by Ken Hagan
Kru nudges Baldr. In response Baldr signs about the axe — pike-end and shaft, thumb and groove. When Baldr is done, Kru appeals to me, his signs insistent and pleading. As to what my friend has asked for — and pleads for again and again — no one can be in any doubt.
*
Bergthor’s stories keep us longer in the brew-house than we bargain for. Even hardened shipmates like Halp and Dantzk — not without exploits of their own — are loathe to interrupt the old man’s tales. Bergthor doesn’t boast of his warrior past. The things he has talked of are not to throw glory on himself or to vaunt long-dead cronies from the harrier days of Lord Lodin. Far from it — they tell of men’s folly and vanity; they tell how conceit never fails to bring a wilful man to a sorry end.
From snatches of stories — not endless histories like you get from a skald-man — Bergthor reveals a glimmer of light in the darkness to brighten the ending of a tale. The old warrior will let slip just enough, drop only a word, to make his listeners believe that people’s strivings were not without value. More often than not, his old cronies and their long-forgotten adversaries come to a sticky end, but whatever the fate of friend or foe — in Bergthor’s way of telling it — each man, as he nears the end of his life, stumbles on something unexpected; lays his hand on a hammer of hope; uncovers an iron rod of truth that others can refine in the fire.
Bergthor’s accounts of his warrior days could have been witnessed through no one’s eyes but his own — the episodes are too fresh and clear in his memory to have been passed from another. In his reports, no trolls or dwarves leap out from under the earth to enter the fray, no serpent heads from the sea bite the ships; no winged horses from the sky descend to carry off the victor. Nothing far-fetched. Bergthor is a man with his feet on the ground. None of us around the brew-house bench doubts his word. That would be unthinkable.
*
‘Of course,’ says Bergthor knowingly, ‘At heart Hakon is still a tearaway. He will be the first to admit that his best days are behind him but, given half a chance, he will revert to his old self.’
‘How do you mean?’ I ask.
‘This emergency for a start,’ replies Bergthor. ‘A bit like myself, I suppose — and for that matter, Lord Lodin too: we can’t wait for those shits to turn up from Lin-dubh. Hakon has kept off the ale, and tightened his belt like we did in the old days before the summer campaign. I tell you, Thralson, if it weren’t for Hakon’s grey beard and wrinkled brow, you would take him for a man half his age.’
Halp rubs his nose, as if to impart a secret. ‘I heard that old Hakon is sniffing after Lodin’s wife, what’s-her-name, Lady Aghamora. That is what has given the old buffer a skip in his toes!’ Halp roars at his play on the word.
‘I wouldn’t repeat that, you daft shipper-lubber.’ Bergthor closes his fist and taps it on the bench. ‘Not if you want to keep a fecking head on your shoulders!’
The midshipman shrinks back. Blood drains from his cheeks.
‘Brew-house talk!’ Dantzk steps in to spare his friend’s blushes. ‘Cheap gossip, that’s all — no one gives it a second thought.’
Fjak relishes the discomfort on his crewmate’s face. ‘Thor’s sake, you are like a dog with a bitch. It is always the same with you, Halp! Why does everything have to be about a woman?’
‘Hakon was at the ironsmith’s earlier today,’ says Hrut. ‘He came to collect a sword.’
‘What?’ Baldr asks in surprise. ‘A new one?’
‘No,’ returns Hrut. ‘Same old sword — the blade was tempered and sharpened, and a repair done on the pummel.’
‘See,’ says Fjak. ‘That is more like it! That is what’s on Hakon’s mind! He is itching to use that old sword of his.’
Bergthor relaxes his fist and lifts his hand off the table. ‘You could be right! Don’t know how Hakon will fare nowadays. He was never a warrior, not like us — but he did have a fair sword-arm, when called upon to use it. Self-preservation was the order of the day, when he started trading from his first ship.’
‘This is different,’ says Fjak. ‘Hakon is bent on revenge. He will have no better chance than this!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Bergthor asks.
Fjak evades my glance — he garbles one word, stumbles over another, and finally gets it all out. ‘I thought Hakon’s story was known by everyone. Hakon is after his brother, Thralson’s brother, Einar Raffson — one of Iron-knee’s henchmen. Hakon has sworn that he will stop at nothing till Raffson is dead.’
The story is news to Bergthor, and to young Hrut, who screws up his eyes in puzzlement.
