heavy with sleep. He watched the flames take hold of the rigging and run up aloft until the shrouds and stays became vivid blazing lines against the gray sky.
He watched as the ship, her crew and his long-time comrade in arms Fasti Magnisson were turned into so much smoke and ash and whisked aloft, up to the place where the gods took such men.
But his thoughts were not on those men. They were, instead, off to a place he did not generally allow them to go, a path he resisted stepping down with all his considerable strength. He was thinking of his sons. Not Sandarr. Sweyn and his brother Svein. They were younger than Sandarr and they were dead. The memory of that fact was worse than any of the many sword thrusts Grimarr had suffered and so he tried not to remember it.
But when Grimarr was attendant on some death ritual, as he was now, and he was quiet and there was no violence with which to keep his feelings at bay, he could not help but think of them.
The younger boys were not as clever as Sandarr, but that had never bothered Grimarr. Grimarr did not put too much stock in clever; a man could be too clever by half. Courage and honesty and strength, those were the qualities a man should have, and Sweyn and Svein had those in abundance.
“You are thinking of my brothers,” Sandarr said. Grimarr had not realized he was standing so close.
“I am,” Grimarr said gruffly.
“Me too. I can’t help it. At such a time as this.”
Grimarr grunted. He did not wish to speak at that moment. It was nearly half a year since Sweyn and Svein had been killed, but the wound to Grimarr’s spirit was still open and bleeding.
“Fasti will join with Sweyn and Svein this day,” Sandarr said. “My brothers died in honorable combat. Sure they feast with the gods, as Fasti will.”
Grimarr grunted again. Sandarr was right, and he was saying the right words, so Grimarr did not entirely understand why Sandarr’s words grated on him so. Perhaps he resented the fact that Sandarr had lived when the others had died, that Sandarr had chosen caution over boldness and that choice had proved the smart one.
“Yes,” Grimarr said at last, feeling as if he had to say something. Like it or not, Sandarr was the only son left to him. “We may thank the gods that they were killed in honorable combat.”
Grimarr stared vacantly at Sea Rider as her immolation come to its end. The rigging was burned through and it fell snaking and flaming down onto the deck. The mast seemed to be tilting a bit, though it was hard to tell with the air distorted by the intense heat. And then the tilting became obvious, the mast leaning aft bit by bit until the momentum built and it came down like a felled tree, and a great burst of flame and sparks roared up in its wake.
The ship was lower in the water now and Grimarr guessed that the heat was opening up the seams. There could be little left but a charred shell, the earthly remains of her men turned into the spirits of the flames. She listed a bit toward Eagle’s Wing, revealing the flames still consuming her deck and thwarts, the wood glowing bright orange. Of her men there was nothing to be seen; the flames were too bright to reveal what lay beneath, and Grimarr was happy for that.
Sea Rider rolled a little further and she seemed to settle into the seas, like a tired man reclining on a soft bed. Inch by inch she went down, the water coming up her gracefully curved sides until just her sheer strake and her proud bow and stern could be seen. Then the water was over the strakes and with a great hiss and a cloud of steam Sea Rider slipped beneath the gray seas and was gone.
For a long moment more the men aboard Eagle’s Wing continued to stare at the place where Sea Rider had gone down, the swirling water, the bits of debris, some still burning, that floated above the spot. Grimarr imagined the blackened hull sinking down, down, settled soft onto the muddy bottom.
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