Turn back."
Erik's voice cuts through the dark like an axe on bone. The ship is still half-shadow, half-water, and already the horn behind us is waking the whole settlement.
"Haraldson will take our heads," Leif adds, breath steaming. "Or worse—he'll take our families."
Rollo spits over the side. "Let him try."
Torstein doesn't waste emotion. He's already at the oar bench, hands set, eyes on the narrowing mouth of the fjord. "Talking is useless. Decide. Now."
The torchlight on the ridge flares again. Shapes move on the shore—men running, shouting, hauling at ropes. I can hear it: the frantic rhythm of a launch. Longships dragged into water. Oars scraping. Orders being barked like whips.
Haraldson isn't debating. He's acting.
Floki leans forward, eyes bright in the gloom. "They will come," he whispers, like it's a prayer. "And they will fail."
"Floki," Erik snaps, "this isn't one of your stories."
"It will be," Floki answers, offended.
I look down the line of them—men who swore an oath in a dim room, men who were brave in the moment and are now realizing what that bravery costs at dawn.
This is where crews break. Not in battle. In the first cold breath of consequence.
I step to the middle of the ship where everyone can see me.
"Listen," I say, and my voice carries better than it should. Ragnar's voice—built for halls and arguments.
They quiet. Even Erik.
"If you want to turn back," I continue, "then do it now—before we leave the fjord. Jump to shore at the next rocks. Swim if you must. I won't stop you."
Leif's eyes widen. "You'd let us go?"
"I'd rather have living cowards than dead brothers who never chose," I say plainly. "But if you stay—if you put your hands back on the oars—then you stay for the voyage. Not for me. For each other."
Silence, tight and heavy.
I pull my arm ring off.
It's a simple thing, worn smooth by years of work and war. In this world, it's not decoration. It's a promise men can touch.
I hold it out.
"This is not payment," I say. "This is pledge. If we find nothing, you can come back and throw it at my feet and call me a fool. If we find land… we split everything fairly, as sworn."
Torstein's gaze locks onto the ring. Not greedy—measuring. Weight. Truth.
Rollo looks like he wants to argue, then doesn't. He understands what this is: Ragnar proving he isn't asking men to die while he keeps his hands clean.
Arne's mouth curls. "If we live, I want more than a ring."
"You'll get it," I say. "Not from Haraldson. From the world."
Erik's eyes flick toward the shore again, where the first longship's prow is already sliding into water like a knife.
His jaw flexes.
Then he nods once, slow.
"I stay," he says.
Leif swallows hard and follows. "I stay."
Arne shrugs like it's all the same to him. "I stay."
Torstein simply sets his hands on the oar. That's his answer.
Floki laughs softly, delighted. "Good," he says. "Good. Now we make the sea jealous."
I slide the ring back onto my arm. "Oars," I command.
Wood bites water.
The ship moves.
Behind us, the fjord wakes fully—shouts echoing off rock, dogs barking, the ring of iron as men grab weapons they won't need if they catch us in time.
We row hard, the new hull cutting clean through the dark. The fjord narrows into a channel between rocks that look like teeth.
Rollo glances back, eyes sharp. "They're launching two," he says.
Torstein's lips thin. "Two is enough."
Another horn blast rolls over the water—closer now, uglier. It isn't a call to assemble. It's a call to hunt.
Leif's breathing turns fast. "How do we outrun them?"
"We don't outrun them forever," Torstein says. "We outrun them long enough."
Floki leans toward me, voice quick. "Shallows," he hisses. "Take the shallows."
Erik snaps, "We'll smash the keel."
Floki's grin turns feral. "Not this keel."
He pats the side of his ship like it's a living beast.
I look ahead—dark water, a pale line where the current changes, and beyond that a jagged stretch where older ships avoid going fast because they draw too deep.
But this hull is different. Floki built it to skim, not plow.
"Starboard," I order. "Into the shallows."