Baldr explains. ‘While we were beached at Linn-dubh, there was a double murder on the Meuris — killings in cold blood. Hakon had left two of our crewmen on ship-watch. We are sure it was Raffson who had their throats cut. He has never denied it. Hakon and he had been in a bitter dispute over a cargo of walrus ivory from Finnmark. Our men were murdered, the Meuris set adrift and left to scupper — it had to be Raffson’s men who undid the landing-ropes — who else? We were lucky to save the ship.’
‘Kotter and Lunan,’ says Halp. ‘They were the ones who took it in the neck. Poor lubbers! But as the old saying goes, “no shipwreck but someone gains!” Good timing for us, eh, Dantzk? We were on the rocks. You and I were in dire straits. Thor’s sake, if it weren’t for Kotter and Lunan doing us a favour — dumb lubbers, they couldn’t run fast enough — we wouldn’t have joined Hakon’s crew.’
‘Steady on, Halp,’ I return sharply. ‘That’s no way to talk of dead crewmen!’
Baldr stands up with anger in his face — a rare sight from him. ‘They were my crewmates. It was a terrible shock to find them, their bodies flung across the thwarts, their blood spilled on the deck. I won’t have you take their names in vain!’
‘Yeah, Halp,’ cries Hrut. ‘Would you like your life to be thought of so cheaply?’
‘Well said, young man,’ says Bergthor.
‘Well said, Hrut,’ agrees Fjak.
Halp is annoyed that his crewmates have ganged up on him. ‘Come, Dantzk,’ says he suddenly. ‘It is time we were back on ship-watch.’
Halp gets up to go. He upsets the brew-master’s hound under the bench. The hound runs off, leaving behind a haze of hair and dust. When Halp sees that Dantzk hasn’t budged, he sits down again.
‘That water has long passed over the ford,’ says Dantzk. ‘A year and more since Lunan and Kotter were killed! Take it from me, Baldr, Hakon will have cooled down. He likes to huff and puff, does old Hakon, but his bark is worse than his bite!’
‘True,’ says Baldr, ‘I don’t deny Hakon blows hot and cold, but not this time. The memory is raw. The wound won’t heal till he is even with Raffson.’ Baldr pulls nervously on his pigtail. ‘I am sorry to be blunt, Skipper Thralson, but I won’t say it behind your back: your brother has to pay for what he did.’
‘I wish it wasn’t so, Baldr,’ I reply with a lump in my throat. ‘But who am I to say otherwise?’
‘You seem cold as ice, Thralson,’ says Bergthor. ‘But are you as cool-headed about this as you would have us believe?’
‘Bergthor,’ I reply, ‘if you ask me to choose between Hakon and my brother, then I cannot choose either. Einar treats Hakon as a deadly enemy. He has told me so — enough said. As for Hakon — to be fair, he has been open from the outset. From the moment he hired me, he didn’t hide his intentions.’
‘It will come to blows, then,’ says Bergthor.
‘I have told Hakon, and I have told my brother, that it is not my fight! It is theirs — I won’t side with one or the other.’
Halp sniffs blood-silver, a chance that he might earn it from Hakon for killing my brother. His neck stiffens in greed. ‘It is not for us to interfere, Skipper Thralson, not without your say-so. But what do you say? Do we have your go-ahead? If Raffson comes across our path — you know, in the thick of it — can we do old Hakon a favour and cut the villain down?’ He nudges Dantzk, ‘You are on the s
ame track as me, eh? What do you reckon, old friend? Could there be something in it for us?’
‘Forget it, Halp,’ says Dantzk. ‘Neither you nor I have met this Raffson — how can we kill a man, when we don’t know what he looks like?’ But then he gives it more thought. ‘And besides,’ he adds, ‘even if luck threw him into our path, we couldn’t claim an ounce for doing him in. Blood-law doesn’t allow it — no one earns blood-silver for a killing done in battle!’
‘Hola!’ A shriek from outside.
Into the brew-house runs a boy — an Erse-lad from the gutters of Vardrar-fiord — scabby-faced, ragged and slight of build. The wherryman follows the boy in. ‘You better come, lubbers,’ yells the lad in the Erse tongue. ‘Someone strange on your ship.’
‘Someone strange?’ returns Halp in alarm.
‘Where’s my lodin?’ yells the lad. ‘You promised!’
‘What does this “someone strange” look like?’ Dantzk asks.
