by Ken Hagan
Hakon has two axe-wounds to the chest. He lies, panting stiffly, spitting blood. His body is rigid as he fights the pain. Baldr and I kneel beside our wounded skipper and support his head in our arms. We hear a rattle from his lungs. Skip tries to speak. The effort is too much for him.
‘Water,’ says Bergthor. ‘Not to drink — just let it touch his lips. He has something to tell you, Thralson — something you need to hear.’
Fjak offers a discarded battle-helmet that he has filled with water from Cluddy River. Baldr dips his fingers in and puts them to Hakon’s lips.
Cullynan shakes his head sadly. ‘Skipper Hakon fought like a man half his age’
‘It is a pity, Cully,’ says Thrandt, ‘a pity that you didn’t catch the bastard who did this to him.’
‘I chased the white-haired man into the woodlands,’ says the half-blood. ‘I lost him beyond the waterfall. The woods are dense in there. He could be hiding anywhere.’
Bergthor sighs in annoyance. ‘Most likely he has doubled back to the river, downstream of the blockade, where they beached their ships. That’s how he has got away. He will have joined the second ship before they rowed south.’
‘No.’ Again Cullynan shakes his head, but this time in disgust. ‘I will swear on my mother’s life that he is still in the woods or somewhere down by the waterfalls. I could smell him in there, smell his fear — I just couldn’t sniff out where he was hidden.’
Hakon again moves his lips; his eyes are mere slits as he turns towards Baldr. Among Skip’s slurred words I hear the murmur of my name.
‘I hear you, Skip.’ Baldr whispers to answer, and then aloud to me: ‘It is his dying wish, Thralson. The Meuris — it is yours — he wants the ship to be in your name and he has arranged the other matter with Lord Lodin.’
Hakon painfully raises his voice, his eyes closed. ‘Ship is yours, Thralson. You are skipper now. What’s mine is yours. You are the one. I trust you. But mind, don’t stint the divvy.’ He splutters blood, shivers, summons all his strength, coughs out his last breath. ‘D’you hear, man? Don’t stint the crew! Then they will sail with you to the ends of the earth.’
Chapter 52
I am certain of it. The white-haired Ostman who ran off into the trees was my brother. No one has mentioned Einar by name, nor did Hakon speak of him in the moments before he died, but Cullynan’s description of the man he chased, and lost in the woodlands, leaves me in no doubt that it could only be Einar. My brother was the one who dealt the fatal wounds on Hakon.
‘Poor old Hakon,’ says Bergthor. ‘He should have left well enough alone. We had them on the run! No need for heroics. Only stragglers to deal with. And my lads were best to do the chasing.’
Bergthor is right,’ says Thrandt. ‘Your skipper was staggering with fatigue, but he was angry as hell — I have never seen him like it. He took it into his head to go after that axe-man. More fool him! At his age Hakon was no match for the cool-hand of the white warrior.’
*
The wilderlings have given up their pursuit of the Ostmen. Glun and a few dozen warriors were able to fight their way back to the ships and get away on the river. The victors saw them off and have returned to pillage in the killing fields. They gather swords, axes, blades, belts and scabbards. They hack off arm-rings and neck-chains. They fight over purses of silver-coin. They tear through leather and kirtle, and rummage through crushed bodies for anything of value to carry away. When they are done with a man’s body, when they have cleaned out all his valuables — filched every last stitch that he stood up in — they carve crude marks on the naked corpse, jesting images of men’s naked parts, drawings of drooping members that mock the hammer of Thor.
To escape the ravaging of the dead, and the frantic celebrations of wilderlings — who are drunk, without a sip of ale, on the smell of their victims’ blood — I decide on impulse to go into the woodlands. I offer to go under pretext of looking for Hakon’s killer.
Thrandt approves. He wishes me luck, though I suspect from his knowing look that he sees through my pretence. I plan to go no farther than the silvery birches that skirt Cluddy water; I will not venture as far as the ravine — just far enough out of hearing to find respite from the ugly aftermath of battle.
I don’t expect to come across Einar in the woods. My brother will be long gone. It is likely that he has reached the beaching ground on an-Uir. He will have regained his ship, or boarded another, and made off downriver. I hope he has. I am in a daze of grief for Hakon. My brother most surely killed my old skipper. My brother is the last man on earth I want to find.
