Excerpt! Prologue
© 2010 Juliet Marillier
Pull! In the name of all the gods, pull!

I haul on my oar, every muscle straining. Cold sweat
shivers on my skin. Salt spray blinds me. Or do I weep?
We’re going to die. We’re going to perish in the chill of
the sea, far from home. Pull! Pull! We haul with our guts,
with our hearts, with our last strength. We seventeen, we
survivors, exhausted, sick at heart – how can we prevail
against such seas? Freyja shudders a moment, balanced
between muscle and swell, then plunges broadside toward
the rocks. The waves snatch up the ship, and with a surge
and a decisive smack, hurl her down on the reef.

A jagged spear of rock splits the prow. Splinters fly. The
fine oak disintegrates like kindling under the axe.
Fragments fall on the deck, a momentary pattern of augury,
gone almost before I can read the signs: Eolh: protection;
Eoh: comfort; Nyd: courage in the face of death. The sea
surges in, erasing the runic shapes in a heartbeat. The
air fills with screaming; abandoned oars fly everywhere.
Struck on the temple, a man falls. Another lies limp over
his bench, a red stain spreading across his tunic. Others
stagger along the boat, pushing, shouting. My heart
thunders. I struggle to my feet. The purchase is perilous.
The shuddering deck has a tilt like a church roof. The
reef is opening Freyja as a hunter’s knife opens the
carcass of a deer.

‘Felix! The rope, quick!’

Paul, gods, Paul with his feet still tied … I stagger over
to where he lies half-on, half-off the bench, clutching a
broken oar. The rope around his ankles is caught on a
jagged length of split wood. A wave washes over me,
drenching me to the chest and submerging Paul. The water
recedes. Paul chokes and wheezes, sucking in air. Freyja’s
timbers groan, grind, shatter. The ship is in her death
throes. Crewmen fall, shrieking, into the maelstrom.
Nowhere to climb to. Nowhere to shelter. No surface broad
enough, flat enough, high enough for even one man to
balance on and wait for rescue. There’s land not far off;
smoke rising. This storm will drown us before anyone can
come.

‘Here.’ I crouch down, fumbling for the rope. It’s
underwater, the knots impossibly tight, the strands
snagged fast in the broken wood. Too slow. A knife, I need
a knife … There’s a crewman dead, his corpse washing about
in the narrow gap between benches. I snatch the weapon
from his belt – gods, let me do this in time, let the two
of us live – and I hear Paul speak behind me. ‘Save
yourself, Felix.’AsI turn back toward him a monstrous wave
engulfs me. It’s in my nose, my ears, my mouth. Its
surging song drowns everything. Iron bands close around my
chest. The sea bears me away.