‘No coin; no tell,’ the lad replies brazenly.
‘Pay him,’ says Halp. ‘Thor’s sake, Dantzk, pay the lad!’
Dantzk shows the lad a lodin, but snaps it shut in his fist. ‘Spit it out, lad, who’s on the Meuris?’
‘A demon of a man,’ answers the lad. ‘Fire in his eyes — beard down to his belt — legs stiff as wood! The demon walks like this.’ The boy mimics an old seaman’s gait, stiff at the waist, wide-legged and cumbersome. ‘Now you pay!’ He squeals at the top of his voice. ‘Now you pay!’
Bergthor’s laughter wakes the hounds. The brew-master’s wife comes running.
After her comes the brew-master, stretching and yawning, in a rage for being roused from sleep. ‘If anyone is to be paid, it will be me!’
‘Hell’s teeth,’ yells Dantzk. ‘Hakon is the demon!’ The big crewman throws out a lodin for the lad to catch. ‘Hakon is on the Meuris. Who else? He’s the only man I know, who hobbles on dead legs like that!
Chapter 40
The mast of the Meuris creaks at its base. Deck timbers groan as waters sweep under the hull. In darkness, at haven in Vadrar-fiord, the inbound tide pushes against the moorings. Tonight in the summer heat my back aches. Old welts, where the whip struck, are raw again to the quick, and stick against clammy sweat of my serk. A burning itch and my insistent rubbing has opened the scar on my neck. The wound from repeated flicks of Drafdrit’s lash stings anew on the flesh below my ear. The scar bleeds. To rid myself of memories too painful to dwell on, I close my eyes and listen, trying to summon up from my inner senses the roaring falls of Cluddy.
*
Again I am on the mossy floor of the cave, Beyveen and I enclosed within walls of stone.
Outside, the waters fall. They shudder on the ears. They hold a constant shield of green, flowing, watery light that keeps us locked within. Nothing and no one — not Einar and his betrayal, not even dearest Helga and her honest, loyal love — can penetrate the cool shield of light. Wafts of spray, wisping inward from the waters, spill mist-like into my eyes. Beyveen and I embrace. Behind the falls, inside the hidden cave, a bed of quivery lichens, waterlogged and warming, rubs under our bodies. Beyveen kisses the scar on my neck, holds her lips to it, and her limbs tighten around me, cool, wet, enfolding; her womanly flesh, firm and yielding.
Chapter 41
‘If you want rid of Fjak,’ says Hakon. ‘I will take him off your hands. You can choose one of my crew in his place — take the half-blood with red hair. Trust me, Thralson, he won’t give you trouble.’
‘No need to swap crew,’ I reply. ‘Leave Fjak to me — I will deal with him.’
The crew on Hakon’s long-ship are looping a new sail to the yard. Clew-lines and gordings are being checked by the midshipman, a sturdy half-blood, more Erse-man than Ostman — by the look of his unruly, red beard — who goes by the name of Cullynan.
Hakon shields his eyes from the low morning sun over the dunes. He runs his eye from masthead down, checking the pulley-rope.
‘Made in haste, Thralson,’ says he. ‘Not the best length of rope I have seen — new-fangled twine and twist, not walrus skin! Baldr’s brother would turn in his grave, but we will make do. It will last long enough to take this old tub for its one and only voyage up-river.’
The crew on Thrandt’s long-ship alongside have the sail hauled aloft for testing sheets and lines. Only these two ships on the landing-beach. Thrandt hurries from the bow of his ship. He ducks under the canvas and lifts his leg over the gunnels to larboard. His ship lies abeam the steer-board of Hakon’s. Both prows, crudely carved as serpent heads, are pointed outbound into the wide bend of an-Shuir, downriver, beyond Inis-cáera, east of Vadrar-fiord. The shipwright springs off his ship and lands lightly on the river-sand. He looks thinner at the waist than when I first met him, and his belt, tightened at the midriff, shows off an upper body that is strong and taut from weeks of toil at Ekvith shipyard. He walks towards us with a youthful swagger that belies his years.
‘Pity these two ships have to be scuppered,’ say I. ‘They look in great shape, I must say.’
Thrandt steps back and admires the shape of his harrier ship — an old-fashioned design, rarely seen nowadays. As if in answer the sail ruffles aloft. A river-wind has caught the canvas.
‘Aye, Thralson,’ says the shipwright, ‘I will be sorry to see them go down.’
