Three young Vikings from Njordheim set out on their first voyage as the sea turns against them, washing them onto an unknown shore where something ancient and dangerous is waiting.
Autumn settled over Gardsfjord like a blade laid across water. At dusk, mist gathered on the surface in silver folds, hiding the far banks and turning every pine shadow into something watchful. In Njordheim, no one could speak of anything else: the day Bjørn, Eydis, and Torvald would leave on an adult expedition was finally at hand.
Bjørn, the blacksmith’s son, had never been the biggest man in the hall, but he had a way of stepping toward danger as if it had insulted him. Eydis saw farther than most men twice her age and thought faster than they liked. Torvald moved like a fox over stone, quick-fingered, quick-witted, and usually gone before anyone noticed he had arrived. Together they had spent winters dreaming of this voyage, speaking of foreign shores and trophies brought back over firelight and mead.
At dawn, their boat, the Wolf’s Claw, slid from the shore beneath a pale sun climbing over the mountains. The oars struck the water in a steady rhythm. Men and women lined the banks to watch, calling blessings, boasting loudly, hiding pride under rough voices. The three young Vikings answered with grins too wide to be entirely steady.
For a while, the fjord seemed to approve of them. The wind filled their lungs cleanly, the gulls wheeled overhead, and the wake of the Wolf’s Claw stretched behind like a bright scar. Bjørn held the steering oar. Eydis stood braced beside him, scanning the horizon. Torvald, restless as ever, kept one hand on the gunwale and the other on the charm tied at his throat.
Then the sky changed.
The light went thin and cold. A low growl rolled across the water, not from the cliffs but from the clouds themselves. Before Bjørn could shout, the wind hit hard enough to snap the mast ropes taut. Waves reared up out of the grey and slapped the hull from every side, as if the sea had taken offense at their passage. Eydis shouted directions that were stolen by the gale. Torvald fought to keep the sail from tearing free. Bjørn dug in his heels and wrestled the steering oar while the Wolf’s Claw lurched and shuddered like a living thing trying to throw them off.
The storm came on in full fury, wild and sudden, until even the mountains vanished behind sheets of rain. Then, just as abruptly, it broke.
They drifted into silence wrapped in thick fog, the Wolf’s Claw groaning softly beneath them. When the mist thinned at last, a pale shore rose out of the water ahead. The boat scraped onto sand with a harsh, final sound. No one spoke. The island was wrong in ways none of them could name at first: the trees were twisted and black-boughed, the air smelled faintly of salt and sap, and somewhere inland a blue light pulsed between the trunks like a heartbeat.
Then came the drum.
Bjørn lifted his head. Eydis narrowed her eyes. Torvald, already pale, stepped closer as if the sound had pulled at him by a hook. From deeper in the trees came another note, low and heavy, and then a horn split the stillness so sharply that all three of them froze. Figures moved between the branches, tall and swift, their shapes breaking apart in the mist as they turned toward the shore....