Wild Magic (60 page)

A knot of girls had gathered on the quay to wave and call out their greetings to the approaching ship: from her vantage point on the landward path down from the Hound’s Tooth, Katla could just about make out the forms of Kitten Soronsen, Magla Felinsen and Thin Hildi – who appeared to have made a miraculous recovery from her collapse – out on the mole, along with Forna Stensen, Kit Farsen and Ferra Bransen and some old women who might be part of the Seal Rock clan, or were possibly Old Ma Hallasen and her friend Tian: at this distance it was hard to tell. What she could see, however, was that in the few seconds it had taken for someone to report the sighting of the sail and the general scramble from the hall down to the harbour, Kitten had somehow contrived to change her overdress and was now wearing her best scarlet silk tunic, which set off her hair and eyes so well. She was likely to attract rather more attention than she’d bargained for, wearing that, Katla thought grimly. And not from some good, honest northern sailor, either. She had given up trying to shout to them: all their concentration was towards the sea and no one was looking in her direction at all. Squinting, she could see Fat Breta wheezing her way down the steep path from the steading in the company of Marin Edelsen, and behind them Otter, Magla’s mother, in company with the Mistress of Rockfall, Bera Rolfsen herself; and behind her came old Gramma Rolfsen leaning on her sturdy stick.

Gritting her teeth as a blackberry runner snagged hard across her shins, Katla redoubled her efforts. The ship was within striking distance of the sound now: surely anyone with eyes to see could tell that this was no Eyran vessel, let alone her father’s elegant new ice-breaker? But the girls knew next to nothing about ships and the old women, who had seen southern vessels before in these waters twenty years and more before, were hazy of vision in these latter days. Katla cursed them all for their stupidity and their age. ‘It’s not the
Long Serpent
!’ she wailed for the hundredth time, even though she knew that rather than carrying to the Rockfallers down below her voice would be wafted away into the rising heat of the air like the cry of a gull. Could she make it down there to warn them in time? It was a long way from the top of the Hound’s Tooth down to the harbour; even by the easy path, which was three miles and more from summit to sea level, it would take a good half hour; and the easy path debouched in a more northerly part of the cliff from where the top of her ascent route had brought her out. This descent path was more direct, but it was far steeper, pocked with rabbit-holes which would happily swallow your foot and snap your ankle, and studded with boulders and outcroppings of granite hidden beneath wild flurries of brambles and gorse and bracken. If she did not watch every step she made, she was like to break her neck and die unseen and undiscovered and no use to anyone.

From this stance on the seaward face of the headland, the path now began to curl away from the coast, following a rock-filled gully down into the valley behind the harbour: she would not be able to see either ship or her folk for several minutes; and her cries would be masked by the landscape. Nothing for it now than to run and run and hope she could reach the women before the crew of the ship were able to disembark.
And if these are raiders, then what?
A voice nagged in her head.
None of them bears a weapon, nor knows one end of a sword from the other: what hope for them, if that is the case? Perhaps,
the voice insinuated,
it would be best if you were to cut your losses. After all, what more do they deserve after all they have said to you, the way they have treated you? Run inland and save yourself, slip around to the back of the steading and fetch your sword and belongings: make good your escape while the visitors are fully occupied down at the quayside
. . .

Katla growled softly. She had given up trying to understand whence such voices came, whether they were internal dialogues she held with herself or from some other source entirely.
Shut up!
she told this one sternly.
I cannot listen to you and run as hard as I must
.

Head down, the breath tearing raggedly through her chest, Katla ran.

