Thorgar's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

The boat rode the swell an hour past the drowned cave, and then the sea turned white. A storm had already passed. It left the ice broken into slabs, drifting and grinding, packed with no gap between them. Thorgar stood at the bow and watched for the open channel Harek had promised. There was none. The floes had closed the northern route into a shifting maze. "No lane," Harek said from the tiller. He did not soften it. "The storm scattered the pack. It shifts with the current. Push in wrong and the ice takes the hull." He held up two fingers, the gaps where the others had been. "I've watched it crush better boats than this." The crew went quiet. The older rower looked to Kjell out of habit, then to Thorgar. Thorgar felt the choice settle on his shoulders. Turn back and lose the crew he had just won. Push in blind and drown them all. Gunnar shoved forward, red beard stiff with spray. He gripped a floe with his bare hand and rapped it with his hammer. He listened to the sound. "Rotten here," he said. He struck another slab. It rang solid. "This one's thick. The metal talks. So does ice." He looked at Thorgar. "Some of it will break. Some won't." Thorgar understood. He could not see a channel, but he could make one. He set Gunnar at the bow with his hammer. "Sound it out," he said. "Tell me rotten from solid." Then he took up the full oar and drove it against the nearest slab. He heaved the way he had heaved the boat off the beach, on his own back. Gunnar tapped and called. "Left. Rotten. Left." The boat nosed at the weak ice. Thorgar shoved his oar into the crack and pried. The floe split. Water opened, a hand's width, then a boat's width. "Right now. Solid ahead. Hard right." Harek leaned the tiller. Kjell took the second oar beside Thorgar and matched his stroke without a word. They worked the maze slab by slab. Gunnar read the ice. Harek steered the gaps. Thorgar broke what would break and dragged the boat through what would not. His shoulders burned. Blood ran from his palms into the oar's leather wrap. The floes closed behind them, grinding shut, sealing the way home. By dusk the ice thinned. The slabs spread apart. Ahead lay dark, open water and a shore of black cliffs two days on. Thorgar dropped the oar and sat down hard. The crew stared at the closed ice behind them, then at him. "No channel," the older rower said. "You made one." Harek studied the cliffs ahead. "That's the guardian's coast," he said. "We can't turn back through that ice. Only forward now." He said it plainly, the way he said everything. Thorgar looked at the black shore and knew the hoard waited there, and the thing that could not be killed with it.