‘Is there no way,’ I ask, ‘to patch the sink-holes underwater, then drain the hulls, and re-float the ships between tides?’
Thrandt wipes a drip from his nose. In a man less staunch than him it might have been a tear. ‘No, Thralson, that won’t do. It is bad luck to re-float a sunken ship. Dead is dead. Let the tide have them.’
Hakon yells at Cullynan. He barks oaths and orders at his midshipman for something not shipshape, before turning back to us. ‘You might save some of the heavy timber, though?’
‘I will save what I can,’ replies Thrandt, ‘but only if there is time before we scupper the ships. Once we un-step the masts, my first thought is to salvage block and footings. I will have the crew float them to the bank and haul them ashore — hopefully we will do it, while still at high water — then we will know they are safe up the bank beyond the flood.’
‘Block and footings are hefty hunks of oak,’ says Hakon. ‘You can use them to step the mast on another ship.’
‘Trouble is,’ says Thrandt. ‘I won’t have my sons with me — it will take twice the time to unpin the block and release the joints.’
‘I thought Vermund and Stein were sailing north with you,’ says I. ‘Has that changed?’
‘I am afraid so,’ replies Thrandt grimly. ‘They have agreed to tow the fire-ships into position, and set the boom across the river.’
‘You did try to talk them out of it, didn’t you?’ says Hakon.
‘I did,’ replies Thrandt, ‘For the amount of silver on offer, Lodin had plenty of volunteers — fools, every damned one of them — who are willing to risk their lives. Once those fire-ships are set ablaze, anything can happen.’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘All credit to them for their blind courage — and a big pay-out to boast of!’
‘Courage, no! Foolhardy more like — or crazy,’ returns the shipwright. ‘But it is not for the silver — that I could understand! They are doing it for their mother.’
‘How come?’ says I, ‘Wouldn’t she be the one most likely to talk them out of it?’
‘Far from it,’ says Hakon, butting in, ‘Sae-Unn is going with her sons. She has agreed to stoke the fires of pitch-tar and fat. She will be aboard the fire-ships, while they are set ablaze.’
Chapter 42
A figure on horseback appears on the crest of the grassy dune above the landing-beach. The sun is in my eyes and the rider too far off to be recognised. The man dismounts at the head of the dune and walks his horse down through tufted grass and reeds. The horse is a stocky piebald, his brinded rear legs sliding in the sand. Though I can’t see the man’s face, the ambling stride, and the height of the
man, tells me that it is Deasún.
I call out as soon as Deasún is within hearing, ‘I thought that you were at Criadain strand. What’s wrong? Why are you back here? Has Lodin changed the battle plan?’
‘Nothing has changed — as far as I know.’ The Erse-man drops the reins and lets the piebald wander. ‘Everything as before. The Erse clans are camped out at Criadain. We will make sure that Glun can’t mount an attack on Vadrar-fiord from the landward side. If he tries a foray inland from Criadain, we will be there to spill blood and chase him back to the ships.’
‘How many men have you?’
Deasún laughs and corrects me. ‘Not only men — women too! With our women fighting alongside, it makes us Erse-men fight the harder. As for numbers, no one makes a tally — could be three thousand, maybe more, but enough to resist a beaching of the long-ships at Criadain.’
‘Why aren’t you there?’
‘I had to report it to Lodin,’ he returns. ‘A ship passed on the estuary, riding the flood-tide north. Whoever it was, they didn’t stop to beach at Criadain. They still had the tide, and the water was running good. The ship was too far off — it was hugging the far coast of the estuary — so I can’t be sure who it was. It was a trading-ship with wide beams and a high stern, not a long-ship. It put me in mind of the horse-ship that Thrandt built — maybe not that ship exactly, but something very like it.’
‘Jötunn? Lodin’s foster son? Sailing from Vaes-fiord?’
‘Well, it could be Jötunn,’ replies Deasún. ‘I am not saying it is for sure. I might be totally wrong. For all I know, the ship might be carrying Glun’s advance party from Linn-dubh — or carrying his horses. It might have got detached from the rest of Glun’s fleet.’
‘You have been to see Lodin? You have told him that the ship is heading for Vadrar-fiord?’
‘Yes,’ returns the Erse-man. ‘He told me to come to the landing-beach and wait here for the ship. He is sending Bergthor and two score of his men from the fort. Warriors will be here soon.’’