Fatal Journeys

by Lucy Taylor

Stolli was also an enthusiastic student of Icelandic history and the events described in the sagas. The night before, he’d been telling us about the brutal custom of goading stallions to fight each other, sometimes to the death, and wagering on the outcome. The idea must have stuck in Graham’s mind.

  Graham was silent for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he surprised me by whispering, “Ellen, do you think Stolli knows what he’s doing?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “I did until now. Have you looked at the map?”

  “Not since we left Gullfoss.”

  “We’re way off track, at least thirty or forty kilometers.”

  “Did you say anything to Stolli?”

  “Not yet. You know Stolli, he’ll just give me a look and say he grew up herding horses out here and who the hell am I but a rich American who buys Icelandics as a hobby.”

  “Some truth to that,” I said.

  “But either he’s lost and won’t admit it, or for some reason he’s taking us way off the route We should’ve reached one of the overnight huts by now or at least seen tire marks from the four wheel drives the touring companies use. We’ve seen sheep, nothing else. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

  I ran my hand along the side of his face and studied the thoughtful grey eyes, the brow furrowed with concern. A small, trim man in his early sixties, Graham inherited from his industrialist father a love of fine horses and lusty women and the money to buy plenty of both. Unfortunately, the private detective I’d hired back in Bar Harbor had told me Graham’s latest indiscretion was more than a fling; I’d heard a tape of Graham pillow talking with his lady love about his plans to ditch me. He had the lawyers ready, the papers drawn up. He was simply waiting until we returned from Iceland to drop the bomb.

  Knowing this, it was with some effort that I caressed his cheek solicitously rather than raking it with my nails.

  “The middle of nowhere? But that’s the idea isn’t it? The interior of Iceland. You don’t get more in the middle of nowhere than this.”

  He continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “This canyon Stolli’s talking about—he said it was northwest of the Tungnafellsjokull glacier, but it’s not on any of the maps.”

  I patted his hand, not knowing how to answer. I didn’t know it at the time, but there are a lot of things in Iceland that aren’t on any maps.

  “At least I have the Ruger I bought from that Norwegian at the horse show,” he went on. “Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s smart for the three of us to be out here alone without any protection.”

  “Go back to sleep,” I said.

  “I don’t think I can.” He sounded frightened.

  But within minutes he was snoring loudly.

  ««—»»

  I waited a short time, then opened the tent on my side and crawled out, zipping it behind me and pulling on the paddock boots I’d left outside. No sign of life from Stolli’s tent, but he could fall asleep on the back of a bull.

  We were camped at the base of a slope leading up into steep hills topped by turret-like formations of rock. To the north loomed a chain of grey, brooding mountains striated with yellow and pink bands of rhyolite. To the east, only the outlines of icecaps and a pair of dormant cinder cones were visible on the horizon. The vastness of it made me shiver, this desolate and beautiful wasteland where it seemed that minds as well as bodies might become lost.

  The horses, twenty-two head of piebald, bay, smoky black, and silver dapple, were spread out across the hillside. Small, surefooted beasts with large heads and short, powerful necks, they were perfectly suited to Iceland’s harsh weather and treacherous terrain. Their distinctive gaits, the smooth tolt and the flying pace, were easy on the rider’s back and ideal for long distances. As I watched them now, they looked unreal, drifting apparitions in the hazy light that might have been sculpted from shadow and fog.

  I did a quick count and was relieved to find them all there. I still believed Graham had dreamed the stallions, but I wanted to be sure. We didn’t need the added complication of a pair of wild stallions trying to pick off mares from the herd.

  I tramped up the slope, skirting a jagged tongue of obsidian rock where sometime in Iceland’s recent past, a lava flow had reached this point and halted, hardening into pock-marked rock carpeted with velvety layers of moss. Higher up, the hills gave way to a series of slate shelves strewn with boulders. From here, I had an unobstructed view, but I saw nothing except our tents below and the horses, grazing peacefully.

  Peaceful and mindless, ignorant of any world beyond their immediate one of sky and wind and grass. And I thought of my father, a frequently unemployed ranch worker with a penchant for philosophy, who used to lament that most people acknowledged no world beyond their limited experience. He believed our lives were just a tiny scrap in an immense and never-ending tapestry, the depth and breadth of which we could never see or understand completely. Privately, I thought that, since he lived hand to mouth and had no creature comforts to offer me or my three brothers, he tried to pretend material pleasures were of secondary importance anyway—a foolishness I’d always openly disdained.

