The North Sea Saga (868)
Arc V: The Great Viking Tournament
Chapter 5: The Olympics But Everyone Is Armed and Emotionally Unstable
They heard about the tournament from a drunk man in a boat.
This was, in terms of information sources, not the most reliable category, but the drunk man was enthusiastic and specific, which counted for something. He was a Dane, sailing solo in a small craft that had no business being this far out, and he hailed the Bubbly as they passed with the energy of someone who had been alone at sea long enough to find any company remarkable.
"THE TOURNAMENT," he said, when Jens asked what he was shouting about.
"What tournament."
"THE GREAT TOURNAMENT. Every few years. Dozens of crews. Prize silver. Fame. GLORY."
"Where."
The drunk man pointed. Then recalibrated. Then pointed again at a different angle with less confidence.
"That way," he said. "Roughly. Three days. Maybe four. There's an island. Big one. You'll know it by the ships."
"And it's happening now?"
"NOW. RIGHT NOW. Well—" he wobbled "—in about a week. Registration open."
Jens looked at him for a long moment.
"Thank you," Jens said.
"ARE YOU GOING?"
Jens turned to his crew.
The crew was already looking at him with a range of expressions that collectively communicated yes before anyone opened their mouth.
Milos was vibrating. This was his resting state but the frequency was higher than usual.
Jesper was — this was the interesting one — sitting up straight, which he rarely did voluntarily, with an expression that was doing something new. Something focused. Something that looked almost like hunger.
"Competition," Jesper said. Just the word. Testing it.
"Yes," Jens said. "Various events. Prize silver—"
"What events," Jesper said.
"I don't know yet—"
"What are the events."
"I JUST SAID—"
"Ship racing?" Jesper said to the drunk man directly.
"YES," the drunk man confirmed.
Something happened in Jesper's face. Something that Jens had never seen there before. Something that the crew would later identify, in retrospect, as the moment they discovered that Jesper had a competitive streak the size of Scandinavia that had been lying dormant under the laziness like a weapon in a sheath.
"We're going," Jesper said.
"I was going to—"
"We're going, Jens."
"I'm in charge—"
"We. Are. Going."
Jens stared at him.
Jesper stared back with the calm certainty of someone who had already made a decision and was simply waiting for reality to catch up.
"We're going," Jens said.
"YES," said Milos.
"The prize silver," Sam said, already with the tablet out, "would offset the Frisia delay considerably—"
"Frisia will still be there," Tijjani said.
"The Low Countries are geographically stable, yes—"
"Then we go."
"We go," Sven agreed, warmly, because Sven was always in favor of things that brought people together, even when the togetherness was armed and competitive.
Yuki said: "Many interesting."
"He says yes," Jesper translated.
"I know he says yes," Jens said. He turned back to the drunk man. "Three days?"
"FOUR. Maybe. The island with the two hills—"
"I'll find it," Jesper said.
"You said that about France."
"I found France."
"Eventually—"
"WE'RE GOING TO THE TOURNAMENT," Milos announced to the sea, arms wide, to no one and everyone and the drunk man and the seagulls and the North Sea in general.
The North Sea did not respond.
It would, however, remember.
I. The Island With Two Hills
Jesper found it in three days. Correctly. On purpose.
This felt significant.
The island was unmistakable — not because of the two hills, though the hills were there as advertised, but because of the ships. Dozens of them. More than dozens. Longships and knarrs and the occasional enormous dragonship with carved prows that were meant to intimidate from a distance and succeeded. They filled the natural harbor and spilled out along the beaches, drawn up on the shore with the practiced ease of crews who did this constantly, and the noise coming off the island was the noise of several hundred Vikings in close proximity, which was to say: overwhelming and constantly threatening to tip from festive into catastrophic.
The Bubbly pulled in alongside a Frankish-Norse trading knarr that looked like it had seen considerable action and the man on its deck looked at the Bubbly with the quick assessment of someone identifying unfamiliar competition.
"First time?" he called.
"Yes," Jens said.
The man looked at their ship. At the crew. At the slightly uneven red sail. At Milos, who was hanging off the prow to get a better look at the island with the expression of a dog arriving at a very large park. At Jesper, whose hair was doing the wind thing.
The man's assessment concluded.
"Registration is up the hill," he said, in the specific tone of someone being politely dismissive. "First event starts in two days. Good luck."
He turned away.
"What did his face mean," Milos said.
"It meant he doesn't think much of us," Tijjani said.
"Why."
