Thorgar wanted a crew. He wanted the richest hoard ever hauled back to Ironholt's shores. But no man would sail with him, because the thing that ate his brother still hunted the northern trade routes. He sat in the stone brewing hall and slid a whetstone down one bearded axe. The other axe leaned against his knee. Twelve men had crewed his brother's ship. Thorgar was meant to be the thirteenth. He slept through the launch, drunk, and the sea beast took the whole crew. The hall was warm and full of sailors. Thorgar dropped a fistful of old coins on the table. Stamped runes, worn edges, a raider's promise of pay. "Northern routes," he said. "Ten men. Rich share." The sailors looked at the coins. Then they looked at the door. One by one they turned back to their mead. A gray old fisherman leaned close. "No gold buys those waters, dwarf. Not while the wrong-shaped thing swims them." He drank and said nothing more. Thorgar swept the coins into his fist. He understood now. The beast was not just his grief. It was the wall between him and every crew he would ever lead. Kill it, and the routes opened. The hoard opened. He could not raid a sea no one would cross. A soot-black figure stood in the doorway. Skin and beard stained with ash and forge grease. He carried an iron adze across one shoulder. Thorgar knew the shipwright by reputation. The man built boats to sail rivers of fire underground, and he traded route knowledge over coin. Missing fingers marked his hands where rivets had cooled too slow. "You're Harek," Thorgar said. Harek walked to the table. He looked at Thorgar's scars, then his axes. "You hunt the northern beast." "I do. Alone, it seems." "I know where it dens." Harek set the adze down. "A drowned cave under the cliffs. Two days north on foot. The current pulls the wreckage there. That's why no ship comes back." Thorgar's hands went still on the whetstone. He had read the same currents for a year. He had never guessed a den. "Why tell me?" "The old pilots said that coast can't be sailed. They're dead. I mean to prove them wrong." Harek's voice stayed flat. "You kill the beast. I sail the route no one else can. Then you get your crew." Thorgar looked at the dead coins in his fist. No crew today. But a map, and a place to swing his axes. He stood. His head barely cleared the table's edge, and his shoulders filled the aisle. "Two days north," he said. "Show me the cave." Harek picked up his adze. "Bring both axes. The current runs strong at the mouth. You'll go in on foot, at low tide, or not at all." They left the warm hall together. The hunt was no longer a search. It had a place, a tide, and a deadline. Thorgar walked north to kill the thing that had cost him everything.

Two days north, Thorgar stood on a cliff above the drowned cave. The tide was high. Gray water churned at the cave mouth and hid it from view. He had walked hard roads to find this place. Now the sea itself barred the door. He crouched and watched the waves. He counted them the way he counted currents. The water fell, but slowly. He needed to know exactly when the mouth cleared, and how long it stayed open. Harek climbed up beside him. The shipwright set his iron adze down and looked at the churning water. Soot and forge grease still stained his hands and beard, even here on the wind-scoured coast. "Tide's wrong," he said. "You go in now, you drown." "I know that," Thorgar said. "I need the low mark. And I need to know how long I have before the water comes back." Harek pointed to the cliff wall above the cave. Old marks scored the stone at different heights. "Sea wrote it down. Read the high line and the low. Time the fall." He crouched and studied the marks. "Cave floods fast here. You'll have one hour. Maybe less." One hour to reach the den, kill the beast, and get out. Thorgar's hands went to his axe handles. The leather wraps were worn smooth. An hour was thin. But it was a number, and a number he could use. He watched the water drop past one score in the rock. A shadow crossed the cliff. Thorgar looked up. A great eagle rode the wind above them, brown and gold, wings spread wide. It hung there, watching the water as he did. Then it folded and dove. It struck the sea near the cave mouth and rose with a fish in its talons. The bird knew the tide better than any man. It fed when the water pulled back. Thorgar tracked its dives. Each time it struck the same low patch, the mouth showed more rock. "There," he said, pointing. "When the bird can reach the bottom, the cave's open." Harek followed his hand. He grunted once. "Good sign to read." They waited. The water fell past the low score in the rock. The eagle dropped again and stood in the shallows at the cave mouth, tearing at its fish. The mouth stood clear now, a black gap under the cliff. The current had gone slack. Thorgar stood. He pulled both axes free and checked their weight. "Now," he said. "One hour." Harek picked up his adze. "I hold the rope up here. You're not back when the tide turns, you're the beast's now, not mine." Thorgar climbed down toward the black mouth. He had his window. He had his path. The obstacle that had trapped him was solved. But he walked into the den alone, with the sea already turning behind him and an hour on the clock.

