Foxmask (41 page)

“It's not nothing. You were there. Tell me!”

“Don't know if you'd want to hear, being a friend and all. It wasn't pleasant. Gave me bad dreams. Shook me all up.”

Thorvald made himself breathe. “Tell me, Skapti,” he said quietly.

“Well, you see, it wasn't exactly as Asgrim said. The way he told it, sounded as if the girl did something silly, standing up in the boat, causing a nasty accident, all hands lost and so on. But I could see. I could see what she did, and I wondered. Now I know. Wolfskin's daughter; all makes sense.” Skapti shivered. “Just makes it worse. Makes it harder to go on.”

“What?” Thorvald struggled for calm. “What did Creidhe do?”

“Deliberate. Not being stupid at all. Trying to escape. Stands up, dives in. Looks like she's gone under for good at first, then she bobs up a bit farther away. When they see her they row after, across the line, into the Fool's Tide. She did that on purpose. So they flail around with the oars, trying to reach her, trying to keep control. The girl grabs an oar and pulls, gives the fellow a good whack with it, he loses his balance and the boat goes over. Then they all disappear. Brave little thing. She gave it her best try. Fighting spirit. Good looker, too. Shapely.” There were tears trickling down Skapti's cheeks; he made no attempt to conceal them. “Don't think I can go on, Thorvald. Don't think I can go on doing this.”

“Doing what?” Gods, he would almost rather not have known this; it was so like Creidhe to keep on struggling, to keep on clinging to hope right to the very end. She would simply refuse to give up. He could see her in the water, fair skin turning slowly blue with cold, fingers cramping on an oar, whispering to herself,
I won't die, I won't
, as the waves rose greedily to drag her down, to snatch away her last breath.

“Everything,” muttered Skapti, staring at his boots. “His business. Asgrim's business. What's the point? We carry out orders, we obey, we fight his battles and die in the hunt because we've got no choice. But where does it end, that's what I want to know? How long? How many times? Look at Wieland. His wife's lost three infants now, three springtimes the Unspoken have sung her babes away, and Asgrim won't even let him go home to comfort
her. The hunt's too important.” Skapti clenched his fists. “But how long? Five years, it's been, and more before that, when we were beating off their raids. And the other things . . . he thinks he can ask me to do anything he wants, anything at all. I've always obeyed. He's the Ruler. He knows best. But I don't think I can anymore. Think it might be better if I wasn't here. Then he couldn't make me do it.” The big man was a picture of misery.

“This summer could be different,” Thorvald said. “I've told you before. It's just a matter of changing the way you think about the hunt, and being properly prepared. When I first came here the men were all over the place, no discipline, no technique. I'm not a fighter by trade the way you are, but I've been well taught. I could see plenty of potential. I could see Asgrim wasn't making proper use of what he had. It happens when a leader starts to give up hope. Now look at them. They're strong, well trained and focused on the task. They work as a team. The weapons are better, the way they use them is better, their whole attitude is changed. This can be the hunt that's different, Skapti, I know it: the one they win.”

Skapti mumbled something.

“What did you say?”

“Not without you,” Skapti said.

Thorvald's heart clenched. “Asgrim can lead you—oh yes, I know what you said—but he can lead you to victory this time. The groundwork's been laid. Besides, he doesn't want me. Not really.”

“Say he does do it,” said Skapti, now looking straight into Thorvald's eyes; the warrior's own were reddened with tears. “Say he leads us in, and we get Foxmask out and return him. Say not all of us die in the attempt. That's good, anyone would agree. But what then? I'm sick of it, I'm sick of him and his rules, fed up with following orders I don't like, because I'm too scared to say no. And if I'm scared, how do you think the rest of them feel?”

Thorvald felt a chill again, a touch of something both heady and extremely dangerous. “I don't know why you're telling me this,” he said. His voice had dropped to a whisper, though there was nobody around.

“Thing is,” said Skapti, glancing nervously to right and to left, “we never had a leader like you before. Nobody ever stood up to him before. If you go off home, there's no chance of changing things after.”