The
Long Serpent
was indeed far, far away from its home port at Rockfall, and one could say not simply in terms of geography. The mists had cleared from around her mast and the men were rowing again; but they rowed through icy seas in mutinous silence, and their number was much diminished. Since the disappearances of Bran Mattson and Tor Bolson, three more men had gone missing, despite the constant watch set by the ship’s captain. Aran Aranson had not slept for four days. His eyes were sore and red-rimmed, the sockets deeply outlined by thin skin as dark as a bruise. He was not always attentive to what was said around him, and when he did listen, he was short-tempered. He ate what Mag Snaketongue put before him, but without relish or comment; he declined to drink hard wine or ale; he consulted his map often. Most of the men avoided him; some gathered in small groups when their shift was done and spoke of losing one other man overboard and then turning the ship for home. None would know the truth of it, they said softly; but though they almost believed it, no one would volunteer to make the first move. Urse watched them and knew their thoughts. He gave Emer Bretison, their ringleader, a hard stare, saw how the big lad held it for several seconds before wavering away into confusion and knew they would not act on their conspiracy. He did all this not out of some misplaced loyalty to Aran Aranson, but because it was his view that they had of their own free wills joined the expedition, and that by setting foot on board the
Long Serpent
they had accepted all consequences of that initial act of greed and risk. The mysterious loss of his shipmates, however, fell somewhere outside this covenant: he did not know what to make of that enigma at all, except that, like his captain, he refused to give credence to tales of afterwalkers and spirits.

Once, in the depths of the night, he had heard a faint cry and a splash, but cloud had lain before the moon and he could see nothing. In the morning Jad the tumbler had been missing, though none save himself had seemed to mark the boy’s absence; when they had, Fall Ranson had muttered darkly about the lad being exhausted by the rowing and in despair about reaching any destination other than Sur’s Great Howe, until Flint Hakason had quieted him with ‘And would you be next?’

Now the ice became thicker and harder to navigate. Great white sheets of it spread northwards away from them through the near-constant half-light, split by snaking black leads and channels. The
Long Serpent
plunged into the first of these with Urse at the tiller, roaring directions to a crew mesmerised by their sudden new surroundings. The farther they penetrated into this freezing maze, the more bizarre the formations became. At first, there were merely small scatterings of hardened ice bobbing in the dark water like jewels. When these struck the hull it was with a noise quite out of proportion to their size, and the timbers rumbled and creaked as though they might burst apart at any moment. For hours on end, Aran lay half over the prow, fending off the larger lumps with a long gaff, but still a thousand of the smaller balls hammered into them, denting and scraping the hard oak of the strakes.

Under a chill pewter sky, smoky wisps of vapour curled up around the passage of the ship like gasts, hovering in the twilit air as if waiting their moment to coalesce and take their fearsome night-time shapes. They wreathed themselves around the form of the Master of Rockfall, silhouetted as he was out on the prow, as though they might insinuate themselves into his very being and take his body for their own. As the pewter gave way to the rose and violet of the arctic sunset, they entered another territory altogether; one which promised imminent sight of the mythological, for it was more bizarre than anything any of them had ever seen. At first they came upon bergs which towered around them like sentinels or giants or fabulous castles, the smooth planes of their ancient ice tinged with gold and vermilion and purple. As they passed, the ship’s wake rolled out down the leads like tidal waves, and when these collided with the bergs it was with a sound like distant thunder.

‘My god,’ Mag Snaketongue breathed, his dark eyes dimly reflecting the sights before him, ‘it looks like the end of the world.’

But things were only to get stranger.

As the light faded, they heard what sounded, freakishly, like a voice in the distance.

‘Terns?’ Jan asked, looking toward Flint Hakason.

The dark man cocked his head, like a dog listening to something beyond normal hearing range. ‘Maybe kittiwakes,’ he said after a pause. But he did not look convinced.

‘It’s too dark.’ Aran Aranson declared, his face stern, ‘and we’re too far from land.’

‘Fulmars,’ Urse asserted. ‘Sounds like fulmars to me.’

The rest of the crew listened. For several moments there was nothing to be discerned except the swirl of air over the surface of the floes, and the eddying of ice crystals which brushed their faces and caught in their beards. Then the noises came again, high and cracked and broken by both distance and wind.

For several moments the men of the
Long Serpent
strained towards the sound, their bodies frozen in stasis. ‘By the Lord Sur,’ Pol Garson said at last, and his voice was low with dread, ‘it’s a song.’