Thorgar found the beast at the back of the cave. It was large and wrong-shaped, gray and soft, as if it had never grown a proper body. He struck it twice with his axes. It screamed and lunged. Its coils wrapped his legs and dragged him deeper into the dark. The water was rising fast behind him. He looked back for Harek's rope. It hung near the mouth, out of reach now, and the exit was already half drowned. Thorgar dug his heels into the stone. The beast pulled harder. Water climbed to his chest. He had one hour, and the hour was gone. He could feel the tide fill the cave. Soon there would be no air left in the low passage. He gripped an axe and hacked at the thing that held him. High above, Harek felt the rope go slack. He leaned into the flooding mouth. "Thorgar," he called. His voice came back flat off the wet rock. No answer. He did not soften it for himself. If the dwarf did not surface, the dwarf was dead. Then a shadow crossed the water. The great eagle dropped again, brown and gold, and struck near the cave mouth. It stood there, tearing at a fish where the last low rock still showed. Inside, Thorgar saw the bird's shape against the gray light. The bird fed where the floor was still highest. That was the last dry patch. That was the way out. He stopped fighting to reach the rope. He turned toward the eagle instead. He swung both axes into the beast's coils. Once. Twice. Steel bit deep. The thing thrashed and its grip loosened. Thorgar wrenched a leg free, then the other. He drove one axe up under the soft head and pushed with all his weight. The beast shuddered and went still. Dark blood spread through the water. Thorgar dropped one axe. He could not swim and hold both. He kept the other and pushed off the floor toward the eagle's rock. Water closed over his head. He kicked. His lungs burned. His hand found stone, then air. He surfaced under the last open patch of the cave mouth, where the bird had shown him the floor still climbed. Harek's rope slapped the water beside him. Thorgar caught it. The shipwright hauled, hand over hand, and dragged him onto the ledge. Thorgar lay on the cold rock and coughed seawater. The eagle beat its wings and lifted off into the wind. "It's dead," Thorgar said. "I left an axe in it." Harek looked at the drowned mouth. "Then the route's open. I sail when you say." He said nothing else about the axe or the water. Thorgar sat up. The beast that killed his brother was gone. Now he had a shipwright who would sail, and a coast full of sailors who no longer had a reason to fear the sea. He needed a crew. He had earned the right to ask.

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.

The crew was his. The route was open. But Thorgar had no destination worth the risk. Twelve men had struck the table for a raid, and he did not know where to point the bow. A blind voyage north would drown them for nothing. He sat in the stone brewing hall the next morning, sharpening one axe against a whetstone, turning the problem over like a dull blade. Harek dropped onto the bench across from him. Ash streaked his beard and hands. He had lost two fingers setting rivets, and the gap showed when he set his palm flat on the table. "Tide's right in three days," he said. "Where do we sail?" "I don't know yet," Thorgar said. Harek did not soften it. "Then we sail nowhere. Or we sail to die." Kjell came through the door then, the man whose word had bought Thorgar his crew. Teeth and claws hung in his braided beard, the count of things he had killed. He set a hand on the table and pulled a cloth pouch from his belt. He poured it out. Old coins spilled across the wood, worn at the edges, stamped with runes gone soft from handling. "Found these on a draugr's corpse," Kjell said. "Years back. Never spent them." Thorgar picked one up. The runes were strange, but he had read the like before, carved into bone in the dark. "These aren't Ironholt marks." "No." Kjell tapped the largest coin. "A dead lord's hoard-mark. Northern make. The ones who stamp these bury their gold deep and guard it with worse than men." He looked at Thorgar. "I know where a hoard like this sits. I've circled it twice and never gone in alone. It's two days past the drowned cave. Ice and cliff. No sane man sails it." Harek leaned forward. His eyes moved over the coins. "How much?" "More than any crew has hauled back to these shores," Kjell said. He closed his fist over the coin. "But the guardian is why I never spent these. It doesn't die from being stabbed." Thorgar set his whetstone down. Here was the target. A destination he could name to twelve men. A prize worth the crossing. He had killed one thing in the dark already. He knew now he could do it again. "Then that's where we point the bow," Thorgar said. Kjell held his gaze a moment. Then he pushed the coins across the table. "Keep them. Show the crew what waits. They'll row harder for the sight of it." Thorgar swept the coins into the pouch. The blind voyage had a name now, and a shape, and a reason. He looked at Harek. "Ready the boat." "Two days past the cave," Harek said, standing. "I'll set the ribs for ice." He was already moving toward the door. The course was set. But the hoard had a guardian that would not die easy, and Kjell had never faced it alone for a reason.

