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peddler said at once, scratching his cheek, “please yourself. Next time I’ll bring you better goods. Trust me.”
    With a wink he turned away into the crowd.
    Thorkil touched her arm. “There you are. Steinar’s coming. He’s had too much to drink, by the look of him.”
    â€œRubbish.” The man was behind them; his breath stank of beer. One heavy hairy hand clamped down on Thorkil’s shoulder. “Back to the ship.”
    Helgi was waiting for them rather anxiously. He gave Steinar a few sharp words, but the man just shrugged and sprawled into his place among the oarsmen. Thrand came late, cursed by everyone.
    The men rowed out into the current. The wind was freshening and the sea seemed much rougher; white flecks topped the waves.
    Looking back, Jessa saw no sign of the peddler. She leaned her chin on her hands thoughtfully. She had promised to wait, and she would, but she couldn’t help feeling they’d missed their chance. Now every day took them nearer to Thrasirshall. But there had been something in the man’s look that had comforted her, some hidden spark of knowledge and, yes, laughter. He’d been laughing at her. He knew something that she didn’t, that was why.

Six
Short are the sails of a ship,
Dangerous the dark…
    By late afternoon the storm was on them. Icy rain pelted down, hurled like glinting spears into eyes and faces. Jessa was already drenched, although she and Thorkil sat in the bottom of the boat with a sheet of sailcloth around them. When the water began to lap their ankles, they had to move and help bail. The ship rose and fell, toppling into enormous troughs, buffeted by waves that curled high over the deck. Through the spasms of rain and hail, Jessa could barely see the oarsmen clenched over their oars, or Helgi, hanging half out of the prow, dripping with spray, yelling when they swerved too near the rocks. The iron gray cliffs hung over them; the boat crashed and rose through the floundering seas, every spar and timber straining and shrieking. Sick and numb, Jessa flung water over the side. Time had gone; she had been doing this forever. Cold nailed her feet to the deck; every bone ached; the world rose and fell and floundered around her.
    As darkness fell, the rain froze into masses of ice on the timbers, so that they had to hack it off with knives and fling it overboard. Once Helgi gave a great yell; the helmsman jerked the rudder and the ship skimmed a bank of shingle, grating horribly, flinging them all down. Then the wind came about and hauled the ship into a trough, and out, swinging her around. Staggering up, Jessa saw that they had cleared the headland; the rain drove now from an empty sky.
    Night thickened quickly. Shields and baggage and casks of beer were flung out into the black hollows. Jessa’s eyes were stinging with the salt and hail that bounced from the deck; her arms ached, frozen to her sleeves, and however hard she bailed, the water still rose, lapping the ankles of the oarsmen, who spat out curses and sardonic remarks.
    At last, exhausted, she sank back on her heels, clinging to the rail. The storm roared around her; she heard strange wailings in the sea, voices on the wind, screaming, whispering spells, spinning the boat with their breath. Closing her eyes she saw Wulfgar standing in the hall; the hangings of the Jarlshold flapped; something walked and padded on strange feet through corridors and locked rooms, a creature with Gudrun’s eyes that held out a thin silver arm ring, pressing it into her hands. She could feel it; she had it out of the bag where it had been hidden. It seemed to her that she turned to the sea, opened her numb fingers, and let the weight of it, the enormous weight, slide swiftly over the side. Then she lay down among the wet baggage. She was asleep when Helgi saw the harbor fire at Ost.
    In the morning, she wondered what was real and what was dream. Ost was a filthy place; a squalid