Chapter 18
Eighteen
“What are you waiting for?” Darcke taunted.
I lifted my chin as his men finished tying five ropes between the ships’ tallest masts.
“Nothing.” My hands were steadier than they should have been as I used the rigging to heave myself upward. I reached the start of the rope at my end at the same time as the other heirs did the same.
Darcke’s scent wrapped around me as he began climbing after, and I scurried upward to evade the heat from his body as his strong arms allowed him to ascend faster.
Still, when I reached the wooden lookout to which the rope was fastened, I hesitated.
Cold sweat broke out across my brow when I accidentally looked down and Viljan stood there, his back straight and eyes on me—like they always were, because my father had asked it of him, despite what I’d just done.
“You’ve made a lot of enemies in your days here, heir.” Darcke’s breath hit my neck as I held on to the topmast when the lookout swayed in the wind. “Probably wasn’t the wisest to sever the bond with your guard.”
I savored the needles of unshaved wood that pricked my palms, using the pain to distract myself.
“He needed to know his place,” I replied, my words as hollow as my heart.
“And what place is that?” Darcke asked. “The dirt? Like the whole world was built to be trodden under your boots?”
There was something comforting—familiar—in the disgust that speared his words. I leaned into that as the wind took hold of the lookout, making the entire mast sway with its strength.
The other heirs all stood on their own lookouts, their faces varying shades of worry.
Darcke laughed darkly when I didn’t say anything else.
“Heirs,” he called, nearly jarring me off the wooden platform.
“If you survive the Hird, you will lead your people into battle. These ropes symbolize the balance that responsibility will ask of you—that there is a fine line between a hero’s bravery and a fool’s drowning.
” He gave me a side-eyed sneer. “Remember, courage is a choice, but recklessness is a death sentence.”
Darcke waved for his men to file out onto the lookouts of the other ships.
“The exercise is also one you might face when taking on your enemies at sea. Being able to walk the ropes between ships is as important as holding your blade steady.” He nudged me forward.
“The Sweengard heir has volunteered to demonstrate.”
Only days ago his wicked smile would have made me shake in my boots, but after seeing Viljan’s face earlier, I welcomed it. Darcke’s hate was my only constant, and somehow it steadied me.
“On each of these lookouts is a horn.” Darcke lifted a white horn that still held the scent of the beast who’d died for it. “Your challenge is simple. You need to cross one of these ropes and grab the horn from one of my men’s lookouts. After that you’re to return here to blow it in victory.”
I swallowed as the ropes shifted in the wind, each one whipping the air, a dark line against the gray sky above us. Beneath them was dark water and polished decks—neither of which would aid me if I fell. Bones would break either way.
“This should be easy for you,” Darcke said as he gestured for me to pull myself onto the lower rope, using the top one to guide my hands and the bottom to shuffle my feet forward. “You’re strong enough to hold on.”
“Is that why you hate me?” I snapped, as my soul twisted and turned in dread. “Because you’re jealous of my magic?”
It went quiet for long seconds.
“No.” Darcke turned his face toward the sea. “I hate you because you keep proving me right.”
Wetness touched my cheek. At first I thought the tears I’d fought earlier had escaped me, but then I realized clouds had mounted above us. Trickling down my face were heavy raindrops, and I jolted when lightning crackled across the sky.
The strain in the air was joined by static, and my hair flew around my face as I inched out on the rope, the bottom one already slick from water and the top coarse as it scratched against my palms.
“Look at that,” Darcke said. “Your gods wish to have a little fun as well. Now go on. Show them how honorable you are.”
“I hate you too,” I hissed, my throat drying up as my foot slipped. “I hate you so fucking much.”
Darcke fucking patted my back. “I’m sure I’ll survive.”
I didn’t turn, but I could almost hear the deadly grin spreading over his face.
Someone beneath me gasped as a gust of wind caught in my clothing, making both me and the sail behind me shift, the loud crack in the air like a whip. My stomach turned when I did, and I had to swallow vomit that wanted to spew out of me.
More rain started pouring, and I cursed wildly as it found its way inside my leathers, drenching my hair and obscuring my vision. The gale shrieked as it tore around me, and my arms trembled from the exertion to hold on as I slipped once more, my feet dangling in the air.
“Elvara, you got this!” Ivren called.
I closed my eyes when other shouts followed.
“Or not!” someone screamed.
“Why don’t you fall and make all this easier for yourself?”
