The moment the fjord vanished behind us, the men changed.
On the coast, every Viking is brave. There's always land somewhere—always a rock to cling to, always a shoreline to crawl back to and curse on.
Out here, the sea is a flat, endless thing, and courage starts asking questions.
Erik was the first to say what everyone was thinking.
"We're beyond the sight of land now," he said, eyes scanning the empty grey like he expected the world to suddenly end. "What's your plan, Ragnar? Besides hoping your luck is stronger than Haraldson's anger."
Leif's hands were raw from the oar. He looked like he was holding himself together by stubbornness alone. "And how do we even know we're going west? In fog, everything feels the same."
Arne shifted his weight, one eye narrowed. "If this is the part where you tell us the gods will guide you—save it."
Rollo stayed quiet, but his jaw worked. He was watching me like he was daring me to disappoint him.
Floki stood near the mast, rubbing tar from his fingers like it was sacred oil. He looked offended that anyone would doubt the ship.
I didn't give them poetry. They didn't need it.
"You want the plan?" I said. "Here it is."
I pointed toward the sky, where the dawn was lifting into a weak, watery light.
"When the sun breaks through, we take our midday mark," I said to Torstein. "We keep that mark steady day after day. If the shadow changes, we correct. If the wind changes, we correct. If the swell changes, we correct."
Torstein nodded, calm as stone. He was the kind of man who didn't need convincing—he needed instructions.
"And until the sun shows?" Erik pressed.
"Until then," I said, "we do what sailors have always done. We watch the swell. We watch the birds. We feel the current. We keep the wind on our quarter and we do not let panic steer the ship."
Leif barked a humorless laugh. "That's the plan? Don't panic?"
"That's most plans at sea," I answered, flat.
It wasn't comforting, but it was true. And truth is steadier than false hope.
Rollo finally spoke.
"If we're wrong," he said, quiet, "Haraldson will punish our families."
The words landed like a rock in the belly of the ship.
Nobody liked saying it out loud, but once it was spoken, it sat with us.
I looked at him. "If we crawl back, he punishes them anyway," I said. "He doesn't forgive men who challenge him. He only delays."
Rollo's eyes hardened. He didn't argue—because he knew it too.
I turned to the crew. "Row in shifts," I ordered. "No heroics. No collapsing. We do this like men who want to live."
They grumbled, but they listened. Tradition mattered out here: the stroke, the rhythm, the shared burden.
Even rebellion had to be disciplined.
By late morning, the wind found us properly.
Not a gale—just a steady push that made the sail worth raising.
Floki was practically vibrating as we hauled it up.
When the cloth caught, the ship leaned and surged forward in a way that stole breath from the men who hadn't trusted it.
Leif stared at the water peeling away along the hull. "It's fast," he muttered, almost grudging.
Floki's grin was unbearable. "She is alive," he said again, like he'd been waiting to say it all his life.
"Alive ships still sink," Erik snapped.
Floki looked scandalized. "Not this one."
Torstein took the steering line while I watched the surface and the sky.
Open sea has a sound—different from fjords and coasts. It's not the crash of waves against rock. It's a long, constant breath. Like the world is sleeping with its mouth open.
The farther we went, the more Kattegat stopped feeling real.
And that was when the fear started to bite.
Not screaming fear. Worse.
Quiet fear.
The kind that makes men stare at the horizon for too long and start imagining their own deaths in every ripple.
At midday, the clouds thinned enough to show the sun like a pale coin.
I pulled the sun board from my pouch and set it carefully.
Torstein leaned close, eyes narrowed, taking in the shadow's length and angle like it was a battle map.
"This is your magic?" Arne asked, skeptical.
"It's wood and light," I said. "No more magic than your bow."
Torstein adjusted the board, then grunted. "It gives a mark."
"A mark is everything," I replied.
Leif watched it with a different kind of hunger now. Not greed—hope. Something solid to cling to.
Erik still looked unconvinced. "And if the sun hides for days?"
"Then we sail by the swell and stars," I said. "And we pray the wind doesn't turn cruel."
Rollo snorted. "That's the first honest thing you've said."
"Get used to it," I told him.
The first omen came that night.
No thunder. No lightning. No dramatic warning.
Just… silence.
The wind died the way a man dies when his throat is cut—sudden and final.
The sail hung limp. The sea went glassy again. The ship slowed, then stalled, bobbing like a cork.
Torstein clicked his tongue. "Dead calm."
Leif rubbed his arms against the cold. "How long does this last?"
"As long as the sea wants," Erik answered.
The worst part of dead calm wasn't the stillness. It was what it did to the men.
They started thinking. Too much.
They started counting what we had.
Water skins. Dried fish. Hard bread. Salted meat.
Enough for a raid along a coast.
Not enough for a long drift into nothing.
Arne spoke what no one wanted to admit.
"If we sit here," he said, "we burn food doing nothing."
He looked at me with that one-eyed stare.
"This is where your 'new way' gets men killed."
Rollo stepped forward like he was about to backhand Arne for the disrespect. I stopped him with a look.
Arne wasn't wrong. He was just saying it bluntly.
"We row," I said.
Torstein didn't question it. He just called the stroke, and men took the oars again.
It wasn't efficient. Rowing in open sea without wind is slow, exhausting work.
But sitting still was worse—because sitting still felt like waiting to die.
We rowed through a moonless night, muscles burning, hands bleeding, mouths dry.
By dawn, Leif's shoulders were trembling. Erik's face was hollow. Even Torstein looked tight around the eyes.
And Floki—Floki kept glancing at the sail like he was offended it wouldn't obey him.
"She will catch wind again," he muttered, as if saying it could make it true.
"Pray harder," Rollo told him.
