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plastered to his head, the thrill of the proximity to danger clear in his unlined, beardless face. “We’ve hands rigging up a lee cloth!”
      Thorgrim nodded. He would need someone to relieve him at the tiller sometime soon. In his younger days he would have stood there all night, but he knew he did not have the strength for that now, not after the damage done by his would-be killer’s knife.
      “When they are done with that lee cloth we’ll serve out some of that mutton, and mead to wash it down,” Thorgrim said over the wind and rushing water. “That will do the men some good!” He had yet to tell the men that they would be underway all night, but at this point he knew it would come as no great surprise. Every man aboard was sailor enough to understand the situation Far Voyager was in.
      They would not like it. The Northmen did not care to be at sea in the night hours, not with all the unworldly things that lurked in the deep water. But weighing that fear against the near certainty of being wrecked if they approached the shore in the dark made a night at sea seem not so bad.
      The lee cloth, a strip of heavy oiled linen stretched along the windward side of the ship to give some shelter to the men huddled there, was soon rigged. Cold mutton and mead were served out as the men settled in for a long and uncomfortable night. Thorgrim remained at the tiller through the meal, not wishing to keep another man from his supper.
      The sun went down, unseen behind the clouds, and the dark settled over the sea. It began to rain, or so Thorgrim thought. It was hard to tell with the great showers of spray flying aft, but soon the lightning began flashing around them, illuminating the ship and men with its long, jagged forks. The waves rose up out of the night and Thorgrim strained to see them as they came on, and to work the tiller to twist the ship through each successive breaking sea.
      Up, twist, down, the bow hit the trough of the wave and sent the seas over the sheer strake, as if Far Voyager was a great ladle dipping water from a bucket. Water rushed down the leeward side and gathered in churning pools in the low spots. Agnarr organized the men into divisions for bailing, with some staggering down to the leeward side to toss the water back into the sea and others huddling under the lee cloth, waiting their turn.
      Thorgrim felt the pressure on the tiller, the responsiveness of the ship. The storm was bad. Not the worst he had known, but bad. Still, he had no fear of finding a salt water grave that night. The ship was well built and he had personally gone through every inch of it. She would not come apart. The sail was in good condition, the rigging new and well set up. Soon they would stow the sail completely and ride it out under bare poles.
      Far Voyager could take what Thor or Ægir was throwing at her and turn it aside. Thorgrim did not think the ship and men were in any real peril, unless the gods decided to play their tricks and throw some obstacle in his path, to send some unlikely danger to confound him.
      Then the gods did just that.
     

Chapter Four
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Staves of the spear-sister,
    you speak of the earl;
    this old man is hoary-haired,
    but has looked on tall waves.
                                          The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue
     
     
     
     
     
    When Far Voyager slammed down on whatever solid thing they had managed to find in that watery world, the impact was visceral and jarring, out of time with the banging of the rig and pounding of the waves. The ship was taking a beating in a dozen different ways, the seas hitting the hull, the yard thumping on the mast, the rigging swaying and slapping. Still, every man aboard heard the vessel hit this unseen thing; they felt it and they knew instantly that this was something beyond the usual battering of a storm and that it was not good.
      Thorgrim was still at the tiller. Far