Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
He shouted the last bit. He was sorry, it was all too clear, because he had allowed his pony to set feet on an ice slope. By the time his voice started to rise he had already failed to slew it round out of its slide, and it was slithering helplessly downwards. He fought for a few moments more, and then jumped for a pillow of snow, the reins still grasped tight in his hands. He held them as long as he could, then released them with a curse. It reached Kathi in an incomprehensible hiss like
No mattresses
.
Glímu-Sveinn, dismounting, ran forward. Kathi did the same and then stopped on the brink of what she found was the lip of a crevasse. The pony had slid to a halt on a ledge, and was peering upwards, its two forelegs scrabbling. Every now and then it licked at the rock as if hungry. Benecke said, ‘Is it worth it?’ Glímu-Sveinn, leaning down, had wrestled M. de Fleury to safety. Both their faces were blue.
‘I think so. It shouldn’t be hard,’ the rescued man said, and trudged off to unfasten the rope.
He was mistaken: it
was
hard, and all of them were breathing painfully before the pony was finally back above, shaking, and
Nicholas
had mounted another. He had been right: they had lost one horse already, and their lives might depend on these creatures. To her narrow gaze, M. de never mind seemed to have suffered no disabling injury; or none worse than his captive, who was grinning again. She wished to God she didn’t have to think what to call him.
They set off at a dangerous jog. The thunder delivered a sudden cannonade, and the lightning danced with reptilian flickers. She could hear it crackling. Above them, Hekla was releasing spurts of saffron and dusky brown smoke and, to a person of credulous disposition, appeared to be rhythmically changing its shape. Her head, but not her ears, received the impression of a cavernous sound: her throat was coated with sulphur. She turned her head to the Banco di Niccolò. ‘So you cried in E.’
‘That was the bell,’ the Bank said. ‘The As, the divine and
Almáttri Æss
, were all mine. The horse was a G.’ The ground suddenly staggered, and his horse slipped and recovered, rolling its eyes.
Kathi’s mount jibbed and she controlled it. Her back ached, and her thighs were chafed raw. Glímu-Sveinn said, ‘I do not think we should waste time at Skard. I think we should make straight for Selsund.’ He had a harsh voice.
Selsund, when they reached it, was deserted. Stiff with cold, aching from the difficult ride; filled with apprehension and unpleasant vapours, they dismounted with resolute badinage, built a fire, and found a pot in which to simmer a snow-broth. Kathi’s eyelids started to droop. Then the cauldron gave a loud rattle and she jerked awake once again, until the shaking petered out. Paúel Benecke said, ‘We are halfway to Hlídarendi. We could probably outride an eruption by now.’
‘And if Katla also breaks open?’ Kathi said.
‘People survive. They speak of wooden churches swimming whole out to sea. You will rejoin one of our ships. Come to Poland.’
‘I didn’t know you were necessarily returning to Poland?’ Kathi said.
‘You know of someone who could stop me? Your brothers are children.’
‘Brothers?’ said Kathi.
‘Your merchant friend thinks of you as his brother. Didn’t you know?’
She was so pleased that she felt herself flushing. Then she caught the Danziger’s expression and laughed aloud. ‘Sergios on horseback. It’s only an allusion.’
His annoyance visibly deepened. He said, ‘Then I have no rival? All the simpler. Come to Poland.’
‘You have no rival,’ she said, and showed him a smile of genuine and unaffected goodwill. ‘Paúel, you are not in the race.’
Chapter 29
I
T WAS AN EFFORT
, when they had eaten, to leave the shelter of Selsund and, laying sodden gloves on freezing harness, to face the white, ice-bounded wastes of the south.
The wind had dropped. The dark smoke behind and the white that rose far ahead now climbed straight into the air before spreading. Before they left,
Nicholas
had peeled off and slung down his jacket, and made Glímu-Sveinn point to the route he expected to follow. It was no more than a guess. On the gouged and rock-scoured area they were entering, there would be water everywhere. At the end, Kathi had said, ‘Where is Robin?’
Benecke, fastening his coat, had glanced at her sardonically, and she was sorry she had asked. But after only a moment, M. de Nicholas said, ‘He is still on the shore.’
‘And the ships?’ Benecke said. ‘Surely you can tell us what has become of the ships?’
M. de Fleury looked at him. ‘Only that the people I left are still there,’ he said.
‘And Hekla and Katla?’ the Danziger persisted. ‘If you can find water underground, can’t you tell what is rising?’