"Because we look like nobody's heard of us."
"Have they?"
"No."
"But we're—"
"Milos," Tijjani said, "in this crowd we are currently nobody. We are a knarr with seven people and an unimpressive sail."
Milos looked at the man who had turned away. Looked at the island. Looked at the dozens of ships, some of them enormous, some of them belonging to crews whose names were probably known.
His expression settled into something focused and unusually still.
"Okay," Milos said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He picked up his axe and his shield. "Let's go register."
II. The Competition
The registration tent was managed by a man who gave the impression of having organized chaos professionally for twenty years and had achieved a kind of transcendent calm about it. He sat behind a table with a list, and crews came to him and gave their names, and he wrote them down, and they went away.
"Crew name," he said to Jens, without looking up.
Jens opened his mouth.
"The Bubbly Crew," Jesper said.
"Ship name?"
"The Bubbly."
The man wrote it. Looked up at the ship, visible from the tent. Looked at Bøllebåden painted on the hull in Jens's not-entirely-steady hand.
"The Bubbly," the man confirmed, writing.
"Yes."
"How many crew?"
"Seven."
"That's a small roster for full events."
"We know," Jesper said pleasantly.
"Events are: ship racing, wrestling, drinking contest, axe throwing, and the treasure hunt final. You'll compete in qualifying rounds for most. Points accumulate. The crew with most points after all events wins the prize."
"And the prize is—"
"Three chests of silver, a decorated dragonship prow, and—" he reached under the table and produced a small carved wooden plaque "—this."
The plaque had a ship on it and some runes.
"The bragging rights," the man said.
"That's the plaque," Sam said.
"The bragging rights are represented by the plaque."
"The bragging rights are a small piece of wood."
"The bragging rights," the man said, with the patience of someone who had explained this before, "are eternal. The plaque is just where you put them so people can see them."
Sam and Tijjani looked at each other. Some calculation was happening.
"The betting pools," Tijjani said. "How do those work."
The man looked at him. "There are bookmakers on the south side of the camp. They set odds. People bet. Winner collects."
"And anyone can bet."
"Anyone with silver."
Sam put his hand on Tijjani's arm. Tijjani put his hand over Sam's. They did not look at each other. They were both looking at the man with identical expressions of professional interest.
"Thank you," Sam said.
They walked away from the registration table. Jens watched them go.
"What are they—"
"Something alarming," Jesper said.
"Should I stop them."
"Can you stop Sam when he has a financial idea?"
Jens thought about this. "No."
"Then no."
III. The Other Crews
The camp was enormous, spread across the flat land between the two hills, and it held more concentrated Viking energy than anything the Bubbly Crew had previously encountered, which was saying something given their month and a half of experience.
They walked through it and were assessed continuously, the way crews at any gathering assessed each other — quickly, professionally, with the specific vocabulary of fighters reading other fighters. Most of the assessments they received were in the category of small crew, unknown, probably not a threat.
Jens catalogued the competition.
There was a Norwegian crew — eight men, average size enormous, with a dragonship that made the Bubbly look like a bath toy. They moved through the camp like people who expected to win and had the record to justify it. Their leader was a man called Gunnar Ironside, which was either his real name or his reputation, and possibly both, and he had the patient confidence of someone who had been the largest thing in most rooms for a long time.
There was a Dane crew from Jutland, twelve strong, with the organized efficiency of people who had prepared specifically for this and taken it seriously as a military exercise.
There was a Swede crew with a navigator who kept consulting three separate maps simultaneously and still looked uncertain, which Jens felt Jesper would appreciate.
There was a mixed crew — Norse, Frisian, one man who appeared to be Saxon and was getting away with it through a combination of size and attitude — who were relaxed in the way of people who competed for fun and had made peace with not always winning.
And there was, at the far end of the camp, a Norwegian crew that the Bubbly Crew registered and then mostly forgot, because they were quiet and their ship was well-maintained but not ostentatious and they didn't attract attention, which was, had anyone been paying closer attention, itself a kind of attention.
Their leader watched the Bubbly Crew walk through camp.
He watched Jesper, specifically, for slightly longer than necessary.
He said nothing. Filed it. Went back to his preparations.
His name was Erik Solveigson and he was not relevant yet.
He would be.
IV. Event One — Ship Racing
The first event was announced at dawn by a horn that woke everyone in camp including people who had been very much trying to sleep, and the race was simple in the way that genuinely difficult things were sometimes simple: from the harbor mouth, around two marked points in the sea, back to harbor. First crew across wins the qualifying round. Points for placement.
