‘I told you I have many treasures in the hills, and I spoke the truth. I will present them to the witches, put myself at their mercy and ask them to save your prince.’
‘And then?’
‘I am a wolf,’ he said, ‘and have had enough of tomorrow and yesterday. I will die or I will not. I will go to the hills or I will not. I will exist or I will not.’
She thought of Vali looking up at her from the pit. She had seen something of the man in those strange green eyes. She loved and admired him more than ever when she thought of his courage. He had allowed them to seal him in. He, unlike her, had the bravery to die. But then she looked at Feileg, so like him in appearance, so different in personality. In some ways it was as if the gods had answered her prayers, given her a low-born man in Vali’s image — someone she could marry, perhaps could love.
‘I will follow you,’ said Adisla.
‘There is no need. The witches are not always merciful.’
‘More merciful than the fates?’ said Adisla. She looked at him and squeezed his hand.
‘There will be great danger,’ he said.
‘Feileg, I’ll follow you because you came here for me and you saved me. I see that you are the first among men. I’ll follow you because I want my Vali back, but I’ll follow you for baser reasons too. I have no home to go to. My mother is dead in the most awful way and I can never look on that place again without that memory. If I cannot be with him, I’ll be with you. And if I cannot be with you then my life is over.’
Feileg now knew that he would have what he so desperately wanted if only the prince died in that hole. All he had to do was fetch bigger and bigger rocks, perhaps even persuade the Noaidis to bring some over by boat, and make sure that thing was sealed in until it starved.
Adisla had tears on her face as her eyes turned to the great heap of stones over the shaft.
‘Come on,’ said Feileg. ‘We will go to the witches.’
45
Veles Libor was not in a good mood. His promise to King Hemming that he would find a way to rid him of the prince and make him a little money at the same time had come to nothing. The deception of the escape — played for the benefit of the mob — had been a good one but he hadn’t foreseen the pirate attack. Hemming would fall into a fury if Veles returned without Forkbeard’s gold and would assume he had pocketed it himself. That, thought Veles, would be a problem to dwarf the unenviable difficulties he was already facing.
He couldn’t believe how quickly they had lost Vali in the fog. They’d scarcely cut him adrift when he disappeared and there had been no sign at all of him since.
‘I’d just cut loose from this king if I were you,’ said Bodvar Bjarki. ‘You could disappear east and he’d never hear of you again.’
‘Neither would anyone else. A merchant without a prince to protect him is nothing,’ said Veles, ‘and besides, his name is worth ten on every hundred to me.’
The berserk was ungovernable, he thought. The crew would have been mutinous if they had not been so depleted and weakened by the attack, and the ship was low on provisions. His actions during the battle had made him an object of contempt to the men and he had to endure being called ‘barrel man’, ‘keg creeper’, ‘tun tickler’ and whatever other less than inventive nicknames they could come up with.
Despite this, Veles now assumed informal command of the vessel, in that he determined its next move. This was not because he had any authority with Bjarki or the hired crew but because he was the only one who seemed to have any idea what they might do.
They stopped at the little market at Kaupangen, where he managed to sell some of the taken battle gear for a reasonable price and to hire five passably hardy-looking Danes to replace some of the men lost in the battle. He made sure the Danes knew who paid their wages and picked them for their brawn and stupidity. He wanted stupid — it was an essential requirement for the expedition he had in mind. He had lies to tell and didn’t want clever men finding them out. The crew was down to twenty-six — five for him, at least in theory, and nineteen for the berserk. The odds were very far from ideal but they were better than they had been.
Luckily for Veles, the berserk wanted Vali as much as he did. Bjarki had vowed to take the prince to Forkbeard and that was an un-negotiable promise, so for the moment he found Veles useful. Bjarki was a brute but not a fool, and he knew the merchant’s brains would be useful in the hunt. After that, well, who knew who had been killed in the pirate attack?
Veles looked at the berserk. He was no mind reader but could guess what Bjarki was thinking. The merchant needed to make himself indispensable to him.
When Veles settled to thinking about a problem then, if there was an answer, he usually found it. At Haithabyr he had heard whispers that Haarik was using Vali’s farm girl to ransom his son. He had not told Vali this because he had very quickly seen that the prince wasn’t in a position to pay for the information, nor to offer any other sort of benefit. However, now he saw a happy meeting of needs between himself and Bodvar Bjarki. The girl had gone north. Haarik had gone north. The prevailing current would take Vali north if he wasn’t shipwrecked on the way. Veles would take his ship up the North Land coast, find Whale People and ask for information about the girl, Haarik and the prince. Find either of the first two and he would find the third, he thought.
There was another reason to go north. He had heard of an island where the Whale People made sacrifices to their stupid gods. There was a rumour of gold there. Bjarki was convinced it was defended by sorcery but Veles thought otherwise.
In truth, Veles had very little respect for magic or for any god. He had seen his children playing by the fire with the Whale People’s holy objects, hung embroideries of the Christ god on his walls for decoration, heard people all over the world singing the praises of Wuoton, Odin, Raedie, Svarog, Spenta Mainyu, Jesus and other gods. All seemed the same to him — pictures and carvings beautiful but empty.
He put more faith in himself, the swords of Hemming and the power of coin than he did in the supernatural. The sorcerer who had made his child’s mask hadn’t been protected by his magic from whoever took it from him; Jesus had been taken to the cross with no angelic defenders, no bolts of fire from the sky smiting his enemies. Veles had actually laughed when the missionary told him the story of the crucifixion. What had the mighty god done to avenge his son? Torn the curtain on the temple. Cross Hemming and you’d suffer more than a ripped wall hanging for your pains.
So, the prince was in the north and Haarik was in the north and even this girl who seemed so important was there. He suspected magical beliefs figured in her disappearance and a look around the Whale People’s holy sites might uncover her. The prince wouldn’t be far behind. Veles thought he’d give it a go. It was better than returning empty-handed to Hemming, and maybe there really was gold up there, though he doubted it.
The journey was excruciatingly slow, hampered by argument and indecision. The whole trip should have taken them a couple of weeks, even against the current. Instead it consumed months. The berserk wanted to go after Vali but didn’t seem to realise that they first had to find out where he had been. There was no point randomly hurtling around the coast, as Bjarki seemed to want to do. They needed to ask if there had been a shipwreck, if strangers had passed by, if anyone had taken captives.
The Whale People were simple and friendly folk. They started out hostile and threatening, waving spears and screaming but if you gave them a coin or two they thought you a very fine fellow indeed and no threat — otherwise, why would you have given them the coins? So they wanted to please. Yes, there had been a shipwreck. Yes, strangers had gone past. Yes, there were captives. In their little dwellings on the headlands behind beaches, in their tents and by their fires Veles listened to them tell their stories of great storms, men with burning eyes and princesses of southern kingdoms tied to reindeer sleds and taken north to marry water spirits. The most recent of the stories, he guessed, was around fifty years old.
He had been freezing on and off the boat for two months when they came to where there was no further land to the north and the coast turned east.
‘What now?’ said the berserk. It was cold, very cold.