Two days before the tide, Thorgar walked down to the water where Harek had beached the boat. The hoard-coins rode in the pouch at his belt, cold against his hip. He meant to see the boat readied and the men fed. But the hull told a different story than the map in his head. Harek crouched at the bow, running his ruined hand along a seam. Ash streaked his beard. He did not look up. "Come see," he said. Thorgar knelt. Harek pressed a thumb into a dark line in the planking. Wood flexed under it. A crack, hair-thin, ran a foot along the seam. "That'll open in ice," Harek said. "Cold water hits it, the seam splits. We go down two days past the cave. All of us." He stated it plain, the way he named the tide. Thorgar's gut went tight. He had killed the beast, bought the crew, named the prize. Now a finger's width of bad wood could drown twelve men before they saw a single coin. "Can you fix it?" "Iron ribs over the seam. Rivets set hot." Harek held up his hand, the two-finger gap showing. "Costs ore. I've got none spared. Ore's scarce down where I work." Thorgar thought of the smith who worked the coast. Iron there ran dear, and dearer for a stranger. He had silver, but not enough. He stood and looked at the boat, small against the gray water. Kjell came down the shingle then. He had endorsed Thorgar before the sailors, laid his old rune coin on the table, and the men had joined for his word, not Thorgar's. Now he stopped beside the hull and read the crack in one glance. Teeth and claws swung in his beard. "That kills us," Kjell said. "I need ore for ribs," Thorgar said. "I'm short." Kjell said nothing for a moment. Then he reached to his belt and drew the pouch of hoard-coins Thorgar had already returned to him once. He weighed it. "Show these to the smith. Not to spend. To promise." Thorgar took the pouch back and understood. He carried the coins up to the smith's forge and poured them across the anvil. Worn gold, strange runes, the weathered gleam of a lord's buried hoard. "There's a mountain of this two days north," he said. "Set my ribs now. Take your cut from the haul." The smith turned a coin in the firelight. Greed moved in his face. He named his share. Thorgar struck his hand on it. By dusk the smith's boy hauled ore to the beach. Harek set the iron ribs across the seam and drove the rivets hot, hissing into the wet wood. The crack vanished under banded iron. The boat would hold the ice now. But Thorgar had promised a stranger a cut of a hoard he had not yet touched, guarded by a thing that would not die.

The ribs held, but the rivets ran short. Harek counted them twice at the bow, then looked up at Thorgar. "Three ribs set. Need one more over the aft seam." He held up the last handful of rivets. "Not enough iron. The smith gave me what his boy could carry. It's spent." The tide would turn by morning. One weak seam would open in the ice like the first. Thorgar walked the shore for a smith he could still bargain with. He found none. So he climbed to the old stone brewing hall on the rise, where a forge burned in the back. Smoke rose from the chimney. Inside, a red-bearded dwarf worked a hammer at a small anvil. Rings and beads swung in his beard. Soot blacked his hands. This was Gunnar, who tended a mountain forge for thirty years before it went cold. Thorgar had heard he mended tools here for ale and coin. "I need iron ribs forged before the tide," Thorgar said. "A boat, a cracked hull. I've no ore left to melt." Gunnar set down the hammer. "No ore, no ribs. Iron doesn't come from want." Thorgar poured the hoard-coins across the anvil. Worn gold, strange runes, the gleam of a buried lord's hoard. "There's a mountain of this two days north. Forge my ribs now, take your cut from the haul." Gunnar turned a coin under the firelight. He did not reach for it. "Promises don't melt either. I've been paid in promises before." He pushed the coins back across the iron. "Bring me metal." Kjell came through the door then, teeth and claws swinging in his beard. He had endorsed Thorgar before the sailors, and the crew followed his word. He looked at the cold refusal on Gunnar's face and read it fast. He unslung his heavy rune-carved axe and laid it on the anvil. "Good steel," Kjell said. "Cut it down. Forge the ribs from it." Gunnar lifted the axe and weighed it. He ran a thumb along the edge. "This is worth ten of your coins." "Then it's worth a boat that floats," Kjell said. He did not look at Thorgar. "I'll take a hunter's blade from the haul. Two, if the hoard is what you say." Gunnar set the axe in the fire. "Wait outside. Ribs by the tide." By first light Gunnar carried the last rib down to the beach. Harek drove the rivets hot, and the aft seam vanished under banded iron. The hull would hold the ice now, whole from bow to stern. Thorgar watched Kjell stand empty-handed on the shingle, his oldest weapon melted into the boat. The crew had followed Kjell. Now Kjell had spent his axe on Thorgar's promise. The debt was no longer only to a smith. It rode with the man the crew trusted more than him, and Thorgar had two days to prove that trust was not thrown away.