My head is reeling from the stench of dead flesh, hundreds of corpses turning rank in summer heat. The wilderlings are cock-a-hoop. They don’t notice gore under their feet. To them the boggy meadows are a field of play. They jostle in a game of hurling, running over puddles of blood, tapping sleetars as they run, balancing them with great skill on blood-soaked camáns. The sleetar-balls are iron studs ripped off broken bucklers. They smack the buckler-studs far over the hawthorns and whoop at each hurling shot that reaches longer than the last.
We owe our lives to the young savages. Glun’s ten hundreds of men would have swamped the tide-head. Had the wilderlings not responded to the battle-beacon on Slieve Bhraan — had they not come, when they did — Tioc’s island settlement would have faced destruction; and his people, along with all of us — the crew and me — would have been wiped off the face of the earth. And Hakon’s treasured ship would have fallen into the Ostmen’s hands.
And yet, however much is owed to the fearless young rabble, their disfigurement of the dead disgusts me. Their mutilation of the Ostmen is thoughtless — a naive jest, the strange humour of mountain folk; it is done almost without malice, but it brings to mind the sickening disfigurements that Mord Asgrimson did to my brother Sigi in the cave at Grisedale fell.
*
My body shivers. I have gone cold after the heat of battle. I take it as a sign of fear. My tongue is thick in my mouth. I find it hard to string words together. Strange that I should suffer from shudders of fear after the battle is over and won, long after the foe is vanquished.
It is not right for Baldr and Fjak to see me squeamish and weak-kneed, or for Hrut to discover that his skipper is no better than he. At the ford young Thrandtson hid from the hell of battle. And now in remorse, like a pup-hound at my heels, he hangs on my every word, craves my forgiveness, begs to be able to start afresh as a crewman — just as if nothing untoward had happened.
Fjak is keen to join me in the woodlands searching for the Ostman. I never thought of Fjak as having a thirst for bloodletting, but battle fury smoulders in his eyes. The scent of blood has made him as drunk — without ale — as the damned wilderlings.
I refuse Fjak’s help sharply with an oath.
‘Cheer up, man,’ I say in parting. ‘You are still alive, aren’t you? And we men of the Meuris, we have cause to be proud — you more than most!’
Fjak returns a smile. ‘Aye-aye, Skip, as long as you know, Skip, you can count on me.’
*
A clear summer evening, and still some daylight remains before sunset. Evening shadows darken the woods. Birdsong spreads under the trees. Finches fidget and gather to roost. The whooping cries of scavenging wilderlings have faded; the scraping-out of the Christian burial-ditch and the moaning of our dying no longer heard. I hear only a distant clack of axe on wood, as the pile of fire-wood grows for the pyre. My thoughts begin to settle. I wander deeper among the trees and head for the ravine and Cluddy falls.
*
I don’t know why Hakon thought me capable of taking over the Meuris. He could have chosen Baldr or Halpin. Both men are more skipper-like than me. Granted, I can trim a sail, and rope-work is second nature to me — I have mastered ropes since I was a boy on the fiord at Thwartdale. And from my time with Skip I have learned to look out for contrariness of tides, if and when a sea will turn against you. But that’s about it. As for setting a course of my o
wn in open water, without sight of land, the very thought of it takes my breath away.
A few spells at a ship’s helm and a bit of river-work on an-Bharu doesn’t make a skipper out of me. As for Hakon’s gift to me of his life’s earnings, all his silver coin lodged in Lodin’s treasury at Vadrar-fiord — that bag of loot, large or small, only makes me more certain of my unworthiness.
*
My path takes me deeper in to the woodlands. I come to the rocky outcrop and narrow ledge where Beyveen and I crossed with the horses. Tree-tops of woolly birches stretch up out of the ravine. I trail them with my fingers while I cross the ledge, and hear a rustle of leaves as stones slide off and fall to the bottom of the scarp. The stones come to rest, splashing far below in the hidden rocky stream.
An urge quickens my feet. Once I am on the far bank of the stream, I run down through the dell.
