The summer sun beat down mercilessly from high in the sky, onto the lake just outside of Kattegat. Ivar shielded his eyes to glare up at it accusingly, as though he could somehow shame it into retreating behind a cloud. The sun appeared to have no intention of doing any such thing. It was shortly after midday, and in the summer, they would have hours of heat to look forward to.
Ivar was fast beginning to regret wearing dark clothing. He pulled off his tunic over his head and dropped it on top of the already discarded gloves that he wore to protect his hands and the delicate bones of his wrists as he moved around. Not far away, his brother's clothing lay in three similar piles where they had stripped before diving into the cool water of the lake.
Overhead, gulls circled in the sky, and the smell of pollen and slightly brackish water filled his nostrils. In the water, his three brothers shrieked and laughed as they splashed and swam.
Ivar dipped a hand into the edge of the lake, splashed his face, then ran his fingers through his hair. It felt wonderful for a moment, but it did not last long enough.
The glare of the sun was blinding on the surface of the lake and Ivar squinted as he watched Hvitserk swim up silently behind an unsuspecting Sigurd and push him underneath. He held him there for a moment, until Sigurd came up gasping and bedraggled, with water dripping from his nose and the ends of his braids. One hand paddled in the water to keep him from slipping underneath again, while the other emerged in a fist, ready to swing. Ivar couldn't help but laugh as Hvitserk dove into the cool depths and resurfaced on the other side of the lake, safe from Sigurd's retribution.
Although he would never tell them, he envied his brothers their ability to swim and play in the water. He could have joined them, of course, he had done so before, but it would not be the same for him. While he could float on the surface and move himself around after a fashion, he could not swim. Neither could he stand in the shallower water, and so to stay in the lake for any length of time would be both exhausting and awkward. Not to mention that if he were to sink below the surface while his brothers were distracted, he could easily drown.
But, in the water, he felt weightless, like he could almost stand. And it would be wonderfully cool...
He moved a just a little closer to the edge and plunged both of his hands in up to the wrists. He splashed his face and chest, then dipped his tunic into the water to soak it, and draped it around his shoulders. He pulled the cap from the leather flask he had brought with him, and took a long drink of water that his brothers had not washed and swam in, then moved himself slightly back from the water to place himself completely in the shade. He lay down, resting his head on the ground, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to relax to the sound of birdsong, and his brothers enjoying the swim.
Soon, when they got bored of being wet, when their fingertips started to wrinkle uncomfortably and they grew tired of unexpected dunkings, they would emerge from the water and dry off in the sun, before the four of them would make their way back up to the cabin to relax until the afternoon's heat subsided a little. As night approached, they would light a fire and cook some of the meat from the deer that Ivar had brought down with a lucky arrow the day before.
It was surprisingly comfortable laying in the grass in the shade of the tree, and slowly the world around him began to fade away as the heat sapped what was left of his energy.
Water hit him suddenly and unexpectedly.
Ivar spluttered against the plume of lake water that hit him directly in the face. He gasped, one hand swiping frantically at his eyes to clear them, the other reaching out, ready to exact retribution on whoever had dared to...
Laughter.
As he cleared the water from his eyes, the image of Ubbe, his second oldest brother after Björn, and supposedly the responsible one, swam into view. Ubbe grinned widely behind his hand as he wiped water from his lips. His hair, braided at the back, was frizzing on the top where it had started to dry in the heat, and his shoulders were burned red from the sun.
"Why don't you get in the water with us, Ivar?" he asked. "I can almost hear you sizzling in the heat."
Ivar stared at him, his sleep-addled brain still trying to piece together why he was suddenly wet. "Did you spit at me?" he demanded.
"No." Ubbe smiled, then shrugged. "Not really. It was a mouth full of lake water," he added, as though that made it okay.
Ivar reached behind him for his rapidly drying tunic, and used it to scrub at his face. He scowled at his brother. Ubbe was standing in the shallow edge of the lake, emerging from the water at just below waist level.
He reached down with one hand, and splashed Ivar. Drops of water covered him, and it felt good. "Come in," he said. "Mother would never forgive me if I let you die of heat exhaustion."
Ivar rolled his eyes. "I don't want to. I like it here."
