Thorgar's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

The open water carried them to the black cliffs by the second dawn. Thorgar stood at the bow and looked for a beach, a cove, any break in the stone. There was none. The cliffs rose straight from the sea, sheer and wet, higher than any mast. Waves smashed against the rock and threw spray back at the boat. There was nowhere to land. "No shore," said Harek from the tiller. He had built this boat and sailed it through ice, and he did not soften bad news. "Wall of stone, coast to coast. We drift here, we swamp. We ram it, we break." He held the tiller steady against the pull. "Find a gap or we die floating." Thorgar worked the cliff face with his eyes. Kjell, the monster-hunter who had bet his own axe on this voyage, leaned beside him and watched the water instead. Kjell pointed low. "There. The waves. They pull sideways, not back." Thorgar looked. A seam of dark ran down the rock, half hidden by spray. A crack in the wall, tide-cut, wide enough for one boat. "Solid or rotten?" Thorgar asked. He turned to Gunnar. The smith had read the ice by sound and saved them once already. Gunnar gripped the gunwale and put his ear low, listening to the sea against the stone. "Hollow," Gunnar said. "Water's got room behind it. Cave, maybe." He struck the hull with his knuckle and listened again. "Tide's dropping. Won't last." Thorgar remembered the drowned cave and its hour of open mouth. The sea gave a window and then it closed. He took up the full oar. "Row for the crack," he said. "Now, while it opens." Harek leaned the tiller. Kjell took the second oar without a word. Thorgar drove his blade into the swell and heaved. The boat lunged at the black seam. A wave lifted them and slammed them toward the rock. Thorgar jammed his oar against the cliff and shoved off before the hull could crack. The bow swung. The seam widened into a gap, then a passage, then dark. They slid through into still water. The roar of the surf fell behind. Thorgar looked up and saw stone closing overhead. A cave, wide and black, cut into the cliff by the tide. Ahead, the water ran deeper into the rock. Cold air moved out of it, and with the air came a smell like old meat and salt. Harek shipped his oar. "We're in," he said. "Tide's still falling." He looked back at the gap, already shrinking behind them. "Rise comes, that shuts. We'll be sealed in." Kjell stood and stared down the dark throat of the cave. His hand found the teeth strung in his beard. "The hoard's in here," he said. "So's the thing that guards it." Thorgar gripped both axes. The boat drifted forward into the dark, and something deep in the rock stirred.