CHAPTER 89: THE SIREN KNIGHT

Hermes had seen battlefields freeze before ... The smell of death, the stillness that followed a slaughter.

But this was different.

It was as if the whole world had been turned to stone.

Every man on that blood-slick shore had stopped mid-swing, mid-shout, mid-breath. Even Glasán himself looked stunned, staring at the raider in front of him as if expecting the man to snap out of it any second.

But he didn’t. None of them did.

Except Hermes and Apple. They stood in the middle of it all, perfectly fine.

Sirentone didn’t work on those who shared it. And they both did ... Apple’s version taken from Somner after he’d drained him dry. But neither twin moved a muscle. They simply stood, pretending to be caught under the same strange spell, curious to see what Glasán would do next.

Somner, meanwhile, was halfway through a one-handed duel with a raider while lazily inspecting his fingernails.

And Aphrodite was still behind a huge boulder, palms clamped over his mouth, as if the brutality might spill into him just from sight alone. His wide eyes peered over the rock like a hare waiting for the hawk to pass.

Glasán took it all in with the wide-eyed wonder of a child in a grand hall. He reached out and poked the nearest man in the chest. The raider’s eyes followed him, but the rest of him stayed frozen, muscles locked like he’d been carved from oak.

A slow grin spread over Glasán’s face.

He walked through the still fighters, weaving between raised swords and half-drawn bows. Then he stopped in front of a hulking raider, leaned in, and said in a testing voice:

"Kick yer mate in the stones."

The raider’s leg jerked back, and shot forward with a thud towards the other man’s balls. That made even Hermes wince.

The victim howled, doubling over and cursing in his. "Helvíti þér, svikin hundr!" (Hell on you, treacherous dog!).

Whatever had held him snapped like a thread, and he rounded on Glasán with a roar, spewing a string of Norse curses. His sword flashed high...

"Stop!"

The word cracked through the air like a whip. The raider froze mid-swing, eyes wild, breath ragged.

Glasán let out a long breath, a shaky smile tugging at his lips. "Well now... that’s somethin’, isn’t it?"

But when he spoke again, his voice had changed. The usual reedy tone was gone. What came out was deep and commanding, like the sea itself was speaking through him.

He pointed toward the dark line of the water.

"Drown, ye plunderin’ curs. Drown, and let the sea take what’s hers."

The frozen Vikings twitched...

And began to move.

The Vikings did not run, did not fight. They staggered as if strings were being pulled from their heels. They were screaming then, high thin keening, prayers spat to any god who might answer.

Some barked "Óðinn!" (Odin!), some begged "Freyr, hjálpa oss!" (Freyr, help us!), and the words came laced with panic that made the air taste metallic.

Step by step, they were pulled into the black water of the bay.

The sea here was no gentle thing. Its waves were heavy, rolling in with the weight of the Atlantic beyond.

The first man vanished under a breaking crest, only to surface thrashing, choking on salt water as his own arms refused to swim.

His mouth gaped open, coughing up brine, eyes bulging in terror. Another was dragged down by the pull of the tide, the white foam swallowing his final scream.

One by one, the raiders went under.

Hermes watched a Viking’s fingers pry at his own throat as he went. The man’s nails scraped skin; his eyes begged, but he was already finishing. A foamy welt rose at the corner of his mouth and he sank, bubbles the last punctuation.

Longships lay off, silent and empty; their oars tapped like slow fingers on the hulls as if to count the bodies. The tide rolled out and left the beach a smear of tracks that meant nothing now.

The worst part, Hermes thought, was that they did not drown like beasts felled in battle. They drowned as people who could still think: cursing their gods, whispering names, trying to bargain with the water itself.

One old raider kept whispering the same line over and over in Norse, as if repeating it would undo what was happening —

"Ek vil eigi detta."

’I do not want to fall’. And each repetition came thinner, until finally there was no line left at all.

The air was thick with the sound of drowning ... the awful, gurgling breaths, the last desperate splashes. They were fully aware of what was happening. That was the worst part.

Soon the longships bobbed empty in the shallows, their oars shifting in the tide like fingers twitching in a dream.

Not a single Viking was left alive on that beach.

Hermes and Apple locked eyes.

There it was... the Siren Knight.

The very first.

His debut written in seawater and death.

When the Irishmen snapped out of the spell, confusion gave way to an explosion of cheers.

They surged toward Glasán, lifting him clean off his feet and onto their shoulders.

"Ridire na Mara!" Someone bellowed. ’Knight of the Sea.’

"The merrow’s own son!" another roared.

Even Dubhán, who’d never missed a chance to call Glasán a coward, was red-faced with excitement.

"By Christ’s nails, Glasán! Come on now ... tavern’s callin’ us! We’ll drink ’til the barrels run dry!"

Hermes, slipping through the crowd, caught Apple by the arm and yanked him close. With a flick of his fingers, Rewind cleaned the blood from Apple’s mouth, the crimson fading as if it had never been there.

"Come on." Hermes muttered. "You too, Aphrodite. Keep to the shadows, but we’re followin’ them."

"Ah, what for?" Apple said, his tone lazy but his eyes sharp.

"Because." Hermes said, glancing at the boy on the men’s shoulders, "We need to hear from his own lips where that voice of his came from."

They trailed the jubilant soldiers toward the village, the noise of laughter and victory songs rolling down the path ahead of them. The air was sharp with the smell of woodsmoke and the tang of the nearby sea.

Glasán looked small against the shoulders of the broad men carrying him, but there was nothing small about his grin. For the first time in his life, the boy wasn’t hiding at the edge of the hall or shying away from the training yard.

Tonight, the whole world... Or at least their corner of it... would raise a cup in his name.

And Hermes intended to be close enough to hear every word he said. He wanted to find out how he can change the future.