Once again Gunner stopped to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and looked up towards the ceiling. He breathed in one large lungful of air and forced it out. He brought his head back down to look at the others.

"You alright, Gunner?" Mentokka asked, walking over to him, and placing a hand on his shoulder. "If you want to take a break...."

"I'm alright," he said looking at her. "Just needed a few seconds." As he continued his story, Mentokka returned to her seat.

We went north that next summer, pulling into a river that twisted though a landscape of pine and birch, a place so far north that hills of snow still showed in shadowed places. We brought reindeer hides from a village among the birches and carried them back out to sea, and exchange them for walrus tusks and whalebone, which in turn we traded for amber and Edik feathers. We carried malt and seal skins, fur and salt meat, iron ore and fleeces. In one rock-circled cove we sent two days loading slates that would be turned into whetstones, and Rerri traded the slates for combs made from deer antlers and for big coils of seal skin rope and a dozen heavy ingots of bronze, and we took it back to Kenet, going to Haith with was a large trading port, so big that there was a slave compound and we were taken there and released inside were we were guarded by spear men and high walls.

Davon found several of his country men and quickly walked over to them and embraced each others and talked in there language among each other. I looked around and walked and stood in the center of the compound and shouted a question.

"Is anyone here from Northeia?" Men stared at me dully. "Northeia?" I shouted again, and this time a women's voice called out from the far side of the palisade. Men were crowed at the palisade, peering at the women though the some what large chink in the wall separating the men and women, but I pushed two men aside. And what I saw, hit me like a kick from a horse.

"Gisela!" I shouted. My childhood friend from my home town. The daughter of the Tanner. And for a while the person I thought I'd marry if not for the war. She had long blond hair, but now it was cropped short. Her eyes were filled with pain. It was hard to look at her. I can only guess what she was thinking when she saw me.

"Falco!" she shouted back. running up to the the wall.

"What are you doing here?" I asked as I reached for her though the hole. " I remembered you leaving the village when the war started."

"We got captured." she said in a small voice as she reached out her arm to his.

Our fingers were just long enough to reach other and to clasp hands. The feeling of joy shot though my body. Feeling I though were long dead inside me. Tears formed in my eyes.

"Lord Osber betrayed us. He told the enemy where to find us......They brought us back into town.........they killed father. And Lord Osber......... he........raped me, before selling me. They all..... "

She broke down right there she let go my hand and move away from me. I kept my hand out at her. Pleading her to cum back to me. I wanted to comfort her and tell her everything will be alright. but I also wanted to feel her touch again. I called out to her. But she was several yards away from me, sitting on the ground rocking back and forth, saying she was dirty over and over again. I prayed that her mind wasn't lost to me. I promised that I'll get free from this and rescue her from who she was sold to. another girl told be that she was sold to a person named, Ivarr. I removed my hand from the hole. I remembered hearing Rerri talking about Ivarr. Someone he did not trust.

But it was another name.
Another person to kill.

The list get longer.


Suddenly I wept for Gisela. I knew what she went though. I feared for her. I remembered one night with Gisela when I kissed her beneath the beech trees and I thought all my dreams that were now hopeless and so I wept. I had lost all chance with Gisela, and that night I felt a swapping pity for myself and I sat on the ground and tears rolled down my cheeks and Davon saw me and began weeping also. I tried to rekindle my angry because it was only anger that would keep you alive, but my anger would not come. I just wept instead. I could not stop. It was the darkness of despair, of the fate was to pull an oar until I was broken and thrown overboard. I wept.

"You and me." Davon said, and paused. It was dark. It was a cold night for summer.

"You and me?" I asked, my eyes closed in an attempt to stop the tears.

"Swords in hand, my friend," he said. "You and me. It will happen." He meant we will be free and have our revenge.

"Dreams." I said.

"No!" Davon shouted. He crawled to my side and took my hand in both of his. "Don't give up!" he yelled at me. " We are warriors, you and I, we're warriors!"

I had been a warrior, I thought. There been a time when I shone in mail and helmet, but now I was lice ridden, filthy, weak, and tearful.

"Here." Davon said, and he pushed something into my hand. It was one of the antler-combs we had carried as cargo and somehow he managed to steal it and hide it with in his rags.
"Never give up," he told me, and I used the comb to disentangle my hair that now grew almost to my waist. I combed it out, tearing knots free, pulling lice free from the teeth And the next morning, Davon plaited my straight hair and I did the same for him. "It is how warriors of the Tine faith dress there hair in my tribe," he said, "And you and I are warriors. We are not slaves, we're warriors!"

We were thin, dirty, and ragged, but the despair had passed like a squall at sea and I let the anger give me resolve. That night I told Gilesa to stay strong, for I will get free and rescue her. My words must of reached her for she looked at me with eyes that spoke of hope. How I thank the God for Davon. For I known I would of long gave up hope.

