The rain was falling for what felt like an eternity. It had soaked through every layer of wool and leather hours ago, leaving the men chilled to the bone. Water dripped constantly from the patched, sagging sail above them, forming small shifting puddles on the wooden deck that sloshed back and forth with each heave of the longship. Underfoot, the planks were slick and treacherous. The grey sky offered no promise of change again, and was stretching endlessly in all directions, it was a colorless dome that merged with the turbulent grey sea.
The Ship creaked and groaned like an old man with aching joints as it rode the choppy waves. Every few minutes, a larger wave would slap against the hull, sending a fresh wash of icy seawater over the side, adding to the water already pooling in the bilge. Men took turns bailing with heavy wooden buckets, their movements were slow and almost mechanical with their faces set in grim lines of endurance.
Each stroke of the oars, for those not bailing or resting in exhausted heaps, was a painful effort. Arms ached with a deep and burning soreness. And shoulders screamed in protest. The crew's faces were gaunt, their cheekbones standing out sharply under their matted beards. Hunger, a constant companion now gnawed at their insides, shortening tempers and pulling at the threads of their resolve.
Sigurd, a younger man with wide, haunted eyes crouched near the stern, his voice was barely a whisper as he spoke to Erik, who was trying to patch a tear in his worn boot with a piece of sinew. "I am telling you, Erik, we should not wake him. Do not even touch him." Sigurd's gaze flicked nervously towards Bjorn's motionless form, lying covered by a damp, spare cloak near where Ragnar usually stood.
Erik paused his work then wiped rain from his tired face with the back of a chapped hand. He looked towards Bjorn. "He is still breathing. I have been watching. His chest moves up and down."
"That is precisely what worries me," Sigurd hissed while leaning closer with his fear palpable. "You saw what happened during the storm. You saw him… speak to it."
Leif, a seasoned warrior with lines etched deep into his weathered face, looked up from where he was meticulously coiling a stiff wet rope. His frown deepened. "Stop your foolish talk, Sigurd. He is Bjorn. Ragnar's son. The same young man we have known for years."
Sigurd turned on him, his usual deference gone, replaced by a desperate intensity. "Is he, Leif? Is he truly? Tell me, have the gods ever answered your prayers so directly? Have you ever seen lightning itself bend and twist because you asked it to?"
The three men fell silent. The only sounds were the drumming of rain on the deck, the rhythmic creak of the oarlocks, and the splash of oars cutting through the grey water. Sigurd nodded slowly towards Bjorn's still form. "I watched that lightning. It came for him, but it… it curled around him, like a striking serpent that suddenly thought better of it. If Thor wanted him dead, he would be nothing but ash and cinder right now. But he is not. So perhaps," his voice dropped even lower, "perhaps Thor wants him for something else entirely."
Near the scarred base of the mast, Floki was kneeling by the ugly black scorch mark left where the lightning had arced from Rollo towards the sea. He tilted his head this way and that, like an inquisitive bird, studying the burned and splintered wood with an unnerving focus. His long, pale fingers traced the charred grain slowly and methodically, then picked at a loose splinter. His lips moved, muttering words too quiet for anyone else to hear, and his eyes were distant and strange. The weak, grey light cast his shadow long and distorted across the wet deck, making him look larger, more ominous than his usually slight, agile frame suggested.
Ragnar stepped down from the raised steering platform at the stern with his leather boots making soft, squelching sounds against the wet wooden planks. He walked with his usual purposeful stride, seemingly unaffected by the ship's bucking, over to where Floki knelt. "What do you see there, Floki?" Ragnar asked with his voice quiet but carrying clearly in a momentary lull in the wind.
Floki did not look up immediately. He lifted one hand, smudged black with soot, and rubbed some of the ash between his thumb and forefinger, examining its texture with intense concentration. Then, to Ragnar's surprise, he touched the tip of his tongue to his sooty finger, tasting the ash.
His eyes widened slightly, and he sat back on his heels, looking up at Ragnar with a dawning, almost gleeful understanding. "There is something… wrong with this burn mark, Ragnar," Floki said, his voice filled with a strange excitement as he stared down at the charred wood. "Or perhaps, something very, very right." He scrambled to his feet quickly, almost stumbling in his haste, a wide, unsettling grin spreading across his soot-stained face.
He gestured dramatically at the burn mark, then pointed a trembling finger up at the tattered remnants of the sail, still faintly smoking in places. "Thor threw his lightning bolt at us, Ragnar! A true hammer blow from the sky! Lightning that can split an ancient oak in half, that can crack solid rock as if it were a child's clay toy, lightning that makes grown men deaf from the sheer sound of its coming! And yet…" He paused with his grin growing wider and his eyes glittering. "It bent. The lightning itself bent away from its true path."
Ragnar's brow furrowed deeper as he looked from Floki's animated face to the scorch mark, then towards where Bjorn lay. "Are you saying Thor was aiming at my son? Specifically at Bjorn?"
Floki threw his hands up in a gesture of mock offense, nearly losing his balance. "Thor does not miss his target, Ragnar! Not unless he chooses to miss. His aim is as true as the North Star!"
Ragnar spoke quietly then, his gaze turning inward, almost as if talking to himself. "Then why did he strike Rollo? Why not Bjorn, if he was the focus?"