“Look at this storm! The gods are showing you that they don’t want you!”
“Give up!”
But it was the chanting that burrowed itself through my chest, like a dagger slowly being pressed into my heart.
“Fall!”
“Fall!”
“Fall!”
When I slipped again, laughter followed, almost as loud as the thunder booming above me. I whimpered when the ropes twisted once more. My palms ached from holding on, the muscles in my arms screaming, and my feet kept slipping off the wet rope.
Fedic’s voice overpowered the karls’. “Watch where you’re going! Look up!”
I accidentally looked down instead. Wind and rain whipped beneath me, falling almost horizontally, and the faces on the ships were blurred.
“Up! Elvara, look up!” Viljan’s voice cut through the other screams. “Start moving again!”
How could I when the people and the sea and the ships beneath me all wanted the same thing? There was a consensus that was rare amongst Vikings, the sense as stark in the air as the electricity making the hair on my arms rise. Almost everyone below me wanted me dead.
“Fall!”
“Fall!”
“Fall!”
Another rumble made one of my hands lose its grip.
“Are you scared of heights, heir?” Darcke taunted behind me.
I didn’t reply, only hissed a strangled sound through my locked jaw.
“Maybe I was wrong,” the warrior called. “Maybe you’ll prove me right today. I had a feeling you wouldn’t survive this.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered.
“I would have brought some ale if I knew I’d get to enjoy you hovering over death’s maw all day,” Darcke continued. “This is better even than watching the fights you refused because you were too scared of them as well.”
“I’m not scared!”
“So you’re standing there because this is also beneath you?” Darcke drawled. “Even heirs have to climb ships.”
Not in storms. Not like this. We respected the seas—the perils of sailing them.
As another gust howled around me, fighting to wrangle me off, I realized my grip had steadied, the anger fueling my tired muscles. Darcke’s words had also drowned out the chants.
“Coward?” Darcke called. “Or spoiled? Which one is it?”
I didn’t bother responding as I started inching forward again. But he kept shouting insults after me. It wasn’t until I reached the midpoint of the ropes that his infuriating accent and voice died on the wind.
After a quick look at the other warriors, I chose Torden’s ship.
He kept my eyes the entire time I battled the distance between us.
“A little more,” he urged. “Just a little longer.”
I thought I might perish from relief when Torden’s hands found my hips and he pulled me off the ropes, setting me down in his lookout.
“You should hurry back.” His eyes darted to the clouds as he fastened the horn by my waist. “Looks like it might get worse before it gets better.”
Small spots of pale blue peeked through the dark cloud, but Torden was right. More lightning danced within them—booms of thunder reached far and wide across the storming seas, making the ropes even more unsteady.
I groaned. “It’s as if he knew there would be a storm.”
“You’ve got this.” Torden placed his hands on my shoulders. “You only need to repeat what you’ve just done.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I said.
A low chuckle rumbled through Torden’s chest. “I can see why your mouth gets you in so much trouble. You have a retort for everything, don’t you?”
“Only when it’s deserved.”
Torden gave me a pointed look. “That right there is why you’re driving him insane.”
I stared down at the floor of the wet lookout. “I’m merely responding.”
“Which means you’re not listening.” Torden moved his hands to my waist, lifting me onto the rope. “Now go before your life forever rests on my conscience.”
Torden anchored me while I secured my grip, his hands warm against my wet leathers.
Darcke’s glare reached all the way over, his features not softened at all by being drenched, but the opposite: the warrior looked lethal with his wet, darkened hair lying around his face, and the sharp angles of his face were accentuated by the rain.
I was as resolved to return as my clothing was dry.
“He doesn’t want me to make it,” I said when Torden let me go and the wind instantly took hold of my body.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Torden replied.
I began inching forward again, trying to push away the terror claiming my chest. “He hates me.”
“Yes.”
“But he wants me to live?” I cried out in my mind when the rope snapped taut and the karls beneath me cheered. My heart was making somersaults in my chest, pounding as uncontrollably as the storm.
“He wants you to prove him wrong.”
I could barely hear Torden’s words over the storm anymore, so I didn’t respond. Creeping forward, I kept my eyes on the violent sky, where gray and black and bright lightning whirled in an intricate pattern.
When I passed the midpoint, my entire body hurt. My fingers were stiff from the cold, and every inch of my skin was wet, my leathers squeaking with every slow step forward. The chanting had quieted, and even the wind died down a little bit.