Bracelet of Bones (18 page)

“Today is the first day of June,” Solveig said.

The river pilot nodded. “And now each day will be hot and more hot. You see.”

Solveig closed her eyes, and what she saw was a little boat crossing molten gold water. There was a man in the
bows and another smaller figure amidships, both of them looking forward. Solveig’s heart was bubbling with everything the king had told her . . . She opened her eyes again.

Mihran smiled. “You go on a journey?” he asked her.

“Sometimes I scarcely know where I am,” Solveig replied. “I’m here in Kiev, but at the same time I’m at home on the fjord and I’m in Miklagard.”

Red Ottar’s crew was resting too. Torsten had hauled the sail a little way up the mast, and most of his companions were dozing in its shadow.

Before long, though, Red Ottar clapped his hands several times and summoned everyone. He said the king had welcomed him, and Solveig too, because he had already received and honored her father.

“The king gave him a curved sword,” Mihran told them.

“And that’s why King Yaroslav wanted Solveig to accompany me,” Red Ottar told Bergdis.

Bergdis simply thrust out her chin and lower lip.

Then Red Ottar told his crew about how the Pechenegs were massing upstream, and how the king had asked them to assist him and promised to reward them all, and about the rich pickings to be had in Miklagard. And he said that he wanted any decision to be as much theirs as his own.

“This is my boat,” he told them, “and I have the last word, so you can’t do without me, but I can’t do without you. In the end, we have to agree.”

Slothi and Bruni were of one mind. They said at once that they favored continuing their journey to Miklagard if the boat was fit to make the journey.

“Fit, yes,” the river pilot said, looking at Torsten. “But she is large.”

“Large?”

“For cataracts.”

“What’s cataracts?” asked Bard.

“Rapids,” Slothi told him. “Rushing water.”

“Seven,” said Mihran thoughtfully. “Many Vikings leave their large boats here and buy smaller boats. Barges.”

“No,” said Red Ottar. “I’m not doing that.” He looked up and down the length of the deck. “She’s . . . she’s my sea wife.”

“I think,” said Mihran, “she is large but not too large. We portage the fourth cataract. All boats must do that.”

Memory of the last portage was sufficiently recent and painful for some of the crew to begin to have their doubts, but then Red Ottar and Mihran said that the Pechenegs were an even greater hazard than the cataracts.

“Our choice,” the skipper told them, “is to wait here or to continue our journey.”

Odindisa pointed to the inert figure lying in the hold. “What about Vigot?” she asked.

“If we go on,” Red Ottar said, “we’ll have to leave him here.”

“Infirmary,” said Mihran promptly. “Monks.”

“At least the Christians are good for something,” Red Ottar observed. “And when we get back, we’ll decide whether or not to take him with us.” He gave Odindisa a nod. “You’re right. Not deciding is sometimes best.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” Bergdis demanded.

“Of course,” said Red Ottar.

“You do surprise me.”

Red Ottar snorted.

“We should make live sacrifices and look at the omens,” Bergdis declared.

“There’s no time for that.”

“No time for the gods?”

“Later,” the skipper replied. “If we’re going, we must leave as soon as we can. And if we’re fated, we’re fated.”

At once Solveig remembered the shaman and her third prophecy:
“I see what I see: one new death.”

The thick, sweaty smell in the shaman’s tent filled her nostrils.

“Fated, are we?” said Bergdis. “Is this the same man who has always called on the gods for their help?”

Red Ottar growled.

“Jesus helps us to help ourselves,” observed Slothi.

“We’re not talking about Jesus,” Bergdis retorted.

“It’s not only the rich rewards,” Slothi went on. “I want to see Miklagard with my own eyes. It’s the greatest city except for Jerusalem in this whole middle-earth—for Christians it is.”

“Why?” Solveig asked.

“Don’t start him,” Red Ottar cautioned her.

“I want what’s most safe for my children,” Odindisa said. “The same as any mother.”

Red Ottar glanced at Solveig. “No point in asking you,” he said.

And Solveig gave him a smile full of such lightness and brightness that Red Ottar couldn’t help laughing.

Around and around circled their talk and argument, and as the quay began to throb and hum and seethe again, Red Ottar and his crew at last agreed to continue their journey.

“In which case,” said the skipper, “we must pack up our cargo.”

“We’ve only just unpacked it,” Brita protested.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Red Ottar demanded. “All our merchandise will sell in Miklagard for double the price.”

