Ship of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

Quickly tiring of this game and anxious to get home, Dane cursed and ran after the horse, determined not to lose sight of him. He ran through brush and briar and down another long pathway, bound on either side by high thorny brambles, growing more irritable as he went.
    At last, in a small clearing, he spied the horse again. From out of the white swirling mist he appeared to him as a pale apparition, his head bent to the ground, lapping water from a small pool.
    Dane approached with caution, stepping slowly. This time the horse stayed put, seeming by his manner to have arrived at the place he had intended. Dane drew up beside him and patted his neck, trying not to show any spite to the animal. He heard the murmur of falling water and noticed fish darting in the pond and birds flitting about on the floating flowers. A white swan swam into view. The horse lifted his head and whinnied, and as he did so, the mists began to lift. Something then caught Dane’s eye and, peering upward, he saw a waterfall appear and then behind that something that literally took his breath away.
    Could it really be?
    There, like some giant towering sentinel, stood a tree of indescribable size. The storied Tree of Life. Yggdrasil! Rooted just a short distance away. Dane stared dumbstruck at the majesty of it. Legend said it was the most massive living thing in all creation, that its uppermost branches encircled the heavens and that its roots stretched down into the very underworld of Niflheim itself. Dane’s father had once claimed that ten thousand longships could be built from its trunk, with enough wood left over to build a roomy hut with attached outhouse for every man and woman on earth. Gazing in wonder at the tree, Dane was sure his father had not exaggerated, for he guessed its trunk was at least five hundred paces around—and its height could not even be measured, for it disappeared into the heavenly mists above.
    Then Dane remembered something else about this tree . . . something of great significance. According to legend, this was the dwelling place of the Norns, the Goddesses of Time—the keepers of the Book of Fate. Everyone’s fate.
    Peering across the pond, his gaze fell upon a stone altar at the base of the tree, and atop the altar lay a large, squarish object. The largest book Dane had ever laid eyes on. As he looked through the thinning wisps of fog, the book appeared to be many centuries old, its ancient leather cover cracked and worn and cloaked in mystery. Dane stood for a time gazing at the enchanted thing, afraid to even touch it. Flicking a nervous look around, he wondered where the Norns might be. Were they watching him at this very moment, preparing to leap out and smite him with their godly powers?
    Just as quickly he found himself cursing the Norns and the powers they had over humans. Who are they to sit and write our fates, as if we were but clay figures to play with, only to crush us on a whim? The witches! They’re probably off with the gods right now, planning more ways to torture us!
    Dane remembered what his father had said about the Norns and their fate making: “It’s a bad system, but we humans are stuck with it.”
    â€œBut are we?” Dane asked himself, struck with a new thought so daring it scared him to think it. He knew he had been fated to die months before—and that the Norns had changed his fate when Astrid agreed to serve Odin. That meant that, in some circumstances, fate could be changed. It was negotiable . If that was true, the only thing he lacked was bargaining power. Something to trade. If he could not strike a deal with Odin, perhaps he could bargain with the very goddesses who ruled fate. A surge of anger arose in him, quickly overtaken by an even more powerful feeling: the return of hope.
    In the early morning chill, Lut the Bent and the boy William the Brave trudged up to Thor’s Hill, the small treeless hillock that lay between the village of