any below-deck shelter; in good weather, the sailors would probably stretch out wherever they found enough room. In foul weather, I imagined, they rigged a piece of cloth up to make a tent. The head of a magnificent beast, like a giant lizard, was carved into the upswept prow, complete with fierce eyes and a row of sharp spikes extending from the head to the deck. A curling tail rose high in the air at the stern. If I’d seen that ship on my beach when we were out fishing, Lif and I would not have come ashore. If the Danes had landed where any of the people of Beal could see them, my neighbors would have disappeared into the forest before the Danes’ feet even touched the sand.

I watched the rowers and noticed that four seats were unoccupied, two on one side of the ship, and then the two opposing spots on the other side of the ship. My side ached and I longed to sit down, but other than the boxes at the oars, there was no place to sit. I would have just sat down on the deck where I stood if I had not been so afraid Thorolf would kick me again. Finally, I just sat down on one of the empty boxes.

“You four,” said another man on the ship, who, apparently, also spoke English, “Sit down at the oars for a lesson in rowing.” He pointed at Wirt, Cole, Stedman, and me. “You others pay attention. You’ll get your turn.” I was already sitting on a trunk in the second row, so I just picked up the oar. Wirt sat at the oar on the opposite side.

“My name is Ingmar, and I am the steersman of the Fýri. You belong to me.” Ingmar looked slowly from one of us to the other. “Watch the man in front of you,” he said. “It is not the speed so much as maintaining rhythm that drives the ship. It is most important that the rowers move in unison. And remember: only a bad rower blames the oar. Or his broken ribs,” he said, winking at me.

I pulled exactly as Ingmar had explained. I watched the man ahead of me and matched my pace to his. Every stroke was excruciating to me, but pulling hard on the oars, with the bracingly cold wind blowing through my hair, and the dark purple sea rushing beneath me was an exhilarating, powerful feeling. After only a few minutes, I felt as if I’d been doing it all my life. I focused all my attention on the task at hand and lost all track of time. I didn’t allow myself to think about Lif or my family. Or myself. Before I knew it, it was time for a break.

“Since it is your first day, you men of Beal will only row for one hour today. You may leave your stations now,” said Ingmar.

Wirt immediately motioned for the other captives to sit and rest near him. He glared at me. “Because of him,” he sputtered, “We are forced to work like slaves.”

Ingmar overheard him. “Are you daft?” he asked. “I can understand every word you say, and you are wrong on two counts: First of all, you would have been made to row whether he sat down at the oars or not; no man is idle on a ship. Second, slaves have, at least, a bed to look forward to at the end of the day; your day does not end, and you have no bed. Being treated as a slave would be a step up for you.”

For the rest of the voyage, the other captives  and I rowed two hours on, two hours off whenever the winds calmed too much to use the sail. Stedman and I always managed to sit opposite each other; we rowed well together and found many things to discuss. For a friend of Dell’s, he was a surprisingly decent fellow. “I saw you out fishing the day of the attack,” said Stedman one day in about the third week of our captivity. “I tried to go out myself, but the wind was coming from every direction, and the sea was churned up like I’ve never seen it. I don’t know how you got your boat out.”

“It must have calmed down a bit by the time I went out,” I said. “But did the sea seem…strange to you?”

“It did,” said Stedman. He looked around to see if any of the others were near enough to hear him before he continued. “Between you and me, that’s the real reason I didn’t go out. I mean, the sea was rough and all, but I could have tried harder.”