shore.
The boat turned over completely as the whale shook its body. Cuthred was launched out like a diver, turned in the air, a shower of objects coming down with him as the boat spilled its contents. His spiked shield, the one made of case-hardened steel, landed a foot from Shef's hand. He watched numbly as Cuthred splashed into the water and the whale turned.
Cuthred trod water for an instant, then seemed to find footing under him. He stepped backwards towards the land, only six feet from where Shef crouched, still thigh deep. Somehow, his sword was in his hand, he leveled it at the great black-and-white jaws boring in. The whale swerved and as it did so Cuthred thrust forward in a classic “long point,” arm and body rigid.
A thump of contact, a sudden flurry, a slap of water from the tail. Then the whale was gone, leaving a thin trail of blood in the sea, and shattered planks where the boat had been.
Cuthred slowly straightened, wiping his sword on his wet sleeve. The provision box floated a few feet from him. He stepped forward again, up to his middle, and without haste gathered it in, turned and waded over to the ledge where Shef still crouched motionless.
“How do we get off here, then?” he asked. “I don't fancy swimming.”
They crouched for a few minutes on the steep rock, looking across the little inlet. The whales were still there, cruising in and out. Once one of them rose to the stern of the boat, floating half-intact ten yards out from shore, took it without haste in its jaws, crunched down.
The two men turned awkwardly to look behind them at the rocky shore. The best that could be said was that it was not completely vertical, rather a stiff slope, steeper than the roof of a house, but made of a jumble of stone. There were handholds and footholds in plenty for a scramble. But the mountain-side seemed to go on and on, up to the pale sky with never a break. It could take hours to reach the top, hours with never a place to rest. Yet there was no choice. Slowly and carefully, aware of the deadly water a few feet away, the men gathered their meager possessions together. Cuthred had his sword and spiked targe. Impossible to carry them while scrambling up the mountain. After a moment Shef took the sword, cut a length from one leather shoelace, tied sword and shield together and showed Cuthred how to sling both on his back. The rope handles on the provision box could be extended, retied so as to make carrying straps. Shef fixed that on to his own back, made certain his short eating- knife was still in its sheath, the fire-flint he always carried next to it. He carried nothing else except the gold bracelets on his arms, was unarmed save for the belt-knife.
They began, carefully and slowly, to make their way up the mountain-side. For what seemed an age they crept from rock to rock, on all fours all the way, trying to angle round vertical precipices, never quite coming on the impassable, never finding a place to stop, to sit or even stand in safety. Shef's thigh muscles began to ache, then to jump spasmodically. At any moment, he felt, the cramp might strike. Then he would lose his grip and fall, or roll, all the way to the water. Looking down, he saw nothing but unforgiving stone all the way down to the metal-gray sea, still patrolled by the orca fins. He forced himself to thrust himself up another few feet. Brace a foot, push again, haul with all the failing strength of his arms.
A voice was talking to him. Cuthred's, just a few feet above. “Lord,” it said. “Three more steps, two more steps. A place here to rest.”
As if in reaction to what Cuthred said, Shef felt the searing pain of cramp in his right thigh. He knew he had to override it, but there was no strength left. He felt the leg give way, tightened his fingers despairingly on their last hold.
Fingers seized his hair, yanked mercilessly with terrible strength. Shef felt himself lifted off his feet like a puppy, hauled up and over a ledge. He lay belly down, gasping. Cuthred seized him by his breeches and hauled him the last few feet, rolled him over and began to knead his thigh.
After a score of deep indrawn breaths, Shef felt the pain ease. He knuckled involuntary tears from his eyes and sat up.
They were on what seemed for all the world like a narrow path, no more than a foot and a half wide, but luxury after the mountain-side. It ran along the side of the inlet, visible either way for only a few yards. Just on the seaward side of the place where they sat, it seemed to fork, one part continuing to run along horizontally, the other turning uphill.
Cuthred pointed to the second fork. “I reckon that might go up to the highest point of the ness,” he said. “Good lookout point. I'll go along there, see what there is. Maybe we can find some wood, light a beacon. The whalers are bound to come back past here sometime.”
Not for a while, Shef thought. And even then they may decide to keep outside the line of the skerries, as they do when they're not hot on the trail of the grind. But Cuthred had already slipped away, sword and shield now ready in his hands. What made this path anyway, Shef reflected. Goats? What else could live up here but mountain goats? Strange that they had worn such a clear track.
Suddenly aware again of his own hunger and thirst, he unslung the provision box, pulled out the milk crock, took a long slow draught of it. As he set it down again, he felt depression and despair settle round his shoulders like a heavy blanket.
The view in front of him was unutterably bleak: gray sea far below, tossing restlessly on gray stone. Above it, just rock and jumbled scree rising all the way to a ridge far above the level where Shef sat. And above that, another higher ridge, and another, rising up to the snow that never melted. White snow and gray stone merged into a sky from which every hint of color had been washed. No hint of green grass, no hint of blue sky, only the everlasting paleness of the high latitudes. Shef felt as if he were at the end of the world, and about to fall off it. The sweat of toil and pain was drying on him, turning him cold and clammy in the little bitter wind that whispered along the mountain-side.
If he died here, who would know? The gulls and the carnivorous skuas would eat his flesh, and then his bones would bleach for ever in the wind. Brand would wonder what had happened for a while. He might never bother to pass word to the south, to Godive and Alfred. They would forget him in a few seasons. His whole life seemed to Shef, in those moments, to be a remorseless pursuit from one disaster to another. The death of Ragnar and the beating he had got from his stepfather. The rescue of Godive, and his blinding. The battles he had fought, and the price he had paid for them. Then the stranding on the sandbank, the march to Hedeby, the way Hrorik had sold him to the Way in Kaupang, the disaster on the ice, his betrayal by Ragnhild, and the killing of little Harald. It all seemed of a piece: momentary success, bought by pain and loss. And now here, stranded beyond hope of rescue, in a place where no human foot had trod since the beginning of time. Maybe it would be better to let go now, fall down the hillside, and vanish from sight for ever.
Shef slumped back, shoulders against the stone, the provision box still open by his side. He felt the sight coming on him, taking over his mind and body in his exhausted, waking swoon.