The scarp-side is thick with saplings of birch and beech, soft underfoot with garlic and crumbled husks of beechnuts, noisy overhead with finches, ouzels and thrushes. The garlic is pungent, its flowers wilting. Hunger takes hold of me, a hollow grumbling like fear in my belly: I haven’t eaten since sharing salt-pork with the crew at daybreak, but I am too sick from blood-stench to think about food.
A crashing of water from the falls: they are hidden behind the trees. The insistent roar grows ever louder. Birch gives way to ancient trees of overhanging hazel and beech. I come to the foot of the waterfall, and to the giant hazel tree where Beyveen dug for fungus under the tree’s roots. Here we feasted on smoky black tubers and leaves of garlic. We laughed uncontrollably, giddy from the feast, while our horses drank from the stream. It occurs to me to dig for a tuber. But the more I think of it, the less inclined I am to eat
A sad weariness takes hold of me. I wash my bloodied hands and face in the stream. I drink and savour the water, cold as ice, my thoughts no longer of Beyveen, but of Helga and our child — a sturdy boy, or maybe a pretty little girl — who await my return to the ice-lands. I think of Hakon’s ship, now mine, and how, when my three years of banishment is done, if I am spared, the Meuris will carry me to them.
The constant roar of falling water holds me in its grip. The sound dulls my aching grief on a day of many deaths, for so much waste of life, both theirs and ours — but the thundering water does nothing to ease my loss for the passing of Hakon. And I wonder if that is why fear has gripped me.
A sudden darkening startles me. No sound of birds. I must return from the woodlands before dusk. Thrandt will light the pyre at sunset. It will blaze through the night. It will burn to ash and dust the departing men of Thor. Hakon my old skipper and my friend, the man who purchased my freedom, and has left me the priceless gift of a ship, will be among those in the pyre.
I turn away from the falls, and look up. My eyes settle on the pale sheen of water at the head of the waterfall. As smooth as an unravelled sheet of white linen, water gushes over a fallen pillar of rock. No one would guess that behind the hurtling water lies a hidden cave. Beyveen and I lay behind the falls on soft, quivery lichens; on a mossy bed, waterlogged and warming, our bodies entwined behind a watery shield of green light. As I watch, a hand breaks through the gushing water at the head of the falls.
I feel outrage at the presence of a stranger in the cave — an unwarranted intrusion. I had wanted the cave to remain as somewhere secret and sacred, a place of watery stillness known only to Beyveen and me. As if to my wish, the hand disappears; the water regains its linen-like smoothness.
Moments later, again the hand. I am not mistaken. Someone is in the cave. Suddenly a man leaps from behind the waterfall. He lands on his feet. He slips, slides, almost tumbles from a sloping plinth of rock, nearly falling into the thundering water. The man crouches, steadies his balance; finds a foothold. Hidden for a moment behind drifting white spray and drizzle, he emerges from the mist and begins his descent beside the high torrents, still crouching like a beast, side-stepping on smooth boulders to the right of the falls.
Half-way down the falls the man turns, dripping wet, to face me. It is Einar. He has white hair, ashen beard, and is naked but for his breeches. My brother’s swarthy face and weather-beaten hands contrast with his pale arms and chest. His lean, wiry figure reminds me of Da. From Einar’s belt hangs an axe. It is the battle-axe that killed Drak, the axe that he took from me in the ice-lands. Losing the axe was a condition of the bond, insisted upon by Asgrim, but the axe was never returned.
‘Kregin,’ he shouts above the noise of the falls. ‘Have you been waiting for me?’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘How could I know you were here?’
‘Stand aside,’ he yells. ‘I am coming down.’
I swallow hard. I don’t budge. ‘Why did you do it?’ I ask.
Einar laughs in return. ‘Hakon was a thorn in my flesh: the old man had it coming. He came at me with his sword — what was I to do?’
‘I didn’t mean Hakon,’ I reply. ‘Why did you abandon me — your own brother? You dumped me on Inis-dubh — you left me in the clutches of Drafdrit!’
He thunders back as loud as the falls. ‘After your fecking dumbness at Lymn’s Isle, what else was I to do? You had only yourself to blame.’
‘The brute was strangling the poor girl,’ I reply. ‘Was I to stand by and watch?’
‘You are too soft, Kregin! You and Dugfus shouldn’t have butted in.’
