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“How do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?”

“We always do.”

“You're stealing our slaves.”

“You stole them in the first place.”

“You're pirates. There's no believing pirates.”

“You're slave dealers. What's your point again?”

The captain clenches his fists over and over.

“We'll keep our end of the bargain,” I say. “You keep yours. Tell one of your men to give us the spears. Don't give the order in words. No tricks, Captain. Just point at a man.”

Finally the captain jerks his chin toward one of his men. The man gathers the spears and stands at the side of the ship.

Matilda moves toward him, but Ingun catches her by the arm. She pulls Matilda with her, and they retreat toward the aft of the ship, out of reach of the men. “Drop them into our boat,” says Ingun.

The man looks back at the captain. The captain nods. The man drops the spears into our boat.

“Now the slaves,” I say.

The man goes to the woman and jerks her along by the arm. Her eyes are terrified. She stops at the side of the ship. The children stay behind.

“The children, too.”

The man goes back and yanks the two children, one by each hand. They stand beside the woman.

“Get back,” I say to the man. “Go all the way to the other side of the ship and stay there.”

He steps back.

Jofrid helps the woman into our boat. She reaches for a child, but the children just stand there, crying now. The side of the boat is too high for them to climb over, and they're too blinded with fear to be trusted to act reasonably if one of us reaches across for them. They need to be lifted over. I know that. I'm telling myself that. But I'm looking at the children, and they're so small. Five years old maybe. The age little Alof is now. I remember that terror—I remember, and I was three years older than they are.

My eyes go back to the captain. He's looking at me oddly. He takes a step forward.

“Pay attention,” says Ingun to the captain. She's still standing near the aft, but her voice carries strong. “Tell one of your men—a different one—to lift the children and drop them into our boat. One by one. Remember, if he does anything wrong, you'll be dead.”

The captain jerks his head at a different man.

The man picks up a child and throws him into our boat. The child's cry of pain is muffled by the gag, and I fear he's choking. Jofrid's already on him, cutting away the gag.

“Carefully!” I shout at the man. I look at the gasping child, then back at the captain.

In that instant the captain lunges and grabs the second
child. He clutches him to his chest. “You won't shoot me now, will you?” He puffs himself up, all triumphant. “You won't risk killing the child. You have affection for him. I see it in your eyes. Ha! Now I'm in charge.” He barks orders at two of his men in Russian.

The men run to the bow and stern and struggle to undo the ropes that bind us together.

“Throw back our spears!” shouts the captain. “And the woman and the boy!”

Ingun swings her ax. It cuts through the wrist of the man across from her, one of those who were fiddling with the ropes. It lodges in the gunwale of their ship. He's screaming. Blood's squirting.

“No!” shouts the captain.

“No one move!” screams Grima, pointing her arrow at the man closest to the wounded man, who now writhes on the deck, curled around his missing hand.

“You broke your part of the bargain, Captain,” says Ingun, wresting her ax free. “We are as good with axes as with bows. Carefully drop that boy into our ship, or we will chop off pieces of your men until you do.” Her face and the tunic over her shirt are splattered with blood; in this moment I believe her.

The captain drops the child into our boat.

“Now step back.”

The captain steps back.

Jofrid and Unn have already looped the ropes onto our deck. Jofrid goes to the helm. Matilda and Ragnhild lift the sail.

“Stealing women and children is wrong,” shouts Ingun. She waves the bloody ax over her head. “Next time we catch you at it, you all lose a hand.”

“You're not long for this world,” says the captain. “Once word gets around, everyone will want to kill you.”

“How will word get around?” calls back Ingun. “Are you going to announce to the world that you let a boat full of women outwit you?”

“Women!” shouts the man who handed over the spears. He races to his wooden chest and digs out an ax.

We are already sailing away, but he throws it hard. It spins in the air and hits Ragnhild in the shoulder—not the head end, but the butt end. The blow sends her over the side of the ship. Thyra immediately jumps in after her.

