by Norman Crane
Greenland, we will meet in a silent darkness. But we will meet."
Erlandr dropped to the ground. "I can't stay here," he mumbled.
Dvalinn wanted to ignore him, or strike him in the face, or grab him by the shoulders and shake him till he understood that a free life was a hard life. In Iceland, Erlandr had been ready to kill Halfdan. Here, he was sulking when he should be beating Goll to death, stuffing rocks down his throat and dragging his lifeless body to the bottom of the fjord before anyone else knew of their presence!
"That's why he's ingratiating himself with that stout woman," Erlandr said, mostly to himself. "He's making allies so that if he disappears people will notice. He's probably told her stories about me so that if he should meet his doom, the suspicion will fall on me."
Dvalinn sighed. It was a defect which those who didn't possess it called honour that was and always would be his weakness. It was the reason he hadn't followed Framarr to Greenland. The Icelanders needed his help. It was the reason he'd stayed in Iceland for years afterwards. Someone was always helpless. Now he'd managed to pull yet another helpless Icelander along with him and, despite his anger, he felt responsible for the fool. He exhaled his excess of emotion. He reminded himself that Erlandr wasn't a fool, not in the normal sense. He was a decent but naive lad who'd tried to do what's right and suffered for it. How could he expect a decent person to consider weighing down a corpse with rocks? As rational as that line of thinking was, it was a rationality that belonged to raiders and brigands, bad people: people like him.
On the other hand, his time of selflessness was over. If he hadn't earned back the sins of his youth, he would never do so. So be it. He would help Erlandr if he could, but he wouldn't do it at the expense of his own self-proclaimed mission. "Do you trust me?" he asked.
Erlandr looked up at him with the innocence of a calf. "Yes, Riverraider. You've done so much for my people."
"You said you wished to die in battle. I said you were too young," Dvalinn said.
"I'm afraid to die. That's why I must leave. I refuse to live as a slave, yet I'm too scared to live as a rebel or an outlaw. I don't want to steal. I don't want to kill. It's not in me. For years, I've fantasized about being a hero, performing heroic feats, but now that I've had a taste of it, I despise it more than anything."
"All boys want to be heroes," Dvalinn said. "Most never have the chance. Those who do, do not know what it means until a sword has been run through their backs."
Erlandr pleaded. "You had the chance. You're a hero, Riverraider."
Dvalinn crouched in front of him. "I am not, and I never have been. I was a husband, once, and a father, and I was no good as either. I watched my wife waste away from a disease I brought to her and could not fight. My son, if he is alive, is my one remaining chance of salvation."
When Erlandr tried to interject, Dvalinn silenced him. "But I can offer you this. Sail with me. If I do not find my son, we will return to the mainland, where I will die and you will start your life, richer for the adventure that we have shared." Two men, Dvalinn reasoned, were better than one. With both Drudge and Erlandr, he would have a greater chance of finding Framarr. "Greenland is the edge of the known world. I invite you to the unknown."
Although it was impossible for Dvalinn to know what went on inside Erlandr's head in those next few moments, the outward manifestation was clear. With this decision, the boy had become a man. The calf had matured into a young bull. "I will sail with you," Erlandr said.
"I have one request," Dvalinn said.
"Anything."
"You call me 'The Riverraider' no more. I am Dvalinn."
"Thank you, Dvalinn."
As Erlandr embraced him, Dvalinn hoped to God or gods that Rikard the Scargiver had known where he was sailing.
15
The morning meal at the bald man's longhouse was simple but hardy, with stew, bread and meat freshly cooked over the meal-fire. Dvalinn ate his portions carefully. Erlandr ate like a berserker. The bald man barely touched his food at all, still excited about the wonderful valuables he'd bought. He asked about the history of each and about how Dvalinn had acquired them, but Dvalinn was in no mood to talk about the past. "I see, I see," the bald man would reply, hinting at some kind of dark secret shared between the two of them, "I won't say a word to anyone. You can count on that." The truth about the valuables was simple. Dvalinn had killed men and taken their belongings. The ones that looked the most valuable, he gathered in a sack that he carried with him. When he left the mainland, he took the sack and used it to pay whomever needed to be paid. The few items that were left he had traded yesterday for a cargo of ostensibly worthless everyday items. The bald man, plying him with food and drink, was delighted.