‘Maybe,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘But what good would it do if I did?’
He had turned then and mounted. It was a precise answer, whatever Benecke thought. He and the Banco di Niccolò were committed to the men on their ships, trapped there awaiting them. And it was too late for the Icelander and Kathi to break away on their own. The pendulum had been consulted, and had spoken, and she knew what it had said.
This time, by request of the Icelander, she rode in the front by his side, instead of behind. She forced herself to speak, gathering together her scraps of the language. ‘Glímu means wrestler, doesn’t it?’
He didn’t look at her, only at his pony, and the ground ahead.
‘Ja
,’ he said. And after a while: ‘It is a good sport. It is what we do
on the strand, when the weather is too bad for fishing. We wrestle, and race. There is plenty of daylight in the summer.’
‘And in the winter?’ Kathi said.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Then there is none at all, or very little. That is how the storytelling began. When darkness falls, we sit on our mattresses in the bed-hall and work and tell stories. I work my loom, and Hristin my wife riddles the straw from the eider feathers, and my sons cut up ox-hides for ropes, and my daughters sew.’
‘You read and write,’ Kathi said. ‘Great writings have come out of Iceland.’
‘Once,’ Glímu-Sveinn said. ‘Once, when farmers were rich, they travelled often to Norway and Denmark, and their sons were educated there, and others were taught by the priests. Now it is only the foreign officials who can afford to be educated, and some of the priests cannot write. We teach ourselves, when we have oil for the lamps. Fortunately, all men have memories.’ He paused. ‘I would ask you something, Junfrú Katti.’
‘Of course. Ask,’ she said. He had turned. His face was withered with cold, his shallow eyes icy blue.
He said, ‘Is it good magic, that your friend has? He says that it is. Do you believe this?’
It was the question occupying them all. There is a grammatical right, a geometrical right and a theological right. And there is the enigma of Nicholas de Fleury. She looked Glímu-Sveinn in the eye and said, ‘I will answer you when you tell me what you were doing outside the farmhouse at Selsund.’
Their ponies slithered and trudged. Hers pecked, and his hand came out to steady it. A veil had dimmed the horizon, as if the thunderstorm had overdrawn the day’s light. Glímu-Sveinn said, ‘We are a Christian country, but there are spirits older than Christ. Some places are known for them. If I have a little extra whey, or some tallow, I leave it.’
‘His magic is good,’ Kathi said. ‘It found Sigfús. It has found others. It is good because Nikolás-riddari did not seek it, and does not want it, and uses it only out of necessity. His chaplain permits it.’ She didn’t mention divining for metals. She hoped he would remember the effort it had taken to find Sersanders and Sigfús.
‘I see,’ said Glímu-Sveinn. ‘I thought perhaps he was like Sorcerer-Hedin, who was
skoll-víss
, deceitful, and could be hired to cause death; but perhaps he is more like Gunnar Hamundarson. You have heard some of our stories?’
‘Who was Gunnar Hamundarson?’ Kathi said. She glanced round briefly. Behind her, an approving Bank jerked up one of its borrowed four thumbs.
‘A fine man. His home was in Hlídarendi, where we are going. They say he sits there today, chanting inside his burial mound.’
‘How did he die?’ Kathi said.
‘They winched off the roof of his farmhouse and killed him. He was the dearest friend of Burnt Njall. You know Njall’s story,
nei
?’
‘Tell me,’ Kathi said. There were five hours of daylight still left. Or less, of course, if either one of the mountains gave way. Enough to get to Hlídarendi, and hear Gunnar singing inside his grave-mound, but not enough to get to the shore, and Robin, and safety. They had to live through the night to have a chance of that.
Glímu-Sveinn told his story, his voice jerking and hoarse in the absolute silence. She strove to follow it. Behind her, the two men were silent. She supposed Glímu-Sveinn had taken on himself, for the present, the role of entertainer to give them a respite – and also, Kathi thought, to bring back to mind those firelit winter days with his family, with the busy hands of his sons and his daughters about him. She glanced at him now and then, but he was always looking ahead.
That was the good part. Very soon after that, there was no room for tales, for the obstacles in their way were increasing. At first, they tried to circumvent the abrupt gullies, the fierce narrow streams and the bluffs, returning when they could to their route. Then a sigh and a whine brought a gust of frolicking wind and a haze of snow fine as dust, which forced Glímu-Sveinn to dismount, for both landmarks and track were now masked, and there was no chain of immaculate cairns in this tumbled and changeable territory, where even magnets were useless.
