by Norman Crane
his horse, which he mounted, slapped on the haunches and rode off on, as quickly and unexpectedly as he had appeared. The sound of his horse's beating hooves receded.
"We should have killed him," the first torchbearer said to Dvalinn, who was still staring into the fire. He blinked and kept his eyes shut. Again, the flames persisted.
"He will return," Dvalinn said.
"And if we don't kill him then, he'll keep returning," the second torchbearer said. "So I say we should kill him once and for all."
"His death solves nothing," Dvalinn said. "He is merely a follower. If you kill him, another will come."
"So we kill that one, too."
"And so on, killing after killing for eternity?"
"Until Ragnarok," the torchbearer said.
I do not believe in Ragnarok, Dvalinn thought. "That may be many killings from now," he said.
"So what do you propose, Riverraider?" the first torchbearer asked.
In the distance, the horseman had become a black speck on the grey ground. Closer, the pyre burst into an orb of fire, with tongues that covered Dvalinn's wife's shrouded body and licked like rabid hounds at the surrounding air. "I do not know," Dvalinn said. "But it is no longer my answer to give." Without his son and without his wife, Iceland no longer felt like his home. He sighed. He was still an easterner after all.
"What are you saying?"
Dvalinn didn't answer. He had already turned his back on both the torchbearers and the pyre. Walking down the hill, he looked once more toward the west. That was where his son had sailed. That, Dvalinn decided, was where his future lay. To Hell with Chieftain Likvidr and to Hell with his sadistic son, Halfdan—if Hell is what they now believed in.
At the foot of the hill, the funeral crowd closed around Dvalinn. "Riverraider," people whispered. Young people, old people. Men, women. They offered their condolences and sincerely said trite things that moved Dvalinn nevertheless for being trite. He would return their warmth. He would keep the custom. In seven days, he would give them their feast. Then, on the eighth day, he would sail. "Thank you," he said, nodding and cupping warm, grateful hands, until—
His old knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
He covered his face with the leathery palms of his hands and started to cry.
But his tears were tears of hope, not sadness, for his heart, though hurt, was not empty. Somewhere, he knew, Framarr was still alive. Some day they would find each other. Somewhere, someday...
A pair of strong arms hooked themselves under Dvalinn's armpits and lifted him up.
He was disoriented for a second.
Then he saw the pyre burning brightly on top of the hill and remembered his wife and recognized the plain face of Erlandr, son of Jokell the sheep farmer, staring warmly into his eyes. Erlandr smiled. It was an innocent smile, a labourer's smile. "I must get home. I have matters I must arrange," Dvalinn said.
"Of course, Riverraider," Erlandr said.
Other faces were looking at Dvalinn and smiling, too. All of them were innocent. Even the torchbearers' faces, which had been so eager to kill the horseman yet so ignorant of the consequences of such an act. But worse even than the stew of smiles was their collective expectation. They expected him to lead, to take responsibility. I don't owe you anything, Dvalinn thought. I never agreed to lead. The fate had befallen him gradually and naturally, like rain darkening a stone, drop by drop. Maybe it was because he was from the east. Maybe it was because he brought with him a reputation. Except that his reputation should have elicited fear, not smiles and the expectation that he would do what was best for the community.
When he was out of their reach, on his way back to the small house that now stood empty, he struggled with this sense of duty. He resented it. Even when he reasoned his way out of it, his heart refused to listen. Why, he asked almost aloud, do I feel guilty?
3
The funeral feast was already under way when Erlandr stepped into the longhouse. Windowless, its exterior had betrayed nothing of the joyous atmosphere inside, where the sweet smells of meat roasting on the meal-fire mixed with the aroma of mead, and the music of bone flutes and horns joined the pounding of palms against leather hand drums as two women sang bawdy drinking songs and laughed. One of them, dressed in more colours than Erlandr had ever seen, hopped onto one of the tables that had been set across the longhouse and started to dance. A man pulled at her dress. She giggled. Another tore off a fistful of fresh bread and tossed it to her. She caught it with both hands—the horn blower blew an off note—took a bite and, with her mouth still full, shouted, "Erlandr! And we all thought you wasn't going to come."
A few silver coins exchanged hands. There'd been betting.