Torstein hesitates only a heartbeat before he relays the call, and the men adjust. The ship angles toward blacker water where the surface looks deceptively calm.
The current catches us—strong, cold, invisible muscle.
For an instant, it feels wrong, like the sea is grabbing our ankles. The bow slews toward a hidden rock.
"Hold!" I bark.
Rollo and Torstein dig in. Oars bend. Men strain. The hull shudders—not a crack, not a split, but a warning vibration through the wood.
Then we slide past the danger, skimming over water that would've grounded a heavier longship.
Behind us, one of Haraldson's ships tries to follow.
I hear the sound before I see it: wood grinding stone.
A shout—furious, panicked.
Their prow drifts sideways. Oars slap uselessly.
They're stuck.
Leif lets out a breath that's half-laugh, half-sob.
Rollo bares his teeth. "Good."
But the second ship doesn't follow. It stays in deeper water, smart enough to keep moving, and it gains speed where the channel widens.
"Still one," Torstein says, grim.
"One is enough," Erik repeats, and there's no bravado now—just the reality of arrows and steel if they catch us.
The sky lightens by degrees. Not sunrise yet, but the first thin wash of grey over the ridge.
I look toward the mouth of the fjord. The open sea beyond is darker, wider, indifferent.
We are almost out.
Then the wind dies.
Not gradually. Not kindly.
One moment there's a light push on our backs, the next the air is dead and thick, as if someone threw a wet cloth over the world.
The surface turns glassy.
The ship slows.
Behind us, the pursuing longship keeps rowing—its men fresh, angry, driven by fear of Haraldson's punishment if they fail.
They gain.
Floki's head lifts, eyes narrowing. "That's not—" he starts.
Erik snaps, "Row!"
We row. Hard.
But something is wrong with the water. It feels heavy, reluctant. The oars bite and pull and still the ship crawls like it's dragging a net.
Rollo glances up at the ridge line near the hall, now visible in pale dawn.
And there—small as a beetle from this distance, but unmistakable—stands a man.
Even here, I can feel the shape of him. The weight of authority.
Haraldson.
Watching.
Not chasing. Not sweating. Not straining.
Just watching the trap close.
Leif sees him too and his face drains. "He's—he's there."
"He wants you to see him," Torstein says. "So you break."
I force my eyes forward. "Keep rowing."
The pursuing ship is close enough now that I can hear their coxswain shouting the stroke, hear the slap of their oars landing in unison.
An arrow zips past and hisses into the water beside us.
Another clatters off the side with a sharp crack.
Arne moves instantly—low and practiced—bringing his own bow up.
"Don't," I snap. "Not yet."
"If we don't slow them—" Erik begins.
"We slow them by leaving," I say. "Not by trading arrows in a fjord where they can pin us."
A fog begins to gather ahead—thin at first, like breath on glass.
Then thicker.
Not the soft kind that rolls in gentle from sea, but a wall—dense and sudden—spilling between the rocks at the fjord mouth like smoke from a giant's lungs.
Floki's smile returns, almost reverent. "Ah," he whispers. "There you are."
Leif stares at the fog like it's a monster. "That's not natural."
"Neither is Haraldson," Rollo mutters.
The pursuing ship hesitates. I see it in their strokes, the slight disorder. Men don't like rowing blind into a white wall when rocks wait on both sides.
This is a gift.
It will also cost us.
Fog doesn't save you. It just makes everyone equally helpless.
I make the decision before doubt can grow teeth.
"Into it," I command.
Erik jerks his head toward me. "We'll die."
"Maybe," I say. "But if we don't, we die anyway—just slower, and Haraldson gets to choose who watches."
Torstein grunts and adjusts the steering line. The ship slides into the fog.
Sound changes immediately. The world muffles. The shore disappears. Even the pursuit behind us becomes a distant smear of shouting and oar-splash.
Leif's hands tighten white on the oar.
"How do we hold course?" he whispers.
"By doing it the old way," I say, and Ragnar's memory supplies the answer like a hand on my shoulder, "and the new way."