We've got the sail down and are rowing back, and Grima and Unn and I stand with our arrows aimed at the slave ship. But the ship is rowing away.

Thyra shouts from the water. “I can't see her!” And we're all scanning the water.

“There!” Jofrid dives in. She comes up with an arm around Ragnhild's chest.

We manage to get us all onboard again. Sopping and injured.

“We were lucky,” says Jofrid.

“I don't count on luck,” says Ingun. “I told you. Luck can't hold. We need to think it through ahead of time. We need a plan for every contingency.”

“Right,” says Thyra. “But we did good today, thanks to you. We're on our way to making the reputation we want.”

“And what reputation is that?” I ask.

“Terrors,” says Thyra.

“Anything less and they will, indeed, come after us,” says Ingun.

I'm rolling the last of the boiled goose eggs between my palms and sitting on the deck with my back against the mast. The ship is anchored in a sheltered lagoon between the shore and a belt of enormous rocks that rise from the water like gigantic gray whales. The rocks make the ship invisible from the sea. That means, for the moment, we do not have to stay alert. The feeling is rare. And somehow empty. I'm at a loss.

My crewmates, all but Unn, have gone off to accompany Tofa home, on foot. Tofa is the woman the Russian slave dealers stole. She lives in a small settlement not far to the south of Birka, which will be our next stop.

Unn is in the forest hunting. She knows little about archery. So standing with the arrow fitted into the bowstring and pretending to have her sights on the captain of the slave ship unnerved her. When we finally left without her having been called upon to shoot, she collapsed in a weak heap of gratitude. She has decided to become an expert marksman. I gave her a lesson this morning, and then she took off on
her own to practice, swearing to bring back the evening meal. It will be a feat if she accomplishes it, for the forest to our south and west is nearly impenetrable—unlike the airy open woods of Jutland. She'd have to be very close to a target to have a clean shot.

The children, Bolli and Sigurd, are gone. Tofa turned out not to be related to the boys, nor did she know them in the least. But she had been captured by the slave ship first, and so she saw where they were taken from. We returned them to their families yesterday and stayed for a feast that lasted far into the night.

Their settlement consisted of nothing more than a hall plus perhaps ten small dwellings for families, and huts and pit houses for metalworking. And wells, so many wells you'd think they were afraid of dying of thirst. Maybe it doesn't rain here the way it does in Jutland. The important point, though, is that they were self-sufficient. They had skis to cross snow, they had sledges to carry goods, they had horses for long-distance travel. But they could survive just fine all on their own if they needed to. Trading wasn't necessary.

That's where the boiled goose eggs came from—that settlement. Bolli's mother gave us a satchel of them and flat breads for travel. I peel and eat the egg slowly. The yolk is sunshine itself, but it cannot cheer me. I close my eyes.

A man lost his hand, just like my brother Nuada lost his hand: an ax swung by a Norse person chopped it off. This is something about the Norse that I will never understand, this chopping off of hands and feet. It is a common punishment leveled at outlaws, particularly slaves. Though I had never seen it done before, I have seen more than one slave with a missing hand. Ingun dealt with that slave dealer just as an owner would deal with a wayward slave. She said it served him right; it was just.

Logically, I see the justice. But I hate it. Especially since it was my fault. I let myself respond to the children's plight in a wrong way. I was caught in the quicksand of their misery. Because I thought of Alof. And, I have to admit, because for that moment, their misery became mine. I was eight. I was terrified.

I remember the training sessions that Earl gave little Hakon on military practice. Never think about things that make you frightened or sad—think only about things that make you angry and fierce. Those are rules of battle. They're as important as the rule: Go easy at the start of the battle to see how bad it will be, then use everything you've got only if you need to. They're as important as the rule: Spare the enemy's ship, because it's valuable to acquire—just like their weapons—so make them jump overboard rather than burn it. Burn their land if you have to, but not their ship.

