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float, still, even awash, but then suddenly it went down out of sight into the dark green deep. The last thing he saw was her little fierce-eyed dragon head. Raef said nothing, only stood there. Conn felt the heart in him crack like a rock in the fire.
     
    He looked around, and found Aslak up by the bow. He went there, looking toward Hakon’s fleet against the far shore. Where they were, in the center of the bay, the Jomsvikings were drinking and eating and bailing their ships out. Conn could see three other ships sinking in a single glance.
     
    He said, “What kind of help is Hakon looking for?”
     
    Aslak had a little skin of beer, and he took a pull on it. He nodded with his head toward the island in the middle of the bay.
     
    “You see that island? It’s called the Blessed Place. There are altars there half as old as the Ash Tree. Hakon may have a problem. He switched sides once too often. I’ve heard his patron goddesses are still angry for when he turned Christian.”
     
    He slung an arm around Conn’s shoulders. “I’m glad to have you on board, boy—you’re a damned good fighter.”
     
    Conn flushed; to hide this pleasure he turned and glanced around at his crew. That took the glow away. He had not realized how many were gone. He was losing everything—his ship, the crew that made her fly. He had to win now.
     
    He turned back to Aslak. “This Christian thing seems common enough. Even Sweyn’s been primesigned.” He took the skin and drank, and leaned out to pass the skin to Raef.
     
    Aslak was sitting on the front bench, his knees wide and his arms bent across them. “Hakon didn’t stay a Christer very long—-just until he got away from Bluetooth.”
     
    “So he’s betrayed everybody,” Conn said.
     
    “Oh, yes. At least once. And beaten everybody. German, Swede, Dane, and Norse. At least once.” With a grimace, Aslak stretched one leg out and rubbed his calf. Blood squished from the top of his shoe.
     
    Conn said, “But we are winning this one.”
     
    Aslak said, “Yes, I think so. So far.”
     
    * * * *
     
    VI
     
    In the blazing sun past noon, Hakon’s ships gathered again, and the golden dragon was in the center. They came forward again across the bay, and the Jomsvikings swung into lines to meet them.
     
    Even as they rowed up, a cold wind began to blast. Conn, pulling an oar in the front of Aslak’s ship, felt the harsh slash of the air on his cheek and looked west and saw a cloud boiling up over the horizon, black and swelling like a bruise on the sky. His skin went all to gooseflesh, and his dream came back to him. The line of the Jomsviking ships swept toward Hakon, and the stormcloud climbed up over half the sky, heavy and dark, the wind ripping streamers away like hair. Under it, the air flickered, thick and green.
     
    Conn bent to his oar. Up the center of Aslak’s ship came four men with spears, which they cast, but the wind flung them off like splinters. A roll of thunder boomed across the sky. Inside the towering cloud, lightning glowed. The first drops fell, and then all at once, sheets of rain hammered down.
     
    Aslak was screaming the oar-chant, because of the mixed crew. Conn threw all his strength into each stroke. The rain battered on his head, his bare shoulders, streamed cold down his chest. Hakon’s ships in their line loomed over them; he shipped the oar and, drawing his sword, wheeled toward the bow.
     
    As he rose, the wind met him so hard, he had to stiffen himself against it, and then suddenly, as if the sky broke into tiny pieces and fell on him, it began to hail.
     
    He stooped, half-blinded in the white deluge, feeling the ship under him rub another ship, and saw through the haze of flying ice the shape before him of a man with an axe. He struck. Raef was beside him, hip to hip. The axe came at him and he slashed again, blind, into the white whirling storm. Somebody screamed, somewhere. There was hail all in his beard, his hair, his