Erlandr nodded a greeting and continued toward the end of the longhouse, where most of the other men had gathered around the Riverraider. Normally, he wouldn't have come. The woman was right to be surprised. He didn't enjoy gatherings. They made him nervous and sometimes the girls made him blush. But today was different. The Riverraider was different. Erlandr felt respect toward the Riverraider and it would have been disrespectful to have snubbed him.
He nodded to several of the merrymakers and took a seat at a table near the wall. Goll, the local mason's apprentice, slid a cup of mead toward him. He downed half of it in one gulp before uttering a thank you, and wiped his mouth with his forearm; just like his father always did, he reminded himself. He didn't know whether to grin or groan. With each passing day, he was turning more into his father.
"Tell us the tale of the eastern expeditions again," someone said to the Riverraider.
Goll raised a brow. "Or the time you bedded the jarl's wife!"
Cups drummed against the tabletop.
The Riverraider glanced around, his gaze lingering first on Goll, then on Erlandr, before he closed his eyes and said, "No tales. Today, I have a thing more important than tales to tell."
The men fell silent.
Erlandr drank the rest of his mead and set his cup aside.
"I have an announcement to give and now that we are all gathered here, I shall give it," the Riverraider said.
"Quiet!" Goll yelled.
The Riverraider stood up from his chair.
The women who'd been singing and dancing stopped dancing and sang, "Shut up yours, you. The Riverraider's got announcing to do!"
Erlandr noted the disquiet on the Riverraider's face. He seldom remembered seeing it before. Even in the face of danger, like seven days ago at the pyre, the Riverraider was calm. Tonight, he appeared lost.
The music ceased.
"I would first like," the Riverraider said, "to thank all of you for this feast of food and drink and for the openness with which you welcomed me and mine when we arrived as strangers at your shores so many years ago."
"Our shores!"
A few people's cheers grew into the entire longhouse cheering. Until, "Shut it," a woman said. "Let the man speak."
The Riverraider continued, "But the time has come for me to leave this land."
It was a short, plainly-spoken sentence but Erlandr felt it like he would have felt a firm punch to the gut. Ever since he'd been a boy, the Riverraider had lived among them. His presence had been a reassuring constant. Lives meandered and fates collided, but the Riverraider was always ready to give advice and solve problems. He was fair, he was wise, and he could not leave because he had always been, and what always is can never end...
Erlandr decided to limit his mead tonight.
"My son is gone. My wife is dead. I am getting old," the Riverraider said. "Tomorrow at dawn, I set sail for Greenland." At the first sign of a question, he lifted his hand to prevent it. "All who wish to sail with me are welcome. My boat is small but seaworthy and in Greenland there is fertile land and free women, or so I am told."
Erlandr noted how the deep creases on the Riverraider's face caught the firelight and transformed his disquiet into a sadness held together by force of will and determination. It made Erlandr uncomfortable. He con
sidered it a bad omen. What if the Riverraider, in all his wisdom, knew something that they didn't—something that had frightened even him?
Goll was the first to speak. "You're leaving us, Riverraider."
"I am leaving my home," the Riverraider said.
Abandoning was the more accurate word, Erlandr thought. He also felt his teeth holding his tongue, preventing him from snapping back at Goll, "He owes us no duty. We swore him no oath."
"If it's a new wife you're looking for, I reckon you'll find one here sure as there," someone said.
“Maybe tonight,” another added.
There was no cheering.
"I am not planning to take a second wife." The Riverraider's voice shook. "I have loved one woman and I will love none more."
"So why are you sailing for Greenland?" Goll asked. "Why not sail east? Life, they say, is easier off the islands than on them. There are more opportunities."
What a stupid question to ask someone who'd come from the east, Erlandr thought. Or if not stupid, certainly impolite. If the Riverraider had chosen to sail to Greenland, he had a reason. It wasn't theirs to know, unless told, and to ask was poor manners. All the same, Erlandr craved to know the answer.
"I am going in search of my son," the Riverraider said.
Erlandr felt a knot appear in his throat. The Riverraider's son, a tall, brooding man with long hair and a bleached beard, had sailed for Greenland seven years ago on the advice of Leif Ericson. He had never returned. Every one of the locals knew what the Riverraider still refused to