Tundra

The drummer at the prow of Eiron’s kraken ship, the head ship, threw stones into the water ahead to test its depth. Dragging the longboats up the estuary was perilous, as snow mangrove roots and rocks lanced through to the bottom like spears, and rose up like snakes to snare unsuspecting hulls. Worse, hoary willows trailed their fronds in the water, creating curtains of revelation that required hacking through, and other trees turned righteous fists and blackened claws to the sky. The most disturbing thing of all, however, was the way the comforting sound of the ocean, a sound the rowers had known their whole lives, was receding, replaced by malevolent silence.

‘I don’t like this…’ a drummer piped up, as the last stone slid into the water up ahead. The net was now empty, and navigation would have to be done with caution.

‘Don’t be naïve,’ Eiron told the man. ‘This is just a raid. We’ve done this hundreds of times. Now, quiet, and let’s land. I want to retain the element of surprise.’

‘Yes,’ murmured the men, ‘but what if he curses us? Or sets monsters on us?’

‘We’re Seafarers, aren’t we?’ It was Jossen, laughing heartily at the head of the second small ship. ‘We’re the monsters he would want to set on people.’

Scraping hulls on sand, the longboats pushed ashore. Here, over a hillock, was a village in an area cleared of vegetation, with grass huts and a driftwood bonfire, piled higher than any of the dwellings. The fire was still crackling, burning sacred blue, but this was no Seafarer settlement. Jossen ran to the fire, stamping it out, picking up a branch and sweeping it through the air. ‘We’ll see who sacred fire favours!’ he cried. There was no response.

‘Are they ready?’ Eiron asked, irritably.

‘They’re as ready as they’re going to be,’ Jossen replied, his gaze sweeping over the men huddled in boats by some semblance of the sea. He sounded annoyed. ‘If they’re this worried about establishing a beachhead, how do you think they'll hold up when we get to Sentinel Rock?'

Eiron had no time for stragglers. In sealskin boots, he marched ahead, declaring, ‘They’ll have to hold up.’

'Alright,’ Jossen said, jogging disgruntledly along the ranks of cowering rowers, each gripping a spear, an axe or an oar. ‘You men, form up. It's a short, brisk walk over those dunes, and then we're going house-to-house. We don't expect much resistance, but try not to get caught by yourself once the fighting starts… Such as in every other raid we've ever done.'

Slowly, the men formed groups by rank and file, Jossen barking all the while. Marching and chanting, they rounded the hilltop, but they might as well have rounded the top of a barrow in the druids’ barrow downs. Nobody could be seen. There were only mounds and standing stones, stark as concentrated night against the paler bleeding grey of dusk.

‘I don’t like this,’ the complainer said again, and copped the blunt end of an axe. ‘Oof!’

Jossen spoke. 'Stop being such a coward. Of course there's no-one in the street, it's night. Besides, these houses are clearly lived-in. Look, there's smoke coming from that one.'

'This isn't right,’ Eiron muttered, shaking his head. ‘I've heard stories about this. Ghost villages that trap anyone who goes there forever... The druids must have tricked us!'

'This isn't a ghost village,’ Jossen insisted. ‘Our uncle came here on a raid last year.'

'Then where are all the people?'

Padding quietly as treading on embers, the Seafarer party continued over the hilltop and into the scraped out valley where the village lay. There, they found an orchard of ugly, thick and calloused trees. Only, they weren’t trees.

'Look, here's someone.’ Jesson yelled, and the few foreign men and women shuffled around. ‘You! Seal-man! Where are the rest of your people?'

'I can take you to them,' came the voice, a deep, unnatural rumble from one of the infected men in bark-like clothing gathered in the mouldy copse.

'What's wrong with his face?' Eiron whispered to his brother, but received no reply.

There was no time, before the first stranger spoke again.

'I can take you to them. I have something to show you.'

The next thing they knew, there was roaring and shouting, and the Seafarers drowned in noise the way they could never have drowned in the sea.