"Told you," came a shout from behind Ubbe. Ivar glanced out into the lake, and Ubbe half turned to look at Sigurd. He was closer to the centre of the lake, submerged to his shoulders in the water. "He doesn't want to get in because he's afraid of the water."
What? Ivar pushed himself up into a fully seated position to allow him to better glare at his slightly older brother. "I am not. Why don't you come over here and say that to my face?!"
Sigurd laughed in response. "If you're not afraid, why don't you come in the water and prove it?"
Ubbe watched the exchange with folded arms and a disapproving expression on his face, but made no move to stop either one of them.
"I have nothing to prove to you, Sigurd," Ivar told him.
He squashed down a stab of anger at Sigurd's accusation. He imagined himself moving to the water's edge and launching himself effortlessly into the lake, swimming the length of the water before pulling himself onto the shore once again to repeat that he had no interest in swimming.
If only it was as easy as that. For a start, he could not swim. The best that he could hope for in the water would be to sit at the edge, submerged up to his neck, with reeds tangling around his feet. Or perhaps to be carried by Ubbe into the deeper water where he could float around for a while, unable to fully relax due to Sigurd's malicious presence.
Maybe if Sigurd hadn't been there, if it had only been Ivar with Ubbe and Hvitserk, he might have joined them in the water. But of course if Sigurd had not been there, nobody would have challenged him, or accused him of being a coward, and he would be happily relaxing in the shade.
Appearing to realise that he wasn't going to change his brother's mind, Ubbe shrugged. "Your choice," he said, then reached into the water and sprayed Ivar with a splash one more time, then fell backward into the lake with a grin, and disappeared under the surface.
Sigurd remained where he was for a moment, then shrugged. Deciding that Ivar wasn't going to take the bait this time, he turned his attention to Hvitserk, who had made the mistake of moving closer to him. Sigurd plunged a hand into the water and splashed his older brother in the face. Hvitserk responded in kind, floating onto his back and kicking up the water with both feet until Sigurd began to beg for mercy.
Ivar closed his eyes and began to relax again.
For a moment.
Drip... Drip...
The water wasn't hitting him directly. Instead, it appeared to be bouncing up from the ground and landing on him in small splatters.
Drip...
Apart from that one. That one had been a direct hit to his left nipple.
Irritated, he opened his eyes again to see that Hvitserk had climbed out of the lake and was standing next to him, naked as the day he was born, and dripping wet. Water ran from his hair, down his face and back, and eventually onto the ground. Or onto Ivar.
"You're not really afraid of the water, are you?" he asked.
Ivar propped himself up onto his elbows and shot an accusatory glare out into the lake where Sigurd was floating on the surface of the water with his arms and legs outstretched. Sigurd was going to pay for this one. It was partially his own fault for speaking about these things to Floki when somebody could overhear him, but still, Sigurd was going to regret it.
Hvitserk sat down on the grass a short distance away, and stretched out, basking in the warmth of the sunlight. "Are you?"
Ivar shook his head, and tore his attention away from thoughts of revenge for the time being. "Of course not." Hvitserk had seen him in the lake before. So had Sigurd for that matter.
He wasn't afraid.
He really wasn't.
Only... He thought of Hvitserk pushing Sigurd under the water. If one of his brothers did that to him, he did not know whether he would be able to surface by himself. He imagined the water closing over his head, and the world growing darker as he sunk deeper beneath the surface. He imagined precious bubbles of air escaping from his lips as he screamed for help, with nobody able to hear him. He thought of the long reeds that grew on the bottom of the lake, and imagined them tangling around his arms and legs, growing worse the more he struggled against them.
Despite the heat, he shivered.
"No," he repeated.
Ubbe and Hvitserk had almost drowned once. They had fallen through the ice of a frozen lake. He imagined what that must have been like; the water icy cold, perhaps already beginning to freeze over again and seal them underneath. He imagined the terror they must have felt as they had fallen, the certainty that death was near, and he could not understand how either one of them could stand to submerge themselves in the water of the lake.
Okay, so maybe he didn't exactly love the idea of going into the water, but that didn't mean that he was afraid.
"So why does Sigurd think that you are?"