Floki's grin faltered just a little. He looked down at the mast again, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Ah, well. Rollo…" Floki shrugged with a flicker of something dark in his eyes. "Wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps. Or perhaps your brother reached for something that was not meant for him to touch." He shrugged again, a gesture that dismissed Rollo's suffering. "Or maybe Thor was sending the rest of us a message : do not interfere with his plans."
His gaze snapped sharply over to where Bjorn lay unconscious with his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. With one arm laying limply at his side, palm upwards.
Floki walked over slowly, his knees bent slightly with his movements strangely reverent, as if he were approaching a sacred, sleeping idol. He held his hand out, hovering it over Bjorn's chest for a moment, then pulled it back sharply, as if he had felt a burn.
"He is still breathing normally," Leif said gruffly from behind them, his voice attempting reassurance but edged with an undeniable tension. He, like many of the others, had been watching Floki's strange examination. Floki knelt down beside Bjorn. He glanced up at Ragnar, who gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Slowly and carefully, as if handling fragile glass, Floki placed one hand on Bjorn's ribs, then moved it higher up his chest. He grasped the rough, damp wool of Bjorn's tunic and began to lift it, the fabric catching slightly on the cool skin underneath.
The crew members nearby stopped what they were doing from bailing to mending, even those slumped in exhausted rest , and gathered closer, their movements were quiet and their faces were etched with a mixture of fear and an almost unbearable curiosity. No one spoke. The only sounds were the relentless creaking of the boat's timbers and the constant whisper of wind across the water.
Then they all saw it. And a collective, soft gasp went through them.
On Bjorn's left shoulder, just below the collarbone and wrapping partway down his upper arm, there was a mark seared into his skin. It was not a simple cut, nor a brand from hot metal. It looked as if lightning itself had been pressed into his flesh and left its intricate, angry signature there. The mark was a livid red in the center, darkening to a bruised purple and black around the edges, with fine, spidery cracks running through it like shattered pottery.
It was clearly and unmistakably, the shape of a rune, it was angular, deliberate, and most importantly ancient.
Floki let out a long, slow breath through his nose. "Thor… marked him," he said softly, his voice filled with a profound, trembling awe.
The crew stood frozen, staring. No one moved a muscle. The rain seemed to fall harder for a moment, drumming on their shoulders.
Ragnar's voice when he finally spoke was quiet, strained, and hesitant. "That is not just a scar from the lightning's passage."
Floki remained kneeling with his gaze fixed on the rune and not looking up. "No. It is more. It is the Thurisaz rune." His voice was barely a whisper now, but every man heard it. "The rune of Thor himself. Of giants. Of disruptive and chaotic power." He paused, then added with chilling certainty. "A sign from the gods. A claim."
Erik shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gaze darting from the rune on Bjorn's skin to Ragnar's stony face. "But… why him? Why Bjorn?" Floki finally looked up, his eyes burning with an almost fanatical light as he met Erik's questioning gaze. "How could I, a mere mortal, possibly know what the gods are thinking, or what their plans entail?"
A few more crew members pushed closer, craning their necks, their faces a mixture of dread and fascination as they tried to get a better look at the rune etched into the young man's skin.
Then there was a rough bitter sound from nearby, a grunt of pain and deep frustration.
Rollo was sitting propped against a water barrel, his left arm held carefully against his chest. He shifted his position, his face tight with pain as he slowly lifted the arm. His fingers were stiff as he uncurled his palm to reveal the damage. His palm was swollen red, the skin was tight and shiny, with a few small blisters already forming.
There was no rune, no divine symbol, just the ugly mark of a burn. He tried to flex his fingers, but they responded sluggishly, a strange numbness already creeping through his hand and up his forearm.
He held it up so everyone could see, his expression was a mixture of pain and fury. "And what about this?" Rollo's voice was thick with a festering bitterness, his good hand clenching into a fist. "Why is all I received this… this dead feeling, this useless flesh?" The crew turned to look at him, at his reddened numb hand. Some immediately looked away again, visibly uncomfortable with his raw display of pain and his almost blasphemous anger.
Rollo continued with his voice getting louder and cracking with emotion. "Maybe the gods made a mistake this time! Maybe their aim was off, and I took the blow meant for him!" He gestured towards Bjorn with his uninjured hand.
Floki tilted his head, his expression was unreadable, and looked at Rollo with narrowed eyes. "The gods do not make mistakes, Rollo. They never have. They never will."
Rollo glared back at him, his wounded pride mixing with his physical agony and utter exhaustion, his good hand clenching and unclenching. "So what does that make me then, Floki?" Rollo's voice was low now, and dangerous. "If the gods do not make mistakes, then what am I in their great game?"
Floki shrugged lightly, a small, almost casual movement that was somehow more insulting than any shout. "A warning, perhaps," he said, his voice was soft but carrying a chill. "You tried to awaken something, to interfere with something, that you should have left well alone." He stood up slowly then, his hands stained black from the soot on the deck and from Bjorn's tunic. His eyes danced with some strange, inner amusement, a frightening light, as he looked down at the still-unconscious Bjorn. "And he," Floki declared, his voice was ringing with certainty despite its quietness, "is the puzzle the gods have given us to solve."