"Right," Jens said, at the Bubbly, looking at the assembled crews preparing their ships. "I'll take the rudder—"
"No," Jesper said.
Jens turned.
Jesper was already at the rudder.
"I navigate," Jesper said.
"I've been on this ship longer—"
"You navigate by instinct and general direction. I navigate by stars and water and twelve years of being taught by the best navigator in Svealand who was furious that a prince had to learn this but taught me anyway because the alternative was a dead prince." He met Jens's eyes. "I take the rudder. You row."
"I'm in charge—"
"Of the crew, yes. I'm in charge of this ship going fast."
They looked at each other.
"Jens," Sven said gently, from his oar, "let him."
Jens went to his oar.
What happened next was the first time the wider tournament world noticed the Bubbly Crew, and it happened because nobody had accounted for Jesper.
Nobody had accounted for Jesper because Jesper had spent six weeks being visibly, consistently, pointedly not trying, and had cultivated a reputation within the crew for doing the minimum necessary and making it look like nothing, and the crew had — not exactly believed this, but gotten used to it as his baseline, so that when his actual baseline appeared it was genuinely startling.
The horn sounded.
The ships launched.
"PULL," Jesper said, and his voice was different. Not the lazy drawl. Not the pleasant surface of someone who found everything mildly amusing. Focused. Sharp. "PULL, ALL OF YOU, NOW—"
They pulled.
"JENS, PORT SIDE HARDER—"
"I'M PULLING—"
"HARDER THAN THAT—"
"I'M PULLING AS HARD AS I—"
"MILOS MATCH JENS'S STROKE—"
"I AM—"
"YOU'RE AHEAD OF IT, MATCH IT—"
"THIS IS MY STROKE—"
"SVEN STEADY—"
"YES—"
"YUKI HOLD—"
Yuki held. Whatever Yuki did at the oar, he did it with the precision of someone who understood the principle of a thing completely and applied only exactly what was needed, and under Jesper's direction the effect was that the Bubbly moved through the water with an efficiency that was, objectively, surprising for a broad-hulled knarr.
"TURNING IN TEN—"
"HOW DO YOU KNOW—"
"BECAUSE I KNOW, SEVEN, SIX, FIVE—"
"JESPER—"
"FOUR THREE TWO PORT OARS LIFT—"
The Bubbly turned.
It turned faster than a knarr should turn, the hull pivoting on the rudder and the differential pull with a snap that made the nearest competing ship — the Jutland Danes, big crew, strong rowers — overshoot and have to correct.
"PULL," Jesper said. "ALL OF YOU. EVERYTHING."
They gave him everything.
Jens, rowing, with his back to Jesper, pulling until his shoulders burned, thought: how are we going this fast.
"SECOND TURN COMING—"
"ALREADY—"
"ALREADY, YES, JENS, TRUST ME—"
He trusted him.
The Bubbly came around the second marker and straightened for the harbor mouth and Jesper said "HOLD YOUR STROKE, STEADY STEADY STEADY" in the specific tone of someone managing a thing they had calculated completely and the crew held and it was — clean. The run for the harbor was clean, all the momentum of the turn converted into straight-line speed, and they crossed the harbor mouth in first place, the Jutland Danes half a ship-length behind, the Norwegian dragonship — which had the raw power advantage — third, because it couldn't turn like that, because nothing turned like that at that speed unless someone knew exactly when to call it.
The camp watched.
The noise of it — the reaction from the shore — was surprised. Not the cheering of people watching their favorites perform. The noise of people revising an assessment.
The Bubbly crew sat at their oars, breathing hard, the ship rocking gently in the harbor.
"Well," Sam managed, between breaths.
"Yes," said Tijjani, who had been at his oar and was now looking at Jesper with an expression of complete professional respect.
Jens turned around.
Jesper was at the rudder. Still holding it. Not performing anything. Breathing like someone who had been working, which he had — the rudder in a turn at that speed required real force — and looking at the harbor mouth with the distant focus of someone reviewing what had just happened.
He looked at Jens.
"YOU SAID YOU DIDN'T FEEL LIKE HELPING," Jens said.
Jesper blinked. "That was before."
"BEFORE WHAT."
"Before there was someone to lose to."
"YOU—"
"Jens."
"WHAT."
"We won," Jesper said.
A pause.
"We won," Jens confirmed.
"So."
"SO YOU COULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS THE WHOLE TIME."