Now they could all hear it: the pitch and roll of notes on the wind, too rhythmic for nature, too melodic for chance; and too far from civilisation to be expected; yet still too distant from the ship to be anything but elusive and baffling to the ear.

Mag grasped his captain’s arm. ‘Let us turn back,’ he urged, his fingers digging into the other man’s biceps like claws. ‘Let us go away from here before it is too late.’

‘Aye, Captain, let’s take to the oars at once!’ cried Gar Felinson, his grizzled head nodding fervently with his request.

Urse One-Ear concurred. ‘I do not like the sound of this at all.’

Now all the men were talking and moving at once, panic making their movements fast and jerky. Several ran to their rowing seats, set their oars in position and looked expectantly at their captain; others ran to the gunwales and stared fearfully into the darkness with their hands on the hilts of their daggers. Flint Hakason marched to the mastfish and unlashed one of the harpoons he kept there, his face set in the grimmest of expressions.

The noises got louder, resolved themselves into distinct and horrible particularity. Whatever it was out there in the darkness, it seemed to be experiencing some difficulty in carrying the tune, for the notes wavered reedily, or were swallowed away into the gathering gloom of the night. But despite all this, the lyric soon made itself apparent as belonging to a song all too familiar to every man present, it being
The Seafarer’s Lament
:

As the last notes died away, an apparition soughed into view: a battered boat with a tattered sail which flailed like rags in the breeze. It was a small faering; last hope of the storm-wracked and shipwrecked. Its timbers were damaged and weather-bleached, and of its parent ship there was no sign. The men of the
Long Serpent
made the sailor’s sign against disaster and clutched their silver anchors as if the pendants had the power to ward off every evil in Elda. They craned their necks for sight of the singer, and for a long while the darkness obscured their view.

A few moments later, they wished it had continued to do so.

A solitary figure sat in the boat. Its face was blackened by the elements and its eyes were staring pits, reflecting the fire of the torch Aran Aranson held aloft. Gappy teeth showed through smeared lips. Its hair and beard were long and matted with some coarse substance which had also leaked down over whatever rags of clothing it had left to it. Its boots were gone, exposing one long white foot and a single grisly stump. In its hands it held what appeared to be a complex arrangement of ivory, whilst heaped all around it, as in one of the long barrows of legend, was a pile of bones and a scatter of skulls.

‘By Feya’s eyes!’ cried Emer Bretison, unmanned by the implications of this appalling sight enough to call on the women’s deity.

There was a rattle as Flint Hakason dropped the harpoon.

‘God protect us!’

‘Vile, murderous bastard!’

‘How? What?’ asked Fall Ranson slowly, his already-protruding eyes seeming to stand out as on stalks. He continued to stare and stare at the ossuary surrounding the figure in the faering without the least understanding of what he saw. ‘The crew – what happened to the rest of the crew?’

‘He’s eaten them . . .’

Now they could not help but focus on details: how long legbones lay shattered and split open, the marrow gone; how a knife lay buried in what was left of a ribcage; how a skull had been cloven in two, revealing a glossy, empty cavity.

And at last, Urse: suddenly recognising the item the survivor clutched in his clawlike fingers. ‘By the Lord Sur,’ he uttered in horror. ‘He’s eaten his own foot . . .’

‘He has, he has!’ An insane shriek of laughter split the air. ‘He’s eaten his own foot!’ Fent echoed, his wild eyes shining.

A moment later there came a strange whistling noise and a thud; and the cannibal fell backwards into the pile of bones. The pale stump of the survivor’s leg twitched convulsively for a few seconds, then the corpse fell still. A harpoon lay embedded in his chest and beyond that ravaged cage, into the timbers of the faering. It was a weapon designed to secure a narwhal or a whale: unleashed on such puny prey, the force with which it struck was disproportionate, savage. Soon, dark wellings of seawater had begun to pool around the skeletal remains; in no time the faering was awash.