Excerpt! Prologue © 2010 Juliet Marillier Pull! In the name of all the gods, pull!

I haul on my oar, every muscle straining. Cold sweat shivers on my skin. Salt spray blinds me. Or do I weep? We’re going to die. We’re going to perish in the chill of the sea, far from home. Pull! Pull! We haul with our guts, with our hearts, with our last strength. We seventeen, we survivors, exhausted, sick at heart – how can we prevail against such seas? Freyja shudders a moment, balanced between muscle and swell, then plunges broadside toward the rocks. The waves snatch up the ship, and with a surge and a decisive smack, hurl her down on the reef.

A jagged spear of rock splits the prow. Splinters fly. The fine oak disintegrates like kindling under the axe. Fragments fall on the deck, a momentary pattern of augury, gone almost before I can read the signs: Eolh: protection; Eoh: comfort; Nyd: courage in the face of death. The sea surges in, erasing the runic shapes in a heartbeat. The air fills with screaming; abandoned oars fly everywhere. Struck on the temple, a man falls. Another lies limp over his bench, a red stain spreading across his tunic. Others stagger along the boat, pushing, shouting. My heart thunders. I struggle to my feet. The purchase is perilous. The shuddering deck has a tilt like a church roof. The reef is opening Freyja as a hunter’s knife opens the carcass of a deer.

‘Felix! The rope, quick!’

Paul, gods, Paul with his feet still tied … I stagger over to where he lies half-on, half-off the bench, clutching a broken oar. The rope around his ankles is caught on a jagged length of split wood. A wave washes over me, drenching me to the chest and submerging Paul. The water recedes. Paul chokes and wheezes, sucking in air. Freyja’s timbers groan, grind, shatter. The ship is in her death throes. Crewmen fall, shrieking, into the maelstrom. Nowhere to climb to. Nowhere to shelter. No surface broad enough, flat enough, high enough for even one man to balance on and wait for rescue. There’s land not far off; smoke rising. This storm will drown us before anyone can come.

‘Here.’ I crouch down, fumbling for the rope. It’s underwater, the knots impossibly tight, the strands snagged fast in the broken wood. Too slow. A knife, I need a knife … There’s a crewman dead, his corpse washing about in the narrow gap between benches. I snatch the weapon from his belt – gods, let me do this in time, let the two of us live – and I hear Paul speak behind me. ‘Save yourself, Felix.’AsI turn back toward him a monstrous wave engulfs me. It’s in my nose, my ears, my mouth. Its surging song drowns everything. Iron bands close around my chest. The sea bears me away.