The Sentinel by Jeremy Bishop

inch blade and hope I don’t trip and fall on it.
    We arrive at the camp a minute later. It’s a natural depression in the endless stone landscape, surrounded by several large rocks that look like they could have been placed in a semicircle by some ancient settlers. They’ll help block the ocean breeze, but they won’t do anything to protect us from the incoming storm. A quick scan of the area reveals no immediate danger.
    No bear.
    No McAfee.
    Just Alvin, Peach, Jenny and a man who I can only assume is Willem’s father. They’re all crouched over an object that I can’t see, but it’s clearly a curiosity and not a danger.
    While I put my hands on my knees and catch my breath, Willem moves closer. “Father,” he says in English. The captain of the Bliksem turns back briefly and I see his face, thick wrinkled tan skin, crow’s feet around his eyes, a white beard and white, close cut hair. Without the beard, he might look a lot like the Colonel. “What happened?” Willem asks.
    His father waves him over. “Willem! Come see!”
    The others make room for him in their tight semi-circle. None of them have noticed me yet. They’re too focused on whatever it is that made two grown women and an old man scream. I’m interested, too, but the storm rolling in keeps my attention on the north. I’ve spent a lot of time on the ocean. I’m pretty good at gauging storms. This one’s going to be bad, and we’ve got about two hours before it hits us hard. Time is short.
    “Jane,” Willem says. “Come see this.”
    He sounds excited, and I wonder if he’s forgotten that we’re all likely to freeze, starve or be eaten to death soon. Like you’re one to talk , I think at myself. I’ve been making light of our situation since it began. Who am I to mock the way someone else handles getting crapped on by life?
    As I turn around, the wind picks up behind me and flings open the cloak. I’m still holding the black bladed knife in my hand and the storm roils in the sky behind me. When I see the others, there are five sets of wide eyes staring at me. I look at Jenny, who’s grinning. “We having another Van Helsing moment?”
    “Totally,” she says.
    I pull the cloak down around me, pull the hood down from my head and close the knife.
    “Jane,” Willem says, motioning to his father, whose bewildered look has yet to fade, “This is my father, Captain Jakob Olavson.” He turns to his father and motions to me. “Father, this is Jane—”
    “Muninn,” Jakob says.
    Willem laughs.
    “What?” I ask. I don’t like people laughing about me without my blessing. “Did I do something wrong?”
    “Not at all,” Willem says. “In fact, I think you impressed him. He called you a Raven. Muninn . One of Odin’s ravens.”
    “That’s a good thing?”
    “It means memory, or mind, but I think the description has more to do with how you look—the cloak, the knife, your hair…your eyes.”
    I’m uncomfortable with the visual inspection and try to think of a way to change the subject, but Jakob picks up where his son left off. “A harbinger,” he says. His English is understandable, but the accent is thick compared to Willem’s. “The raven is drawn to death.”
    “Great,” Peach says, looking down at the object they were all looking at and stepping away from it. I can’t see it clearly yet, but from here it looks like just another stone.
    “Father,” Willem says, his single word statement communicating something close to Knock it off .
    But the old man’s voice can’t be stifled. “Odin’s ravens welcomed the dead into Valhalla. Some even called him Hrafnaguð, the ‘raven god.’ So, you see, the birds represent great power, but their presence usually follows death.”
    At first I think he’s talking doom and gloom about us, like we’re all about to die—which might be true—but then I remember that there are thirty something fresh corpses floating around in the Arctic Ocean, and I wonder if that’s what