Daughter of Fire and Ice (8 page)

‘Are we on course for Iceland?’ I asked, seeing nothing but sea in every direction. ‘How can Thrang tell where we are going?’

‘He has methods of navigation. But I don’t think he knows with any precision at the moment,’ said Bjorn, frowning. ‘He says we’ve almost certainly been blown off course to the south in the storm. We’re looking out for the Faeroe Islands. If we sight them, we’ll make land there to take on fresh water. If we miss them, we’ll sail straight to Iceland.’

‘And if we miss Iceland?’ I asked.

‘We won’t miss Iceland,’ replied Bjorn. ‘We can trust Thrang. I’ve never seen a more competent captain.’

‘Have you often been to sea before?’ I asked, curious. It was clear to me Bjorn wasn’t a novice aboard a ship. He had even gained Thrang’s respect.

‘You forget, Thora. I am Bjorn Svanson. I’ve made many voyages,’ said Bjorn, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. I understood him. He would put his previous identity behind him and play the part of Svanson so thoroughly that even those closest to him would forget he was not born a chieftain. It was my task to support him and I shouldn’t ask questions.

We sighted land later that same day. We sailed into a bay between two high headlands at the extreme end of an island. Huge rocky stacks reared up out of the water like guards watching the mouth of the bay. The sea broke against the pillars sending spouts of spray flying into the air. Sea birds wheeled and glided and as we passed them, the black rocks stained white with their droppings.

It wasn’t until both the boats were in sheltered water and the anchors were dropped that I noticed how strained both Thrang and Bjorn looked.

‘Was it dangerous?’ I asked Bjorn as he paused beside me.

‘Very,’ he replied. ‘These ships are swift and sturdy but they are not manoeuvrable in small spaces. And there are always treacherous currents and rocks outside a bay like this.’

‘Will it be just as dangerous to leave?’ I asked tentatively.

‘That should be easier.’ Bjorn managed a quick, reassuring smile before moving off to arrange a party of men to go ashore.

I looked at the island. It was an inhospitable place. A cold sea wind blew directly into the bay bringing with it sheets of drizzle. The air was raw and cold. The land rose steeply out of the sea, a uniform vista of misty green hillsides disappearing up into cloud. I couldn’t guess whether they were low hills or high mountains. The place didn’t appeal to me in the least.

There was a low dwelling tucked back into the hillside, clinging to the rocks. I wondered if Bjorn had noticed it. He was climbing into the small rowing boat to be taken across to our sister ship. I watched as Bjorn spoke to Stein, Thrang’s apprentice, and the rest of the slaves for the first time, though his words were lost in wind and waves and rain.

We began work to clean our ship. Once more, the decks were sluiced clean of all the unpleasant leavings of our voyage. I saw Asgerd shaking out fresh hay for the calves, lambs, and foals and I went to help her.

‘What are the chickens to be fed on?’ I asked her.

‘There’s a bag of last year’s grain under the seat,’ she said, nodding towards a sack. I pulled it out and threw a handful of grain into each crate. The chicks darted here and there, pecking up the food greedily.

I noticed that the foal we’d helped yesterday was lying down again and hadn’t touched the hay we had given him. I went to his head, stroking and petting him. He was damp with sweat again.

‘This animal is really sick,’ I told Asgerd.

‘Sea sickness,’ she said. ‘Horses get it badly because they can’t be sick. When I was brought across the sea from my home country, we ran into a storm and half the horses died. I heard the master say he’d brought enough horses on board to allow for some losses.’

‘We shan’t lose half these horses if I can help it,’ I said with determination. ‘Come and help me get him on his feet again.’

Between us we coaxed and pulled the foal onto his legs. He stood there trembling and shivering, his eyes dull. He seemed worse, I thought anxiously.

‘Would you fetch me some oats?’ I asked Asgerd.

‘You’d waste oats on keeping a horse alive?’ she gasped. ‘And what’ll we eat once winter sets in? We can’t eat hay.’

‘I only need a few,’ I told her and reluctantly she fetched them. Painstakingly I persuaded the foal to eat a small handful. The other foals butted and nudged me eagerly, trying to get some too. I gently scratched the sick foal’s neck, and spoke coaxingly to him.

