The Falcons of Fire and Ice

by Karen Maitland

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the dark voice hisses. ‘But you are the dead. You know the suffering that the living have inflicted on you. Look at your wounds, and the wounds of your children. Don’t you want revenge for what they did to you? Come with me and you shall have it. You shall make them plead for mercy and you will give them none as they gave none to you. You will tear their children apart before their eyes and tear out their wives’ hearts while they still beat. Jorge, Jorge, you will hear their screams like the sweetest music in your ears and drink their blood like the strongest wine to fire your belly. Hinrik, my poor Hinrik, wouldn’t you like to see the Danes running in terror from you? Make them know how fear tastes?’

  ‘Enough!’ the grandmother says. ‘We have listened and we have heard. Now each must judge for themselves.

  ‘You.’ She points to the old woman. ‘Your mummy has healed his corpse, what do you say?’

  The old woman lifts a quavering hand, glancing fearfully at Valdis, whose head turns towards her.

  ‘Speak,’ the grandmother urges. ‘We all stand with you. Say only what you think to be right.’

  ‘He must return to his own corpse,’ the old woman whispers.

  A howl of fury bursts from Valdis’s lips.

  But the grandmother ignores him, relentlessly pointing to each of the dead in turn, adults and children alike. ‘My son, speak. Must he return to his own corpse?’

  Their hollow eyes all stare at Valdis, as each of them pronounces their verdict.

  ‘He must return.’

  ‘He must return.’

  The woman whose mouth is stuffed with earth can only nod, but her gesture is emphatic.

  Finally, only Jorge is left to speak, but the grandmother points instead to Isabela.

  ‘He cannot speak. You must deliver the verdict for him. You must utter what is in his heart, not yours.’

  Valdis rolls her head. The words that emerge from her lips are soft, coaxing. ‘He wants revenge, little Isabela, Isabela. You know he does. Jorge suffered the cruellest death of all of us. He was innocent. He has a right to justice. You can give him justice. You know what is in his heart. You know he does not want me to be destroyed. You know what he wants you to say for him. Just say it and that gag that chokes him will vanish. Say it and his wounds will be healed. Your own mother betrayed him, but you can help him, Isabela, Isabela. You can put right the wrong that was done to him. You can free him for all eternity.’

  Jorge gives no sign. He stands, gazing at Isabela from out of his charred, blistered face, but nothing betrays his thoughts.

  Isabela turns to me, anguish on her face. ‘Is it true, can I help him? Can I release him from that?’

  The grandmother speaks again, ‘Say what is truly in his heart. Speak the truth, only the truth.’

  ‘But I don’t know what he is thinking, I don’t.’

  ‘What binds him to you, Isabela?’ I ask her. ‘How did you call him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I keep telling you, I don’t know. He didn’t give me a stone. I didn’t take a bone.’

  Jorge raises his hand and the green and scarlet words slide from his fingers, drifting to the ground like falling leaves.

  For a long moment, Isabela simply stares at the words lying at his feet.

  ‘Stories …’ she murmurs wonderingly. ‘He gave me stories that I still remember. That’s how I called him.’

  She lifts her head and turns to look at Valdis as the others have done.

  ‘Jorge does not want revenge. He wants you to return.’

  There is a shriek of fury. Valdis’s body is lashing backwards and forward, her blackened nails are clawing at my face. It takes all my strength to hold us both upright.

  The grandmother lifts her voice over the draugr’s cries. ‘You have entered a body that is not yours to inhabit. You have stolen a life that is not yours to live. It is the verdict of the door-doom that you leave the body of Valdis now.’

  There is a great howl that tears through our bodies as if Valdis is being ripped from my side. A black stream oozes from between her lips and passes through her veil, forming itself into a great black shadow. The shadow grows and spreads as if the white mist itself is staining black. It is denser and darker than any smoke. It pours from Valdis’s mouth like black blood gushing from a wound. It rises higher and higher until it towers over us, swelling up like a great black leech, breaking open the circle of the dead.

