The next morning, Tanis woke him at dawn with a bowl of hot porridge. As little as Skíði enjoyed waking up at dawn, he had to admit that having a hot bowl of porridge already there to go into his empty belly was nice. He ate his porridge gratefully, and then stood, put on his boots, and took a walk into the woods to pee. When he returned, Ajax, Brother Paweł, Svanbjörn, and Yrsa were packing up small bags to bring with them, so he hurried over to pick up his bag off the ground.

“We are going into town then?” he asked, still yawning.

“Yes,” Ajax answered. “If we’re on land and river anyway, we could use some more supplies. Lin and Tanis have volunteered to stay here with the ship.”

“Will they be alright by themselves?” he asked with a small frown of concern.

“Why, are you going to stay with them?” was the sour response. “They’ll be fine. Come on. Daylight is wasting.”

Skíði gave Lin and Tanis a short wave before hurrying to follow the others. What was the story behind those two, he wondered, that Ajax trusted them to watch the ship alone? Or were they lovers and Ajax was trying to give them time alone? He knew that Brother Paweł would frown on that, but Skíði had known several couples who didn’t marry and didn’t see any harm in it as long as everyone was happy.

“Is it really alright to leave Tanis alone with Lin?” Brother Paweł was asking, almost as if on cue. “A man and woman alone… and I doubt those two have been married in a church.”

Ajax laughed. “Believe me, monk, Tanis isn’t Lin’s type.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” the old monk asked with a frown. “She is a lovely young woman, and he has surely taken no vow of celibacy.”

Ajax grinned a maniac grin. “He certainly has not done that. No, Lin has his reasons for not being interested in Tanis. Several of them, in fact. They are fine friends, but if they were ever more than that, I would be very surprised. I suspect Lin would be surprised as well.”

“What of Tanis, then?” Yrsa asked. “A woman can make up her own mind. If Lin isn’t interested in her, is she interested in him?”

“So to speak,” Ajax said easily. “It’s complicated. She respects Lin, and admires him. As I said, they are fine friends. But unless Lin acquires a head injury I doubt anything will ever come of it.”

Brother Paweł shook his head. “Is something wrong with her? Why would Lin not be interested in her without a traumatic injury?”

Svanbjörn sighed. “Surely this is between Lin and Tanis, and is none of our business.” He turned to Ajax and said pointedly, “So, tell us more of this town. A fishing town, you said?”

The subject successfully changed, they walked on, and Skíði felt his attention shift away from the chatter of the others. There were bluebirds singing in the nearby trees, flitting here and there. He watched them as they marched for one candle mark, then another. They took a rest on the banks of another river, this one smaller than the Wisła.

“Does this river meet the Wisła?” Skíði asked after scooping up a handful of water.

Ajax shook his head. “It starts at a small spring not far from the Wisła, but they do not quite connect.”

They rested there for a short time. They were just standing up to start walking again when Skíði heard a distinctive high-pitched yowl from the river, and turned just in time to see a small scrap of black fur struggling to escape the water. He didn’t hesitate, but waded into the river and grabbed the struggling kitten by the scruff of the neck.

“They can swim, you know,” Yrsa said helpfully as Skíði set the coughing and sneezing bundle of claws and teeth on the bank of the river.

“When they are this small? In a river that deep?” he asked. The kitten stopped sneezing and gave him a look of pure disdain. It meowed at him as if to say, ‘I thank you, but I had the situation under control,’ and began to groom it’s sopping wet fur with as much dignity as it could muster. “Very well, your lordship, as you say.”

He dug into his pack for some of the stockfisk he had packed and broke off a piece. Even before he had knelt down to offer it to the soaked kitten, it was winding about his ankles and meowing imperiously. He offered it the dry, salted fish. It sniffed it and delicately ate it, then meowed for more.

“Now you’ve done it, boy,” Brother Paweł grumbled. “You fed it, it will follow you forever now.”

“It is well,” Yrsa said. “They’re beloved of Freyja, it is said. Is this a boy, or need we worry about more kittens in our future?”

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“I don’t know.” He picked up the kitten and peered closely at its hindparts as it yowled and wriggled angrily in his grasp. “A boy. Here, your lordship, for the damage to your dignity.” He broke off another piece of stockfisk for him. Skíði received a glare for his trouble, but the kitten licked his paw three times, paused, and took the fish.

“Are you going to give him a name?” Svanbjörn asked. “Assuming he follows us, which he might.” He reached down a hand for the kitten to smell. The scrap of fur hissed at the older man, and scramble up Skíði’s pant leg, all the way up his tunic, to perch on his shoulder, hissing menacingly at the others.

Skíði thought for a moment. “Vaði.” Svanbjörn and Yrsa snorted, and he grinned. “I mean, under the circumstances.”

“Enough about the kitten,” Ajax said. “Let us get a move on. We’re losing daylight. If he follows us he can keep the name. If not, it’s one less mouth to feed.”