The words hung in the air between them, those that had been spoken and those that were too perilous to utter aloud.

“Yes, well,” Thorvald managed, “I—I don't think we should be discussing this. Not even up here. It's not that I don't want to stay. It's that I can't. It's my fault that Creidhe died. I'm going to bear the burden of that on
my conscience forever. I need to face up to it and go home; recognize that I was never more here than a meddling incomer.”

“Have more on your conscience if you leave,” Skapti said. “That's my opinion.”

The two of them walked back together in the end, Skapti drawn and silent, Thorvald working hard at keeping his mind fixed on one thing: he had made a decision, the only right decision, and he would stick to it. They could win their fight without him; he would make himself believe that. As for the tantalizing prospect Skapti had alluded to, of
afterward
, he must on no account allow himself to consider that. It was fraught with danger.

They'd been gone longer than he'd thought. Supper was cooking, the men sitting around the fire, looking as they used to in the first days after he came: weary and dispirited. They were probably worn out. It seemed to have been a busy day, though Thorvald had played no part in it. He'd missed his opportunity to catch Sam alone, and they were running out of time. The weather had a habit of turning bad here, and there often wasn't much warning. He'd have to try later tonight, call his friend outside on some pretext. They must go tomorrow; there was a limit to his own capacity to remain firm on this.

Asgrim had not come down yet. Hogni, too, was absent. Gods, they looked bad: Einar grim, Skolli glaring into his ale cup, Wieland pale and exhausted. As for Sam himself, the expression on his face could only be described as furious. Clearly, a day's rehearsal with the tools of combat had done nothing to damp down his rage. Of course, most of them had been up drinking late into the night, Thorvald reminded himself as he sat down by Skapti on the earthen shelf. Still, he felt distinctly uneasy. It was becoming ever plainer that the sorrow, the disapproval, the animosity were directed squarely at himself.

Little was said until the suppertime stew had been ladled from the great iron pot, the hard loaves split and shared. Thorvald found the food impossible to get down; his stomach was churning. Beside him Skapti ate stolidly. It was Einar, the senior among them, who broke the awkward silence.

“So, Thorvald. Asgrim tells us you're off home in the morning. Walking out on us.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Sam snarled under his breath.

Thorvald said nothing; what was the point? They could not understand his reasons.

“We couldn't believe it,” Wieland burst out, surprising Thorvald, for this was a reserved man, a man of very few words. “That you'd turn against us right at the end, abandon us just like that. Especially now. How could you?”

“I mean,” Skolli put in, “we know about the girl, terrible thing, upset all of us, that did. But I'd have thought that would make you keener to go on. Makes you one of us, in a way.”

“That's just it,” Orm said. “Now you know how we feel. We've all lost someone: friend, brother, father. Infant in the cradle. Look at Wieland there, his last was taken only this spring, the child they say your girl helped to birth. Sounds like she did her best for us. Why can't you?”

“Thought better of you,” growled Knut, the young fisherman. “Thought it was going to be different this time. Just goes to show, you can't trust an incomer.” There was a general rumble of assent; its tone was ominous.

“Anyway,” Sam said, “if I won't go, you can't go. Did you think of that?”

There was a brief silence.

“I suppose I need to explain,” Thorvald said reluctantly. He had gone through this twice already; he felt a profound desire for it all to be over, and the
Sea Dove
on her way home, even though that voyage could only end in pain. “I don't expect you to understand. It's just—it's just—” He made himself stop and draw breath; they were angry, and there were a lot of them. This was not a moment to come out with some rambling, scattered statement about his own feelings. It was time to demonstrate some real leadership, if he were still capable of it. He rose to his feet, spread his hands. “You know,” he said, “when I first came here I didn't know what to make of you. So much strength, so little application; so much potential, so little will to develop it; so much ability, so little cohesion. There were leaders among you, but they were too dispirited to lead. There were skilled fighters wasting their time on guard duty. There was intelligence, but you weren't using it. I saw an army without hope. Nonetheless, I saw an army.”