The hull was whole by dawn, but the crew still stood at Kjell's shoulder, not Thorgar's. When the boat slid into the water, the men waited for Kjell to give the word to board. Thorgar felt it in his gut. The axe Kjell had melted down bought them a boat. It had also bought the crew's eyes, and every one of those eyes turned to the wrong man. Harek dropped from the bow and wiped grease on his apron. "Loaded and sealed," he said. "She'll take the ice. But the aft oar-bench cracked in the night." He held up a splintered plank. "One man rows short. Or you fix it before the tide." The crew groaned. An older rower spat and looked to Kjell. "We should wait for another smith," he said. "Kjell would say the same." Heads nodded. The men were already choosing. Gunnar came down the shingle with his hammer, red beard swinging. He had refused Thorgar's gold two nights back. He looked at the split bench and shook his head. "No time to forge new. Tide's turning." Thorgar did not look at Kjell. He took the cracked plank from Harek and snapped it clean off with his hands. The wood cracked like a branch. The crew went quiet. "No bench, then," Thorgar said. "I'll take the short oar. I'll row the gap myself." The older rower laughed. "You'll row against twelve men?" "I'll row harder than any of you." Thorgar planted his feet on the shingle. He gripped a full oar and drove it into the water beside the hull. He heaved. The boat scraped forward across the stones, moving on his pull alone. His shoulders bunched under the bear pelt. The oar bent. The boat kept sliding. He pulled again, and again, until the keel floated free of the beach. The crew watched the boat move on one man's back. No one spoke. Thorgar set the oar down and turned to face them. Sweat ran through the woad on his arms. "I killed the thing that ate my brother's crew," he said. "I'll pull this boat to the hoard the same way. Follow me or walk home." The older rower looked at Kjell. Kjell said nothing for a long moment. Then he stepped up beside Thorgar, not in front of him, and set his hand on the hull. "He rows," Kjell said. "That's answer enough. Board." The crew moved. But they climbed in past Thorgar now, meeting his eyes, gripping his forearm as they passed. Gunnar tossed his hammer aboard and followed. Harek took the tiller. Thorgar had the crew at last. But Kjell had spent his axe and his word both, and now stood empty-handed at Thorgar's side. The men would follow Thorgar into the ice. Kjell would follow too, owed two blades from a hoard no one had yet seen, guarding a thing that could not be killed.

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.

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.

The boat drifted into black water. The gap behind them had shrunk to a bright slit, then closed. No light reached here. Thorgar could not see his own axes. He heard water lapping stone on every side. Somewhere ahead, three tunnels split the dark, but he could not tell which one ran deeper toward the hoard. Choose wrong, and they would row into a dead pocket while the tide rose and drowned them all. "Tide's turned," Harek said from the tiller. He built this boat and sailed it through ice, and he did not soften bad news. "Water's climbing. We pick a passage now, or we sit here and fill up." Gunnar, the smith who read ice by ear, leaned over the side. He struck the hull with his knuckle and listened. He did it again, turning his head. "Three throats," he said. "Left one's tight. Sound comes back fast. Short cave." He listened again. "Right's the same. Middle's open. Water's got a long way to run in there." Thorgar could not see to trust his own eyes. He had to trust Gunnar's ears. "You're sure." "No," Gunnar said. "But the middle breathes. Feel it." Cold air pushed against Thorgar's face from straight ahead. It carried the old-meat smell, stronger now. Kjell stood in the bow. The monster-hunter had bet his own axe on this voyage, and his hand went to the teeth strung in his beard. "Middle," he said. "That's where it lives. That's where the gold is." He said it flat, like a fact he'd already paid for. Thorgar weighed it. A wrong turn stranded them. The right one led to the thing that stirred below. He took up the oar. "Middle. Row." Harek leaned the tiller. Kjell took the second oar. Thorgar drove his blade down and pulled. The boat slid into the center tunnel. The walls closed tight on both sides. He could reach out and drag his fingers along wet stone. The air kept moving out at them. That meant open space ahead. Gunnar had read it true. Then the oar knocked something below the surface. Not rock. It gave, then pushed back. Thorgar froze. Behind them, water surged up the tunnel with a low roar. The tide had come in fast, sealing the branch mouth. There was no rowing back now. The boat rocked. Something slid along the hull, heavy and long. Kjell drew a throwing knife by feel. "It's here," he said. Thorgar planted his boots and gripped both axes. He could not see it. But the tunnel had led them true, straight to the guardian and the hoard behind it. The water rose to the gunwale. The thing rose with it. "Light," Thorgar said. "We need light. Now."

