Hawk Quest

Vikings snored and groaned. Garrick’s breathing steadied and Hero’s eyes closed again.

A commotion at daybreak snapped him awake to find men running in all directions. Arne hurried past with his sword drawn. ‘The Icelandic women have escaped.’

Hero began to rise but Garrick restrained him. ‘You don’t want to see.’

A blast from a horn sent the Vikings racing towards the eastern side of the island. With a wondering glance at Garrick, Hero followed. He found the Vikings standing around the women. Mother and daughter sat side by side on the shore, slumped together as if they’d fallen asleep waiting for the sun to rise. Hero stepped in front of them. They would never see another dawn. They had cut their wrists and their life-blood had drained away, leaving their faces white as chalk and their laps drenched with blood. On the ground lay the bloodied stone they’d used to commit suicide. Arne tried to stop him from picking it up, but Hero swore and shook him off. The mother had sawn her daughter’s wrists before hacking at her own. Hero’s face lost shape. He hurled the stone into the sea.

‘Curse you! Curse this place!’

Thorfinn laughed in Hero’s face, then his eyes narrowed in baleful intensity and he strode back to the camp.

Arne caught Hero’s arm. ‘Listen to me. It was your English friend who gave the stone to the women. I heard him creep away in the night. When you go back, don’t speak to him. Don’t even look at him. If you think that Thorfinn can’t read your thoughts, you’re wrong. He sees into men very well, especially if they’re hiding what he wants to see. Stay here until I fetch you.’

‘Why? Are there more horrors to come?’

‘Thorfinn is going to hang one of the prisoners. He thinks one of them gave the stone to the women.’

‘Mother of God. You have to stop him!’

‘I can’t. He’ll kill me.’

After Arne left, Hero found himself looking across the strait to where Shearwater lay anchored. A thin column of smoke rose from the island and then flattened out with the wind. Over there they would be blowing life into last night’s embers, preparing breakfast, exchanging the everyday asides of travellers grown easy with each other’s company. He was still wishing himself across the gulf when Arne returned.

‘It’s over.’

Hero followed him back to camp in a sick daze. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop his eyes turning towards the hanged man. The poor wretch dangled with his head wrenched at a grotesque angle, eyes bulging from his mottled face.

‘Hey, Greek.’

Hero’s blurred gaze fell on what he’d imagined with horror but never really believed, and never for a moment thought he would see. It was true, though. Thorfinn sat on a log tearing with his huge teeth at the freshly plucked liver of his victim.

He waved the steaming offal at Hero like a man tucking in to a hearty breakfast. ‘Put that down in your story.’

XXXIV

Hero watched the coast draw closer, the flat black contour forming into a forest wall breached by a muddy river. The treeline was beginning to slice into the setting sun and the tide rippled red where it lapped against the strand. Thorfinn ordered the sail to be lowered and the longship glided in and kissed the shore. The Vikings jumped down and then paused, half crouching, as if they were nervous of waking something. Hero followed and gave a shiver. It was so quiet. As if life here had still to be called into existence. The stillness amplified every stray sound. A leaf wafting down through branches clattered like broken earthenware. The shrilling of mosquitoes made him drill a finger into his ear.

He walked up the beach towards the forest. Many of the trees on the edge were blighted. Inside they clumped on islands surrounded by stagnant pools and bilious green bogs. Curtains of moss hung from branches like rotted mortuary shrouds. Clouds of mosquitoes danced in hazy spirals. The light was clotting in the thickets.

Along the beach stood some kind of effigy sited so that no one entering the river could miss it. Thorfinn studied it with his nostrils flared and then approached.

It was a tattie-bogle fashioned from ragged garments stretched across a wooden frame and crowned by a death’s head. The skull must have been pickled in tannin because it still wore its leathery skin and hanks of ginger hair sprouted from its pate. Thorfinn made a sound deep in his throat.

‘That’s Olaf Sigurdarsson,’ said one of the Vikings. ‘I’d know his face anywhere.’

‘And those are Leif Fairhair’s breeches,’ said another.

Arne leaned towards Hero. ‘Two of the men Thorfinn lost on his last expedition.’

Hero’s attention was riveted on a pair of stupendous double-curved tusks planted in the ground each side of the totem. ‘Elephants don’t live this far north.’

‘They’re the teeth of a giant rat that uses them to burrow through the ground,’ Arne said. ‘The rat dies if it comes into the air or is reached by sunlight.’

‘Perhaps the skraelings left them as scat,’ one of the Vikings said. ‘Perhaps they hope that by offering tribute, we’ll leave them in peace. That ivory will fetch a pretty penny in Nidaros.’

‘Don’t touch them,’ said Thorfinn. He growled again, his eyes switching from side to side. A raven flew overhead and rolled right over. Krok, it said.

They turned to watch Shearwater dropping anchor off the beach. Vallon and company rowed ashore with the Viking hostages. Thorfinn’s men fingered their weapons and looked to him for instruction, but the chieftain had his axe grounded and Vallon kept his sword sheathed. He stopped a few yards in front of Thorfinn. The hostages walked past him and rejoined their comrades with weak grins. ‘We’ve spoiled them,’ Vallon said. ‘I hadn’t realised how hungry you kept your men.’

Thorfinn motioned with his chin and his men shoved the four Icelanders forward.

‘They’re half-starved,’ said Vallon. ‘What happened to the rations we gave you?’

‘Meat’s too precious to waste on captives. If I didn’t need the rest of the Icelanders for rowing and pulling at the portages, I’d let you take them off my hands.’

‘Where are the women?’

Thorfinn didn’t answer.

‘They killed themselves last night,’ Hero said.

Vallon shook his head. He put his arms around Hero and Garrick and led them away. ‘Thank God you’re back. Did you learn anything useful? See anything that we can turn to our advantage?’

Hero spluttered between laughter and tears. ‘Where shall I start? The Icelandic women? The man hanging by his neck and Thorfinn eating his liver so freshly plucked that the steam was still rising from it. Is that useful intelligence?’

Vallon stared at him. ‘We’ll talk later. Go and join your friends.’

Vallon stood alone on the beach after the two sides had separated. His gaze probed this way and that. The sun sank below the trees and he hunched his shoulders against air grown cold as iron.

They were at work early by torchlight transferring cargo to the ships’ boats. The craft were too small to hold all the people and horses. The Icelanders rejected Vallon’s suggestion that they draw lots, with the losers to travel in the longship. After hearing how Thorfinn treated his prisoners, they said they’d rather walk to Novgorod.

‘Good,’ said Vallon. ‘Because that’s the only alternative.’

Wayland came over looking very subdued. Vallon frowned. ‘Something wrong?’

‘I won’t find enough food in the forest to feed all the falcons. I’m going to release two of them.’

Vallon winced. ‘All our hopes rest on bringing four white falcons to Anatolia. We can’t afford to lose two of them this far from our goal.’

‘I didn’t reach the decision lightly. Better six healthy falcons than eight sickly ones.’

Vallon bowed to his judgement. Watching him prepare to turn the falcons loose, he thought of all the effort that had gone into their capture.