"I didn't feel like it the whole time."
"THAT'S—"
"I feel like it now."
"THAT IS THE MOST—"
"Jens."
"WHAT."
"Well done rowing."
Jens opened his mouth. Closed it.
Jesper was already examining the harbor, planning the next move, done with the conversation.
Milos, behind Jens, said: "I like him when he's like this."
"When he's infuriating?"
"When he's both things at once."
Jens turned to face forward and said nothing and was furious and also had to agree and that made it worse.
V. Event Two — Wrestling
Milos's opponent in the qualifying round was a large Norwegian.
Not Gunnar Ironside large. But large. Wide, with the low center of gravity of a real wrestler and the patient stance of someone who had done this competitively for years.
The crowd around the wrestling circle was substantial. The Jutland Danes had entered their biggest man, who had won his round easily. The Norwegian dragonship crew had two in the bracket. The results so far had been what everyone expected: the biggest, most experienced wrestlers advancing.
And then Milos stepped into the circle.
He was not the biggest man in the bracket. He was quick and compact and currently vibrating with a frequency that his opponent clocked and, to his credit, registered as unusual.
"You're the berserker," the Norwegian said. Not unfriendly. Assessing.
"Yes," Milos said.
"They say you ran at five men alone."
"I did."
"And won."
"Yes."
The Norwegian looked at him. "How."
"I don't remember the middle part."
The Norwegian blinked.
"Ready?" the official called.
"Yes," Milos said, and the Norwegian barely got the same word out before Milos moved.
The thing about Milos in a fight was that his unpredictability was not an act. He genuinely did not know what he was going to do next. He operated on a kind of combat instinct that bypassed the planning stage entirely, which meant he was genuinely impossible to read because there was nothing to read — there was no plan behind his eyes to detect, just pure responsive action, and this was deeply confusing to fight.
The Norwegian was good. He got a hold twice and lost it both times because Milos went somewhere unexpected and the hold became wrong. He tried to use his weight and found that Milos went with the weight instead of against it, which shouldn't have worked and did because Milos had no investment in any particular direction and would go any direction that led somewhere interesting.
The third exchange was fast and the Norwegian ended up on the ground and Milos ended up standing, and there was a moment where both of them seemed surprised.
The crowd reacted.
Not cheering exactly. More: the sound a crowd made when something happened that it hadn't expected.
Milos offered his hand. The Norwegian took it, standing.
"How," the Norwegian said.
"I don't think about it," Milos said.
"You don't—"
"If I think, I get slower. So I don't think."
The Norwegian looked at him with the expression of a man being told something that was simple and also impossible. "Everyone thinks."
"I stopped," Milos said cheerfully. "It's better."
He walked back to the crew.
"You won," Sven said.
"Yes."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Do you need—"
"I need another round," Milos said. "Who's next."
He looked at the bracket board with the appetite of someone who had been given one biscuit and discovered they were extremely hungry.
VI. Event Three — The Drinking Contest
Nobody predicted the finalists.
The drinking contest had a bracket system. You drank. If you were still functional, you advanced. If you were not, you went and lay down somewhere and were respected for your effort.
The expected finalists were large men with large tolerances and the accumulated professional experience of Viking feasting. The Jutland Danes had a man who was famous for it. The Norwegian dragonship crew had two candidates who had apparently trained specifically.
The unexpected finalists were Sven and Yuki.
Sven made it through the early rounds without visible effort, which was partly his size — he was very large and liquid distributed accordingly — and partly something else, some quality of constitution that nobody had identified because Sven was not the person anyone thought about in the context of drinking contests. He was the person who made sure everyone ate enough and didn't do anything regrettable and said "I think you've had enough" with the gentle authority of a man who was usually right. Nobody had expected him to drink an entire bracket of opponents into the ground with the calm expression of someone at a regular meal.
"Sven," Jens said, between rounds.
"Yes?"
"Are you alright."
"I'm fine."
"You've drunk—"
"Yes."
"You don't seem—"
"I'm fine, Jens."
"You're not drunk."
Sven considered this. "I'm a little warm."
"That's all."
"And the bench is slightly softer than it was."
Jens stared at him.
"I think I might have a high tolerance," Sven said. "I've never really tested it before."
"WHY NOT."
"It didn't seem important."
Yuki's presence in the final was the greater mystery because nobody had ever seen Yuki drink heavily. He ate moderately. He drank moderately. He was moderate in all things that weren't the application of a sword, where he was extremely immoderate in the direction of excellence.