They moved on. Skíði had a passenger perched on his shoulder, shivering from the cold of the river, for the first five minutes, until Vaði meowed piteously at him and he pick the kitten up off his shoulder and put him in his tunic where it was warm. There was an awkward moment where the kitten was scratching his way down Skíði’s chest before it hit his folded arms.

Once there, the kitten meowed again and curled up in his tunic, purring and grooming it’s wet fur. Skíði cradled the tiny black scrap of fur for the better part of a league as they walked. Vaði slept, purring, presumably comfortable, warm, and fed, the rest of the journey into town.

The town reminded Skíði of the parts of Visby near the shipyards in a way that made his heart twinge and pang a little with homesickness. Ajax stopped someone on their way into town and spoke quietly in Latin to him. The fellow shrugged, answered in another language entirely, and Brother Paweł straightened, and said something in what sounded like the same tongue. The man answered. They exchanged a series of fluid sentences, and the man went on his way.

“We’re not so far from the city I grew up in,” Brother Paweł said, answering their questioning looks. “He told me where we can find a shipwright. Follow me.”

With Brother Paweł in the lead, they walked into the small village. As they passed a fishmonger, Vaði clawed his way up Skíði’s tunic and meowed a question.

“Perhaps later,” he told the tiny black kitten, who was looking much more dry and quite fluffy. To his surprise, Vaði only meowed again, as if in agreement, and crawled back down into his tunic.

Several moments later, after Brother Paweł had stopped for directions twice more, they walked up to a small storehouse and found inside two small fishing vessels being build. A man put down his hammer and the piece of chinking in his hand, and puffed over to them, wheezing slightly as he got closer. Brother Paweł spoke to him a moment, and then looked to Skíði.

“Skíði, go outside with that devil beast you picked up,” he said. “The shipwright is asking if one of us has a cat. They give him breathing fits.”

“I will wait outside,” Skíði agreed, and stepped outside. He looked up at the sky uncertainly, noting the thick clouds gathering there. “We may be in for some rain, Vaði,” he told the kitten, who meowed in agreement. He felt he temperature of the air and shivered, grateful for the warm kitten under his tunic. “Or worse.”

He was right about the worse. Just as the others came out, carrying a huge bundle of the wooden slats that made chinking, the first slushy drops of sleet began to fall from the sky. The other four look askance at the sky, and gave a collect sigh of disgust.

“This will be lovely to walk back to the ship in,” Yrsa muttered.

“Perhaps we should find that inn after all?” Ajax suggest, scowling upward as though the sky had mortally offended him.

Brother Paweł ducked back into the shipwright’s workship, then came out again, shaking his head. “There is no inn, Janusz says.” He squinted up at the sky. “We are in worse straights than Mother Mary, in many ways, for there is no inn for us. We might stay with Janusz, but with the kitten—”

“I’m not leaving Vaði out in this,” Skíði said firmly. Vaði stuck his head out of his tunic again and gave one loud, long, indignant yowl, and then ducked back inside.

Yrsa smiled, in spite of the sleet. “Well. That’s that.”

Skíði caught Svanbjörn and Ajax smiling also, although the latter covered it as soon as he noticed. Brother Paweł was frowing, but seeing he was outvoted, sighed.

“Then we walk,” the monk said grouchily. “Well, perhaps it will not last long.

“Let us hope the market is still open,” Yrsa said. “We did need other supplies as well.”

They were not so fortunate. The market stalls, when they walked up to them, were closing. Brother Paweł tried to talk to some of the shopkeepers, but they all of them shook their heads, pointed to the sky, and kept closing up. Finally they gave up and left, taking with them the bundle of chinking (fortunately wrapped in wax cloth), and their new addition of a tiny black fluffball named Vaði, tucked safe and warm into Skíði’s tunic.

They marched hard for almost a league through the sleet, and stopped again near the river where they had found Vaði. This time they stayed well away, as the sleet was likely to make the way there treacherous. They paused only briefly to eat some stockfisk, and then hard marched the rest of the way to the ship, shivering in the cold, damp sleet. At last they saw the ship in the distance, and, as if to mock them, the sleet slowed and then stopped completely. As they approached the ship, finally, the clouds were turning into a distant, chilly memory.

“That is entirely unfair,” Ajax muttered. Vaði, who had been shivering under Skíði’s tunic the entire trip, stuck his head out and meowed his agreement.

“Who this?” Lin asked, after grasping Ajax’s arm in greeting, looking the small, black kitten as Skíði finally fished the rascal out and set him on the scruff near the fire. The scamp gave him another disdainful look, and walked over to the fire, where he began to groom himself again with the utmost dignity the tiny kitten could muster.

“This is Vaði,” Skíði answered. “I rescued him from a river and he seems to have chosen me as his master.” Vaði meowed imperiously at this, looking offended. “Oh, forgive me, your lordship,” he corrected sarcastically, “he has chosen me as his servant.” Vaði meowed again as in agreement. “Why do I feel like I just lost an argument with a cat?”

“Because you did,” Ajax said firmly. “You absolutely did.”