The Whale Road. Robert Low
We sailed north then, up past Man, where there was much argument for putting in at Thingvollur and getting properly dry and fed. But Einar argued against it, saying that people would ask too many questions and someone would talk and the news would get to Strathclyde before we did.
Grumbling, the men hauled the Elk further north, into the wind and the white-tressed sea.
Three more days passed, during which no one spoke much more than grunts and even the sheep had no strength left to bleat. For the most part, we huddled in solitary misery, enduring.
I dreamed of Freydis often, and always the same vision: her receiving me on the morning I arrived. She wore a blue linen dress with embroidery round the throat and hem, her brooches had strange animal heads and between them was a string of amber beads. She made no movement save for the rhythmic stroking of the growling cat.
‘From the pack, I take it you have come from Gudleif,’ she said to me. ‘Since he would only miss this journey if he were sick or injured, I presume that to be the case. Who are you?’
‘Orm,’ I replied. ‘Ruriksson. Gudleif fosters me.’
‘Which is it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Sick or injured.’
‘He has sent for his sons.’
‘Ah.’ She was silent for a moment. Then: ‘So were you his favourite?’
My laugh was bitter enough for her to realise. ‘I doubt that, mistress. Why else would he send me through the snow to the hall of a—’ I stopped before the words were out, but she caught that, too, and chuckled.
‘A what? Witch? Old crone?’
‘I meant nothing by it, mistress. But I was sent away and I think he hoped I would die.’
‘I doubt that,’ she said crisply, rising so that the cat sprang off her lap and then arched in a great, shivering bow of ecstasy before stalking off. ‘Call me Freydis, not mistress,’ she went on, smoothing her front. ‘And ponder this, young man. Ask yourself why in … how old are you?’
I told her and she smiled gently. ‘In fifteen years, you and I have never met, though we are but a day apart and Gudleif came every year. Ask that, Orm Ruriksson. Take your time. The snow will not melt in a hurry.’
‘He sent me to die in the snow,’ I said bitterly and she shrugged.
‘But you did not. Perhaps your wyrd is different.’
Then the hall changed, to the one I had sat in under her bloodsoaked sealskin cloak, with the roof caved in. Yet still she sat on her bench, the cat somehow back on her lap.
‘I am sorry,’ I said and she nodded her head off her shoulders, so that it tumbled into her lap, sending the cat leaping up with a yowl …
I woke to the cold and wet, wondering if she was fetch-haunting me. Wondering, too, what had happened to the cat.
Then Pinleg yelled out from the prow, where he was coiling walrus-hide ropes. When he had our attention, he pointed and we all squinted into the pearl-light of the winter sky.
‘There,’ shouted Illugi Godi, pointing with his staff. A solitary gull wheeled, staggered in the wind, dipped, swooped and then was gone.
My father was already busy, with his tally stick and his peculiar devices. I never mastered them, even after he had explained them to me.
I knew that he had two stones, like grinding wheels, free-mounted. One pointed at the north star and the other was fixed to point at the sun. That way, my father knew the latitude, by seeing the angle of the sun stone. He could calculate longitude by using that and what he called his own time, marked on his tally stick.
I never understood any of it – but at the end of four days I knew why Einar valued Rurik the shipmaster, because we found the land at the point where we were supposed to find it, then my father, leaning over the side, watching the water, announced that a suitable inlet lay no more than a mile away, one where we could get ashore and sort ourselves out.
He read water like a hunter reads tracks. He could see changes in colour where, to anyone else, it was just featureless water.
The mood had changed and everyone was suddenly alert and busy. The sail came down, a great sodden mass of wool which had to be sweatily flaked into a squelching mass and stowed on the spar.
The oars came out, that watch of rowers took their sea-chest benches and Valgard Skafhogg, the shipwright, took a shield and beat time on it with a pine-tarred rope’s end until the rowers had the rhythm and away we went.
Pinleg swayed past me, smiling broadly and clapping a round helmet on his head. He had a boarding axe in one hand and a wild light in his eye. It was hard for me to realise that Pinleg was older than me by ten years, since he was scrawny and no bigger than I was.
I wondered how such a runt – his leg was permanently crippled, from birth I learned, so that he walked with a sailor’s roll even on dry land – had ended up in the Oathsworn. I learned, soon enough, and was glad I had never asked him.
‘I’d leave the sheep, Bear Killer,’ he chuckled. ‘Grab your weapons and get ready.’
‘Are we fighting?’ I asked, suddenly alarmed. It occurred to me that I had no idea where we were, or who the enemy would be. ‘Where are we?’
Pinleg just grinned his mad grin. Nearby, Ulf-Agar, small, dark as a black dwarf and with an expression as sullen, said, ‘Who cares? Just get ready, Bear Killer. Pretend they are lots of bears. That will help.’
I glanced at him, knowing he was taunting me and not knowing why.
Ulf-Agar hefted his two weapons – he scorned a shield – and curled a lip. ‘Stay behind Pinleg if you are worried. Killing men is different from bears, I will grant you. Not everyone is cut out for it.’
I knew I had been insulted; I felt my face flame. I realised, with a sick lurch, that Ulf-Agar was probably deadly with his axe and seax, but a slight is a slight…
A hand clasped my shoulder, gentle but firm. Big-bellied Illugi Godi, with his neat beard and quiet voice, spoke softly: ‘Well said, Ulf-Agar. And not everyone can kill a white bear in a stand-up fight. Perhaps, when you do, you will share your joy with Rurik’s son?’
Ulf-Agar offered him a twisted smile and said nothing, suddenly interested in the notching on his seax. Then: ‘I have a spear, Bear Killer,’ he remarked, with an edge-sharp smile. ‘Since you drove your own up into the head of that beast, you may want to borrow it.’
I turned away without replying. Ulf-Agar wanted the tale to be a lie, for it was a task Baldur would have been hard put to manage, let alone a scrawny man/boy. And the nightmare of it hag-rode me to a shivering, soaked waking most nights, which I am sure Ulf-Agar had not been slow to notice.
The nightmare was always one of those where you are running from some horror and yet you cannot get your legs working fast enough – which is what happened when I spilled out of that doorway, leaving Freydis to her wyrd. I was sobbing and panting and struggling in the snow. I fell, got up and fell again.
My knee hit something, hard enough to make me gasp. The wood sled. The bear lumbered forward, spraying snow like a ship under full sail. I had Bjarni’s sword still, was surprised to find it locked in my hand.
I picked up the sled awkwardly, stumbled a few steps and half fell, half hurled myself on it. It slid a few feet, then stopped. I kicked furiously and it moved. I heard the bear grunting and puffing through the snow close behind me.
I kicked again and the sled slithered forward, picked up a little speed, then a little more. I felt the hissing wind of a swiped paw, a fine mist of blood on my ears and neck from its ruined mouth as it roared … then I was away, hurtling down the hill, the bear galloping clumsily after, bawling rage and frustration.
There was a confusion of snow