For a while the Icelander walked, probing ahead with his stave. Time went on, and the snow-haze persisted. Finally, he halted and pushed back his hood. There was snow on his cheeks as well as his beard, and his pursed lips were blue. He said, ‘We can go on, or we can dig in until it clears.’
‘Will it clear?’ Benecke said. ‘In time to reach Hlídarendi before dark?’
‘It would have to clear at once, and even then one could not be sure,’ said Glímu-Sveinn.
‘Then surely it is better to go on?’ Benecke said. ‘You are a man of this country. Even blind, a man can tell where he is by the wind, by the light, by the slope of the land. Nikolás-riddari?’
He was not at once answered, and when the other man spoke, he seemed to be thinking. He said,
‘How lovely the slopes are
. But here they alter, and so does the wind. In the desert, a blind man uses his nose. We can be guided by the smell of the sulphur.’
‘And by your magic,’ said Glímu-Sveinn. ‘If it reads true. Can you not tell where to go?’ The wind wailed.
‘That isn’t fair,’ Kathi said. ‘We are all tired.’ It disturbed her to have him called a magician.
He was already answering Glímu-Sveinn, his voice even. ‘I don’t know Hlídarendi. I can take you, without deviation, to the person waiting at the mouth of the Markarfljót.’ He paused and then repeated,
‘Without deviation.’
Glímu-Sveinn put his hand on the saddle. He said, ‘Not even an animal could travel blind from here to the delta. Ravines and rivers, ridges and crevasses stand in the way.’
‘But an animal, even blind, could pass from here to Hlídarendi,’ Benecke said. ‘The terrain is easier, is it not? And Hlídarendi is on our direct route to the mouth of the delta. If Nikolás uses this instinct, he could guide us as far as Hlídarendi by nightfall. And then tomorrow, when we can see, we can cover the worst twenty miles to the coast.’ He looked round. ‘We have nothing to lose. I propose that we start, with Nikolás in the lead.’
‘No!’ said Kathi. She knew the concentration it needed. His senses fixed on the distance, he couldn’t look out for himself.
‘Nei,’
agreed Glímu-Sveinn. ‘He and I will set off together, linked, and leading our horses. The spare horses follow.
The junfrú
rides after, and then Herra Paúel with the bell.’
‘You need a bell for the leader,’ said Kathi.
‘We don’t,’ said the Banco di Niccolò. ‘The leaders will proceed on their own, singing versicles. Or
nídvísur
, if you prefer it. Let us begin.’
‘Wait,’ said Kathi. She dropped from the saddle and stepped through the snow to Glímu-Sveinn. He had pulled forward his hood. She took his two thick arms in her grasp and kissed him.
‘Bénédicte,’
she said. The snow from his beard brushed her face; he kissed her in return, the courteous Icelandic salute, his hands on her shoulders. Then she turned and went back to her horse.
‘Now me!’ called Paúel Benecke from behind, but she didn’t look round, although she raised a glove in cursory acknowledgement. They had been joking, and would continue to joke, however little she trusted him. But whether you believed a diviner to be god, or man, or to possess the worst features of both, the person bound to him was staking his life, his one ordinary life, by that deed.
At first, it seemed as if they had made the right choice. After a slow and anxious beginning, the wind dropped and visibility returned, and with it their landmarks. It was evident, too, that the violence within
the two mountains was still contained: the smoke was no worse, and the underground movement had ceased, as had the thunder. For a while, the earth seemed to have recovered its voice: the ponies snuffled and blew, their shoes thudding in snow and rapping upon the bare rocks; at one point they heard the croaking of ravens.
Twenty-four hours had passed since the field of the hot springs had become silent. She had thought, as anyone would, that the danger would steadily escalate, but Glímu-Sveinn said that sometimes the shades below could not make up their minds as to which fires to stoke, or decided to tease, by alternately fanning and choking them. He said, however, that once such a force had begun, it could not subdue itself for very long, and that the outcome would be all the more violent. They must not be deceived into stopping.
He had hardly spoken the words when the wind rose, this time from the east and the south, and bringing sulphur mixed with fresh snow. Behind her, Kathi heard Benecke swear, but Glímu-Sveinn simply dismounted again and paced forward, shafting the snow, his head bent to catch the level, spaced observations of the diviner. There were three hours of daylight still left.