“And if we can pick up anything more here,” added Blacktooth, “we must do so.”

“You and Slothi,” Red Ottar told him, “you go around the stalls as soon as the cargo’s stowed.”

These evenings, thought Solveig, closing her eyes, what will they be like in Miklagard? With my father.

“Solveig!” Red Ottar barked. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Solveig.

“This is no time to dream. I said I wanted you to help Mihran and the monks carry Vigot to the infirmary. And then we must find someone to replace him.”

“Not difficult,” said Mihran. “King Yaroslav will help.”

“I see,” Red Ottar said with a grim smile. “So you and he have already talked about it. And doubtless the king has already rewarded you for . . . your services.”

“No, no,” said Mihran.

“Yes, yes,” Red Ottar retorted, and he turned to Bergdis. “So now! You wanted to see the palace.”

“I have never seen a king,” Bergdis replied.

“No,” Red Ottar said. “Most unusual. Four legs.”

“Is that true?” asked Bard. “Do kings have four legs?”

“What do you think, Bard?”

“Smik had four when he wanted to.”

Red Ottar slapped his thighs. “Very good!” he exclaimed. “Kings have as many legs as they say they have.” Red Ottar turned back to Bergdis. “You wanted to see the king,” he said, “and so you shall. Better than that! You are to speak to him.”

Solveig had never seen Bergdis so taken aback, let alone so nervous.

“He’s a man,” Red Ottar told her. “You know how to talk to men. Say Red Ottar greets King Yaroslav. Say I’ve spoken to my crew and we’re of like mind . . .”

“Like mind,” repeated Bergdis.

“Say we’ll sail to Miklagard and carry the king’s messenger.”

“Please,” said Mihran, “I will go to the palace with Bergdis.”

“No,” said the skipper. “You’re taking Vigot to the infirmary.”

Mihran fingered his mustache. “Infirmary is in the palace,” he replied.

“Is that so!” barked Red Ottar. “Is there anything left for me to arrange? This message must be extremely important.”

The river pilot shrugged.

“Or is no other boat prepared to shoot the rapids so early in the year?” Red Ottar demanded. “Is that the truth of it?” Then the skipper looked around his crew. “We must buy provisions,” he said.

“Several seams need caulking and mossing,” Torsten added, “and those knees have come loose from the thwarts again. Odindisa, will you mend those splits at the bottom of the rig?”

“What about the new vane?” asked Odindisa.

“That too,” said Torsten.

“And then,” said Red Ottar, glaring at Bard, “we’re sending you back up the mast again. And this time we won’t let you down until we reach Miklagard.”

Bard looked up at Red Ottar and grinned.

“All this,” said Red Ottar, “and with or without the king’s help, we have to replace Vigot.” He turned to Bergdis and nodded. “Tell the king I await his messenger.”

Some members of the crew were glad to see the back of Vigot—Red Ottar because Vigot was such a liability, Bruni because Vigot had stolen his scramasax, and Bergdis because she despised him.

But others surprised themselves by feeling sorry for him and almost reluctant to let him go. None more so than Odindisa.

She dropped to her knees beside his litter. “You saved Brita,” she told him. “You saved her life. That matters more to me than any amount of wrongdoing.”

“The monks will look after you well,” Slothi told him later. “And if anyone can help you mend, they will. Heaven knows, you’ve been punished enough.”

Brita overheard her father. And on her own, unbidden, she just stole up to Vigot, knelt beside him, and planted a kiss on his brow.

Vigot opened his dark eyes.

“Daystar,” he murmured.

“What?” asked Brita.

But Vigot had closed his eyes again.

With the help of two monks, Solveig and Mihran carried Vigot on his litter up the hill to the monks’ infirmary, and Bergdis helped them before proceeding to the palace on her own.

The world inside the infirmary’s thick walls was cool and quiet and shadowy.

It’s like a world inside the world, thought Solveig.

The monks already knew all about Vigot’s injury.

“I prepare the way,” Mihran told her, nodding seriously.

“So I see!” said Solveig.

Solveig sat on the cool flagstones beside Vigot. “Red Ottar says he’ll come and find you when he gets back,” she told him quietly. “You know he won’t punish you further,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Vigot nodded.

“I think he’ll try to get you back home,” she said.

“You?” Vigot whispered.

“What?”

“Home?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Wherever my father is.”

“My lines,” Vigot said. “All my hooks.”

“Yes?”

“Yours,” he said in a weak voice. “Yours now.”

