Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Egil blinked. “I’d forgotten about that. Anyway, I helped a lot, I really did, but it’s my first time at sea. I don’t know much.”

  “You’ll learn,” said the voice behind them that Skarga found increasingly irritating.

  Egil twisted around, grinning. “You really mean that? Someone’ll teach me?”

  “Someone may,” said Grimr. “Most of it’s simply practise and following orders. First, get indoors and dry yourselves off. We eat soon.”

  The place was a lifeless wilderness without shelter or welcome. The wind whistled low among the scrubby dunes, flattening the weed.

  Skarga blinked. “Indoors? There isn’t a door to go into.”

  Grimr pointed. He and some of the men remained, securing the ship against incoming tides and possible storm but most of the crew had already left the ship, cloaks slung over shoulders, carrying armfuls of gear or dragging sea-chests across the scrub, trudging up the slopes and into the distant tangles of grey thorn. Skarga picked up her skirts again and plodded behind, Egil following. Beyond a hillock there were two long low buildings, as colourless as the landscape, with leaning shelters for grain and animals.

  It was Lodver who called to her, “More privacy in there, lady,” he nodded to the smaller barn. “It won’t be clean. But then, none of it is.”

  Skarga saw no one else that night. She and the boy slept warm amongst the old straw, the sheep droppings. No window peeped in upon them and Skarga wedged the door shut with a pitchfork. She did not dream, not of haunting moonlight on snow nor the hurtling desperation of the sled, the chase of the great white bear, the eagle eye nor the glimmer of the dolphins through the waters. There was no music. There was only Egil, cuddled close, his nasal wheeze against her ear.

  When she woke for the morning, she stretched, sighed and crawled outside with the still yawning Egil. Grimr was standing in the rain. He said, “You took no food with the rest of us last night. You both need to eat.”

  She wondered how he always managed to turn up at the relevant moment. She said, “You’re trying to keep me alive?”

  He grinned. “No pleasure in killing someone already half dead.”

  She believed him. “I’m not hungry. I was going to explore.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. With poor visibility and no landmarks, you’d be lost before I could be bothered looking for you. There’ll be a heavy sea cloud drifting in before afternoon and this rain won’t let up. Stay close until you get used to the lie of the land and the climate. And eat.”

  He turned his back and strode off. Skarga glared, then stalked off in the opposite direction. Soon Egil was shivering. There was no comprehension of distance. Everything was the same and the sameness of everything disappeared into the thickening blur of fog. Skarga was already hungry and the mist was as drab as gruel. The cold seeped between the seams of Egil’s tattered clothing. “Can’t we go back, lady? I’m frozen.”

  “Stop whining,” said Skarga.

  “You’re lost, aren’t you?” accused Egil. “He said you would be.”

  “If you were still a slave brat,” said Skarga, “I’d slap you. Or something.”

  “I didn’t know you’d freed me,” said Egil, blinking wide.

  “Stupid boy.” Skarga took his hand, which was numb with cold, and rubbed it warm, then tucked it into the crook of her arm beneath the thickness of her cloak. “Children picked up after being found abandoned are always slaves by law. If I’d freed you officially, my father or brothers would have been equally free to kill you. Belonging to me sort of kept you safe. I said the words of freedom in front of the Althing law complier many months ago, but it was safer not to tell anyone else, not even you. Officially the procedure wasn’t complete but that can’t possibly make any difference now.”

  “It does,” said Egil. “I want to die free.”

  “You’re not going to die,” said Skarga. “We’re going to find a place on this horrid island where we can hide. So being lost doesn’t matter unless we end up walking in circles.”

  The mist was clammy fingered and thick and viscous and her ankles scraped stone. The fine rain no longer fell straight but swirled into billows and the mist was thick as dirty milk. Shapes loomed, then shrank to gorse bush and hillock. Wind shuddered across the grass, ironing it flat in a sudden glimpse of bog or reed. No creature moved. There were no sheep. Then there was a shadow in the mist, first seeming huge, then diminishing to man size. A dark muscled man with a frown. “The captain sent me,” said Lodver. His voice was swallowed by mist. “You’re to come back now, lady.”

  It was, ridiculously, an enormous relief. Skarga said, “The captain said he wouldn’t bother to come looking for me.”

