by Norman Crane
the Riverraider said.
Erlandr spread his legs, seeing in his imagination the killing blow that he was about to apply: the force of the axe, its blade driving through bone, the spray of blood and brain...
Halfdan turned his face sideways, hissing, "If you let me live, I'll make sure your family does the same. Kill me and all of them are dead."
"And just who will be the witness of your death?" Erlandr asked.
Several in the crowd nodded in agreement.
"I will." Standing in the open longhouse doorway, sword unsheathed and knees shaking, was the young horseman from the pyre. Fresh, purple bruises covered one half of his face.
"He deserves to die!" someone cried.
Erlandr felt the full weight of the axe pressing into his shoulder.
"So kill him," the Riverraider said. "If all of you wish him dead, all of you kill him."
The horseman didn't take a single step forward. Neither did anyone in the crowd. All fell silent, until the only sound Erlandr could hear was the rasping of his own breath. Everyone wanted Halfdan dead but no one would accept the consequences of doing the act. Silently, they expected him to do it. Passively, they hoped he had the bravery, or the stupidity.
Erlandr lowered the axe.
His imagination was no longer creating images of heroic murder. It was staring into the meal-fire and seeing his family, his father and his siblings, being ripped limb from limb and burned like so many pieces of animal meat. A drop of fat dripped into the fire. It sizzled.
"Leave," the Riverraider said to Halfdan.
Erlandr stepped back.
Halfdan got to his knees, then uneasily to his feet. He clutched at his wounds. Hatred filled his eyes—at which even more hateful eyes stared back: Erlandr's and the crowd's. Reason may have cooled his thirst for blood, but Erlandr still despised the Chieftain and his son. He despised that he couldn't kill them.
Halfdan hobbled to the door. "As a man of honour, I'll keep my word and your family will live," he said, turning to stare down Erlandr. "But you are a dead man. You attacked your better and justice shall be done."
The horseman made way, and the two of them exited the longhouse together.
When the door closed, no one moved. The drumming had stopped and no one said a clear word. But there was murmuring. Hissing, discontented murmuring...
"Come with me," the Riverraider said.
It took Erlandr a few seconds to realize he was the one being spoken to. He still didn't quite believe what had happened. The Riverraider put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him towards the door. "Let us go."
4
Outside the longhouse the world was quiet and dim. Evening was falling. Neither Halfdan nor the horseman were anywhere to be seen, but Erlandr expected them to appear at any moment, probably with a dozen more riders and a dozen more weapons. They might fall from the grey sky or arise from the rocky ground or: "They—"
"Are gone for now," the Riverraider said.
Erlandr covered his mouth with the back of his hand, which tasted like blood.
"It takes anger to kill. It takes more than anger to think. You saved lives," the Riverraider said.
But Erlandr didn't feel like a hero. In fact, he didn't feel much of anything, except numb. Even his jaw had stopped hurting. It merely felt twice its regular size. "They all wanted me to kill him. I saved the life of someone who didn't deserve to live. I'm a coward," he said.
"You were among cowards."
The numbness became pressure, which became a pain that gripped Erlandr's heart. His nerves started vibrating like plucked harp strings. His teeth chattered. The realization hit him harder than Halfdan's fist. They were gone for now; they would come back. And when they did, they would be coming for him. "But they don't know who I am," he reasoned aloud.
The Riverraider glanced at the longhouse. "They are regular people inside there. One of them will tell your name, from fear or for profit. That is just the way it is."
Erlandr shook his head, and couldn't stop it's shaking. The Riverraider grabbed him. "Listen to me. Your time here is over,” he said.
"No."
"You must leave."
"This place is my home. These are my people, my family."
"And they owe you their lives."
Erlandr ripped the Riverraider's hands from his shoulders. "I'm a coward. I should have broken his head with that axe."
"And broken the heads of your own people?"
Erlandr vividly remembered the meat on the fire. He knew the Riverraider was right. Likvidr would have taken brutal revenge for the death of his son. But he wanted to argue, to disagree with everything, and especially with reality, because it was impossible that in that one moment the only life he'd ever known had ended. "I won't run. A man does not run from his home. He stands and fights."