  ‘I will not obey the door-doom,’ the dark voice thunders. ‘You have no right to sit in judgment over me. I am living. I am the life that will destroy the living and the dead. I will not be destroyed.’

  Isabela is cowering terrified on the floor beside me, the bone still gripped in her hands. I reach down and tear it from her fingers. I raise my arms and feel the power of a falcon’s wings. I know the courage of it in my heart as it plunges down in a stoop. I feel the grip of its talons in my soul, a grip that will not relinquish its hold even after death.

  I lift my head and stare into the blackness writhing before me. ‘The door-doom of the dead has spoken. You are of the dead. You will obey. You will return to the body you owned in life. By the power of the white falcons who were our birth and shall be our death, I command you to return.’

  I thrust the bone with its iron band straight into the centre of the black shadow. A bitter cold, such as I have never known, envelops my hand. My skin is withering in it. My bone is being eaten away, but still I push against the shadow.

  ‘No! No!’ he roars.

  The cold is so intense that I cannot bear the pain of it. I cannot hold the bone in it any longer. I must let go. But if I do, he will win. He will never go and I will not be able to prevent him entering us again. I will become the darkness.

  Just as I think I can bear no more, just as my hand is sliding out of the icy shadow, I feel the bone growing warm in my grasp. They are with me. The dead are still with me. We will defeat him. I throw back my head and a scream erupts from my throat.

  ‘Krery-krery-krery!’

  The darkness shatters into a thousand tiny pieces. A great wind roars through the cave. The black shadow is caught up in it. For a moment or two the fragments are tossed helplessly in the maelstrom and then it is gone, leaving only a whirlpool of white steam swirling around us.

  Ricardo

  Check – when a falcon leaves the quarry it is supposed to be hunting to pursue some other prey.

  A great roar filled the cave and then a high-pitched screech that was so painful it was like a dagger being thrust in each ear. It sounded as if two great beasts were hurling themselves at each other. Terrified, I looked up, and for a moment I thought I saw a crowd of people huddled together in the steam. Men and women I didn’t recognize, children too, all staring down at the sisters, and looking pretty much the worse for wear, I can tell you. Where on earth had they come from? But before I could do anything, the roaring and the screeching stopped abruptly and the people just sort of dissolved. Not that they were ever really there, of course, but it just shows how that damn heat was affecting us.

  I suddenly realized I’d lost sight of Isabela and stared around frantically. Finally, I saw her lying behind Eydis. Her eyes were closed, and she was not moving. God in heaven, had Vítor carried out his threat and hit her over the head to knock her out? I crawled across to her and touched her gently on the arm. She sat bolt upright, an expression of alarm and bewilderment on her face, like someone who’s been woken suddenly from a sleep and can’t remember where they are. I knew that feeling only too well, especially on the morning after a good night in the tavern, but if ever there was a time for taking a little nap, this was most definitely not it.

  I was so distracted by Isabela that it took me several moments to realize that Ari was shouting at me, gesturing to Valdis. I struggled over and knelt beside him. He had broken through the iron hoop, but his hands were shaking with exhaustion. The heat and moisture were making us as weak as newly hatched nestlings.

  Valdis was perfectly still now, l
olling away from her sister who was struggling to pull her upright so that Ari could wrench the band off. My fingers pressed against her skin as I tried to grasp the hoop and I felt again the dreadful coldness of her flesh. I snatched back my hand and found to my horror I’d ripped off a long strip of her yellow skin which was now stuck to my nails. But worse still, I realized the wound wasn’t bleeding.

  ‘She’s dead, Isabela. Sweet Jesu, she’s dead!’

  ‘I know,’ Isabela said faintly, ‘but … we have to free her … Eydis will be trapped in here with her. Try!’

  I gritted my teeth, wrapped the blanket around my fingers and seized one side of the broken hoop. How could she be dead? It wasn’t possible. Just minutes before, I’d seen her thrashing around and heard her shouting. I could perfectly understand that her heart might have suddenly given out in the heat, mine was racing so hard, I was sure it too was about to collapse. But Valdis’s body wasn’t just dead, it was decaying.