He had entered the drinking contest not because he was confident but because someone had handed him a cup and gestured at the bracket board and he had interpreted this as an invitation and it had seemed impolite to decline. He drank what was put in front of him. He remained vertical. He advanced.
By the semifinal he was the most sober-appearing person in the entire contest, which was remarkable because he had drunk more than most people in the contest, and the bookmakers were watching him with the specific attention of people whose financial models had encountered something anomalous.
"What is happening," Sam said, from the betting area, watching Yuki drink his semifinal cup.
"I don't know," Tijjani said.
"Is he—"
"I genuinely don't know."
"Does he even—"
"Sam."
"What."
"I don't know."
In the final, it was Sven and Yuki and two other men, and the two other men were out by the third cup, and then it was Sven and Yuki.
They looked at each other across the table.
Sven smiled.
Yuki inclined his head.
They drank the fourth cup.
The fifth.
The crowd had developed the specific silence of people watching something they didn't have language for. Two men who should not still be functioning were still functioning, one of them enormous and warm-faced and somehow more settled with each cup, one of them compact and still and apparently made of different material than other humans.
The sixth cup.
"Sven," Milos said, from the watching crowd.
"Yes?" Sven said, perfectly clearly.
"Are you going to be sick."
"No," Sven said, in the tone of someone who had checked.
"You've had six—"
"I know."
Yuki picked up the seventh cup. Looked at Sven. Made a small gesture — a question.
Sven picked up his cup. "Ready," he said.
They drank.
Sven set his cup down.
Looked at the table.
Looked up.
"I," Sven said carefully, "am quite drunk now."
This was apparently the critical moment. Not a collapse. Just: an honest report from a man who had finally reached his limit and was informing the available parties with characteristic directness.
He stood. Steadily, but slowly. He looked at Yuki.
"Good contest," Sven said.
Yuki looked at him.
"You win," Sven said. "I need to sit down."
He sat down. Bjarni appeared from somewhere and sat with him and Sven put his hand on the dog and was fine, just very warm and in need of some minutes.
Yuki was declared the winner.
He sat for a moment after they announced it. He looked at the cup in his hand. He looked at the crowd.
He seemed, for just a moment, genuinely puzzled.
He said something in Japanese.
"What did he say," Milos asked Jesper.
"I don't speak Japanese," Jesper said.
"You speak everything—"
"I don't speak Japanese."
"Then how do we usually—"
"Context," Jesper said. "And Yuki being very good at making himself understood."
They looked at Yuki.
Yuki looked at the cup.
His expression seemed to be saying: I also do not know why this is.
"Same," said the crowd, essentially.
VII. Event Four — Axe Throwing
Jens was excellent at axe throwing. This required no setup, no context, no dramatic revelation. He threw axes the way he did everything physical — with the complete, unselfconscious competence of someone who had been doing it since before he was big enough to do it well and had gotten very big and very better. His qualifying rounds were not exciting. They were thorough. He hit what he aimed at. He advanced.
The final round had five competitors.
Jens hit the mark each time.
The Jutland Dane hit the mark each time.
The Norwegian dragonship man hit the mark each time.
A young Swede who nobody had noticed in the brackets hit the mark each time, which was its own small story that nobody had time for right now.
And then an old woman walked in.
Not the same old woman as the arm wrestling one from the feast. A different old woman. This was a distinct phenomenon that Jens was beginning to understand was a real category in the world — extremely competent elderly women who appeared at exactly the moment his confidence was highest.
She was perhaps sixty-five. Small. She carried a set of axes that were beautifully maintained, the kind of maintenance that meant she had been doing this for a very long time and cared about it. She stood at the line and she threw without theatrics and she hit the center each time with the accuracy of someone for whom accuracy was not an achievement but a baseline.
She tied Jens in the qualifying marks.
The tiebreaker was a smaller target, further back.
Jens hit it. Center.
The old woman hit it. Center. Fractionally closer to the absolute middle than Jens's throw, by a margin that the official measured three times because he didn't believe it.
"Second place," the official said to Jens.
Jens stood at the line.
He looked at the target.
He looked at the old woman, who was collecting her axes with the calm of someone concluding a routine task.
"Second place," Jens confirmed.
"Yes."
He walked back to his crew.
Nobody said anything. They were learning when to not say things. This was one of those times.
Except Milos.
"Is it the same—"
"Different old woman," Jens said.
"Oh."
"Different one."
"So there are multiple—"
"Yes."
"That's—"
"Yes."