All the rules matter. What goes on in your head is as important as what goes on with your weapons. Warriors win because they know they will.

I didn't act properly as a warrior, and it cost that man his hand. And it could have cost Ragnhild her life—for the crew might not have been so furious at us if we hadn't mutilated one of them, so she might not have wound up in the water, only barely conscious.

Ingun and I talked privately this morning. She said what matters with an enemy is acting decisive. She said I am the first in command and I must never forget it—because the rest of us depend on it. I promised never to hesitate again.

How does one keep a promise like that?

I am furious with myself. If someone else had displayed such weakness, I'd have wanted to send her home. I must keep my promise to Ingun. We have a mission. And to be successful, we must become the terrors of the Baltic, as Thyra said.

Mel was not sold in Miklagard. Mel was sold somewhere up here, on this sea, if she's the famous witch. And I'm almost sure she is. Why? I don't know. Maybe just because I have to have something that keeps hope alive—and this is the only thing so far.

So we'll go to Birka and find out what we need to
know. Then we'll rescue Mel. I turn my face to the early evening sun and hope the warmth will heal whatever there is to heal within me. I am not eight anymore. I will never be powerless again.

And Beorn and Ástríd will protect Alof. They will protect Búri. Queen Tove and King Hók will protect Hakon. The children I love are safe.

A low sound comes to me. Regular. I sit up and open my eyes. Unmistakable. It's the steady, vigorous pull of oars. I grab my bow and fit an arrow in the string. The sound comes from my left. It stops, and I hear the splash of an anchor. But the rocks block my view of the ship. Men talk. It isn't Norse. Someone's crying. I hear shuffling. Then a scream. A man yelling. Laughter.

A memory is jogged—something hideous. I go hot. Sick. It's all a confusion, but at the same time too familiar.

I have to know.

I could climb the mast, but I wouldn't be able to find a good perch up there. And I doubt I can scale the rock beside me. Plus, from the top of that rock I'd be an easy target, nowhere to hide.

A man grunts, and others grunt in encouragement. A woman weeps.

I remember Mel and another woman herding the children away from a weeping woman while the men closed
around her. Mel wouldn't let our eyes meet. She didn't want me to know. But I did. And I do now. I cannot simply do nothing.

I take off my shoes. I'm more surefooted without them. I fill my quiver and sling it over my shoulder. I hang the bow across my chest. I carry one arrow in my teeth. I sit on the gunwale, swing my legs around, and jump from the boat to the side of the rock. I grab hold, but the side is steep and without crags; my feet find no purchase. I slide, face mashing against the rock, barnacles just below the surface scraping me bloody, down, down with a splash.

Did they hear? But there's no choice of action at this point anyway.

The arrow is still firmly in my teeth.

I swim soundlessly to the far side of the rock, away from the weeping woman and the grunting men. My hands and eyes search. The waves on this side sweep me against the rock and batter me against sharp edges. But there's a little ledge here. I manage to climb onto it. Then from there to a spiny ridge. Finally to the top. I flatten myself onto my belly and shimmy to the edge closest to the boat.

Two sails. At one end of the ship, five men guard a group of women and children. At the other end, two men grunt appreciatively while a man savages a weeping woman.

I take the arrow from my teeth. I fit it into the bowstring. No one would fault me for meting out justice to a villain in the act. Or they wouldn't if the victim were a free woman. But I don't have a clear shot of the man on top of the woman. It kills me to wait, but I must.

Now the men laugh. The lout climbs off the woman and searches for his trousers. One of the two watching men drops his trousers and takes his place on top of the woman.

I aim and shoot.

The man reaching for his trousers screams and claws at the arrow stuck in his shoulder.

The second watching man looks around and spies me and points with a shout, moving just enough to give a clear shot.

I aim and shoot.

The man on top of the woman now screams and pulls at the arrow stuck in his rear.

A spear flies at me. I don't bother to duck; it doesn't even come close. Slave dealers are not warriors. I am learning that quickly.