  ‘I’ve already taken Fannar’s wife and daughters safely to the entrance of the cave,’ a voice said.

  I glanced up to see Vítor standing over us.

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Isabela,’ Vítor said. ‘Come and I’ll guide you out and help you to climb the rocks.’

  ‘Can’t leave yet,’ Isabela said. ‘Have to help Eydis … We have to free them … we can’t leave them here.’

  ‘Ari and Marcos will bring the women as soon as they have released them. There’s nothing more you can do. We can only climb out one at a time. We must get out now in order to leave the gap clear for them. If you stay you will only hinder them getting to safety. Hurry, the steam is building, we haven’t got much time.’

  He seized her arm and she turned towards him as if she had every intention of going with him.

  ‘No, don’t. We must all stay together,’ I protested. I scrambled to my feet and tried to make a grab for Isabela.

  ‘You may need help …’ Isabela was gasping in the suffocating steam, ‘getting the sisters out of the cave. If we’re on the outside … we can help pull her through the gap.’

  ‘Besides,’ Vítor said, ‘Fannar’s wife and daughters are out there unprotected … some of us should join them.’ He bent over coughing violently, struggling to regain his breath.

  ‘Then I’ll take Isabela out,’ I said, but Ari tugged weakly on my breeches. I glanced down at him.

  He gestured urgently at the hoop. I could hear the water in the pool bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. Jets of boiling water were shooting up to the cave roof and crashing back down into the water with the roar of a deadly waterfall. I looked up and reached out to grab Isabela, but where she and Vítor had stood just a moment ago was nothing but swirling white steam.

  ‘Hjálpa! Hjálpa!’ Ari yelled at me, frantically clutching at my leg.

  I crouched again and grabbed the iron ready for one last pull. Then, with a howl of fury, someone lunged towards us out of the steam. I just had time to glimpse the face of the man who minutes before had been lying unconscious in the corner. Ari sprang up and pushed himself between Eydis and the man, trying to fend him off.

  ‘Hjálpa Valdis!’ he yelled.

  I grasped both ends of the iron hoop, trying to pull them apart, but my muscles had turned to water in the heat. The man slammed his arm across Ari’s chest with such a powerful blow that the boy was lifted clean off his feet and tossed backwards. I heard the sickening crump as his body hit the cave wall.

  I felt the squeeze of Eydis’s hand on my leg and knew she was begging me to hurry, but before I could do anything the man had launched himself towards her. He threw his whole weight forward as he tried to seize Eydis. As his fingers reached for her throat, she jerked backwards, his hands missed her, his feet slipped on the wet rocks and he crashed face down to the cave floor and lay still.

  Eydis fought to pull her sister’s body up, so that I could once more grab the iron band encircling Valdis’s waist. I seized it on either side of the break and pulled with a strength that could only have come from blind fear, and the iron band shattered.

  ‘Ari, where are you?’ I yelled into the swirling steam.

  But I had the gut-wrenching feeling he couldn’t answer.

  ‘Isabela, are you there?’ I could see no one and nothing except for Eydis standing beside me clasping the body of her dead sister in her arms.

  ‘We’re here, Marcos,’ Isabela called from the other side of the cave. ‘No, no, Vítor. I don’t think that’s the right way.’

  ‘Let go of her, you bastard!’ I screamed. ‘Isabela, don’t trust him. He means to kill you. Get away from him, get away.’

  I blundered over in the direction from which I’d heard Isabela’s voice, all thoughts of Ari forgotten. I had to get to her.

  The steam cleared slightly just for a moment and I thought I could see two figures. But they were moving away from the passage towards the pool.

  ‘Stop, Isabela, stand still,’ I yelled. ‘The water, he’s taking you towards the water!’

  She must have stopped then and tried to pull away from him, for I heard Vítor urging her to keep walking.