The men were quite silent now.

“Well,” said Thorvald, turning his head to meet each of them in the eye. “Look at you now. What a team! What a fighting troop! You've got cunning, cleverness and skill; you've got cooperation and discipline and the will to go on. You've got what gets a man up at dawn uncomplaining and out onto the practice field, even when his head aches fit to split asunder.” There was a faint ripple of laughter. “You've got leaders like Einar here, and Skapti and Hogni, who'll drill you until you're half dead on your feet, and stand by you through thick and thin. You're not a dejected rabble anymore, you're a force to be reckoned with. You've got what you never had before: the will to win. I didn't give that to you, you did it yourselves, by hard work and determination.”

There was a moment's pause, then an outbreak of applause and a muted
cheer. Thorvald noticed Asgrim and Hogni standing in the doorway, watching. Then Einar spoke.

“Well said. It's true, we've a far better chance this hunt, and we know it. And it looks like we've no choice but to put it to the test, since there's no possibility of a truce now. But you underestimate yourself, Thorvald. There's only one thing different this year from last year and the one before; that's you. Without you, we'd have been the same—what was it you said—?”

“Dejected rabble,” put in Skolli.

“Exactly. You can't leave us now. You're the one who turned us around. You're the one with all the bright ideas—attack from three points at once, doctor the weapons, disable the traps. We can't do it without you.”

“Told you,” Skapti murmured at Thorvald's side.

“Stay till after the hunt,” Einar urged. “Then we'll load up your boat for you, and the two of you can be off home if that's what you want.”

“Or you can stay,” Skapti said, eyes flicking nervously in the general direction of Asgrim.

“Or you can stay,” agreed Einar gravely. “What do you say, man?”

There was a chorus of voices then, and many men pressing forward, each to make his own personal plea to Thorvald, all of them with that same look in their eyes, a look that made it starkly clear to him that what he had wrought here was far bigger than he had ever imagined. He had put hope in their hearts, had shown them a future without fear. Now he was taking it away again. He had not realized how closely he himself was bound up in their vision; had not dreamed of it until Skapti had uttered the fateful words,
If you go off home, there's no hope of changing things after
. These men saw a future in which Asgrim was no longer leader. It was a future in which his own part was critical. It came to him that Asgrim would be a complete fool to let him stay.

Thorvald raised a hand, and the hubbub quieted. “You forget, maybe,” he said, “that a friend of mine was drowned here. I take the responsibility for that on my own shoulders. I should have protected her and I did not, for my mind was all on our own work here and I had forgotten her. It's my duty to take the news of her death home to her kin as soon as I can. That is the main reason why—”

“We understand your grief, Thorvald.” Asgrim had stalked over to the top of the central hearth and now stood there wrapped in his dark cloak, his gaze sweeping them all. Total silence had fallen. “All of us have felt something of the same. In the Lost Isles, bereavement is our daily bread. But let us be
practical. Your young friend is gone; we cannot bring her back. You've been away from home a long time, more than a season now. What difference can it make to Creidhe's family whether you bring them this sad news now or after midsummer? None, I think. Let me add my own voice to those of the men. You speak only truth, and you speak with a rousing voice, a young man's voice. We have sore need of true battle leaders here, those who can carry us forward with hope and purpose. Earlier, I accepted your decision to leave us, since I could hardly compel you to stay. But I regret that I did so. Can I not press you one last time to remain with us until after the hunt? We need you, Thorvald, you and Sam.” The Ruler gave a cursory nod in Sam's direction. “Stay with us. Avenge your friend. Help us capture Foxmask. This, I believe, is the reason the gods sent you to the Lost Isles on the breath of the east wind. This, I am convinced, is your quest.”

A cheer went up, louder this time. Someone put a cup in Thorvald's hand. He had the curious sense that he was no longer in control of his own life, that some malign force had taken over and was playing games calculated only to wound him, and to highlight his weaknesses. He wanted so badly to say yes, and he knew he must not.