"A man has no home until he takes a wife," the Riverraider said. "Home is family. However, the choice is yours. The fight is unfair and your people will not fight for you. They will burn your body and they will remember you, but what good is being remembered to a dead man?"
Erlandr's imagination was showing him the interior of the Valholl. Odin was passing him a chalice of wine. He could die a hero in a valiant fight against impossible odds, perhaps taking a few others with him; but they would be men like the horseman, henchmen, lackeys, men perhaps not much different than himself. His belief struck against his will to live like a monstrous sword against a mountainous shield.
It was as if the Riverraider had read his mind. "You are young, Erlandr. There is yet time to die in battle."
"Where would I go?"
"Beyond Likvidr's reach."
Erlandr combed his fingers through his hair. Above, the sky made the world seem infinitely vast. He could go anywhere, in any direction, all the way to the edge of the world. Yet he was anchored. He was stuck in place. He'd been taught that only a coward runs. He had believed it to be true. But here was the Riverraider, a man who was not a coward and who had fled here from the mainland. And here were his own feelings: a greater fear of what lay beyond the known areas of Iceland than of remaining here and dying for it. "I'm afraid, Riverraider," he said.
"Only fools do not fear."
"You said you sail tomorrow?" Erlandr asked.
5
It was still the dark of early morning when Dvalinn stepped onto Fox's Prowl. He was carrying a sword, a shield and a sack of valuables. He was alone. His boat, the same small but sturdy flat-bottom on which he'd made his initial voyage from the mainland to Iceland, sat on the shore as he'd left it several days ago. It was sea ready and packed. He tossed his shield and sack inside, then sat down to face the sea. He was early. He would wait. He began to gaze over the peaceful waters, toward the horizon line, and ponder...
Two faces preoccupied him. One, his wife's, he couldn't stop seeing. He saw her in the clouds and on the surface of the water, with features that were almost too vivid, too sharp. How could she be dead if he remembered every detail about her? The second face was his son's. The features of this face were fuzzy. Its shape was distant. From his wife's face he wanted to escape. His son's he wanted to catch. But each time he drew close to the latter, it was the former that loomed back at him.
A flock of birds scattered.
Dvalinn noted from where and studied the area, a clump of trees further up the coast.
A man emerged from the trees and neared.
Dvalinn had expected it to be Erlandr, but it wasn't. The man was Goll.
"Good morning," Dvalinn said when Goll was close.
"Is your offer still good?"
"It is."
"Are there still wives to be found on Greenland?"
"I have heard," Dvalinn said. When he saw that Goll was empty handed, he added, "there is still room in the boat for supplies, as well."
"I travel light, Riverraider. I have food for myself and I have this." He slipped the knife with which Erlandr had stabbed Halfdan out of his sleeve and spun it in his fingers. "It's quite the versa
tile little tool."
Dvalinn was wary of men who preferred knives to swords. "Do you have ale?"
"I have a leather skin full." Goll laughed. "If I need more, it means we're too long out to sea and lost beyond saving."
"I have an extra supply in the boat," Dvalinn said. He believed that a man should never sail without ample ale. Food he could do without, but he needed his drink. Ideally, there should have enough ale to last him a few days after landfall, too. Unknown sources of water were not to be trusted. They could make a man ill.
Goll sat down beside him and picked at the ground with his knife. After a while he said, "Do you suppose Greenland's really out there?"
"I suppose it is."
"And what about beyond? Leif Ericson clinging to the edge of the world?"
Goll laughed. Dvalinn didn't. Despite the younger man's jovial attitude, Dvalinn could see that he was nervous. Nerves led to pointless conversations that did nothing but fill time which could be better spent thinking. More importantly, Dvalinn was still trawling through his memories, trying to find a clearer image of his son's face. It wasn't his place to ask why Goll was leaving Iceland.
Within the hour there was another rustling and Erlandr appeared. A small axe was slung across his back and he carried two bags, one on each end of a stick that he'd placed horizontally on his shoulders, behind his neck. He walked steadily until he was close, then laid down the stick, untied the bags and packed them into the boat.
Dvalinn stood up. "We sail," is all he said.
6
The first day of the voyage passed without conversation, and Erlandr was glad. He thought he might be