Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)

by Catherine Lundoff

  Boys informed, she went back round to Thora. Her daughter was already sitting up, jaw set and clutching her own belt knife. The noises were getting louder and Thora had always had better hearing than her brothers anyway.

  “There’s more than one, Mama.”

  Sewenna nodded slowly. Understandable. One man might consider himself able to kill two women in their sleep, but her sons posed a more significant problem.

  This was definitely a murder attempt. A humiliation or a threat would have been delivered in daylight, or with great noise. But this was a cowardly, dishonourable murder attempt: killing a family in their sleep in the dead of night with no chance for them to fight back. It should ruin all who took part in it. So why was it happening? What had prompted it?

  She thought that she knew. When your household was built like theirs, you knew it was just a matter of time before your society couldn’t tolerate you any longer.

  Minutes later, they smelled smoke. In the darkness, the flickers of fire at the door were so stark in contrast that even Sewenna could make them out. There was more noise coming from outside now: low, angry male voices. Sewenna cast a nervous look at the other end of the house, where she knew a stout wooden bar blocked the door and wondered if someone out there was gaining a conscience before it was too late.

  Luckily they had nearly finished moving all of the massive pile of old furs that lay in one area of the floor. They would have been at least thirty seconds faster, but Godgest and Thorkell had kept scuttling up and down and returning with sacks that clinked. If she had to guess, Thorkell had grabbed a half-finished axe-head he’d discarded two days ago and Godgest had grabbed a fire-poker. She tried not to snap at them about it. Neither of them were little boys anymore and she was lucky they had listened to her at all and not stormed straight out of the house, waving their puny bits of iron.

  Also, if she was fair, she’d admit that she’d stopped and tied a full purse to her belt while she was pulling on her outer dress. Job done, she lifted the final fur away for the first time in fifteen years and the children all made noises of surprise as the wooden trapdoor was revealed. She tugged at the handle. It stuck. One, two, three hands joined hers and heaved, and the trapdoor opened. Even to her eyes, its square black maw looked uninviting.

  “Where did you say this goes again, Mama?” Godgest whispered.

  “Helvegr,” Thora said with typically bitter humour. The Road to Hel.

  Sewenna rolled her eyes at their melodrama. They hadn’t even thought of the really terrifying bit: that the tunnel could cave in when they were inside it, and that they could end up suffocating underground as their home burned.

  Ha. Lovely.

  The front door was starting to catch light properly now. The shadows it cast made her children look much older than they were.

  “Thorkell, you first.” She shuffled aside to let him peer into it. Now she elaborated on what she’d told them earlier, “It was measured for your father so you should have enough space to move forwards with your knees and elbows. Eventually, you’ll hit another wooden trapdoor. You’ll end up in the old outhouse—yes, the one we used to tell you was rotting and full of ants. There should be a big wooden peg in the back wall; if you pull it out, the whole wall will fall away. Try to do that quietly. It backs straight onto the copse. Hide in there and wait for me.”

  “No, I’ll go last, Mama.” Godgest. Always Godgest. He stood in front of her with that silly patchy beard he was so proud of, stubbornly folding his arms. She could see the stupid poker dangling from his belt.

  “No.” She was calm but firm. He scowled so hard that she could see it distort the blur of his face.

  “Yes!”

  “I should really go last. I can stand heat better than the rest of you,” Thorkell, an apprentice blacksmith, pointed out.

  “I’d rather crisp and know you were all in there, getting away,” Sewenna said bluntly.

  Thora sighed loudly at them all and plunged into the hole like a diver. Sewenna’s stomach dropped to her feet as she imagined the potential for slow suffocation.

  “Wait a bit before following,” she advised Thorkell. “You don’t want her to accidentally kick you in the face.” Just three years ago, she’d had a swollen, bruised face for days when they’d crawled into it to test it and Makarios had panicked in front of her.

  Smoke was starting to fill the room beyond what they could usually tolerate. She hoped that the stout, hardened outer shell could withstand the fire for just a bit longer.

