As They Burn by Dylan Doose

Author:Dylan Doose
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780994828392
Publisher: Dylan Doose

“Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead,” Celta thought over and over. Images of Theron naked in the moonlight, as beautiful with savage scars and beard as he ever was as the clean-shaven, princely boy she had met as a child. She replayed, again and again, him jumping from his burning ship into the waves. She hated him and loved him and lusted for him like she always had. She hated and loved herself for making the awful and right decision of slinking from her drunken husband’s slumbering arms and skulking through the halls of her own home like a thief to Theron’s chambers. At that moment, she had not cared if they were caught. She was owed; he was hers.

Sigurd shouted commands to veer the ship south so that they could land in the enemy shipyard that was barely discernable through the waves a mile down the shore.

If Theron was alive, he had made it to the beach by now. She scanned the battle on the sand, but she could not make him out among the warring souls. The longbowmen had turned their focus from the advancing ships to the soldiers and ships already on the beach. Smoke from the burning, landed ships obscured her view.

“To the shipyard!” Sigurd yelled. “We must avoid the arrows. We can charge up from the south after we dock.”

“No!” Celta screamed. “This is my father’s ship. My ship.” Mine. “The archers fire into the bay no longer. We must reinforce the beach!”

Around her, men nodded. They knew she was in the right. Landing at the distant shipyard and making their way over land would bring them to the battle too late to support the vanguard.

“Celta—” Sigurd began, and those at the oars momentarily slowed looking to her husband for the final word. She would not give it to him. They would look to her; she would give the final word on this quest. This was her father’s campaign, so it was her campaign, not Sigurd’s, and if she wanted to rush the beach that is what they were going to do.

She stared at her husband of less than a year. She had married him because she had needs and because he loved her. She pitied him for that, as she had pitied the two husbands who had preceded him. None were strong enough to match her.

“If you want to be witnessed, if you want Bodan’s eye to fall on you, then row to that fucking beach and get us in the front lines of that shield wall.” She said what he and the others needed to hear and she bared her teeth.

The helmsman turned to the beach. The rowers began to row.

Her husband snarled and seconded her command. “Get us to the beach, to battle! To the ax hall!”

She let him have this small salve to his pride.

The crew heaved hard to shore, yelling ‘row’ in unison with each stroke. Burning debris and corpses floated in the bloody waves that smacked the prow.

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