  As far as I was concerned, my immediate experience was the only one that counted. Soon I planned it to include luxury homes in Vail and Grand Bahama, and a fabulous horse ranch outside Reykjavik, where the finest Icelandic horses would be bred.

  Too bad for the bitch who thought she was going to be Graham’s fourth wife.

  After this trip, I’d be his grieving widow.

  My pleasant musings were short lived. I felt the hair at the back of my neck prickle as something tripped an inner alarm.

  Glancing toward the obsidian outcrop, I saw a nest of shadows that seemed to swarm and thicken. A palette of funereal shades, muted greys and dun and umber, coalesced into the vague outline of a figure creeping slowly toward me in the unnatural twilight. As it got closer, I made out a tanned and bearded man who wore a shabby, long-sleeved shirt, leather boots, and cloth pants cinched with a drawstring at the waist. Had I met him in a city, I would’ve crossed the street or looked for a cop. As it was, I held my ground and noted with sick dismay that he was brandishing a knife.

  My mind emptied of thought like an overturned bowl. All was instinct. Never let them know that you’re afraid, was a rule I knew from a lifetime of working with horses.

  In as calm a tone as I could manage, I said, “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  At the sound of my voice, he flinched and looked perplexed, but he didn’t lower the knife a single centimeter.

  I stretched a hand out in what I hoped to be a soothing gesture, while with the other, I scrabbled behind me on the rock wall for a chunk of loose stone.

  “How about putting that down? You’re scaring me.”

  His brows furrowed into a single bushy bar. He squinted with suspicion and befuddlement, shaking his head like a man trying to awaken from a terrible dream.

  “Please,” I said, but he kept approaching, the knife still held aloft but less surely now, as though the option of severing my arm at the shoulder was no longer entirely certain.

  “Asgerd,” he growled, barking out the word in the voice of one unused to speech, whose tongue and lips formed only with difficulty around the syllable. “Asgerd.”

  “Asgerd? Is that your name?”

  He was so close now I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead, the dirt in his beard. There was something else, too, something even stranger than his appearance, but I couldn’t quite identify what it was—or wasn’t—and I let it go. My attention was on the blade, which he finally sheathed with what seemed like some reluctance. Suddenly his right hand grabbed for my throat, but only to drag the back of his fingers slowly across the skin, like a blind man learning Braille. His touch made my flesh heat and prickle, as though his fingers gave off a mild electric charge. He stared at me, but I knew he didn’t see me. Wh
atever it was he looked upon was distant as the stars, though he’d evidently found its likeness in my face.

  And while he studied me, I studied him—the matted beard that looked like it might provide a nest for mice, the dried blood streaking his temple, the look of bereavement and bewilderment in his eyes. For a moment, his neediness reflected back to me the child I once was, angry and lonely, scared there would never be enough to go around, always wanting more. Like looking into a mirror that transcended time or perhaps foretold the future.

  “Don’t!” I cried out and jerked away.

  His hand withdrew. Pain flashed in his eyes and he fled from me as though I carried plague.

  ««—»»

  My first thought was to wake up Graham and Stolli and tell them what I’d seen, but I knew Stolli would be skeptical and Graham would want to launch a search, since it would be virtually suicidal for a lone man to be hiking in this area. Because no sane person ventured alone into the Sprengisandur, with its swift, glacial rivers, unpredictable weather, and harrowing emptiness. The danger of becoming lost, hypothermic, or injured was just too great.

  And really, then, what had I seen—a bloodied and bedraggled man in peculiar clothing, a man who looked at me with first with rage and then with sorrow, a man who’d touched me as though we knew each other?

  I lay awake through the remainder of what we still called night, although the sun dimmed but never set completely, and tried to come to some rational conclusion. The man was real, I told myself, I hadn’t had a waking dream or conjured a phantom. A hiker lost out here might well be mad from exhaustion, dehydration, and terror. He’d be desperately in need of help and I had offered it.

  So why had he run away from me, I wondered. Why had he run?

  ««—»»

  Why did it never end, this torment?