"Are they connected? Like a—"
"Milos."
"What."
"Please stop."
Milos stopped. He patted Jens on the arm. Once. With genuine sympathy.
Jens sat down and thought about what old women had against him specifically.
VIII. Sam and Tijjani and the Economy of the Tournament
On the first day, Sam and Tijjani went to the bookmakers to investigate.
On the second day, they placed several careful, specific bets.
On the third day, the bookmakers started looking at them with a new kind of attention.
By the fourth day, other crews' members were quietly asking Sam or Tijjani where the smart money was going, because word had gotten around that the small-crew nobody knarr had two people who seemed to know something, and nobody was sure what they knew or how, but the bets they'd placed were all paying out.
"How," Jens asked, on the fourth evening.
"We watch," Sam said.
"Lots of people watch."
"We watch differently," Tijjani said. "Sam watches the economics. I watch the people. Together—"
"We see what's going to happen," Sam finished. "Roughly."
"You predicted Yuki winning the drinking contest."
"We put money on it before the final, yes."
"How."
"He was the most controlled person in the bracket," Tijjani said. "Everyone else was trying. He was simply doing."
"And Sven—"
"Sven's size was an obvious factor but we adjusted for the emotional investment variable."
"The what."
"Sven genuinely didn't care if he won," Sam said. "Which meant he wasn't drinking with any tension in his body. Tension affects tolerance significantly."
"I didn't know that."
"Most people don't."
"How did you—"
"My father's warehouse manager explained it to me when I was twelve," Sam said. "He was a very experienced drinker. Very educational man."
Jens sat back. "And the others are coming to you."
"They started yesterday," Tijjani said. "We've been charging a small consultation fee."
"A—"
"And placing bets on their behalf for a percentage."
"You're running a—"
"Commercial service," Sam said firmly.
"That's not—"
"A completely legal commercial service in the context of an event that openly runs betting pools."
"Sam."
"Yes."
"Is this becoming organized—"
"No," Sam said.
"Because it sounds like—"
"It's commerce, Jens. I'm a merchant. This is what merchants do."
"With gambling."
"Gambling is just commerce with uncertainty built in. The uncertainty is the product."
Jens looked at Tijjani.
Tijjani said: "The Jutland Dane crew came to us this morning. The mixed crew came in the afternoon. We've had inquiries from three others."
"And you're—"
"Being helpful," Tijjani said.
"For a percentage."
"Generosity has its limits."
Jens put his face in his hands.
"You're aware," he said, through his hands, "that if the bookmakers work out what's happening—"
"They already know something is happening," Sam said. "They've adjusted our odds for future bets. Which means they're paying attention. Which means they won't work against us directly because we're making the pools more interesting and interesting pools attract more bettors and more bettors means more money for the bookmakers."
"You've created a situation where the people who should stop you have financial incentive not to."
"Yes."
"That's—"
"Efficient," Sam said.
Jens stood up. He looked at them both. He thought about saying several things and said none of them.
"Don't get us thrown out of the tournament," he said.
"Of course not," Sam said.
"Sam."
"We're assets to the tournament economy, Jens. Throwing us out would be counterproductive."
Jens walked away and made the decision not to think about this.
Tijjani watched him go.
"He's worried," Sam said.
"He's right to be slightly worried. We should probably—"
"Slow down? Yes." Sam wrote something in his tablet. "After the next round."
"Sam."
"One more round."
"Sam."
"The Swede axe thrower is being underestimated by everyone. Enormous upside on his final placement."
Tijjani looked at the tablet. Looked at the numbers. Looked at Sam.
"One more round," Tijjani said.
IX. Event Five — The Treasure Hunt
The final event was explained by the tournament organizer as follows:
Three objects had been hidden on the island. Each crew had the same starting information — a description of each object and three clues, the same clues for everyone. First crew to return all three objects to the starting point won the event, and the event carried the highest point value of the tournament. Current standings going into it: the Jutland Danes were first, the Norwegian dragonship crew second, the Bubbly Crew third.
Third place could not win the tournament on points.
Unless they won the treasure hunt.
With all three objects.
By a significant margin.
"Right," Jens said.
The seven of them sat in a circle with the clue sheet.
This was, historically, the Bubbly Crew at their most dangerous. Not because they were smart — they were a mixed bag, intelligence-wise, ranging from Tijjani, who was genuinely brilliant, to Milos, who was genuinely not interested in being brilliant and made up for it in other ways. But they had, without intending to, developed a way of being together that was more than the sum of parts. Tijjani planned. Sam found angles. Jesper saw patterns and read languages. Sven noticed people. Yuki noticed everything else. Milos executed without hesitation. Jens held all of it in the same direction.
