Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea by Qaz Page A

a knarr, teasing her into the wind rather than using force, persuading her until you found one she liked.
    Finn spat derisively when I started that, saying that you did the same with bulls and stallions and old boar pigs if you were sensible, adding that a ship was a ship and no good would come of dressing it in skirts. Especially skirts, for a woman was a useless thing at sea. There was good reason, he finished, that the word for ship in Norse is neither woman nor man.
    Sighvat said it was a good thing. 'After all,' he added, 'there is always expense with a ship as with a woman. And always a gang of men around. And a ship has a waist, shows off a top and hides a bottom.'
    Ìt takes an experienced man to get the best out of a ship and a woman,' added Kvasir into the roars of laughter. They went on with it, finding new comparisons while they cursed it in equal measure. If you could gybe or tack, a knarr was a good vessel, but when the wind failed, you hauled down the sail and waited, rolling and wallowing, until another came up from the right quarter — or just sailed in the wrong direction.
    Gizur had his own views on Radoslav's ship. 'The rigging needs to be served, seized or whipped properly,' he declared to me with disgust. 'The beitiass should be shortened, the cleats moved and blocks rigged to tighten it.' He raised a hand, as if presenting a jewel of great value, though his face was twisted with disgust. When he opened his fist, there was a handful of what looked like oatmeal. 'Look at this. Just look at it.'
    `What is it?' demanded Radoslav fearfully and I was close behind him. Some wood-rotting disease? A rune curse?
    `Shavings, from the rakki lines,' Gizur said with a snort. I looked up at the rakki, the yoke which snugged round the mast and took all the strain of hauling the sail up and down.
    `The lines are rubbing the mast away,' Gizur went on, frowning. 'It is falling like snow!'
    Radoslav rubbed his chin and tugged his brow-braids, then shrugged shamefacedly and said, 'The truth of it is that this is only the second sea voyage I have ever done. I am a riverman, a born and bred oarsman. I traded happily up and down from Kiev, furs for silver, and made a good living at it until the troubles started with the Khazars and Bulgars. So I bought this, thinking to change my luck.'
    Gizur at once changed, clapping the mournful man on one shoulder and all sympathy, for that was his way — which the others said came from being named for his mother, Gyda. His father, it was believed, had sailed off west following tales of a land there and had never come back.
    We were rarely out of sight of land in this scattering of islands, so that we could put ashore each night. I preferred not to sleep there all the same, lying at anchor instead, since I was never sure of what lurked beyond the beach.
    When it suited us, we sailed into the night, which was a dangerous business that no other seamen dared try — but we were Norsemen and had Gizur. The days turned warmer, but it still rained and we needed the sail as a tent on most nights, even though we slung it under a great wheel of stars in a seemingly cloudless sky. The last filling of waterskins was before the long, deep-water run to Cyprus and a succession of days followed one on the other, with a steady wind that let the ship run on blue-green water.
    We never saw another ship but, on the last night before Cyprus, as the sun sank like blood-mist, Finn split and sizzled fresh-caught fish on the firebox atop the ballast and we settled cross-legged and ate them with thick gruel and watered ale flavoured with the Limon-fruits, something we had all taken to doing to take away the stale taste of the drink, which had been too long casked. It was also as good as cloudberries at taking away the journey-sickness that brought out sores and loosened teeth in your gums.
    We missed the taste of the cloudberries, all the same, and Arnor started singing mournful songs full of haar mists and the