  “Mama, I’m staying until you go!” Godgest hissed.

  “Then we’ll both die and that would be a pity.” She stared at his face as the seconds ticked away in frantic heartbeats. People tended to react better when she stared at them like this, even though they were just blurs to her. “I’ll be behind you. I promise.”

  She didn’t need to see his eyes to know when he gave in.

  True to her promise, she wriggled into the hole only thirty or so heartbeats behind him. She closed her eyes in the darkness and started to edge forwards on her knees and elbows, being careful with her feet. If they got tangled in her skirt, she might accidentally kick the wall. She knew how fragile the tunnel could be. And who knew how much air there was left? With three panting, wriggling bodies before her, and a fire behind them, perhaps it would run out soon. There had been no point in scaring the children, but that just meant that all the fear sat on her chest like a great toad.

  The earth was freezing cold and damp around her, and small clods kept dropping onto her face. She imagined ghostly dwarven touches and shuddered. She thought that she could hear Godgest moving up ahead of her—and just for a terrible second, her mind told her that it wasn’t her son and it wasn’t moving away from her.

  After what seemed like an eternity, when she was certain that she couldn’t breathe another breath in this underground snake belly, she felt a sharp upwards tilt. Silently she thanked the Lord of her childhood and every god of her husband’s, just in case any of them were listening. The next second, a white blur was waving in front of her face and she could hear Thorkell telling her to grab on.

  She sat on the edge of the hole and spent a few precious moments trying to control her breathing so that they couldn’t tell how badly she’d reacted down there. She noticed her filthy hands, felt the mud in her ears and up her calves. The others appeared equally as filthy, at least if the unusual darkness of their faces was anything to go by. At least one of them had badly chattering teeth. Probably Thora—she always did forget her cloak. Well, at least they might not be immediately recognisable.

  “Have you got the wall open?” She coughed to try and cover up the alarming deep pitch of her voice.

  “Of course!” Godgest’s voice was strained. “I’m holding it ajar for us. We were just waiting for you.”

  She wriggled her toes to check how her leg muscles were doing. Minimal shaking. She’d be fine. “Let’s go, then.”

  Thorkell took the other side of the loose wall and they lowered it slowly and carefully. One side snagged on a sapling, which was reassuring. If the trees had started to regrow around the gap they’d cut a few years ago, their escape should be less obvious. She put both hands out to navigate around the snagged door. Gadgets made an abortive “helpful” gesture towards her and she hissed at him like a cat.

  “Peer over the edge of the outhouse and tell me what you see,” she demanded. It was her way of reminding him that he could be helpful in better ways. “Is anyone looking in this direction?”

  “The-there’s a lot of people, Mama.” His voice trembled just a little. Thora crawled out of the opening on her hands and knees and took a look through the screening branches of a bush too. Even Thorkell had twisted round and was trying to see over his shoulder.

  “No one’s looking, Mama,” Thora confirmed. “They’re all crowded round the front, just…waiting.” Now her voice wobbled.

  Waiting for the screaming to start, Sewenna thought bitterly.

  Nev
er one to be outdone, Godgest interrupted when Thora drew breath, “There’s probably half the village out there.” He named a few of them.

  The detached wall scraped against the rest of the outhouse. It sounded deafening. She’d just caught her movement in the edge of her vision—Thorkell had flinched, hard, and who could blame him when Godgest had just said Thorkell’s future father in-law’s name?

  Enough. She shepherded them outside and then told them to try and prop the wall back up again. It was probably futile but the tiny attempt at covering their tracks made her feel better.

  They pushed onwards through the trees—doubled over at first for cover under stunted thorn bushes and eventually standing taller as the trees around them matured and multiplied. From long habit, Thora went first. Not only was she the closest to Sewenna’s height and so the best judge of obstacles, but her leading stopped the boys from arguing and fighting.

