7. The Andorayan Travelers
Shagot rested his palms on his knees. He panted. He had stopped only seconds before he started puking from the exertion. He had done way too much drinking and loafing lately. Though he would never admit it, particularly to Sigurdur and Sigurjon, whose parents must have lost a riddling contest to a boulder to come up with names as unimaginative as those. Not that he and his brother had fared much better.
'Shit,' Shagot gasped. He fought for air. 'How the hell… can we still… be this far… behind… those assholes?'
Shagot and his companions stood in a saddle on a ridge in the Jottendyngjan Mountains, fighting for wind while studying the road south. The fire in Shagot's lungs was less a problem than his incredulity at the fact that those pussy missionaries were still safely ahead. But, there they were, looking like ants scaling the flank of the next line of mountains.
Svavar said, 'I don't like this. We should've taken a ship down and waited for them at the Ormo crossing.'
Shagot grunted. He did not waste breath reminding Svavar that the Ormo Strait was not friendly territory. Any ship from Andoray appearing there was inviting a ferocious disaster.
The Southron villains had to be overhauled from behind. On dry land.
Sigurdur asked, 'What're we gonna do when it gets dark, Grim? They's trolls and dwarfs an' shit up here.'
'Yeah. Not to mention ghosts and haunts left over from the god times,' Sigurjon added. By the god times he meant prehistory. The gods were marginally active even today — witness the Choosers who took Erief away — but not much had been heard from them since those legendary times when the early Andorayans drove the wild, mystic, primitive Seatts north beyond the cliffs of ice, into the lands of always-snow.
'The old folks gave me all the wards and charms we'll need to get through the night For as long as it takes to catch those girls.'
'Who gave them to you?' Svavar wanted to know. 'Not Vidgis, I hope. Because if it was Vidgis we're dead already and we're just too boneheaded to lay down and stop kicking.'
Vidgis had gotten Svavar to top her once, in a drunken hour. He insisted that it would not have happened if she was not some terrible witch who had enchanted him.
Chuckling, Shagot agreed. 'Oh, yeah. She's a witch.' The way all women are witches. She just had a few extra years on her. 'Pulla, Trygg, and that bunch gave them to me. They're tribal charms. Charms they wouldn't have given us if Snaefells and the Skogafjordur hadn't witnessed those marvels.'
'Huh?' Sigurdur said. Not the brightest man, Sigurdur. 'What marvels?'
'Sigurdur, you think the murder of a king is something that happens every day?' Erief would have become king if he had lived, Shagot knew. 'You think the Choosers of the Slain just drop in?'
'Oh. No. I get you. But I do reckon they picked us six mainly so they could get us out of town.'
So Sigurdur was blind in one eye but could see out the other. Shagot had not realized that the old folks might have chosen this group so he and the others would not be hanging around causing trouble.
Those assholes Trygg and Pulla would pull that kind of shit, too. Old people did not like chaos, confusion, tumult, or excitement. They wanted life calm, quiet, and predictable.
Shagot thought he must be getting old himself since he had no trouble understanding why the old people wanted him out of the way.
'Let's just catch these guys, then get our asses on home.' Of a sudden, Shagot found himself able to consider Snaefells special. Found that he could think of the village as home. He was amazed.
Shagot the Bastard was not able to catch those Missionaries. Those ferocious southerners who did not believe in raising a hand against their fellow man. Day by day, hour by hour, he and his companions gained ground, but never, ever, did they actually catch up.
Shagot's band was a scant thirty yards behind when they reached the shore of the Ormo Strait, at a village called Ara. Hallgrim and Finnboga both wasted arrows. Naturally, they missed. Shagot barked, 'Quit it! You might hit the ferryman in the fog.'
The boat the fugitives had chartered was small, manned by a single oarsman who must be a true man's man, for the strait was fourteen miles wide here. Ara was not the customary jump off for those who wanted to cross. That was Grynd, thirty miles southeastward along the coast. Commercial ferries ran there, making the four-mile journey through treacherous currents to Skola on the tip of Friesland.
Grynd and Skola were too civilized. Shagot could not go there. Erief's enemies and King Gludnir's friends were much too common there.
Unstringing his bow, taciturn Finnboga observed, 'If we need proof that those two are villains, this is it.'
'Because they chose a smugglers' crossing?'
The boatman would conduct his passengers to Orfland, a swampy, sparsely inhabited, totally impoverished island off the west coast of Friesland. The fugitives would have to traverse Orfland on foot, then cross to the mainland from Orfland's nether end — without ever attracting the attention of anyone who mattered in Friesland.
Sigurdur said, 'I'm not comfortable leaving Andoray on foot.'
That was such a dumb thing to say that Shagot just nodded. 'You guys go scare up another boatman.'
There was no boatman to be found. There was no one in the village. Not a soul. But the evidence said Ara had been a busy little town until a few hours ago.
Sigurjon said, 'I don't like this, Grim. Something weird is going on.”
'I think you're right. Let's wait here. When that boat comes back we'll go across. Keep your bows strung. Just in case.' He made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard. It was a fine old blade that had come from a monastery in Santerin, probably left there by some noble trying to bribe the local god.
Hallgrim asked, 'What do you make of this fog? Fog usually burns off by this time.'
'We're at the mouth of the Ormo Strait. There're strange currents and tides and fogs here all the time.'
Hallgrim did not talk much. Shagot wished he would give up the vice altogether. When he did speak he always brought up something disgusting. Often he belabored the obvious when everyone else did not want to be reminded.
He did not shut up. 'Will we all fit in that boat? It didn't look that big.'
Shagot grunted. His brother Svavar asked, 'You want me to hit him on the head?'
'He might not notice. Besides, it's a good question. And I think we will fit What I'm wondering is, how long will we have to wait? I didn't see a mast or a sail. And at the wrong time of day the current is going to be vicious.'
The Ormo Strait joined the landlocked Shallow Sea with the Andorayan Sea, to the west. The Shallow Sea was so called because at dead low tide a tenth of its bottom lay exposed and a third of the remainder did not rise above a tall man's head. Ships on the Shallow Sea were broad of beam and drew very little water. And had to be guided by very knowledgeable pilots. There were just two small areas in all of the Shallow Sea where, at high tide, the water was over a hundred feet deep.
Navigation in the Ormo Strait was particularly harrowing. Immense volumes of water raced back and form as the tides turned.
People like the smugglers and fishermen of Ara knew their waters better than they knew their wives. They started learning the waters when they were toddlers.
Svavar sighed. 'Yeah. We'll be lucky to get out of here today.'
Sigurdur said, 'The moon is almost full. We could manage a night crossing.'
Finnboga mused, 'We should liberate some horses after we get to the mainland. Then we could catch up fast'
Except, Shagot thought, that would make it impossible for them to come north again — assuming they stayed ahead of the pursuit after they stole the horses.
Svavar said, 'It looks like the fog is thinning out'
But visibility remained less than a bowshot.
