Free Raven of the Waves by Michael Cadnum

as it took to be aware of it. The waves shook and threatened on all sides, like a struggling crowd, but the new silence stunned Lidsmod.
    Men stood and blinked up at the sky. They searched the ocean around them. Far off, Crane took a wave peak and then slid easily down a slope of sea. Sunlight spilled onto the ocean. The sound of Ulf’s bailing was loud, a splashing, grunting struggle with water. Opir the boaster, silent now, took the bailer from Ulf, and Floki took the other one.
    Landwaster was nowhere. It could not be seen.
    The men could not say the name of the dark ship. To talk about it would be a mistake—to mention a possible misfortune practically guaranteed it would take place. But every man looked back, again and then again. The sea was busy, like an army of gray shields. But it was true— Landwaster was gone.

11
    Lidsmod gazed back, until he told himself it would do no good to worry. Either the ship was afloat or it was not. Nevertheless it would be very bad if Landwaster was gone. All the men they had known since childhood, all the blood brothers and cousins—Lidsmod could not think about such a bitter loss.
    Gunnar would not meet the eyes of his men. He knew they were looking at him for a clue as to how they should feel. Calm? Worried? Should they turn back and search? A mark appeared on Gunnar’s cheek, a scar that showed only on rare occasions. As a youth, the story went, Gunnar had slipped on the first ice of autumn and cut himself on the head of a harpoon he’d won in a wrestling match. Lidsmod knew that if Landwaster had capsized, every man was gone. There was a song about a man saved by a large seal on a stormy night, and Lidsmod had half believed a man could be saved that way.
    But this cold morning was real—it was not a song.
    â€œLidsmod,” said Gunnar at last. “Climb to the top of the mast.”
    He did not hesitate, not with every man watching. He climbed. One side of the mast was already dry from the wind; the other was icy wet. His legs and arms wrapped the pine mast and were nearly not strong enough for the task. Until he was about the height of the tallest of them, the robust Ulf, it would simply be a struggle to climb at all. The weather vane twitched and fluttered high above.
    The very top of the mast was too far away. But Lidsmod struggled upward, the mast pressed against his ribs, his legs wrapped around it. Every man on Raven was either watching, or watching with his thoughts. Gradually the mast tapered, and it was easier to get a grip.
    But now the mast pitched and shivered. The ship wobbled far below, and Lidsmod gasped at how strange it looked, how crowded with men, and how small. It was a fifteen bencher, and not as big as some ships. But from this height it looked too frail to protect thirty and more human beings.
    Don’t look down, thought Lidsmod. Don’t look anywhere. Just hang on. Close your eyes and climb and ignore the cold and the drunken stagger of the ship.
    The ship fought and dodged. The weather vane snapped just above Lidsmod, then just at his ear. This was the very end of the mast, and he opened his eyes.
    He slipped.
    He closed his eyes and hung on tight. He imagined hearing the even voice of his mother, the tone she used when a fishing boat was late during a squall, saying that their faith would balance the harm and keep it from happening. He pictured Hallgerd’s gray eyes, believing Lidsmod when he said that some day he would bring gold and glory to the table of her father.
    Climb again, he told himself, and he did, very slowly, until once again the salt-stiff weather vane was at his ear.
    He glanced down.
    A mistake. Opir’s pale face gazed upward, his smile offering silent encouragement. Opir’s father had failed to wake one morning last summer and had gradually drifted away into a deeper and deeper sleep, until he stopped breathing altogether. Opir had been all the more reckless ever since, his voice louder