Hawk Quest

The monks exchanged looks. Saxo leaned forward. ‘When did you last attend mass?’

‘Not long after Easter,’ Raul said with a straight face.

‘Did you confess your sins?’

Raul winked at Wayland. ‘I was in too much of a hurry.’

Hilbert pinned him with an earnest gaze. ‘Do you wish to make confession now?’

Raul looked out across the placid ocean. ‘How long have you got, Father?’

The passage went smoothly. Six days out of Reykjavik, Wayland saw his first icebergs — emaciated wrecks, all ribs and hollows. They rounded Cape Farewell on Greenland’s southern tip and in a diffused light drifted north with huge mountains to starboard. They didn’t land at the Eastern Settlement. To reach it they would have had to sail thirty miles up an ice-strewn fjord. Instead, they tacked and rowed only as far as the first farmstead. Here the monks took their leave. With them went the pilot, who declared that he was too ill to go any further, and two of the Icelandic crewmen. Replacing them wasn’t difficult. Ships were rare in Greenland and half a dozen settlers begged to accompany the foreigners on the searoad north. After two nights ashore, the company sailed on and reached the Western Settlement at night on the third day.

It lay at the head of a long fjord — just a few sod houses with hay-fields under a black-and-white backdrop of mountains. Shearwater landed at a farm in a bay on the north shore and the Greenlanders and remaining Icelanders disembarked to complete their journeys on foot. Wayland, Raul and Syth stood in the twilight silence, wondering why people would choose to settle in such a barren outpost.

They’d just sat down to breakfast next morning when a man stuck his grinning face above the gunwale.

‘Well met, far-farers.’

The dog advanced on him. The stranger whistled in admiration. ‘What a monster,’ he said, chucking it under the jaw. ‘The wolf Fenrir who devoured Odin couldn’t have been bigger. If he fathers a litter during your stay, I’ll pay a good price for a dog pup. I’ll call him Skoll after the wolf who chases the sun.’ Up he breezed — a powerfully built man followed by a sturdy boy. He gave Syth a formal bow. ‘Good morning, lovely daughter.’ Wayland and Raul had risen uncertainly. He shook each by the hand. ‘Orm the Greedy,’ he said. ‘This is my son, Glum. I hear you’re looking for a guide to take you to the northern hunting grounds. You’re in luck. I’ve trapped and hunted there most summers for thirty years.’ He sniffed appreciatively. ‘Hot wheaten scones with fresh butter. Don’t let them grow cold on my account.’

Wayland sank back on his seat. ‘Would you care to share our meal?’

‘By all means,’ said Orm. He plonked himself down on a thwart, helped himself to a scone and trowelled butter on it.

Wayland studied the Greenlander. His main impression was of grizzled red hair. A great shock of it on the man’s head, long ragged moustaches, bushy eyebrows that grew straight up, giving him an air of perpetual astonishment. Bright blue eyes nestled in wrinkles. His son was cast in the same stocky mould but was as hangdog as his father was outgoing. On his right temple was an indentation the size and shape of an egg.

‘You’re after falcons,’ Orm said. ‘I know where to find them.’

‘White ones?’

‘Pale as the winter moon.’ Orm arched his incredible eyebrows at Syth. ‘Can you spare a little more butter, lovely maid?’

Raul eyed him suspiciously. ‘What kind of arrangement are you proposing?’

Orm crammed another scone under his moustache. ‘A fair one. You need a guide and a crew. I need a ship.’

‘How many crew?’

‘Four friends as well as my son. We’ll be netting auks, killing whales and walrus, trapping foxes. We’ll be away six weeks.’

‘It seems to me that you have the better part of the deal.’

Orm jabbed with his knife. ‘The falcons are hard to find and harder to reach. How many are you after?’

The ransom stipulated four, but Wayland had always counted on taking more to make up for losses on the journey south. ‘Eight should be enough.’

‘That’s a lot of gaping beaks to feed. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they never go hungry. Do you have the stomach for heights?’

Wayland hesitated. ‘I once climbed a hundred-foot beech in a gale to free a hawk tangled by her jesses.’

‘It’s not trees you’ll be climbing. The falcons nest on crags in the clouds. I’ve been birding on cliffs since I could walk. Glum, too. That reminds me. I hear you have iron.’

Raul narrowed his eyes. ‘Suppose we have?’

‘You’ll need ice axes. I can get them forged by tomorrow evening and we can be off on the dawn tide. What do you say?’

Wayland looked at Raul. He looked at Glum standing with his face downcast. ‘He’s rather young, isn’t he?’

‘A boy can stand where a man will fall. Glum’s as agile as a goat.’

‘What happened to his head?’

‘A stone hit him when he was collecting auks’ eggs. He was only seven. Don’t worry, his wits are still the right way out. He’s always been tight-tongued.’

‘Syth will be coming with us,’ said Wayland.

Orm hesitated only for a fraction. ‘Excellent. I haven’t tasted scones as good as these since my mother died.’

‘Have the last one.’

‘Are you sure?’

Wayland stood. ‘You’ll supply all the necessary equipment.’

‘Everything.’

Wayland stuck out his hand. ‘It’s a deal.’

Orm sealed the contract with a crushing grip. Back on the jetty he paused. ‘Do you have beer?’

‘We drank it,’ said Raul. ‘We’ve still got barley and malt.’

‘Then we have everything we need. A hunter must have ale to toast his triumphs and console him in his failures.’

Off he went, whistling. Raul and Wayland pulled faces at each other.

All next day Orm and his friends loaded Shearwater with hunting paraphernalia. They had long horsehair ropes, scaling ladders, traps and nets of various kinds, harpoons, fishing lines and hooks, barrels of salt and fermented whey, tents. They stowed a skiff in the hold and lashed a whaler on deck alongside Shearwater’s boat. Since they wouldn’t find wood in the north, they carried fuel bricks made from straw and dried cow dung. The Greenlanders were in holiday mood, singing and joking as they worked.

A dozen or so of their relatives turned out to bless the enterprise and watch them set sail. They felt their way north in thick fog, borne along past icebergs wreathed in silence. Three days later the fog released them into a realm of permanent daylight and air so clear that they could sometimes see their next destination more than a day before they reached it. Icebergs as big as cathedrals drifted by in ponds of turquoise meltwater, the cold blue light of thousand-year-old winters entombed at their cores. They passed one of the glaciers that calved these monsters and watched cliffs of ice collapse thunderously into the sea, raising waves that sent Shearwater pitching wildly. The next day they sailed into an upwelling current the colour of hyacinths on which every kind of native creature that swam or flew had converged. An ominous cloud out to sea turned into a flock of auks a mile wide that whirred past in a sooty squall. Wherever Wayland looked, he could see whales breaching or sounding. The loud reports of their flukes smacking the water kept him awake almost as much as the sun shining at midnight.

That same sunlit night orcas switchbacked ahead of the ship, their backs glowing like polished manganese. One of them launched out of the ocean and pirouetted on its tail before crashing back. They disappeared and the sea settled into a silky calm. Syth was standing next to Wayland in the bow and he watched her stroke a strand of sun-bleached hair from her eyes. He noticed how her eyes took on the colours of the sea — amethyst, violet, cobalt.