The clues were in three different languages.
Old Norse. Frankish. And something else.
"That's not Latin," Jesper said, looking at the third clue.
"Church Latin?" Sven suggested.
"No. Something older. Or further."
Yuki leaned over and looked at the third clue.
He said a word. In Japanese.
Then picked up a stick and wrote something in the dirt next to the clue. Characters — not runes, something different, a writing system nobody else in the circle recognized.
"Can you read that?" Jesper said.
Yuki nodded.
"What does it say."
Yuki thought about how to say it in his limited Norse. "'Where the water goes down but not away.'"
"A drain," Tijjani said immediately.
"Or a spring," Sam said. "Water table. Underground."
"The well," Sven said. "On the north side. I saw it when I—"
"SVEN," Jesper said. "The well. You walked past it?"
"Yesterday. When I was—"
"Does it have anything particular about it—"
"There was a loose stone on the south side. I noticed because I thought about fixing it—"
"That's it," Jesper said. He looked at the first clue, Norse. "This one says 'what holds a ship when the wind tries to take it.' Anchor. Where are the anchors kept here."
"Dock storage," Jens said. "I walked past this morning. Big building by the south dock."
"And the second." Jesper read the Frankish. "'A king's house made small.' A longhouse model. A carved thing. Someone who makes miniatures or—"
"The woodcarver," Sam said. "On the east side of camp. I spoke to him yesterday about acquiring—" He stopped. "I spoke to him."
"You've all been wandering around for three days," Tijjani said, with dawning comprehension.
"Yes," Sven said.
"And between you you've seen nearly every part of this island."
"Yes," Sven said.
"By accident."
"Sven makes friends everywhere he goes," Jesper said. "Sam assesses every commercial operation within walking distance. Jens inspects anything that might be useful to a ship. Milos—" he looked at Milos.
"I explore," Milos said.
"You wander looking for things to climb or fight."
"That's exploring."
"And you've covered the hills and the north shore and—"
"And there's a cave," Milos said. "Northeast side. Behind the second hill. Big one."
"Is there anything in it."
"A box. I didn't open it because it looked important."
"A BOX—"
"It looked like it belonged there—"
"MILOS, THAT'S ONE OF THE OBJECTS—"
"HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW—"
"WHAT ELSE WOULD A BOX IN A CAVE BE—"
"I THOUGHT IT WAS SOMEONE'S BOX—"
"IT WAS SOMEONE'S BOX, IT WAS THE TOURNAMENT'S BOX—"
"RIGHT," Jens said, over both of them. "We have all three locations. Split: Sven and Yuki to the well, Sam and Milos to the dock anchor storage, Jesper and I to the woodcarver. Everyone back to the start. Go."
They went.
The Jutland Danes had been working through the clues methodically and were halfway through the first one.
The Norwegian dragonship crew had solved two and were looking for the third.
The Bubbly Crew reconvened at the starting point seventeen minutes after the event began, with all three objects, having not actually solved any of the clues in the traditional sense so much as remembered where they'd already been.
The tournament organizer looked at them.
Looked at the three objects.
Looked at the time.
"All three," he confirmed.
"All three," Jens confirmed.
"...how."
"We know the island," Jens said.
The camp reacted.
Not just the cheering of people whose bet had paid off, though that was part of it. Something bigger. The sound of several hundred Vikings recalibrating simultaneously — the noise of an assumption being revised, of a verdict reopened, of a name being filed in a new category.
Not nobody.
Not anymore.
X. The Aftermath
They won the tournament. Total points, across all events, with the treasure hunt maximum tipping the balance: the Bubbly Crew.
The prize silver was real and Sam counted it twice and confirmed it was real and then counted it once more because he wanted to.
The dragonship prow was decorative and Milos immediately wanted to put it on the Bubbly and Jens said "it won't fit" and Milos said "we'll make it fit" and Sven said "maybe not" and it was eventually decided to bring it anyway and figure it out later.
The plaque — the small carved wooden plaque representing eternal bragging rights — Jens held in both hands and looked at for a moment.
"Small," Milos said.
"Eternal," Jens said.
"Still small."
"The bragging rights are eternal. The plaque is—"
"Small."
"Yes," Jens agreed.
He put it in his shirt, close to his chest, which was the safest place he had.