  Sewenna’s eyes were starting to hurt from pointless straining into the dark, so she closed them instead and trudged forwards. That meant she was the first to hear the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. She opened her mouth and eyes.

  And Thora screamed. Sewenna’s heart tried to appear in her mouth and her feet simultaneously, and she charged forwards like a bear in the pit.

  “Easy, my darling!” came a familiar voice. A familiar outline too, with a familiar way of standing.

  Sewenna stopped dead. “Fuck you, Maka,” she said instead of the hysterical giggle that wanted to come out.

  “Mama!” Thorkell sounded so shocked that Sewenna had to remind herself of the language she’d caught him using when he’d got distracted at the forge yesterday. She put her hand on Thora’s shoulder and separated Makarios and Thora from their hug. He obligingly hugged her instead, which hadn’t been her intention, but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that it was good to lean into his warm embrace for a second or two.

  “What’s going on?” The pommel of his sword was digging hard into her hip. It was unsheathed, which meant it was bloodied. She could smell blood too, standing this close to him.

  He clasped her hand and squeezed it three times, an old sign for ‘We’ll discuss this later, not in front of the children.’

  She frowned and went for a different question instead. “Where’s Ref?” She ran her free hand over his face, and he flinched away as her fingers brushed something wet and ridged.

  “He’s heading for the Serpent.”

  “Ah.” Sewenna let her eyes slide even more out of focus for a second as she tried to figure out which emotion was causing the sudden weight on her chest. She wasn’t fond of that ship. She’d been brought here on that ship. But, more importantly right now, it was the fastest ship and the one that the fewest people knew about.

  Makarios’ hand on her elbow broke into her unpleasant thoughts.

  “Let’s go, yes?” He had already started walking before she said anything. Thora ceded head of their line to him and they shuffled on as fast as they could. The ship Makarios had mentioned was ten miles away, and they all knew that they needed to be out of sight when the sun came up.

  Sewenna knew she was the big obstacle to that. They had to travel at her speed. Most of her slowness was due to the unfamiliar ground and a lifelong fear and avoidance of tripping and falling over obstacles she couldn’t see: loose stones, a dip in the path, a rise in the path…anything, really. At this speed, it would take them maybe four hours. If she just straightened up and accepted that her family would catch her or pick her up if anything happened, they could maybe make it in three hours.

  Come on. Speed up.

  She walked on quickly, with her heart beating her throat. Every step felt like a disaster waiting to happen. Every sound could be an attacker bursting out of the trees. The moon was bright enough that people with normal eyesight would be content—that wasn’t what you wanted when you were trying to escape.

  “Who’s joining us?” she asked after what felt like hours of tense trudging, when she couldn’t quite bear keeping herself company anymore.

  People had to be joining them, or they might as well have lain down in the house and drunk the smoke. Although they all knew how to row, the ship needed twenty people to row it most effectively, so six wouldn’t be of any use at all.

  “Not the usual crew.” Makarios’ voice was flat. “Ref’s sent Kupsi as a messenger to round up some old favours.”

  Kupsi was a grizzled veteran of fifty who had known Ref since they went raiding together as young men. It made Sewenna feel a little better that he was still dependably around.

  “Why not the usual crew?” That was Godgest. Sewenna guessed from the angry tone of his voice what he would be saying next, her most predictable child. “You can stop trying to keep secrets from us now. Someone’s tried to kill us! In our beds! We deserve to know why!”

  “He’s got a good point,” Thora said. “Father clearly did something. Did he kill someone?”

  “Not unprovoked,” Makarios muttered, half under his breath. He stopped so abruptly that Sewenna banged her nose on his shoulder, and turned to face them all. “You’re right, you’ve got a point. Or rather, you’ve all got a choice and you’ve got to make it now.”

  Silence. In her mind Sewenna could see the shape of what Makarios was about to say, but, as if the situation was deliberately mirroring her eyesight, she couldn’t make out the exact details.