“Oh, Vigot!”

“I wish . . .”

“What?”

Vigot’s dark eyes shone in the gloom. “I wish I hadn’t. Your bead . . . your eye.”

Then Solveig just dipped her head so that her lovely fair hair caressed Vigot’s chest. She paused for a moment, and then she stood up, and, with hot tears in her eyes, she turned away.

In the almost-dark, two white faces ghosted along the quay. One stopped short of Red Ottar’s boat in the shadow of an upended skiff, but the other walked right up to it. He put his right foot on the gangplank.

“Ottar!” he called out.

Red Ottar grunted. He and his crew were all sitting around the mast, some drinking ale, some dozing. Bruni and Slothi were talking about their new purchases, and Odindisa was saying that although Vigot had been no use to man or beast since his terrible injury, it was still not the same without him.

“Red Ottar!”

Red Ottar growled and got to his feet. He grasped the flaming brand and lifted it from its metal stand beside the hold. “Who’s there?” he called out.

“The king’s messenger,” said the voice.

Red Ottar took several steps down the gangplank and waved the brand in the man’s face.

It was Edwin.

18

E
dwin was aboard. Sineus was aboard. And although he grumbled, Red Ottar wasn’t displeased.

“When we reach Miklagard,” he told Edwin, “you’re the king’s messenger, but on board this boat, you and Sineus are oarsmen.”

“Half oarsmen,” Edwin said firmly.

“Vigot rowed opposite me, and that’s what you and the Slav will do. Alternate shifts.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Edwin.

“You will,” Red Ottar replied. Then he rounded on Mihran. “You knew about all this.”

The river pilot held up his hands in front of him as if he were weighing and balancing them.

“You rogue!” Red Ottar said, but as much with admiration as with disapproval.

Solveig and Edith were delighted to have Edwin and Sineus for company. And so was Odindisa. More than once, Solveig saw her and Sineus exchanging lingering smiles.

“Do you remember what Edwin called us?” Solveig asked Edith.

“Fine young women!” exclaimed Edith, smiling.

“And then Red Ottar said I was a half-baked girl on a half-baked journey and you were a slave woman.”

“Well, I am,” Edith replied.

“The first cataract . . .” Mihran told everyone that evening, and then he took a swig of ale and began again. “The first is the Gulper. Some pilots call it ‘Wake Up!’”

“On a journey like this,” Red Ottar said cheerfully, “every day’s a cataract! Difficulties, dangers, choices . . .”

The river pilot wagged his finger and shook his head. “Not difficult,” he warned Red Ottar in a dark voice, “very difficult. Not dangerous, very dangerous. Tomorrow.”

From the safety of the bank, Red Ottar and Solveig stared aghast at the cataract.

At their feet the milky water was slip-sliding fast between ugly rocks and making huge gulping noises, like a giant in a hurry to eat his breakfast. The rocks cut the river into ribbons, and beyond the rocks the water was rollicking and somehow cartwheeling back upstream.

It’s making me dizzy, Solveig thought. The rapids at the head of our fjord are nothing like as fierce as this.

“Why didn’t you warn us?” Red Ottar yelled.

“If I warn you,” Mihran called back, “you will all be afraid.”

Once the stern of the boat had been very firmly double roped to a stout oak tree, Mihran drew everyone around him and gave them instructions.

“That water,” he said, pointing midstream. “Terrible! But here . . .” The pilot pointed at the water swirling and surging at their feet and nodded confidently.

Then Mihran told the men to strip down to their drawers and the women to take off their woolen tunics and wear only their long sleeveless shifts.

“You mean . . .” said Odindisa, appalled.

“No brooches,” Mihran told them. “The water’s a thief; it will rip them away. No belts, no one. I know one Viking strangled by his belt.”

Then Mihran issued each of the crew with one of the pine poles he had brought aboard in Kiev. “We are twelve,” he said. “Two of us stand by the prow, two on each side of the waist, two by the stern. Four of us tie and untie the ropes. You all understand?”

Seeing the fear in everyone’s eyes, the river pilot gave them a flashing smile. “I do many times,” he reassured them. “You find your way with your poles, yes? And if you trip, if you cannot hold the boat . . .” Mihran paused to make sure everyone was listening. “. . . then float,” he said, bouncing his left hand up and down and away. “Float and paddle yourself to the bank. Never, never try to find your feet or hold on to a water root. The water will flatten you, and you cannot stand up again.”