  ‘I’m trying to get you out, Isabela. I helped you in the forest, don’t you remember? You trusted me then. Trust me now. I helped Fannar’s wife out. I know the way. Come on now, take my hand. That’s right. Only a few more steps and you’ll be in the passage.’

  I tried to run, but the ground was too slippery and I stumbled, falling down on my knees.

  There was a roar behind me. The man who had attacked Ari came lumbering out of the steam to the side of me. Then he vanished again into the whiteness. Ahead of me I heard Vítor yell and Isabela scream.

  I struggled to my feet, slipping and sliding until I finally managed to reach them. The man and Vítor were locked in a struggle. Vítor had drawn a knife, but the man had his arm pinned so that he couldn’t use it. He was clearly far stronger, but he was having difficulty keeping a foothold on the wet rocky floor.

  I grabbed Isabela. ‘Come on, this way.’

  ‘But we can’t leave Vítor, and what about Ari and Eydis?’ She turned back to peer hopelessly into the swirling clouds.

  ‘I have them safe,’ a calm voice said. A tall, stately woman stepped out of the mist behind me. She was carrying an unconscious Ari in her arms as easily as she might have carried a child. Eydis followed her. My brain was reeling so much in the heat, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined her, like the crowd of other people I thought I’d seen.

  ‘Isabela, we must leave now,’ I begged her.

  ‘But Vítor … that man is killing him,’ Isabela said desperately, half-choking in the steam, but still trying to move towards the place where we’d last seen them.

  ‘No, Isabela. Leave them,’ I pleaded. I tried to pull her but she resisted, pushing my slippery fingers easily from her arm.

  The cave suddenly shook again

  The tall woman turned. ‘This way now before it is too late.’

  We didn’t stop to ask questions, even Isabela didn’t protest. How the woman could find her way so surely through the hot dense fog, I didn’t know. But if she knew where the entrance was I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her. I couldn’t even tell which way we were facing any more.

  I found the rocky outcrop that led to the passage by dint of colliding with it. Ignoring my bruises, I reached out blindly for Isabela. She grasped my hand and together we groped our way around the rock until we reached the passage. Steam filled the narrow tunnel but, protected by the outcrop of rock and with the entrance above to vent it, it was much less dense. More rocks had been dislodged in the last shaking, but there was still a way up. The tall woman went first. Ari slung over her shoulder, she climbed up as effortlessly as a man might climb his own staircase. She lifted Ari up as high as she could, then pushed him up through the slit at the top, before scrambling out after him.

  I wanted to make Isabela climb out next, but she hung back.

  ‘Let Eydis go first, we might have to help h
er.’

  I hesitated, but Eydis had already started to climb, one arm around her dead sister’s body, using the other arm to pull them both up over the rocks. At the final boulder she hesitated. The only way both sisters would fit through the hole together was if she clasped her sister’s body to her own as tightly as she could, but Valdis’s head was lolling backwards. Eydis had to use both hands, one to hold up the weight of the torso and flopping arms, the other to press her sister’s dead head against her own neck. That meant she had no hands free to heave herself up over the edge.

  I couldn’t see how she’d manage to get out by herself. I would have to climb up and help her. The slit was so narrow, if she became stuck, we would all be trapped. I clambered up the rocks until I was just below Eydis. A pair of arms which I presumed belonged to the tall woman reached down through the gap to grasp Eydis under her armpits. I braced my back against the wall, trying not to think about the narrow ledge I was balancing on so precariously. I tried to work my shoulder under Eydis so that I could push her up. For the moment nothing happened. I squealed as I felt one of my feet sliding towards the edge of the ledge, and wildly flailed about, trying to grab hold of something. Then the weight lifted from my shoulder and I saw Eydis disappearing into the darkness above.

  At once the woman’s arm reached down again for me, and I grasped it thankfully. But as I stretched up with my other hand, the strap of my scrip around my waist snagged on the sharp rock. I felt the leather give way and the scrip containing all the money I possessed in the world tumbled into the billowing stream below. I could have howled, but there was nothing I could do to retrieve it. All that mattered now was getting out.