  “He didn’t,” said Lodver. “He sent me.”

  The drear grey of the old longhouses and the surrounding huts and barns welcomed them back into apathy. Lodver turned at the long house doorway, ready to leave again. “It’s a bad country to hide in, for there’s nowhere to go.”

  Skarga shook her head. “I’m under threat of execution. I’ll try and get away.”

  Lodver almost smiled. “Easy to be lost, impossible to hide. And our crew, lady, well, we’re what you might call – experienced in all terrains. If the captain wants someone found, he’ll find them. He can watch from land, and sea, and air.”

  Skarga scowled. “So, he’s a god.”

  Lodver’s smile briefly materialised. “Not a god. Not a monster either. And I don’t believe he’s interested in executions, lady.”

  The men wandered back desultory in small groups, some wet as if they’d swum the murky shallows, though were the happiest. Grimr did not return with the others. Big Orm, his silken hair now plaited, flung himself down cross-legged and began twisting the plait into a knot. Another man stood shaking water drops, shrugging the wet weed from his shoulders. “Too cold for you my friend? It’s not the hair in the way that’s the trouble, it’s making the Shift with the mist thick as the incoming tide.”

  Orm glowered, concentrating on his chosen task. “Don’t fucking talk to me of the Shift, little fish. Go wriggle your fins elsewhere.”

  Three men had piled logs, dried grasses and heather over the flat stone hearth, and the first tiny glimmer of flame tinged cinnabar. Skarga sat watching. She had seen no tinder box, heard no click of the hammer on flint, saw no spark. One man’s hands had cupped and at once the fire licked his palms.

  Lodver leaned over. “Raise the spit, Halfdan, what we need is food. My belly’s empty as a sow after farrowing.” Then he turned, holding his hand out to Egil. “Lady, if you’ll excuse the boy?” Egil was up and scampering. Skarga stayed quiet and alone.

  It was lamb on the spit and Skarga ate as Egil sat moon-eyed with the men, clasped tight to Lodver’s knee, eating little, breathing adoration. Eventually Skarga crawled back alone to her bed in the barn.

  Egil was at her side when she woke in the straw, but not for long. He had been invited to pass the dull day’s hours with Lodver. Then the storm set in. The wind came from the west with a thunderclap and a rain like cold steel. Skarga had seen a thousand storms worse, rode through them, struggled through them, slept through them. But this one blew the roof off the barn. The rain hurtled in, she was soaked and shivering and the heaped straw sodden. A family of mice scurried from beneath her skirts and buried themselves deeper into the dryer straw beneath. Skarga flung her wolf cape over her head and raced to the long house door. Her feet slipped in the wet mud, her hems splashed with it. She ran inside, slammed the door shut behind her and leaned back against it, panting. The walls vibrated. She dripped water from nose to tunic, tunic to shift, hem to toes. Puddles around her feet. A scattering of sooty ashes rose in the little whirlwind of her entrance. “Shit,” she said loudly and stamped both feet, releasing more muddy water.

  A faint sigh drifted on the same little wind, and a shadow upended itself from a blanket beside the open and empty hearth. Skarga whirled around, facing the shadow giant. The gloom within the l
ong hall was enclosed into darkness by the shuttered windows and the darkening day without. She peered, seeing a sudden glimmer of naked skin, a shoulder shrugged, the curve of a narrow buttock and the heaving of legs into clothes. “Abduction,” Grimr sighed, “is a thankless task, and not only for the captive it seemed.”

  Another figure, much smaller, emerged from the swirl of blanket and, clutching its cape and a heap of skirts around it, quickly scurried past Skarga towards the entrance. Pulling the big wooden door open with an effort, the girl dipped her head into the slanting torrents and disappeared at once. Grimr stood inside, looking down at Skarga. The opening of the door gave a sudden slash of light, followed by thunder. Grimr was frowning. “I suppose,” he said, “you are going to be an infernal nuisance.” And he pushed something into her arms. It felt like soft wool and she guessed it was the blanket. “Dry yourself,” he said, and strode across the echoing boards. Again the door opened to an unnatural light, and closed again, this time quietly.

