Arne set about whipping the cord to the rotten tooth. He muttered as he worked and kept having to break off to clear the site of blood and saliva. At last he rocked back on his heels. ‘That’s as tight as I can make it.’
Hero looked up at the mast, calculating more like an engineer than a physician. ‘Lay your chief on that thwart directly under the yard, head against the side. Tie the free end of the cord to a line long enough to run over the yardarm with about ten feet to spare. I need a heavy weight. A ballast stone will do. Also a sack for the weight and a short rope to hang it from the yard. Three feet should be enough.’
One of the men selected a large oval stone from the bed of ballast around the mast and held it up.
‘My favourite little stone,’ Thorfinn warbled. ‘I picked it myself from the strand on Saltfjord.’ He began to sing again, swinging one hand before his face like a pendulum.
‘Place the stone in the sack,’ Hero said. ‘Tie the short rope to it and hang it from the yard.’
One of the Vikings climbed to the yard and pulled himself along it. Hero calculated angles and forces. ‘Tie it there. Just outboard. That’s the spot. Stay where you are and cut the rope when I give the word.’ He looked round. ‘Toss the line from the tooth over the yard. Good.’ He estimated for a drop of ten feet and looked up at the man straddling the yard. ‘Take in the line. That’s enough. Cut it there and tie the end to the sack. Make it secure.’
With everything in place, Hero made a last inspection of the set-up. ‘I want two men to hold Thorfinn so that his head doesn’t move when the stone drops. Put his head as far back as you can. Someone had better hold his legs as well.’
The Viking on the yard held his knife ready. Someone sniggered. ‘The Greek’s going to drop it on our captain’s head.’
‘Cut!’
Down dropped the stone. Up flashed the line leading from Thorfinn’s tooth. It twanged as it met the ballast stone’s heft. Thorfinn convulsed, kicking off the assistant pinning his legs. The line whipped over the spar and the stone hit the sea in a spout and disappeared, dragging the line so fast that no one could see if was still connected to the tooth or had broken. Hero ran to Thorfinn. Black blood and pus poured from his mouth.
‘Keep hold of him.’
Hero splashed water into the pirate chief’s mouth. He mopped it with a rag and inserted a finger. Where the tooth had been was a gaping cavity.
He reeled back on his haunches. ‘It’s out. You can unloose him.’
Thorfinn groped to his feet like a drunken mariner waking in a storm. When he’d achieved a degree of equilibrium, he cracked open his maw and delved inside with a filthy finger. A crazy grin spread across his face. He pointed at Hero, took one step, crashed into a thwart and, after one last witless stare, fell full length, cracking his head a mighty blow on the gunwale. One hand closed and unclosed; one leg contracted and stretched. Then he fell still.
‘You’ve killed him,’ one of the Vikings marvelled.
Hero felt Thorfinn’s pulse. ‘He’ll live. When he wakes up, tell him to rinse his mouth out with salty water. Keep food away from the cavity until it heals.’
Arne smiled at Hero and winked. The other Vikings slapped his back and guffawed. ‘Hey, Hero,’ one called, using his name for the first time. ‘Give me a taste of your cordial. I’d pull out my own eye-teeth for a cup of that brew.’
They sailed south along the White Sea coast into the forest zone. Thorfinn hadn’t exaggerated the bounty of wildlife. Salmon packed the estuaries, waiting for an autumn flood to carry them up to their spawning grounds. The Vikings speared them from the ship’s boat, trapped them in wicker funnels, hooked them on gaffs as they threw themselves over the rapids like bars of silver.
Thorfinn’s jaw healed. The swelling went down, and with it his boiling temper. In quiet moments some of the Vikings sidled up to Hero and sheepishly asked him to cure their ailments. He agreed to do what he could in exchange for better food. He told the Vikings that their comrades on
One fine morning Thorfinn shaped a course away from the coast until it sank below the horizon. In a glassy calm they approached at evening an archipelago of wooded islands a day’s sail from the head of the gulf. The Vikings had used it as a waystation before and made for an islet set on the sea like a green crown, every tree and rock faithfully reflected in the water. Watching it draw close, Hero was reminded of the sacred groves where the ancients consulted the oracles.
He stepped ashore half expecting to see a rustic temple. What he saw confirmed his intuition and wiped the smile from his face. At the centre of the island rose a bubbling spring surrounded by pines and birches decked with votive offerings. Hero saw cast hammer amulets, the shrivelled wing of a raven, carved bone images of Freyr with his immense phallus. Scattered beneath the trees were many bones. Hero recognised a horse’s skull and a sheep’s scapula, both green with moss. Hero spotted a more recent sacrifice and his blood ran cold. It was a human skeleton collapsed all of a heap, the bones still chalky white. His eye darted up. Directly above the skeleton the frayed end of a rope dangled from a branch.
He turned to see Arne studying a birch post carved with runes. ‘Who did you hang here?’
‘I don’t know. A captive, a skraeling …’
‘But why?’
‘Punishment, sacrifice … Ask Thorfinn.’
‘Sacrifice? You kill men to propitiate your gods? You’re savages. Worse than animals.’
Arne showed anger. ‘See that?’ he demanded, pointing at the rune-post. ‘It says “Thorolf made this for Skopti, died in the north.” I knew Skopti. He had a brother, Harald, who lived up the valley from my own farm. Harald had a wife and two children, a boy and a girl under five. Six years ago we had a very bad winter, the worst anyone can remember. So bad that the snow rose above the eaves and trapped us in our homestead for months. When the thaw came, we went to see how Harald and his family had fared. We called greetings as we approached the house and when we received no reply, I went into the farmstead and found Harald and his wife dead. They’d starved. I didn’t find their children, though. Only their bones. Their parents had eaten them.’
Hero began to walk away, but Arne grabbed his arm. ‘What would you have done? You boast about your homeland with its fields of wheat stretching to the horizon, orchards laden with apples, pastures crowded with sheep and cattle. Land shapes men’s lives. Don’t stand in judgement over others until you’ve experienced their sufferings.’
Hero stood mute and sullen.
‘We’re here for one night,’ Arne said. ‘Tomorrow you’ll go back to your friends. Shut your eyes and morning will soon come.’
That night the Vikings got drunk on birch ale and took the women into the grove and gang-raped them. Hero went to the other side of the island with Garrick and Arne and tried to blank out the sounds. The aurora danced in the north.
‘The skraelings say it’s the souls of the dead,’ Arne said.
‘Why don’t you join the debauchery?’ Hero asked.
Arne stared at the ghostly lights. ‘I have a wife and daughters. I think, What if it were them?’
‘Your companions have wives and daughters.’
Garrick put his hand on Hero’s arm and frowned. The aurora faded. On a neighbouring island the flames of
‘You know this journey will end in blood,’ Hero said.
‘Yes,’ said Arne. ‘If Thorfinn doesn’t take revenge, the men won’t follow him again.’
‘Change sides,’ Hero said. ‘Bring others with you.’
Arne rose heavily and went away into the night.
After silence had fallen, Hero and Garrick returned to the camp and settled down around the embers. Hero listened to the offerings clacking together in the sacrificial grove until he fell asleep. He dreamed of bones and woke in the dark to hear Garrick slipping back into his place, breathing in pained sighs. All around them the drunken
