Wolfsangel by M. D. Lachlan

effect, as the lines on the great sail were tightened and it pulled them out of the bay at an exhilarating pace. Vali raised his hand in goodbye to the people on the shore, saw the figures becoming smaller and smaller and lost himself in the rhythm of the oars.

    The ship, which the skalds called the stallion of the waves, really did feel like that, a living force straining to get forward. For a moment Vali almost forgot the brooding presence at his back. Then, against himself, he gave half a glance behind him. The disfigured man was staring directly at him. Or was he being silly? There wasn’t really anywhere else for him to look.

    Bragi saw Vali’s glance and turned to wink at the boy.

    ‘Don’t show me the man with the scars; show me the man who put them there,’ he said. Vali smiled. Bragi was a good man, he thought, who had his interests at heart. He was honest, big-hearted, straightforward and courageous. Vali just wished he found him less boring.

    The journey was to take three days - three days of dull stories, homely advice and excruciating jokes from the old boy. In rescuing him from the berserk, Bragi had achieved a small victory. Vali should have had a knife on him, granted. But it was that, a small victory. It didn’t imply, as Bragi seemed to with his told-you-so smile, that everything the old man said and believed was correct, and that he now had the right to patronise him for the foreseeable future.

    Vali thought of a trader he’d met two years before, Veles Libor from Reric in the east, who was travelling up to see the Whale People. Now he would have made a better mentor, had he stayed. He knew so much, had travelled the world in peace not slaughter and survived off his wits. With him, Vali felt inspired and eager to learn. He had spread out his scrolls, and Vali had been amazed to see the beautiful colourful pictures and intriguing squiggly writing. He had longed to find out how to read it, how to put down his thoughts in long waves of ink that rose, fell and broke like the surf. Bragi, though, had nothing to teach him that he wanted to learn.

    The journey had been scouted the summer before. They skirted the coast north up nearly as far as the Whale People and then across west to the Islands at the World’s Edge - which were no longer at the world’s edge but simply a staging post to the richer lands to the west. From there they sailed south and picked up the coast of the West Men’s land. Vali slept on the bottom of the boat, wedged in among the other men, listening to the mutterings and cursings of the berserks, looking up at the stars and thinking of Adisla.

    The berserks never bothered to speak to him, and he was glad of that, as it allowed him to remain in his own thoughts. His people saw no beauty in the sea. He thought of the names they gave it: roarer, empty place, devourer, rager. To them it was an obstacle, a place of production and a killer. They turned the backs of their houses to the water, not wishing to look at it when they opened their doors. But Vali was enchanted by it, the sparkling greens and blues, the movement of the clouds on the horizon, the delight when a wave broke over the side of the ship and a mackerel landed in his lap.

    Then: ‘The island! This is where it happens, boys!’

    Vali glanced over his shoulder but could see nothing, no land, no enemy. Bragi put a hand on his arm. ‘Stick to the oar, lord; don’t worry about what’s waiting for us when we get off the boat.’

    Vali nodded, aware that soon he would be killing his first enemy, or being killed himself. He wished he’d unpacked his sword already. He felt the need to piss and stood to do so. He wasn’t the only one. It was almost a comical sight, ten men weeing over the side in one go, a like number on both accompanying knarrs, as if it was some sort of ritual.

    Vali scanned for land. All he could see was open sea. No, there was something, a flat dark patch in the hazy distance. ‘This is it,’