‘Brennan’s thug would have killed the child if we hadn’t stopped him.’
‘The Erse are nothing but fecking animals. Brennan and his like know how to deal with their own kind. You should have left them to it — whether they kill a slave-girl, or not, is no consequence to you or me.’
To hear this said of M’lym-kun cuts me to the quick, but I try to reason with my brother. ‘How can you say that, Einar? Like me, you are the son of an Erse woman — and the son of a slave.’
Einar steps down to the boulder below. ‘It shows weakness to think of others — even family. Dugi was weak too, and a fool. That’s what got him knifed.’
‘I liked Dugi. I am sorry that he had to die.’
‘Dugfus took a fast blade to the neck. So what? I don’t give a rat’s arse!’
‘But wasn’t I sent to Inis-dubh to pay for his death?’
‘No, you fool!’ returns Einar. ‘Not for Dugi’s sake — what made you think that? I did it for the Hrafentyr — I did it for my crew.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My lads needed a reminder of the golden rule for ships’ lubbers: kill or be killed, our lives or theirs! I won’t suffer softness among the crew. I won’t have soft men fecking around on my ship. No exceptions — not even my brother.’
‘I kept thinking you would come for me. Believe me, Einar, I kept hoping you would pay Drafdrit, and secure my release. Right up to the last, when we were taken to the slave market at Linn-dubh, I felt certain that even then you would come and free your brother.’
‘I leave that fool’s game to the likes of Hakon.’
‘He has been more family to me than you!’
‘You think so, Kregin?’
I swallow hard. ‘Yes, he was true — right to the end.’
‘Can’t you see what Hakon was up to? He paid the ransom for you to get back at me.’ Einar laughs. ‘He was hoping to earn your gratitude. He imagined you would be man enough to kill me on his behalf. Until today, that skipper of yours hadn’t the balls to try it himself.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ I pull out my axe and weigh it in my hand. ‘I won’t have you say that of Hakon.’
The falls seem to roar more loudly. Einar shouts above the noise. ‘Put you axe away, brother.’
I stand motionless. My arm stiffens. My grip tightens on the heft.
Einar stares down at me. He slips his hand under his belt as if pondering his next move, but slowly, deliberately, he takes his hand away from the axe.
‘If Hakon was no coward, why did he hide from us? He and his friends wouldn’t come out of th
e woods. They hid like cowards. They broke cover only at the last, when they saw that horde of naked youngsters and our men in retreat.’
‘Wilderlings!’ I return. ‘They are wilderlings. And it was no retreat: it was an all-out massacre, utter defeat for Iron-knee and the men of Linn-dubh!’
Einar frowns angrily. ‘Wilderlings? Is that what they are called? Well, Hakon didn’t show himself until he saw they had the better of us.’
‘Hakon was with a handful of men in the woods. What else could he do? He and the others had no chance against you. They had no choice but to skirmish and hide. You had hundreds at your back.’
‘I could have had more men at my back, had Glun beached on Criadain strand, as I urged him to. We should have waited till the fire-ships burned out,’ Einar adds ruefully. ‘Why did he have to be in such a hurry? All for the sake of missing a measly tide! As it was, Glun took a chance to sail past them. And what happened? We ended up losing six of our long-ships in the estuary.’
‘So Lodin’s fire-ships worked!’
‘Pure luck, Kregin! Nothing more! We had given the fire-ships a wide berth. Our ships were heading upriver, a decent tide at our sterns. Suddenly, without warning, we lost the westerly. Not only did the wind drop, but at the neck of the estuary, where the channel narrows, the tide sucked eastwards. Before we knew it, our hulls were treading water, and fire-ships were drifting into our fleet.’
To my left a doe leaps across the stream at the foot of the falls. Startled, seeing Einar above at mid-falls and me below, the deer dips her head under the hazel branches and retreats into the shadows.
‘Step aside, Kregin, I have had enough of idle chatter! My ship and crew are waiting. Finn won’t leave without me.’
Einar crouches on all fours to make his way down over the boulders. My brother’s back is arched like a beast towards me. His shape is like a wolf — a white wolf.
I search for a means of taunting him, and find the words. ‘Don’t count on seeing your crew.’
He snarls back. ‘What’s that?’