Sheer terror made his shout audible even above the roar of the wind and the thunder of the waves against the ship. The driving rain running down his face looked uncannily like tears.
'Be silent!' Ragnar shouted and slapped the terrified man across the cheek. Shocked at being hit by a youth barely old enough to have the down of manhood on his cheeks, Yorvik reached for his axe, his fear momentarily forgotten. Ragnar shook his head and glared at the older man with his cold grey eyes. Yorvik stopped, as if realising where he was and what he was doing. They stood in full view of all the warriors on the prow of the ship. Attacking the son of his captain would gain him no credit in the eyes of the gods or the crew. The flush of shame came to Yorvik's cheeks and Ragnar looked away so as not to embarrass the man further.
Ragnar tossed his head to get his mane of long black hair from his eyes. Squinting through the lash of the wind and the salt-spray of the storm-tossed sea, Ragnar silently agreed with
Yorvik. They were going to die unless a miracle occurred. He had been going to sea since he was old enough to walk, and never had he seen a storm this bad. Sullen dark clouds scudded across the sky. It was dark as night even though it was noon. Spray billowed as the prow of the ship cleaved through another enormous wave. The drag-onhide of the deck echoed like an enormous drum with the force of the impact. He struggled to keep his balance on the constantly moving deck. Even over the wind's daemon shriek, he could hear the creak of the ship's bones. It was only a matter of time, he decided, before the sea killed the vessel. It was a race to see whether the force of the waves smashed the Spear of Russ into a thousand pieces, or whether it simply stripped the cured dragonhide from the ship's skeleton and left them to founder and drown.

Ragnar shuddered and not just from the chill, sodden wetness of his clothing. For him,
as for all his people, drowning represented the worst of all possible deaths. It meant simply sinking into the clutches of the sea daemons, where his soul would be bound in an eternity of servitude. There would be no chance of earning his place among the Chosen. He would not die with spear or axe in hand. He would not find himself a glo- rious death or swift passage to the Hall of Heroes in the Mountains of the Gods. Looking back along the rain-lashed deck Ragnar saw that all the massive warriors were as frightened as he, though they hid it well. Tension was written on every pallid face, and visible in every blue eye. Rain matted their long blond hair and gave them a hopeless bedraggled look. They sat huddled at their benches, useless oars held at the ready, massive dragonskin rain-cloaks thrown around their shoulders or flapping in the wind like the wings of bats. Each man's weapons lay beside him on the soaking deck, impotent against the foe that now threatened their lives. The wind howled, hungry as the great wolves of Asaheim.