From the summit you can climb down to the nest. You won’t be able to see it from above. I’ll take the ship up the fjord to mark the spot. First we must make camp.’
They rowed on with the sun behind them, water falling like blood from their oarblades. Around the north side of the cape was a foreshore of tumbled boulders. The skeleton of a whale lay on the strand like the frame of a wrecked ship, each vertebra occupied by a cormorant holding out its tattered black wings in an unholy cross. Orm steered between bluffs enclosing an inlet and brought
Orm’s base camp was a shieling built with granite slabs. The roof had collapsed under winter snow and the company’s first task was to make it sound. Then they carried their equipment ashore and stowed it away. Orm proposed a meal and then rest, but Wayland knew that Greenland’s summer smiles were fleeting and insisted on climbing to the falcon’s nest straight away.
‘Syth and the dog had better stay with me,’ Orm told him. They sorted out the equipment. Glum slung two coiled ropes and an iron bar over his back. Raul carried another pair of ropes. Wayland strapped a wicker basket over his shoulders.
The sun had moved south and they climbed the boulder field in dusky blue shadow, jumping from one ankle- jarring stance to another. They laboured up a scree slope until they reached the foot of a diagonal rift in the escarpment. Between vertical crags fanged with icicles, an ice gully rose in a succession of steep chutes and steps.
Raul’s jaw dropped. ‘Orm said a path.’
‘Use your ice axes,’ Glum said. ‘In the steep places I will cut steps for you. There are some difficult parts where you must use a rope.’
‘Difficult parts,’ Raul repeated.
Glum set off at an easy pace, chopping toeholds with his axe. Wayland stepped on to the ice and realised how tenuous his grip was. He hadn’t climbed more than a few feet before he slipped. He would have fallen if he hadn’t managed to claw the point of his axe into the ice.
Raul struggled up beside him. ‘This is the stupidest thing I ever did in my life.’
Wayland looked up at Glum’s foreshortened outline. ‘Go back if you want.’
On he went, considering each step. Glum was approaching the top of the icestep by the time he reached its base. He surveyed the treacherous cascade. Looking down through his feet, he could see Raul’s head and shoulders and the slick couloir falling away to the bottom of the cliff. If he slipped now, he would carry Raul away with him. Splinters of ice skipped past. Glum hauled himself out of sight over the step.
Wayland waited for Raul to reach him. The German’s teeth were gritted in terror.
‘You’d better lower the rope,’ Wayland shouted.
Down it came. ‘You trust him?’ Raul gasped.
‘More than I trust myself.’
Up he went, his feet skidding on the cobbled ice. At the top he found Glum wedged behind rocks at the edge of the gully. Wayland’s gaze shot up past him, hoping to find that the ascent became easier. Instead, there was another cascade of ice even higher than the one he’d just scaled.
‘You should have told us how dangerous it was.’
Glum regarded him calmly. ‘If I had, would you have come?’
Wayland climbed most of the next pitch on the bare rocks at the side of the gully. One awkward manoeuvre involved shuffling around a pillar that had split away from the face and fractured into blocks. He was fully committed, gripping the stack with both hands, when he felt it begin to sway outwards. Somehow he got round without it toppling, but then he heard a scraping sound and saw as if in slow motion the cap of the pillar slide and fall. The rock was twice the size of a man’s head and it shot down the gully towards Raul. Wayland jammed his fist into his mouth, and that’s what saved the German. If he’d shouted a warning, Raul would have looked up and been struck full in the face. Instead, he was concentrating so hard on his next hold that he didn’t hear the rock coming until it crashed in front of him and bounded over his body. It flew over the icestep and Wayland heard it shatter on the walls and go clattering away into the depths. Shocked rigid, he waited for Raul to join him.
The German groaned and collapsed against the crag with his head lolling back and his eyes closed.
‘I won’t hold it against you if you go back,’ Wayland said.
‘Too late. It would be as dangerous to go down as to go on.’
He was right. A grim fatalism overtook Wayland as he climbed the next icestep. If he fell, he fell — a swoop of terror as he lost his footing, a smashing impact, then oblivion.
Above the third step the gully widened and the going became easier. Wayland was able to climb without the use of his hands. A blue skylight opened and he staggered on to the summit plateau. Raul thrashed up behind him and turned and pointed down the gully as if it were the throat into hell. ‘I’m not going back down there. You hear?’
Glum was coiling the rope over his shoulder. ‘Yes, you must. It is the only way.’
The climb had taken them most of the morning and the sky was beginning to skin over. From up here they could see the vast polar desert that covered Greenland’s interior. A cold wind from the icecap stung their faces as they plugged over the plateau, the ground curving away on all sides so that they could see nothing but snow and sky and their footprints dwindling behind them. The slope began to descend and the snow cover grew patchy, exposing fields of frost-shattered rock. Wayland saw the ice-ribboned clifftops on the far side of the fjord, and then the edge of the plateau came into sight — broken columns and buttresses connected to the face by knife-edged ridges. Glum made his way out on to one of the projections. Very vulnerable he looked on that lofty promontory.
He made a slow overarm gesture towards his left and they trudged on into the wind.
‘There!’ Wayland shouted, pointing at a blocky silhouette perched on an outcrop along the escarpment.
‘Yes, it is the falcon,’ Glum said. ‘The nest is close, I think.’
Wayland forgot the perils of the ascent and hurried forward. He’d got halfway to the outcrop when the falcon launched off and disappeared around its sentinel rock. It wasn’t as large as he’d been expecting. ‘That must be the male,’ he said. ‘The tiercel.’
‘Wait here please,’ Glum said, and walked nonchalantly on to another prow. He anchored himself with his pick and leaned over, then hissed and made a beckoning motion.
Wayland’s heart beat fast as he picked his way forward. A ferocious updraught lifted him back on his heels. Eyes watering, he peered over the edge. The world spun. He drew back dizzy and afraid.
‘Take my hand,’ Glum said. ‘See, my axe holds me very firmly.’
Wayland entrusted his life to the boy’s grip and leaned over. The wind blew his hair back. The ship below was no bigger than a speck. He heard a creaking wail and out from an overhang to his left sailed the gyrfalcon. Wayland looked straight down on her, taking in her size and whiteness, her massive shoulders, the broad bases of her wings. She rode the updraught without effort and glided along the cliff face on slightly downheld wings, passing close enough for Wayland to see the highlights in her eyes.
He turned to Raul. ‘Pure white! As big as an eagle!’
‘The nest is below the overhang,’ Glum said. ‘It will not be possible to go straight to it. I will look from the other side to see if that way is easier.’
The falcon floated away, making height. Wayland’s blood tingled at the thought of possessing her offspring before the day was out.
Glum came back shaking his head. ‘This side is not so difficult, I think. Now we must find a place to fix the ropes.’
They explored the ground behind the eyrie. About fifteen feet back from the edge, Glum located a crack deep enough to sink the bar a foot deep.
Raul wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Who’s going down?’
Glum looked at Wayland. ‘I think it must be me. It is not so easy for you.’
Wayland almost let him have his way. The prospect of descending the precipice made his heart quail and turned his legs to water. But when he looked into the void and saw the falcon patrolling her territory, he knew that
