VII Tee

The longship slid through the morning fog like a surgical blade through taught skin. Oars dipped silently, thirty men breathing as one. No drums. No chants. Only the creak of wood and the low growl of warriors waiting to feed the gods. At the helm stood Eirik Skull-Splitter, the breacher. Broad as a bear, beard clotted with ash and salt. He carried no shield—just a war axe, a pry hook, and a sack of pitch-soaked rags. The monastery walls rose ahead—timber palisades, a gate barred shut with thick oak beams. Inside, monks rang bells and stammered prayers. Eirik smiled. He'd breached louder places. They made landfall fast. No formation—just instinct and rage. Two men hauled the battering ram from beneath the deck: a splintered trunk reinforced with iron and stained from twenty raids. “Hold the flanks,” Eirik growled. “We go loud.” The ram struck the gate—once, twice, again. Splinters flew like hornets. From the rear, one man lobbed a burning jar—pitch and oil exploding across the wall, fl