Thorgar's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

The beast was dead and the route was open. Now Thorgar needed men. He had walked back from the coast with Harek at his side and a name on his tongue for a crew that did not yet exist. He knew how to gut a monster in the dark. He did not know how to make twelve hard men trust one hand at the tiller. He stood in the mead hall doorway, warm smoke and firelight ahead of him, and felt the size of what he lacked. Sailors filled the benches. They had heard the sea beast was dead. They were willing to come. But they watched Thorgar the way men watch a stranger with coin, not a captain. One older rower spoke it plain. "You kill things," he said. "That's not the same as leading them. Who's fought at your shoulder? Who anchors this crew when the water turns?" The hall went quiet. Thorgar had no answer. He killed alone. He always had. A man rose from a bench in the back. Kjell. Thorgar knew him by his beard, strung with teeth and claws, the first a troll tooth taken when the man was a boy. Kjell had hunted draugr and lindworms and come home each time. Thorgar had never asked him for anything. Kjell crossed the floor and stopped close. "You went into the drowned cave," Kjell said. "Alone. At the turn of the tide." It was not a question. "I did," Thorgar said. "Most men wait outside and call it courage." Kjell looked at the notched axe on Thorgar's back, the one he still had. "You left the other one in the beast." "I couldn't swim with both." Kjell was quiet. Then he pulled a coin from his belt and set it on the table between them. It was old, worn, stamped with runes. "I've killed things that don't die from being stabbed. You'll want a man who knows the difference on the water." He raised his voice, plain and flat, so the whole hall heard. "I sail with him. His shoulder holds." The hall shifted. The old rower nodded slow. Men who had watched a stranger now watched a crew forming. One by one they came forward and struck the table, until the benches emptied toward Thorgar and the count reached twelve. Harek stood by the door and said nothing until it was done. "Twelve," he said. "I sail when the tide's right." Thorgar looked at the men who had said yes because Kjell said yes. He had his crew. But the trust in the room was Kjell's, not his. If the water turned and the men looked for their anchor, they would look at the trophy-hung dwarf, not the one who was supposed to lead. Thorgar had bought his raid on another man's name. He would have to earn it back at sea.