‘I’ll call you Aki,’ I told him. ‘Perhaps having a name will give you the will to live.’

‘Is all well on board the other ship?’ I asked Bjorn when he returned.

‘As well as can be expected,’ he said for my ears only. ‘Like here, nearly half of them are women and not pleased at having been made to row. I need to take a party ashore and don’t for the life of me know how to best split the party. If I leave Thrang here, what is to stop him making off with the ships? But if I stay and send others ashore, I can’t be sure they won’t desert and spread unwelcome tales about what has been done here. I need time to win them over.’

I thought for a few moments.

‘I think you can trust Thrang now,’ I said. ‘Especially as we are already too few to row the ships. But if you don’t want to take any risks, I suggest you send me with only those who won’t want to run away. Keep Asgerd and Astrid here and send Erik. Keep Thrang and send his apprentice Stein. Grim won’t run away with Asdis still aboard and Kai won’t disappear while Vigdis is on the ship.’

Bjorn looked startled.

‘You’ve noticed all these relationships already?’ he asked. ‘I’ve barely learned their names as yet.’

I smiled, knowing that men rarely noticed such subtleties. Besides, I had my aura reading to help me, though I never spoke of this to anyone.

‘I’d planned to speak to the people in the dwelling house,’ Bjorn said, his brow still creased with uncertainty. ‘To assure them we mean no harm.’

‘I can do that for you,’ I offered.

‘You’d be unprotected.’

‘But at least I’ll know that no one will make off with the ships leaving me behind if you are on board. Erik can go with me to the longhouse, and Grim too.’ I smiled at Bjorn reassuringly, showing him I was not in the least afraid. At last he nodded.

‘Very well. But Erik and Grim will be armed if you are going up there,’ he said. He moved away to give the necessary instructions and then we climbed into the small boat with the water barrels and rowed to the beach.

I led Erik and Grim up the steep, well-worn path to the longhouse while the others of our party filled the water barrels from the stream nearest the beach. We knocked at the wooden door but there was no reply.

‘Hello!’ Erik called. ‘We come in friendship.’

His words were met by a silence that was broken only by the trickling of water in the streams on the hills above us.

A sudden squall of wind brought a sheet of heavy rain with it. I shivered. I could see raindrops glistening in Erik’s grizzled hair and knew mine must be as wet. Impatiently, I pushed at the door. It yielded under my hand and swung inwards. Glad to escape the drenching rain, I stepped into the gloomy porch.

‘Hello?’ I called as Erik had done before me. ‘Is there no one here?’

I walked forward into the dark house, my eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom. The only light came from a slight glow in the central fireplace and I could make out little. The smoke caught at the back of my throat after days in the open air, making me cough. The house stank of fish, and I could just make out dried fish hanging from the roof. Strange, I thought. I saw no fishing boats in the bay.

Something moved in the darkness behind the loom.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked quickly. ‘We mean no harm.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ came a grating voice, like the sound of iron scraping on iron. A small figure emerged, moving strangely. As it came forward into the light I could see it was a young woman, dragging one leg.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked starting forward in sympathy.

‘Not I,’ said that metallic voice.

As she spoke, I caught sight of her aura and recoiled in horror. She didn’t have a single pure colour radiating from her. All was muddied browns and greys, flushed through with sulphur. It would have made Svanson’s aura look innocent and playful. I’d never seen anything like it. My first thought was that this could be no human being. This must be some hidden creature, some dwarf or troll or malevolent spirit lurking in this abandoned farmstead to entrap unwary travellers. Then I looked more closely and saw it was just a woman. She was even pretty. One leg was twisted, probably broken and badly set at some time in her past, I guessed. But she was fair of face, slight and elfin-like in her looks. She had small, neat hands and very white teeth. But none of this could distract me from her aura.

‘What do you want?’ asked the young woman sharply. ‘There’s nothing here to steal. We’re poor people.’

‘We stopped only for drinking water,’ I said, spreading my hands in a gesture of humility. I had to struggle with myself to hold my ground and speak to her, facing that swirl of vicious and unhappy colours. My impulse was to flee. ‘We simply came up here to tell you so. Surely you aren’t alone here? Sorry, I don’t know your name … ’

‘I am Ragna. I’m alone, but not unprotected,’ she said, and there was a hint of a sinister threat in her voice. ‘Drinking water?’ she continued. ‘And what gift have you brought me to compensate?’