The storm came like it had been waiting for us to be weak.
Midday, second day—clouds thickened, low and ugly. The air turned sharp. The sea started to lift in long swells that rolled under the hull like a beast shifting its weight.
Torstein sniffed the wind. "That's not good."
Erik's eyes narrowed. "We should turn—"
"Turn where?" Arne cut in. "Back? You can't find back in this."
A gust slammed into the sail, snapping the cloth tight so fast it sounded like a whip crack.
The ship surged, then pitched.
Leif stumbled and caught himself on the gunwale.
Rollo grabbed him by the collar and shoved him down. "Stay low, idiot."
The wind rose again, harder. The waves stood taller.
And then the rain hit—cold, violent needles that turned the deck slick as ice.
"Reef the sail!" Torstein shouted.
Floki and Rollo lunged for the lines. The mast groaned. The ship climbed a wave, hung for a heartbeat, then crashed down with a sound like the sea had slapped us.
Water poured over the side.
Men cursed. Someone screamed when their hand got pinched in a rope.
Arne fell to one knee, bow clutched uselessly as the deck bucked.
"This is your west!" Erik bellowed over the roar.
Another wave hit, higher. The hull shuddered. The broken oar-stub banged against the side like it wanted to tear free.
"Bail!" I shouted.
Leif grabbed a bucket and started heaving water out like his life depended on it—because it did.
Rollo was at the lines, teeth bared, fighting the sail like it was a living enemy.
Floki laughed once—high and wild—because the man was half-mad and storms fed something in him.
"She loves it!" he shouted, soaked through.
Rollo snarled back, "She's trying to kill us!"
The wind howled like an animal.
The world turned into water and grey and the hard taste of fear.
A wave smashed us broadside. The ship tilted so far my stomach dropped. For a split second, the sea was level with my eyes and I was sure we were going over.
Torstein roared, "Hold her!"
I drove my weight into the steering oar. The hull groaned, fought, then swung back into the swell, taking the next hit more cleanly.
We weren't safe. But we weren't dead.
Not yet.
Hours blurred. Time stopped being measured in anything but survival.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the wind eased.
The rain thinned.
The sea still rolled, but it wasn't trying to tear the ship apart anymore.
We were left shaking, soaked, and exhausted—men clinging to wood like wood was the only thing separating us from the grave.
Erik wiped water from his face, panting. "Where are we?"
No one answered because no one knew.
Torstein's eyes searched the horizon.
Nothing.
Just sea in every direction.
Leif's voice went thin. "We're lost."
Arne stared at me. "Now what, Ragnar?"
And there it was—the real fear, finally showing its teeth.
Not Haraldson.
Not punishment.
Not even death.
Just the possibility that there was nothing out here but water, and we were fools rowing into a story that didn't care if it had an ending.
I didn't pretend confidence I didn't have.
I just reached into the covered basket lashed near the mast.
Rollo frowned. "What's that?"
I pulled the cloth back.
Inside, three ravens blinked at the light—black feathers slick, eyes sharp, alive.
The men stared like I'd produced a weapon.
Leif whispered, "Odin's birds…"
Floki smiled slowly, reverent. "Ah. You planned."
Erik looked sick. "You brought birds?"
"I brought a way to find land," I said.
Arne's one eye narrowed. "And you didn't tell us?"
"You'd have laughed," I answered. "Or you'd have called it witchcraft. Either way, it would've become noise, and noise gets you killed."
Rollo stepped closer, studying the ravens. "How does this work?"
"The old way," I said. "If land is near, they fly to it. If there's only sea, they come back."
Erik swallowed. "And if they don't come back?"
"Then they found land," I said. "Or they died."
That shut him up.
I looked at the first raven—strong, restless.
I opened my hands.
"Go," I said, and released it.
The bird shot upward, circled once, then twice—wings cutting through damp air. It flew west for a short while, then hesitated.
Then it turned.
And came back to the ship, landing on the mast like it belonged there.
Leif exhaled, shaky. "No land."
"Not close," I corrected.
I took the second raven. Its claws flexed on my wrist. It looked at me like it understood the stakes.
I released it.
It flew higher than the first, circled wider, then drove forward into the grey.
For a moment, hope clenched in my chest.
Then it, too, turned back—angry, cawing, landing hard as if offended we'd asked it to do the impossible.
Erik's face collapsed. "We're dead."
Floki hissed, "Quiet."
I didn't waste time arguing. Fear spreads faster than plague.
I reached for the third raven.
The last chance.
Rollo moved close enough that I could hear him breathe.
"Ragnar," he said, voice low, almost—almost—pleading. "If this one comes back…"
I met his eyes.
"Then we row until our arms fall off," I said. "And if we still find nothing, we die like men."
Rollo didn't look away.
I lifted the third raven.
Its body was warm against my hands. Real. Alive. A small, fierce thing that didn't care about our politics, only its own instincts.
I opened my palms.
The raven launched, wings beating hard.
It rose, circled once.
Twice.
Then—without hesitation—it turned its head west and flew.
Not wandering.
Not searching.
Flying like it knew where to go.
Leif whispered, barely audible, "It's not coming back…"
Torstein's voice was steady, but I could hear the edge in it. "That means land."
The raven became a dark speck against the grey sky.
Then it vanished.
And for the first time since we fled Kattegat, the men didn't look at the sea like it was an empty grave.
They looked at it like it was a road.
I tightened my grip on the steering oar.
"West," I said.
Torstein called the stroke.
Oars dipped.
The ship started moving again—slow, painful, stubborn.
But moving.
And somewhere ahead, beyond the grey, beyond the fear, beyond the reach of Haraldson's hall…
Land was waiting.