Drudge ate his meal, which consisted solely of stew, in the corner of the longhouse. He hadn't been included in the conversation.
Agata had left the longhouse after serving them and had never returned. "She's probably cavorting with that Kaspar freak," the bald man said with some derision after catching Dvalinn glancing at the door. "I told that boy that if I ever seem them together, I'll kill him with my bare hands. She's a good woman and it isn't right her being with a youth, especially one as queer as that." Still, it didn't seem to be the foremost thought on this mind.
After they finished eating, they grabbed the last of the supplies that Dvalinn had bought and carried them to the boat. Yesterday's supplies had taken up all the storage space under the large sheet of cloth, so these last bundles Erlandr placed loose on the deck. They handsomely took the place of Goll.
When the supplies were loaded, Erlandr and Dvalinn began pushing the boat onto the fjord.
"What are you standing there for?" the bald man shouted at Drudge. "Go on and help them!" He picked up a stick and threatened to smack the giant across the face with it. Dvalinn, watching out of the corner of his eye, saw the worst form of nobility: newly found, never earned. The bald man smiled from ear to ear.
With Drudge's help, they made the boat float. It was heavy with cargo but the wind was blowing strong. Dvalinn and Erlandr got in. "So long," Dvalinn shouted.
"If ever you find yourselves on this island, you are welcome in my home," the bald man shouted back.
Dvalinn doubted that very much, especially as Drudge lumbered aboard the boat and the bald man's expression melted off his face. "What's the meaning of this?" he screamed. "Get back here!"
Drudge turned to look at the horizon, the back of his head ignoring his former master. Erlandr looked at Dvalinn. "You're stealing a thrall?" he asked. There was a hint of disappointment in his voice.
The bald man was screaming obscenities from the shore.
"A man is not leather boot or a horse, to be stolen," Dvalinn said. "He decides his actions and his allegiances, and he suffers the consequences of both."
"It's unjust. The law—" Erlandr said.
"The law says you are a dead man, Erlandr. It is not just but it is lawful, written by men like Likvidr. Justice is a thing deeper, which you feel in your heart and can defend in your head," Dvalinn said. "Your presence on this boat is no more just than the presence of this man, Drudge."
The bald man became smaller and smaller until he merged with the shore and Dvalinn could no longer see him, and the wind had swallowed up his obscenities.
Soon they were on the sea.
Dvalinn kept the boat within sight of land until they passed the place where Birchwood Fjord had been. Now, only a few piles of unused building materials remained, overgrown and resembling burial mounds. "Rikard destroyed the settlement before he sailed," Drudge said.
"Why?" Erlandr asked.
"I do not know, but he had his reason. Rikard was a thoughtful man. I would have been proud to have sailed with him."
"You sail with us," Dvalinn said.
Drudge let out a laugh that rocked them upon the water. "And of that I am also proud."
They maneuvered the boat until it faced west. The wind filled their sail. Behind them, Greenland vanished, i
ts grey mountains being the last to let go. The sea around them opened and Dvalinn felt the exhilaration of the uncharted, a paradoxical feeling that was much like the intense feeling by which he was sometimes overcome in battle: an indifference to life intertwined with a yearning for living in this, its ever-present and glorious moment.
16
It was three days since they'd cast off from Greenland and they'd not even sniffed a hint of land. Erlandr's doubts were growing. Dvalinn's quiet confidence and the dispassion of the man called Drudge only made them worse. Had he gravely erred in coming with them? He'd made the decision in haste, and hasty decisions were often wrong. Would life with Goll have been so horrible? He would have carried their possessions, made food, hunted, constructed things with his hands. It would have been work, but did not farmers and herders also work? But too embarrassed to ask Dvalinn, who had done so much for him, and not yet desperate enough to talk to Drudge, Erlandr kept his doubts to himself and the sea. The sea, however, was the epitome of indifference. Its depths said nothing and all its surface suggested was that there was never any choice at all: fate was the same in all directions. It was a cold comfort.
It was colder still at night, when the others were resting or asleep and Erlandr couldn't stop his imagination from crafting his doubts into a waking nightmare in which they sailed forever on a forever sea, finding nothing and