I pull the sun board from my pouch and hold it where Torstein can see.
"No sun," Torstein says bluntly.
"Not yet," I answer.
I point to the water, to the way the surface shifts.
"Feel the current," I tell them. "The fjord pulls outward here. If it starts pulling us sideways, we correct. If you hear surf too loud on one side, we're too close."
Floki leans toward the bow, eyes half-lidded as if listening to the sea speak. "She will tell us," he murmurs.
Rollo snorts. "She'll tell you by smashing you against rock."
"Still telling," Floki replies.
Another arrow hisses out of the fog behind us and vanishes with a soft plunk.
They're firing blind.
Good.
Then a sound cracks through the white—wood striking wood, a distant shout, a curse.
The pursuing ship has hit something. Maybe a rock. Maybe the grounded longship trying to free itself. Maybe the shoreline.
Either way, they've lost rhythm.
We press.
But the fog takes its price.
A hidden current grabs our stern. The ship yaws.
"Hold!" Torstein barks.
Oars dig. The hull swings back—too late.
The bow kisses stone.
Not a shattering blow—just a sickening scrape that vibrates through the deck.
A menacing sound follows: an oar splinters as it catches the edge.
Leif cries out. "Oar!"
Arne curses, drops his bow, and helps haul the broken shaft back in before it can snag and tear a man overboard.
"One less," Torstein says, jaw tight.
"We can still row," Rollo says, already shifting to compensate.
But time bleeds away in fog. And the fog doesn't care about your courage.
Finally, the white thins. The world reappears in pieces: grey water, then sky, then the open sea stretching flat and endless.
We burst out of the fog like we've been reborn.
Behind us, the fjord mouth is a pale scar. The pursuing longship is not visible—swallowed or slowed or simply gone the wrong way.
Leif exhales shakily. "Did we lose them?"
"Maybe," Torstein says. "Maybe not."
Erik stares at the open sea and looks suddenly smaller. "Now what?"
Now the old world falls away.
Now we either prove we're men of the coast… or men of the horizon.
I lift my chin and taste the wind.
It's light, but it exists—enough to work with.
"Now," I say, "we go far enough that Haraldson can't catch us in a day's rowing."
Rollo's eyes flick west, uneasy despite himself. "And then?"
"Then we navigate," I say.
Floki lets out a low laugh, thrilled. "He says it like it's simple."
"It isn't," I answer, blunt. "So listen."
I point toward the sky where the light is brightening behind thin cloud.
"When the sun shows, we use the board," I tell Torstein. "We track our drift at midday. Until then, we hold the swell on our quarter and keep the wind just off the starboard side."
Torstein nods, absorbing it.
I glance back toward the fog-wrapped fjord.
Kattegat is gone now. Haraldson is gone. Lagertha and Bjorn and Gyda are behind a wall of distance that suddenly feels cruel.
This is the cost of stepping out of the old ways.
Leif swallows. "And if we're wrong?"
I don't soften it.
"Then we die," I say. "Or we crawl back and Haraldson makes an example of us."
Rollo grunts. "I'd rather die at sea than die begging."
Arne gives a one-eyed grin. "At least the sea won't lecture me first."
Floki's gaze is fixed on the horizon like he's staring into a holy place.
And as if the world wants to remind us we're not alone out here, a line of dark birds cuts across the sky—fast, purposeful—heading west.
Not circling.
Not wandering.
Traveling.
Torstein sees them too. "Birds don't fly that way for nothing."
My pulse kicks.
Not proof.
But it's something.
I set my hands on the steering oar, feel the ship's new hull answer, and turn us a fraction more toward the fading line of land.
"Keep rowing," I tell them. "Shift by shift. No slack. Not today."
The men bend to it.
Oars dip.
Water parts.
And the shore of everything we've ever known shrinks behind us—while ahead, the world waits, silent and unclaimed, like it's been there all along and we were just too afraid to look.