The camp talked for the rest of the day and into the evening and the talk was about the Bubbly Crew, specifically, the way people talked about things that surprised them — with the energy of people wanting to get ahead of the story, to be the ones who said I knew about them before or I saw them or I was there when.
The Jutland Danes sent a man to introduce himself properly, not the dismissal of day one but the genuine overture of people who respected a result.
The mixed crew came to drink with them, specifically with Sven, who they had adopted at some point during the week without anyone noticing.
The Norwegian dragonship crew — Gunnar Ironside and his people — acknowledged them with a nod that meant something in the specific vocabulary of experienced competitors. Jens nodded back with the same weight.
And at the edge of the camp, in the early evening, Erik Solveigson sat on a rock and watched the Bubbly Crew receive their acknowledgments, and watched Jesper specifically, who was currently telling someone a story and using his hands and looking, in the evening light, exactly like someone who had always been worth looking at.
Erik Solveigson was a patient man.
He was also a man who had looked for something for a while now and had a feeling, watching Jesper, that his search had just become more complicated.
He stood up. Went back to his ship. Said nothing to anyone.
His crew noticed him notice. His crew knew him well enough not to ask.
Not yet.
XI. The Night After
The Bubbly sat in the harbor, rocking gently. The camp was quieting. The prize silver was stowed. Bjarni was asleep. The three stowaways had emerged from below deck, emboldened by the presence of so many camps with accessible food, and were presently in various locations on the island and would reassemble on the ship by morning because they always did.
The crew sat on the deck, all seven.
The stars were very clear.
They didn't say much, immediately. There was a fullness to the silence, the specific density of people who had done something together and were sitting in the done thing, not yet ready to talk about it.
Milos ate.
Sven had an arm around Bjarni.
Sam had his tablet and was not writing in it.
Tijjani was looking at the stars with the expression of someone thinking about something they couldn't yet name.
Yuki was at the prow in his morning position, except it was night, and he had turned around.
Facing forward.
Facing them.
"We won," Milos said eventually.
"Yes," said Jens.
"Together."
"Together."
Milos nodded. "Good."
"The treasure hunt," Sam said. "We won it because we'd all been—"
"Wandering," Sven said.
"Wandering. Being ourselves. Not planning any of it."
"Sven made friends," Jesper said.
"Yes."
"Milos found a cave."
"Yes."
"You bought things you didn't need from a woodcarver."
"I was assessing the market—"
"You now own a small carved longhouse."
"As an investment."
"It's a toy."
"It's a collectible."
"It's a toy, Sam."
"It's—"
"Sam."
Sam looked at the sky. "It's a very nice toy."
Something rippled through the group. Not quite a laugh. A shared warmth, the specific warmth of people who know each other well enough to be honest and have decided to be.
"People were talking about us," Tijjani said. "At the camp. After."
"I heard," Jens said.
"Not legend. Not yet. But—"
"Noted," Jens said. "We're noted."
"Is that good?" Sven asked.
"It means we can't be invisible anymore," Tijjani said. "Invisible was in some ways—"
"Easier," Jesper said.
"Yes."
"But boring," Milos said.
"Yes," Tijjani agreed. "But boring."
Yuki said: "Name travel fast."
"Yes," Jesper said. "Name travels fast."
"Good name or bad name?"
"So far—" Jesper thought about it. "Strange name. The cat island. The tournament. We're the strange crew."
"Strange is good," Milos said, with the certainty of someone for whom this had always been true.
"Strange might protect us sometimes," Tijjani said. "People don't know what to do with strange. They watch it instead of attacking it."
"Until they work out how," Sam said.
"Until then."
The ship rocked.
The stars moved in their slow way.
Below, the sea was dark and going somewhere as it always was.
"Tomorrow," Jens said.
"Tomorrow," they said.
"We sail for Frisia."
A comfortable silence.
Then Jesper said: "Do you actually know where Frisia is?"
And the answer was the same as it had been before, which was that nobody was entirely sure, which was also, somehow, fine. They had the plaque. They had the silver. They had seven people on a knarr with a slightly ridiculous name and an emerging reputation for being impossible to predict.
The North Sea was wide.
The world was beginning to know their name.
Whatever came next, it would find them ready.
Probably.
Approximately.
Close enough.
The Bubbly Viking Crew departs for Frisia. The North Sea talks. And on a ship not far behind, a Norwegian man named Erik Solveigson watches the red sail disappear into the morning and makes a decision he will not act on yet. Yet.