The thing pressed the hull upward. Thorgar felt the boat tip beneath his boots. He still could not see it. Water climbed past the gunwale and slopped cold around his ankles. If the beast rolled them now, they drowned in the dark, and the hoard died with them. He needed light before he could swing. "Gunnar," he said. "Steel and stone. Strike a spark." But the smith's flint and tinder had soaked through when the tide surged. Gunnar cursed and struck anyway. Wet stone gave nothing. Kjell moved in the bow. The old monster-hunter had killed things in worse dark than this, and Thorgar heard him tearing at his own pack. "Scales don't help," Kjell muttered. "Teeth don't help." Then his hand found the pouch at his belt. Coins spilled out, the northern lord's coins, old iron and gold stamped with worn runes. Kjell had carried them for years. He'd bet his axe on them. Now he crushed a fistful in his glove. "Give me your blade," Kjell said. Thorgar passed one axe across by feel. Kjell scraped the coins hard along the notched steel, fast, again and again. Sparks jumped. In each flash, Thorgar saw it. A gray hide, wet and slick, wider than the boat. No eyes he could name. A mouth split the front of it, ringed with hooked teeth, rising along the hull toward Kjell. The sparks died. Thorgar had the shape now. He did not need more. "Again," he said. "When I say." He set his feet. He gripped the second axe two-handed and raised it above the gunwale. He counted the beast's climb by the drag against the wood. "Now." Kjell scraped the coins. Light flared. The mouth hung there, an arm's length off. Thorgar swung down into it with all his weight. The axe bit deep behind the teeth and stuck. The beast reared. It ripped the handle from his grip and hauled the whole boat sideways. Water poured in. Harek fought the tiller. "Going over," he said, flat as ever. Thorgar caught the trapped haft with both hands. He hauled himself half over the side and drove his boots against the beast's hide. Then he wrenched the axe free and buried it again, higher, where the mouth met the body. Black blood pumped over his arms. The thing thrashed once, hard, and sank. The pull vanished. The boat slammed level. They drifted. Kjell struck the coins one last time. In the flash, blood coated the water. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a wider cave, and something gleamed on a ledge above the waterline. Dull gold. A pile of it. "There," Kjell said, and let the spark die. Thorgar sat in the dark, breathing. His axe was gone into the deep with the guardian. But the way ahead was clear, and the hoard waited on the stone.

The boat drifted under the ledge. Kjell scraped the last spark from his coins, and Thorgar looked up. The gold sat high on the stone, well above his reach. Water still climbed the tunnel walls. It had risen a hand's width since the beast died. Thorgar measured the gap with his eyes. No handhold. No ledge below it. And the roof came down toward them. "We can't reach it," said Harek. He held the tiller and watched the waterline. "And the water beats us. Soon it fills the cave." He wasted no words. He never did. Thorgar knew what he meant. Reach the gold or drown, and no time for both. Gunnar pressed a palm to the rock beside the ledge. He rapped it twice with his knuckles and listened. Thirty years at a forge had taught him to hear metal and stone. "Cracks here," he said. "The face is loose. Rotten." He struck it harder. A chunk broke free and splashed. "It won't hold a rope. But it might come down." Thorgar understood. He could not climb to the gold. So he would bring the gold to him. He gripped his one remaining axe. The other lay in the deep with the beast. He set his boots wide in the tipping boat and swung at the rock beneath the ledge. Steel bit stone. Chips flew. Gunnar caught his rhythm and drove his hammer beside him. Two dwarves, hammering the mountain, while the water rose past their knees. "Faster," Kjell said. He stood in the bow, throwing knives ready, watching the black water for another beast. "Roof's close." He did not shout it. He said it flat, and that was worse. The crack widened. Thorgar felt the ledge shift above him. He struck once more, low, at the last shelf of rock holding the gold. It gave. "Back!" he roared. Harek shoved the tiller. The boat slid clear as the ledge broke loose. Stone crashed down. Gold rained with it, coins and cups and chains, hammering the hull and the water. The boat rocked hard and near swamped. Thorgar dropped his axe and grabbed with both hands. He hauled dripping fistfuls over the side. Gunnar bailed and scooped. Kjell dragged a chain thick as his wrist across the bench. The rockfall settled. The water was black and choked with dust. Thorgar sat in a boat half full of gold and half full of sea. It was not all of the hoard. Much had sunk. But the benches gleamed with more wealth than any crew had hauled to Ironholt. Then he looked up. The rockfall had brought the roof lower. Where the tunnel opened ahead, the gap between water and stone had shrunk to less than a foot. And the tide still climbed. "Row," Harek said. "Now. Or we're sealed in with it."