Raven Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew that there was no glory to be won in that ria and so we fled, just aswe had fled from the Franks along that snaking river. But this time men must have felt knots of ice in their guts because we were rowing, where it was wide enough, back to the open sea which had mauled us and which might still be raging beyond the estuary.
    For a while our craven enemies scrambled along the cliff tops, loosing arrows with fair skill as they moved. They even had the nerve to jeer us as though we were the cowards and not they, which was a hard thing to endure. Then after some hard pulling by too few oarsmen we were in deeper water beyond their reach and nearing the mouth. Which still seethed.
    ‘At least the tide is with us, hey!’ Bjarni called. I grimaced at my oar. The way things had gone for us I suspected the gods were playing with us, like a cat with a mouse, and we all know how that ends.
    ‘Thór’s balls, this is an ill thing,’ Bag-eyed Orm said, not sharing Bjarni’s optimism. He had been holding his shield over Arnvid at the oar but now he had moved to Serpent ’s side and was looking beyond her bow.
    ‘From the pot to the fire,’ Halfdan agreed, laying his Thór’s hammer pendant on the outside of his tunic so that the Thunderer would see it and know to watch over him.
    We led now, the other dragons following in our wake, and Olaf and Sigurd oversaw the reefing and raising of the sail, having been able to rob benches of oarsmen because the ebb tide was pulling us inexorably out to sea. Three reefs left only a small sail, which would make Serpent easier to handle in a storm, but there was still every chance that a mighty gust would lean into that sail and capsize us, or a wave wrench the steerboard from its block and leave us helpless, subject to Njörd’s will. I could hear those waves now – Rán’s white-haired daughters hurling themselves against the coast, smashing in spumy gouts. Then the estuary vomited us out into the maelstrom and Serpent ’s bow rose into the breakers and waves buffeted her hull, flinging themselves over the sheer strake tosoak us again and sting our eyes and freeze our hands on the staves. Some of those waves were three times the height of a man and Serpent moaned because we had returned her to that violence. Spent arrows, cups and bowls sloshed around our feet as we grimly pulled the oars, trusting in Olaf’s sail-craft and Knut’s skill as a helmsman. All that the rest of us could give was muscle against the storm and muttered pleas to our gods to spare us a bad end.
    We rowed out into the open-water swells and when Sigurd was satisfied that we were far enough away from the coastal rocks he gave the order to stow oars. Now we were past the headland on our steerboard side, a fierce northerly hammered across the sail and Olaf caught that blast and harnessed it so that we rode the waves rather than ploughing through them. It was a dangerous game to play but it was also a thrilling one because Serpent flew and her rigging thrummed and her belly trembled with the madness of it.
    Aboard Fjord-Elk Bragi followed his jarl’s lead; the Danes did likewise and in this way all four dragons ran south before the wind. We worked the sail in shifts, forever tightening the stays and reefing or lengthening the sail according to Olaf and Sigurd’s reckoning of the risks, and above us the grey cloud swirled in eerie likeness of the wind-tossed sea. We surfed past fog-shrouded green cliffs and inlets and lonely sharp rocks that seemed to burst up through the white breakwaters, and the rain lashed into us, so that men looked half drowned despite their best efforts with greased skins and hats. That northerly wind wanted to hurl us against the coast. It wailed and whined but Knut fought it, hauling on the tiller so that Serpent ’s steerboard drove against the Dark Sea to hold our course. There was no sun to be seen, just the faintest blush in the east behind the black clouds and above the fog-veiled