The next morning we loaded the Fina with ingots of copper, bronze and iron. We rolled barrels of ale into her stern and filled the remaining space with salt meat, rings of hard bread, and tubs of salted cod.

Rerri laughed at our plaited hair. "You think you'll find a women, will you?" he mocked us. "Or are you pretending to be women?" he grinned at us. He was in a good mood. Something that was rare for him. But by nightfall that would change. For Rerri told his crew that we were pursued by another ship. Pirates. Raiders. We ran north under sail and ore and the other ship slowly overhauled us for she was longer and leaner, and faster, and it was only the coming of the night that let us escape, but it was a nervous night.

We stowed the oars and lowered the sails so that the Fina would make no noise, and in the dark I heard the oar-splashes of our pursuers and Rerri and his men knelled down near us, swords in hand, ready to kill us if we made a noise. I was temped and Davon wanted to thump on the side of the ship to bring the raiders to us, but Rerri would of slaughtered us instantly so we kept silent as the strange ship passed us in the darkness and when the dawn came the ship had vanished.

Such threats were rare. Wolf does not eat wolf., and falcon does not attack another falcon, so the Northmen rarely prayed on each other, though some men desperate, would risk attacking another Northmen. Such pirates were outcast, as nothing, but they were feared.

Usually they were hunted down and the crew would be killed or enslaved, but still some men risked being outcast, knowing that if they capture one rich ship like Fina they could make a fortune that would give them status, power and acceptance. But we escaped that night, and we set sailed farther north and still north, and we did not make land that night and for many nights.

For two weeks we traveled north. This was the whale path, and the monsters of the sea rolled to look at us or spouted water, and the air became colder and the sky was forever clouded, and we knew Rerri's men were nervous. They thought we were lost, and I thought the same, and I believed that my life would end at the sea's edge where great whirlpools drag ships down to there deaths. Seabirds circled, there cries forlorn in the white cold, and the great whales plunged under us, and we rowed until our backs were sore. And we had one day of friendly wind when we could travel under sail with the big seas hissing along our hull.


And so we came to the Land of fire. The mountains smoked and we heard tales of magical pools of hot water, though I saw none. And it wasn't just a land of fire, but a haunt of ice. There were mountains of ice, rivers of Ice, ans shelves of ice in the sky. There were codfish longer then a man was tall and we ate well there and Rerri was happy. Men feared to make the voyage we had just made, and he achieved it. He was in such a good mood that he even allowed us ashore and we drank sour birch wine in a long house that stank of whale flesh.
We were all shackled, not just with our ordinary manacles, but with neck chains also. Rerri had hired local men to guard us. They were armed with long spears, used to kill whales while the other four were armed with knives. Rerri was safe with them watching us, and he knew it, and for the only time in all of the months I was with him he deigned to speak with us. He boasted of the voyage we had made and even praised our rowing. "But you hate me," he said looking at he and then Davon.

I said nothing.

"The Birch wine is good," Davon said. "Thank you for it."

"The Birch wine is walrus piss," Rerri said. He was drunk. "You two hate me," he said , amused by our hatred. "I watch you two hate me. the others now, they're whipped, but you two would kill me before I could sneeze. I should kill you both, shouldn't I? I should sacrifice you two to the sea."

Neither of us spoke

"But you row well," Rerri said, "I did free a slave once," he said. I released him because I liked him. I trusted him. I even let him steer the Fina, but he tried to kill me.. You know what I did to him? I nailed his corpse to the prow and let him rot there. And I learned my lesson. You're there to row. Nothing else. You row and you work and you die." He was about to leave when I asked him one question.

"Captain," I called out. "May I ask a question?"

What is it?" he replied.

"The freed slave who tried to kill you. Have you ever wondered why he try to kill you?" He looked at me and said nothing. No doubt asking the question himself in the past.

"You released him, yes. But you never freed him. You never let him go. You turned him into your trained Pet........your Toy. And that is worse then being a slave."

He muttered that I didn't know what I was talking about, as he left but I know my words touched him. Bothered him. Another victory to keep the spark alive in me. And another step towards our freedom. And another step towards Rerri's doom. With that me and Davon slept.

The next morning we were back on board the ship and under a spitting rain, we left that strange land of Ice and Flame.

It took us much less time to go south because we ran with a friendly wind and so we wintered in Kenet again. We shivered in the slave hut and listened to Rerri grunting into his women's bed at night. The snow came, ice locked the creek, and it became my second year as a slave and I lived twenty-two years and I knew my future was to die in shackles because Rerri was ever watchful, clever and ruthless.

And then the raiders came.