Eyvind looked at him, and looked away. “Forget it,” he said. There was a doubt in his mind, a terrible, dark doubt, that stretched not just over today’s shocking events but back into the distant past. His fingers touched the scar on his forearm, mark of an oath deep and binding, a promise of lifetime loyalty. He closed his eyes a moment, and sent up a silent prayer to Thor. Let this not be true. Let me be wrong about him. They cast the bull’s body into the water, but Freyr was not pleased. The wind changed; the rain began to descend in icy sheets, plastering the men’s clothing to their skin and scouring the deck clean of blood. Ulf’s intended course had been toward the setting sun, but it now became clear the god’s angry breath was driving both vessels away from their true path toward a region trackless and empty, where the dark waters held only the lurking terror of sea monsters and the sudden sharp grip of low-lying skerries. On the knarr, they manned the oars, but the current pulled so hard it threatened to rip the lengths of heavy pine from their hands, and the vessel plunged ahead on her own wild course. The passengers clung to ropes, to rails, to one another, to whatever they could find, shocked into a white-faced silence. Ahead of them in the gloom of driving rain and ocean spray, the dark form of the Golden Dragon was barely visible above the turmoil of surging water.

Eyvind narrowed his eyes; he could scarcely see a ship-length beyond the knarr’s prow. If Ulf had been right in his calculations, they must surely even now be passing their intended safe harbor, swept beyond it by the elements’ fury. It was as if day had become night; the storm had turned the world to darkness. He closed his eyes. Thor! He spoke in silence, in the depths of the heart. Thor, I am your loyal son. I have served you with all my strength. Help us now, best of sailors. Show us the way.

“Land!” someone shouted. “I see land! Look, there to the south!”

“And there to the north!” yelled another man.

Eyvind’s eyes snapped open. It was true. Now, dimly showing between the curtains of rain, a low, dark mass could be discerned. It was not so very far off, and yet it might have been at the other end of the world, so little chance there seemed of changing course to reach it. The ship followed her own will now. Another shape loomed farther away, and more again, small islands, bigger islands, like a pod of whales rising in stately convoy from the ocean depths.