“Come on, then,” said Red Ottar. “The sooner we start, the sooner it will be over. You, Torsten, you come to her bows with me.”

“No,” said Mihran. “Torsten on the bank. He knows ropes and knots.”

“I will,” said Solveig eagerly.

For a moment Red Ottar hesitated. “All right!” he said. “You, Solveig.”

Early June it was, but the water was bitingly cold. It churned and frothed around Solveig’s feet, and she wiggled her toes and tried to get used to it.

And then, ribbon by rock by root by rope, the companions slowly began to nudge their boat downstream. Once the boat was grazed by a rock, and once it slewed sideways, so that the bows were pointing at the bank and Bergdis and Edwin could do nothing as they were dragged behind the stern through deep water, thrashing their legs. There was no respite, and only when Red Ottar and his crew had cleared the first cataract, and the shadows were lengthening, did they realize their hands were blistered and their feet torn.

“You’re trembling, Edwin,” Solveig said.

“Like a newborn lamb,” he replied.

“Ale!” cried Mihran. “Food! Tomorrow, first the Island, then the Clanger.”

All that night, waking and sleeping, Solveig heard rushing in her ears. River voices rushing and splashing and singing and gulping.

As soon as they reached the second cataract, Solveig could see how it had gotten its name.

In the middle of the river, there was an inviting green island strewn with wildflowers, but on either side of it the water raced through dark channels.

I can’t run that fast, thought Solveig. No one could. Not even Thialfi when he raced against the giant.

“Come on, girl,” Red Ottar told Solveig, peeling off his clothes. “You and I, we’ll take her bows again.”

Solveig’s heart swelled. She knew this was almost a compliment.

This cataract was less hazardous than the first, and the crew worked their way around it quite quickly, but then they came to the Clanger.

“Hear that?” Torsten asked Solveig.

“A battle sound,” said Solveig, swallowing and closing her eyes. Father! Father, I wish you were with me now.

As the river water charged at one of the rocks midstream, it kept clanging—not a mellow boom but the flat of an ax ringing against a shield.

At their feet, however, the water was only yapping and stabbing, and for a third time Red Ottar and Solveig picked their way downstream, prodding with their poles, and led everyone to safety.

That evening, though, the crew was far from comfortable. Their clothes were still sopping, and the air hung so heavy that they were unable to dry them. Biting flies smelled the damp crooks of their elbows and backs of their knees and hollows of their necks and drank their blood.

“Very fair-minded, flies are,” Edwin said, trying to keep up everyone’s flagging spirits.

“Why’s that?” asked Odindisa.

“They like men as much as women and Vikings as much as Englanders. They even like children.”

“They like me most,” Brita wailed.

“I don’t mind enemies I can see,” growled Red Ottar, “but I keep thinking we’re being watched.”

Everyone stiffened, and Solveig felt Brita jam herself firmly against her.

The river pilot cupped his ears and closed his eyes. “Is possible,” he said at length.

“Bears?” asked Red Ottar.

Mihran shook his head.

“Pechenegs!” several voices exclaimed.

“But King Yaroslav said they’re massing upstream,” Red Ottar said.

“They are,” Mihran replied. “But Pechenegs are everywhere.” He looked around the crew. “You are safe,” he said. “You are safe in the dark.”

“Safe . . . in the dark,” Bruni repeated slowly.

“Pechenegs are archers, and in the dark they cannot see.”

Then Mihran told a story.

“When Prince Svyatoslav reached these cataracts,” the pilot said, “the Pechenegs were waiting. They stickled him with arrows. Like a hedgehog. All over his body. The Pechenegs cut off Prince Svyatoslav’s head. With their sharp knives they shaved his beard and all his hair.”

Brita wedged herself even more firmly against Solveig. She was trembling.

“And then,” said Mihran, his voice lowering in disgust, “the Pechenegs, they are beasts, they make a drinking cup out of the prince’s skull.”

“No!” cried Brita.

“I know a story like that,” said Bruni. “About the smith to the gods . . .”

“Not now, Bruni,” Slothi told him.

“Tonight we are safe,” Mihran told them again. “Tomorrow is tomorrow.”

“Brita,” said Odindisa, “Bard, both of you go down into the hold.”

“We are so early,” Mihran said, “maybe the first boat in this summer. I thought we reached here before the Pechenegs . . .” He sighed and shrugged, as if the archers were simply another discomfort like drenched clothes and bloodsucking flies. “Tomorrow,” he said, “is the fourth cataract. The most dangerous.”

