Svend was the first to see the other ship, a low-walled drakkar black with age sliding over the choppy sea. Its sail was stowed as if expecting a storm, and from each of its sides emerged a thicket of long oars furiously fighting the white-capped waves. Svend, one arm locked around the longship’s dragon prow, pawed at the damp that clung to his face and blinked. But his eyes had not lied, and the strange ship grew closer with each beat of its oars.

“Hrodgar! By Throd, this you must see!” Svend called, and the crew stood on the rocking deck and shielded their eyes out of habit from a sun that was all but shrouded in that leaden sky. And Hrodgar, King’s Champion and War Chief of the Ghotts, rose from the side of his dead king and moved stiffly to the bow of the forty-man longship.

“What devil ship is this that rows through a man-high chop and against the very winds?” Svend asked, searching the face of Hrodgar as the War Chief drew near. A storm had knit itself across Hrodgar’s dark visage, and the glint in his eye presaged the coming battle. His black beard bristled. He turned to his scant crew and roared his orders in a voice that overpowered the slap of waves and creak of wood, rope, and sail.

“Take in the sail men, there’s no outrunning these fiends. Clear the decks and arm yourselves. Now’s the time to test that stolen mail!” Though weary and wounded, the men hastened to the task, but Hrodgar saw the confusion in their pale faces. “You’ve not much time in which to doubt what I’m about to say, but yon black ship is the vessel of the Sea Kings; cold fiends who’ve come to take Ceding from us and press him to their service. By our steel they will not!”

The men looked aft, where the body of their dead king lay wound in sailcloth, young Ceding slain at the hands of a Nolundish horseman as he commanded his first raid on distant shores.

The devil ship grew closer, cleaving the wild seas as sure and as sharp as a knife.

Gaunt-faced Vulfnir was first at the chief’s side, his eyes questioning beneath wind-whipped locks of iron gray. “Surely these are but reavers, bound late for the season’s raiding in Nolund. Why frighten the men with campfire tales? It will not help them fight.”

But the black ship had moved within bowshot, and a glimpse of it was enough to banish Vulfnir’s doubts. Its design was ancient, that of the first men, and its salt-pitted planks were encrusted with coral as if it had long lain beneath the ocean. From its mast depended clumps of sea-grass, and its prow was an uneven, barnacled knob. But for all its strangeness, it was the ship’s crew that stole the breath and stilled the heart.

“Throd’s balls, I’d swear twas Gothrim Shieldbreaker pulling just there, second on this side.” And so it was. Vulfnir exclaimed a string of curses as he watched the damned crew grow closer, and recognized others at the sweeps from their likenesses in the sagas. “Tis all kings ever lost at storm or buried in the sea, Hrodgar wh—”

The champion was already pacing the decks, kindling the fire of courage in his men. “A king’s rest is in the Halls of Valor, not a cold bed of sea-grass. Ceding died a man, and we would not be men if we did not see him home for the pyre. All that die here will drink at his right hand till world’s end, and none who hear our tale shall hold their valor above that of men who fought demons, and died facing into the storm!”

Hrodgar’s warriors steeled themselves, fierce men and hard, clad in hauberk and helm and battle-scarred shield, good war spears in their hands and keen axes in their belts. A few nocked arrow to bow; others readied throwing spears. But by some dread glamour the Sea Kings stole athwart the longship with neither arrow nor spear hurled in challenge. With mud-encrusted grapnels of ancient bronze, the wights of the sea held fast the two vessels, the deep-traveled drakkar and raider’s longship. The Sea Kings then rose armed and glittering from their benches and, while Hrodgar’s crew looked on in frozen wonderment, boarded the longship at many points along its flank.

Defenseless Vulfnir was the first to die, his head taken cleanly as he stood transfixed at the bow. Others followed, their bellies opened by salt-pitted steel, their limbs cleaved by swords thought lost to the world of men, blades renowned in song and saga. The Kings were all around them, many seeming men like themselves in hauberk and byrnie, others of an older kind in age-greened plates of bronze. Ever had they haunted the wild seas between the Isles of Storm and the mainland, hungry for royal blood to fill their ranks. Should any king of man be lost upon the sea, or any as is unburned enter upon that wind-tossed realm, then those that count themselves his peers and rule upon the deep take him to their service. Such fierce Kings slew with sword and seax the helpless crew, and pushed toward dead Ceding to administer their blessing.

But rage swelled within Hrodgar, who had watched a score of his men die on the journey, and with a roar the black-haired giant broke the spell of those dread lords and let fly his hand axe to find the cold heart of the King that slew Vulfnir, his friend of thirty years. The specter fell. The glamour that allowed the Kings to board unopposed was ended and the helpless Ghotts regained their senses.

“Ho, men! Up and give these fiends a second death. Kings they call themselves, but in company no better than slaves I say. Slaves that break their own backs at the oars!”

With this, the men rallied and struck about them with sword, spear, and bearded axe, dealing migthful blows to flesh long chilled in the deepest places beneath the waves. But, though their blood coursed cold, the Sea Kings were battle-wise and prideful, and their blades dealt death on all sides. Many men fell dead upon the blood-washed deck.

“Dogs! Slaves-o-the-bench curs that raise a cup of brine and eat cold fish whilst men sup on joints and mead,” Hrodgar roared, standing fast between Ceding and the Kings, drenched in the ice-blood of the wights of the deep. Though weary, he spun his long-axe in a blurred arc to sides and front, and the Sea Kings lost limbs and heads and suffered opened bellies as they tried to get through its murderous sweep. Hrodgar laughed to see them fall, and scythed through them just as the reaper mows the high grass of the summer season. “Here then is a sharp taste for numb lips!”

A King unlike the others, an ancient ruler of lands long lost beneath the salty lick of the tide and the whited foam crests of the wave-legions of the sea, halted beyond the ring of crumpled bodies and raised his sword in salute. In speech of foreign cast, in a voice cold as an ocean grave, he spoke the rite long used of kings in the binding of their champions. He spoke this as an offering.

Hrodgar searched the faces of his dwindling crew, the fierce but mortal men caught between the willful dead and the uncaring immensity of the sea. With a laugh he cast his bloody axe at the feet of the eldritch lord, and roared his answer above the din, “Aye, if it’s to be that, I’ll champion your wintry cause, only waste not another drop of real men’s blood in the taking of your prize!”

And with that, the King speared Hrodgar through the chest, the War Chief’s double mail no proof against the dread blade of ancient make.

The Kings ceased their warring as quickly as they had begun and bore the slain champion solemnly to their ship, loosed their grapnels, and cast off into the chop. Ceding, King of the Ghotts, lay whole beneath a bloody wrap, and the longship had crew enough to see it to Reaver’s Bay. The few survivors burned their king in splendor and entombed him in a barrow of good earth, and split what little remained of the journey’s take. None went to sea again, and they shunned the company of reavers for the rest of their days. But even still, on winter nights when tongues were loosed by drink, hearth-fire tales of the giant of the sea, the black-bearded Champion of the Sea Kings that slays entire crews with mightful blows of his ice-rimed axe, could not fail to reach them. At such times they pretended not to hear, and filled their cups anew, and moved closer to the fire.