  It was that evening, better lit with oil lamps set swinging on the long walls and the fire high, when the men, all soaked from the storm, were merrier and noisy with a fresh ale barrel rolled central and tapped, when Lodver said, “Lady, there’s a cupboard bed, clean enough, and to spare. It’s yours, if you’ll accept it, ‘till the barn roof’s repaired, or another made ready for you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Spending her days miserable and alone, Skarga wandered the safe outskirts of the visible land, tentatively stretching her boundaries without risking the endless mists. Egil danced off to spend time with Lodver, the slim man Safn, or with Grimr himself. Sometimes, during the crowded noisy evenings with the intoxication of full cups and the comfort of the fire slapping flames up to the stars, Grimr closed his eyes and recounted the sagas. Then each man would become quiet, and listen with such intensity that it seemed another kind of intoxication. Many tales were strange, but some were stories Skarga had heard before, of the heroes and dragons, the gods and the wild, far explorations. Yet Grimr’s voice brought the tales marching alive from the shadows.

  Egil usually returned to her as heather-misted twilight turned to moon rise, telling of the care he had received during the day, of teaching; seamanship and the navigation of ocean-craft, and of learning to read the geology of any land as surely as the tidal waves. Close to her side and his head against her breast, his voice would murmur into the salt stained linen of her tunic and the tired boredom of her breathing. “And from above, they say you can understand the patterns the land weaves, like a crust of soil over ancient rock. I’m not sure how they’ve seen it, but I can imagine how it looks when they describe it all. You know I’ve always loved birds. I can dream of being high, like them, watching from the clouds. Seeing hills like threaded lines each tipped with trees, curves where rock’s crushed into steps and hollows but too huge to understand unless you look straight down on them. Colours bleeding from the earth.”

  “Perhaps we all dream of flying sometimes. It’s freedom, isn’t it?”

  His small arm crawled to circle her waist, snuggling down for the night’s fantasies. “I never think of it as freedom. It feels more like waking up. You know, as if I’m dreaming now. Then when I dream of flying, it’s real.”

  “When you talk like that, you sound as crazed as these men. None of them talk about a sensible world. They talk about the Shift and the Change, whatever that is, and they tease each other about swimming. And flying.”

  “I know what you mean.” He sighed. “They talk to me about flying too. Perhaps it is, to some people.”

  “Silly boy.” Murmuring affection. “It seems the men care for you. Lodver watches over you, just like a big brother ought to. Not like my big brothers anyway.”

  “It’s the captain as well.” Egil wondered if she’d object. “I know you don’t trust him. Well, why would you? But he doesn’t seem dangerous when he talks to me. And he’s the best teacher of all. He says things I’d never thought of before, like listening to your heartbeat and slowing it down or speeding it up by panting and running. Breathing different till you’re nearly asleep, holding your breath, then letting it out, but holding it longer each time. Feeling it move inside, up and down, even one side to the other. Do you know, you can see yourself sitting on top of your own head, and really feel it?”

  “I can’t imagine what use that would be. And I don’t think,” Skarga said, “you should encourage this captain Grimr. Try to be with Lodver instead. And don’t tell Grimr anything private about us. If he asks about me, tell him nothing at all.”

  “Oh, that’s safe,” said Egil cheerfully, “he never asks about you at all.”

  Once again, Skarga planned to escape.

  Great mounds of sweet smelling turfs were spread across the ground and set with fire, spouting smoke. Beneath the smouldering turfs were the meat carcasses, already part dismembered. The men had prepared the fires and buried the mutton some time earlier and now sat cross legged, licking their scalded fingers. Skarga watched them, forty faces, now recognisable through the leaping sparks. She knew them now, though not all their names. Orm, Grimr’s Second; a massive belly protruding from his chain mail, thin silky yellow hair down his back and a thick beard around a diminishing chin. Lodver, seemingly Grimr’s third hand, all in neat darkness, trimmed black beard and cropped hair like curls pressed flat across his head. Not so tall, not so wide, but could lift a sheep carcass one handed, and eat most of it too. The other small dark man but slimmer, was Safn, with a complaint for every occasion. It was red Halfdan who yelled, “Will you keep us company tonight, lady? It’s a fine midsummer and the moon’s smiling full. A good night for a bellyful and a comforting shag later.”