  “Ref and I are both outlaws now. For…well…” His head moved towards Sewenna, as if silently asking for help.

  “For fucking.”

  Godgest. Why was it always Godgest? But no, Thora was nodding hard too. Makarios’ face was still pointed towards Sewenna. She could see from the shadow pattern that his mouth was slightly open. Her mind, too, was blank. She’d always thought that she, Ref and Maka had kept their secret, but that instant, shared reaction surely meant that at the very least, the children had had suspicions.

  “Ref can tell you more details if he wants when he gets to us,” Makarios said eventually. “But the point is still the same. We’re both outlaws—or I’m sure we will be once they get to the þing assembly. If you help us, you will be seen in a very bad light.”

  “What, like the light from the fire they used to burn us in our beds?” Thorkell hadn’t spoken in at least an hour and his voice was gravelly. Sewenna raised her eyebrows at his dramatic pronouncement.

  Godgest jeered, “What are you, a skald now?”

  They were all starting to stumble by the time that they reached the cove where the ship was stored. The distance wasn’t necessarily the problem, but combined with sleep deprivation, worn-off adrenalin and the fact that in Thorkell’s case, he had put on his old ruined shoes in his hurry to flee, it all added up to a grumpy, wobbly group. Makarios was the only one seemingly unaffected. At several points in the last mile or so, Sewenna had to outright lean on him, rather than just using his shoulder for guidance, and he had walked on despite his wound and her extra weight. Now he shepherded them under a cliff, up a pebbly slope and into a small cave. There was just enough room to fit everybody in.

  He looked down at them with one hand on his sword and nodded unsmilingly. Sewenna thought, with a slightly hysterical laugh, that smiling was probably not an option for him right now.

  The sun was rising now, casting pink and cream shadows over them all. Sewenna could have wept for relief at the resurgence of colour. She dealt so much better with the world when she could identify bits of it properly. She was tempted to look up at Makarios, get close enough to feel his breath on her face while she checked his gaping cut and she pretended not to want to kiss him for the children’s sake. Instead of being that self-indulgent, she examined Thorkell’s feet, made Thora sit down, and just…tried not to antagonise Godgest.

  The image of her burning house kept creeping back into her mind. Money she hadn’t been able to bring. Rugs and blankets, and the first horseshoe Thorkell had ever forged, which he’d given to her. Every single item of clothing other t
han what they stood in. All gone.

  Shut up, Sewenna. She took a deep breath in and shut her eyes. Her eyelids let a single tear go free. Just shut up. That won’t help.

  They were tightly snuggled up against each other and feeling warm for the first time in hours. Thorkell was definitely asleep. It was always obvious when he was asleep. With his snoring deadening her hearing, Sewenna knew Thorgest had reached them, not because she’d heard or seen him, but because Makarios had, and the loosening of tension from his shoulders was obvious.

  “He took his time,” she whispered into the warm skin of his neck. Makarios laughed and staggered on sleepy legs out of the cave so that the rest of them could follow him.

  Thorgest stood at the bottom of the slope looking, Sewenna thought, much like an engraving of Thor himself. He just needed a hammer instead of his sword. It was the ridiculously dramatic way that his waist-length curly red hair streamed out behind him. She couldn’t wait for the wind direction to change and for that mane to thwack him firmly in the face.

  Thora was the first to fling herself at her father and he picked her up and swung her around even though she was a young woman of fifteen. Fierce hugs followed for Thorkell and Godgest.

  “I knew you’d get them out,” he said to Sewenna, standing close enough to her that she could see most of his facial expression. Their foreheads rested together.

  “You hoped,” she replied even as her heart melted anew, because she’d been brutally honest by default for too many years to change now.

  “I prayed.” He touched his hammer amulet briefly. Then he pursed his lips and whistled a passable imitation of a cuckoo.

  Suddenly, men materialised from the trees a few hundred feet away. Sewenna flinched backwards, then felt a lot better for it when she saw Makarios take his hand off his sword.