Tundra

The moon sung a song of ice, shining high above the shore as Eiron walked the long track back to the beach. The sand was battered by the tide, smooth and ethereal in the silver light. Turtles had scooped out hollows with their fins, and those pools had then filled up with water, but they were nothing compared with the furrows driven by the longboats beaches and tossing their carven manes along the shore. There were kraken with tentacles lunging, twisting or raised in frozen hisses. There, too, were grinning, sabre-toothed whales and howling wolves, doe-eyed seals and knotted serpents. There, finally, were the men whose markings matched their prows.

One was Jesson, Eiron’s second in command, who came striding up the beach to greet his party leader. More than one boat had beached itself, to Eiron’s surprise. Jesson had assembled quite the flotilla for him while he was gone, banished by his uncle, the karl and leader of the Cleaved Tide, apparently in name only.

‘So,’ he asked, braided hair falling into his eyes, where the face of an open-mouthed serpent was fearsomely superimposed over his own. ‘What did they want?’

Eiron shrugged, shoulders loping. His scar rippled up his back. ‘They want us to kill one of their own,’ he said. ‘I told them we’d do it.'

‘Isn’t it bad luck to kill a druid?’

‘Not when another druid tells us to do it. I think that absolves us of their death-curse, surely?’ Eiron was serious, but Jesson did not look convinced. The others stood back a respectable distance, letting the brothers who were second and third in command after the karl converse. ‘We’re doing it,’ Eiron insisted. ‘We’re marching overland. I know it’s not usual, but there’s precedent. Remember Ivar, attacking over the mountains? We will ask his blessing, and row upstream, and be at Sentinel Rock in less than a week.’

Finally, a rower piped up. ‘But why are we doing this?’

‘Because I said so,’ snapped Eiron, fiercely. ‘I am your Prince.’

‘But–’

‘The Prince has spoken,’ Jesson proclaimed. ‘That should be good enough for you.’
‘But, begging pardon, it is not,’ the other protested. ‘Yes, he is Prince, but we are Seafarers, not southerners. He only rules because we let him.’

Fire flared up in the ice of Jesson’s cold, grey eyes. In a flash, his long, fish-hooked knife was drawn, and in the next moment the protestor’s entrails were flying through the air, scattered on the beach like seaweed. ‘Does anyone else have a question?’ he snarled, splattered in warm blood.

’Eiron,’ another rower bowed, ‘you are my Prince.’

‘If you say we’re doing this,’ piped another, ‘I will follow you to Sentinel Rock.’

‘But I think we should know why,’ said Jesson, sternly but not unsympathetically.

‘It’s so I can go home,’ Eiron announced. ’The druids will raise me up, back to my old position… And if I can go home, so can all of you.’