“And what’s this one called?” asked Bruni.

“Ah! Several names. Ever-Fierce and Ever-Raucous. Impassable.”

“If it’s impassable . . .” said Bruni, but Mihran cut him short.

“We portage,” he said. “Same as before.”

The crew was already very anxious; now they were dispirited too. Bergdis sucked a withered parsnip, and Slothi’s back teeth were aching, and down in the hold Brita picked a fight with Bard and Odindisa snapped at them both.

Solveig remained steadfast, intent on reaching Miklagard. But all the same, she was afraid they would never come through the cataracts or survive the Pechenegs.

“Same as before,” Mihran reassured everyone. “Rollers. Men to help us. Yous see.”

Solveig thought the portagers at Impassable looked like woodwoses—men who had lived so long in the wild that they were more like two-legged beasts than human beings. Long hair, long beards, even long eyebrows. They wore filthy rags, some so torn that Solveig blushed and looked away.

Nonetheless, the wild men were just as obliging as Truvor and his gang. They told Mihran that they had seen no Pechenegs yet that year, but for all that, Solveig saw that while some of the men inspected the grazed keel and hull, others were keeping a sharp watch on the dark woods around them.

As Red Ottar’s crew and the portagers edged the boat along the riverbank, Solveig looked down through the trees at the rapids, hurling and lashing.

“What’s that?” she cried. “Down there.”

“Where?” squealed Brita.

“Where I’m pointing. On that rock.”

“Oh! That bird, you mean?”

“Brita!” screeched Odindisa. “You’re portaging. Watch your footing.”

Slothi looked angrily at his daughter. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he scolded her. “Only fools fail to learn from them. You don’t want to go under again, do you?”

Before long, though, the wild men called a halt, and everyone was able to look. Sitting on the rocks were two huge white birds with long hooked bills, and hanging from their bills they had enormous pouches.

“For all the fishes they catch,” Mihran explained.

“They look,” said Bard, “well, I can’t explain it.” Then he began to laugh.

“Like laughter makers,” Mihran told him with a smile.

The river showed its teeth, grim and gray. It clashed its cymbals and thrashed and foamed beneath them, but the wild men were sure-footed and strong-shouldered.

Step by step Red Ottar and his companions rolled their boat along the portaging track, and slowly their spirits caught up with them again. Before daylight failed, they had passed Impassable.

“Impossible, Impassable, and I’m impatient!” exclaimed Red Ottar. “Let’s press on at first light and have done with these cataracts.”

“Cataracts and Pechenegs,” said Bruni, looking all around as he had done so many times that day.

“She’ll leak unless we take up,” Torsten warned him.

“As much as comes in, we’ll throw back out,” Red Ottar replied. “We only need one pair at the oars. The rest of us can bail.”

The helmsman’s eyebrows beetled. “A boat is a being,” he said. “She needs to slake her thirst.”

“What!” said Red Ottar. “While we sit on our hands and get picked off?”

To begin with, the boat fairly bounced downstream. Slothi and Sineus sang a praise song together, the water streamed and chortled under the keel, and Red Ottar and his crew skipped their way around the next rapids.

“A pair,” Mihran had told them. “Together they are White Wave. Then there’s a water bubble . . .”

“What’s that?” asked Solveig.

“A lake,” said the river pilot. “And then is another pair. The Seether . . . some travelers say the Boiler or the Laugher.”

By the time the boat had been tied up, she was heavy with water, as Torsten had predicted. So while Bard and Brita ranged around, gathering pads of dry leaves and firewood, and Bergdis and Edith lit a fire on the riverbank, all the others had to bail, and down in the hold, the water came up to their hips.

“I know,” Red Ottar told his exhausted companions. “Tonight I’m thankless. But tomorrow night you’ll thank me. Tomorrow night we’ll be cleared of these hellish cataracts . . . and the stalkers. The stalkers we can’t even see.”

“And then Sineus will sing you a praise poem,” Edwin told him.

Red Ottar gave the Englishman a knowing look. “As a gift, I hope,” he said.

“The last cataract is Strok,” Mihran told them.

He picked up a stick and scraped several lines on the ground as if he were keeping a tally.

“It looks like combed hair,” said Brita. “After it’s untangled.”

“And before it’s braided,” added Odindisa.

“That’s what Strok’s like,” Mihran said. “Each of the streams is very thin, very deep, very fast.”