"Because Sigurd is an..." Ivar stopped, then gritted his teeth. Sigurd hadn't arrived at his theory by simple observation and piecing things together; he wasn't that clever. No, there was only one explanation. Hvitserk was staring at him intently, and Ivar knew that the only way he was ever going to end this conversation was to tell the truth. "Because he overheard me talking to Floki," he admitted. "But I am not afraid of the lake."
Hvitserk nodded, and remained silent, waiting for more.
Floki had been telling him, not for the first time, of the first journey that he and Ragnar had made to the west, to England, setting out with no real certainty that they would find land. He had told them of other trips across the ocean, of ships lost to the waves, and of men who had set out alongside them and never arrived at their destination. "I do not like the sea," Ivar admitted.
Hvitserk's lips quirked into a shadow of a smile before his expression grew serious again. "You've never been in the sea," he said. "Or even on the sea."
That was what Floki had told him too. Ivar shrugged. "True. And now you know why."
"No, that's not why," Hvitserk insisted. "You have never been on the sea because both you and Sigurd were too young when father took Ubbe and I to Frankia. After that, you would not have had the chance."
Ivar felt his lip curl in distaste. "Why would I not? Because nobody would ever ask a cripple to join their raiding party?"
Hvitserk hesitated. "Yes," he admitted. "Though I might not have put it quite so harshly. But not only that, you're still almost a child, and Sigurd has never been to sea either."
Ivar scowled. "I am not a child, and Sigurd would have no interest in raiding. All he wants to do is lounge around playing music and spreading his legs for anybody who asks. Anyway, you were a child when father took you to Frankia."
Hvitserk nodded. "But that was different, because it was our father. Unless he decides to come back, we'll all have to either join other crews, or have Floki build us a boat of our own. Or not. There's no shame in staying in Kattegatt, you know."
"Says the brother planning to go with Björn to explore south," Ivar said.
Hvitserk shrugged. "He asked all of us, I was the only one that decided to take him up on the offer."
That wasn't quite true though, was it? Either Hvitserk hadn't noticed that one of his brothers had been missed out of the invitation, or had chosen to ignore it.
"Anyway," Hvitserk added, he clapped Ivar on the shoulder and grinned widely. "If you do ever go raiding, can I be there to watch when you tell mother?"
Ivar frowned. "I will go," he said. But Hvitserk was right, that would be a... difficult conversation. For all that their mother had told him his entire life that he was just as strong and capable as his brothers, and that one day he would be a great warrior and carry on his father's legacy, he didn't think that she actually believed it. Not really.
But it didn't matter, because Ivar believed it.
"Well, sign me up to go too," Hvitserk told him. "But first, you need to get over that fear of the water. Unless you want to conquer the world by land, riding on my back."
Ivar scowled. "I am not afraid, I just...don't like it very much. In theory." He folded his arms defiantly. "Anyway, it is not important. When the time comes, I will board the boat regardless."
Hvitserk nodded. "Well, one good thing about the ocean, he said. "Out there on the open water, being able to swim would make no difference at all. The waves can get so big and the wind so strong that anybody who goes overboard will end up as food for Jörmungandr."
Ivar swallowed, suddenly feeling queasy at the thought. He took a deep breath and the sensation passed. If Hvitserk thought that piece of information was going to help, he was mistaken.
One glance at Hvitserk and the expression on his face showed that he had not been trying to help. Ivar opened his mouth to say something in return, but for once, words failed him. Hvitserk got to his feet, shrugged apologetically, grinned, and backed away into the water again. As Ivar watched, he ducked underneath, and re-emerged at the other side of the lake.
Ivar glared at him for a moment, then looked around. His brothers' clothes still lay in three messy piles close to the water's edge. Well, if Hvitserk wanted to mess with him, he could mess right back again. Sigurd too, for that matter. His little dig about him being afraid had started the whole thing.
And now that he thought about it, it was Ubbe who had drawn everybody's attention to the fact that he wasn't in the water. And it was Ubbe who had spat water in his face while he dosed in the heat...
Ivar glanced out into the centre of the lake to check that his brothers were distracted, then flipped himself onto his front and made his way over to the piles of clothing...