  Grimr came to her as if appearing from the fire. With gold flame at his back, his pale hair turned black shadows and set him in basalt. He said, not to her though it was her he watched, “Yes, she’ll stay. And she’ll sit with me.”

  Skarga had been sitting apart, waiting for the meat to be unturfed and her platter filled. Now she scrambled to her knees, ready to leave. Grimr sat beside her. He said, “Don’t be a fool.” She paused. He made no move to restrain her. She recalled dignity, and sat again. She saw Safn with Egil. Egil animated, Safn calm. Egil, at least, was content and welcomed. At her side, Grimr said suddenly, “Have you been made unwelcome?”

  It was what she had been thinking, but had spoken nothing of it. Surprised she said, “Do you care? But yes. I’m left constantly alone. Your men ignore me.”

  “You’d prefer to be constantly guarded? Never alone? And what the men would say, if they chose not to ignore you, you’d be unlikely to find diverting.”

  “It hardly matters,” Skarga sniffed, “since you mean to kill me anyway.”

  “An impatient child indeed,” said Grimr. “Has it not occurred to you that if I wanted you dead, I could have dealt with you very simply while at sea? Or left you to wander in the mist the first day, when you thought of escaping. The wind on this island turns to ice at night and there is neither food nor shelter. The rain is relentless and the mist almost continuous. If I’d wanted to kill you, I would simply have left you out in the wilds. Instead I have arranged both shelter and food, and a home here, of sorts. A considerable waste, if I planned an imminent slaughter.”

  He was leaning back on his elbows, booted feet outstretched beside her. Although the details of his face were deep in shadow, the blue glitter of his eyes lit his watchfulness. She kept her own eyes on her lap. “Am I supposed to thank you for the food? It’s Lodver’s bed, so the shelter isn’t from you, but perhaps you expect me to be grateful anyway. And you’ve been very good to Egil. But I can’t thank a man who refuses to say whether he means my death or not.”

  The smoke was billowing in the low sea breeze, a sharp smell of brine at her knees, the rich perfumes of baked mutton at shoulder height. The men were unearthing their feast. Roast flesh slipped, spitting pink juice, from its dark bones. Lodver was already chewing, nose to his dinner and not a m
ind to anyone else. Grimr leaned over, taking the great soapstone bowl of seeping meat. He speared one wedge on the point of his knife and passed it to Skarga. “I haven’t the slightest interest in your gratitude,” he said. “Now eat.”

  She took the food. She was careful not to touch his hand. “So you still refuse to tell me what you intend. Do you enjoy leaving me in a miserable suspense?”

  He had turned away again, but now he turned back suddenly, as if startled. “You imagine I enjoy anything about you? And you think I should explain myself to you?”

  Skarga glared back. “Shouldn’t I know whether to expect life or death?”

  “None of us know that,” he answered. “Eat your supper.”

  She squinted through the steam and said, “I don’t have a knife.”

  He smiled. “Of course you do. You have two. I’ve had my hands on you three times and I know you have a knife strapped beneath your tunic under your left arm, and another, smaller, wedged inside your belt. Eat, or you’ll be ill and then I may decide to let you die after all. I’ve no time for nursing capricious females.”

  She opened her mouth to answer but he had turned away and was talking to the man on his other side. She took the little knife from her belt and began to cut her meat. Grimr no longer wore the chain mail that he had at sea, and she wished she could stick her knife into his side instead of into her dinner, but the slow roasted mutton was delicious, and very hot. The skin was wafer thin, dark and flaking.

  Through the chill of the evening and into the full black of night, the men continued their feast, stretched out on the sward or stomping around, poking at the fires, searching for the turnips left to soften in the embers or kicking at the logs to reawaken the sparks. Four ale barrels had been tapped and the dark beer seeped in scummy dregs into a sour pool where the men stamped, refilling endless cups. All men drank, all men valued a gut of oblivion. And if some ready woman promised more pleasures, then the gutful was easily pissed or spewed, leaving a man ready to fuck his splendorous night into another kind of oblivion. Women drank too. Forgetfulness served many purposes. Although she’d never welcomed the cup as a solution, Skarga understood the desire for escape into the blank dreams of sodden, drunken warmth. But it was another kind of escape she was looking for now. She drank very little.