‘For water?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘
Our
water,’ said the girl.

I tried to see past this poor woman’s tortured, terrifying colours to the person that must have feelings of kindness and sympathy, just as I did. But I couldn’t find her. I sensed only darkness and evil. I felt fear course through me and began to back towards the door.

‘Don’t forget that compensation,’ she reminded me.

‘I’ll speak to our chieftain,’ I said.

I left, Erik and Grim following me closely.

Once out in the open, I breathed the clean sea air deep into my lungs, trying to clear away the smells and sights of the dreadful house.

‘Are we going to pay her?’ asked Erik beside me.

I shuddered, trying to collect myself. ‘We’ll have to ask Bjorn,’ I replied, forcing my voice to be steady. ‘How does she come to be quite alone in there? She can’t live by herself, surely?’

‘Not she,’ replied Grim in a reassuringly matter-of-fact voice. His eyes roamed the hillside above us. ‘The others will be somewhere near. They most likely fled at the sight of two ships entering the bay, in case we meant harm. That poor girl probably can’t walk well enough to go with them.’

‘They’re almost certainly watching us right now,’ added Erik.

I tried to summon up pity for the woman left to face danger alone, but I failed. It hadn’t seemed to me that she was in the least afraid.

‘Let’s fill the barrels with water and leave this place,’ I said.

We headed down for the shore, avoiding the patches of sheep droppings that were scattered on the grass, stopping only because I spotted a growth of stunted plants beside a stream on the way. Remembering Erik’s cough, I stooped to look more closely. They were a plant I knew, but smaller, probably struggling to grow to any size in this raw, wet climate. I carefully picked off a few leaves, leaving the plant to grow. There were more and I lingered, collecting a leaf here and there, until I had a small handful.

By now, Erik and Grim had gone ahead and I was left alone on the hillside above the beach. I could see that our small boat had left without us already, heading out to the two big ships, loaded almost to the waterline with the heavy barrels of water. Kai and Stein were rowing it. Only Erik and Grim were left on the island with me. As I watched the boat pulling out into the bay, I felt a prickle in my fingertips and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. There was danger close by.

I couldn’t place it straight away. I was badly shaken by the encounter in the house, and at first I put it down to that. But the feeling strengthened. It crossed my mind that the three of us could be left stranded here, but that wasn’t it either. It was more menacing than that. I felt bad intentions thick in the air. I looked back, scanning the hillside behind me.

The pieces suddenly began to slot together in my head. Sheep droppings, but no sheep. A longhouse that was left empty except for one girl. No boats in the bay, though these people must surely live at least partly from fishing. I’d smelt fish in the house.

This was a trap. We’d walked into a trap. The people were, as Erik had said, hiding somewhere, watching us, waiting to attack. It was that decision that I had sensed just now, I was sure of it.

I ran the last stretch down to the beach where powerful waves pounded the lonely shore, drawing back with a rush and a rattle of pebbles and sand. I was breathless with fear and the sense of danger was growing on me fast.

‘They’ll be back for us in a while,’ said Erik, nodding to the boat that had now reached the ships. ‘It wouldn’t have floated with all of us.’

I could just make out the people, tiny in the distance, passing the barrels up onto the ship and then one man heading back to pick us up.

‘Yes, of course,’ I agreed anxiously. ‘Will they tell Bjorn what the girl said about a gift? He might choose to send something.’

‘Yes, I mentioned that,’ nodded Grim.

There was nothing to do but wait. I was reluctant to frighten my companions with my fears, so I passed the time by scraping the bark off a flattish stick and cutting runes into it with my knife. It was intended for the girl in the house and invoked the blessings and protection of the goddess Freya. When it was done, I stuck it in the sand. If Bjorn refused to pay, that would be my gift to her.

As I finished, I became aware it had grown darker and darker around us, though it was still hours until night. I looked up, puzzled, and saw heavy clouds rolling down from the hills behind us. With them came once more the heavy lash of rain.

‘What a climate,’ shivered Erik. He coughed, drawing his cloak more closely around him. I sensed danger again at that moment, strong and vivid, a picture filling my mind.