  Sometimes his head cleared enough that he could stitch memories together, but they unraveled like the fraying threads of a poorly woven cloak. Time, if it still existed, had become a hellish labyrinth, corkscrewing and spiraling, a snake devouring its own tail, or freezing solid as the rivers of winter.

  He knew this: that he was Gunnar, son of Thorkel, and that his life had once included a bounteous farm and able-bodied kinsmen, a proud lineage of sturdy farmers and sailors who’d plundered the coasts of Ireland and Britain for treasure and slaves.

  Now time had ceased, but he ran unceasingly, pursued by fragments of memory and his enemy Thorir’s vengeful kin.

  War horses screamed inside his skull and tore at each other with their teeth: a contest between his own stallion and Thorir’s. His own horse had been killed. By way of recompense, he had demanded the hand of Asgerd, Thorir’s cousin, in marriage, but Thorir had laughed, telling him Asgerd scorned his offer and that Gunnar was of low birth, hardly better than the son of a slave-woman.

  Here memory lapsed, but his aching forearms retained the jolt of impact when, in a rage, he’d planted an axe between Thorir’s eyes.

  In the summer, the matter of Thorir’s killing was brought before the Althing, to be judged by the Lawspeaker and the local chieftains. Witnesses appeared, including Asgerd, who denounced Gunnar as a scoundrel. She demanded he be put to death or sentenced to full outlawry, which amounted to the same thing. To be outlawed meant that a man was to be given no protection or aid by anyone, not even his own kin, and could be killed with impunity.

  The Althing decided in favor of Asgerd and her family, declaring Gunnar an outlaw. He fled to the farm of his brother Egil, hiding in the shieling, where the cow herders and shepherds lived during the summer, but Thorir’s kinsmen eventually learned where he was staying. He fled into the Highlands for a time, but when he to Egil’s farm, he was greeted by a ghastly sight—his brother’s head impaled upon a scorn post. A curse on Gunnar and his entire family was carved in runes into the post.

  Now he was deep in the Sprengisandur, and Thorir’s kinsmen were still in pursuit; he’d seen the glow of their campfire in the distance. He’d seen Asgerd, too, and now brooded bitterly over that encounter, wondering what she was doing here and how he should deal with her.

  ««—»»

  I awakened to the aroma of bacon frying and coffee brewing—Stolli was up, making breakfast. He was a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced man whose Nordic good looks were marred only by swollen nose and broken veins of the chronic alcoholic. When he saw Graham and me emerge from our tent, he proffered two mugs of steaming coffee, making a point to hand the larger one to Graham, and grinned, “Big day today.”

  “You say that every day,” snapped Graham.

  “Every day’s a big day when you’re out on an Icelandic horse,” said Stolli, with a cheerfulness I had to concede was a bit much to take at this hour. And what hour was it anyway? My body clocked somewhere around five a.m. but the sun said afternoon. Hard to believe that, come winter, the light would be in exile once again while pitch darkness ruled the day.

  Over breakfast, Graham brought up the subject of our location. “I think we’ve gone off track, Stolli. This canyon you keep talking about, I can’t find it on the map. Where exactly are we anyway?”

  “Whatsa matter, Graham? You think we’re lost?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Nice to know you’ve got faith in me,” said Stolli, scowling in a way that made his eyebrows appear to do push-ups. He turned to me. “What about you, Ellen? You think we’re lost, too?”

  I bit into a piece of hardfiskur and pretended to chew it thoughtfully. “I think we must be taking the scenic route. If the canyon’s not on the map, that just makes it more mysterious.”

  Graham shot me a look that said I must have lost my mind.

  “We’ll be there in another day,” said Stolli. “Then you’ll thank me. And wait ’til you see the valley beyond the canyon. Lush, green, it’s why I bring the horses up here every summer, wildflowers everywhere.”

  “I’m sure the horses love it, but I’ve seen a lot of valleys,” Graham said. “Missing this one isn’t going to kill me.”

  “And what do I do with the horses, leave them here without adequate pasture?”

  “Take them back to your farm. They’re better off there anyway. It always did strike me as ridiculous, this custom of driving the horses into the Highlands for the summer.”

  “Like you’d know about Iceland or the horses,” Stolli said.

  Graham clutched his fork like he was thinking of shoving it through Stolli’s eye. “I own some of the best Icelandics in the world.”

  “Because you’ve got money to buy them and fly them to the States. Doesn’t mean you know a goddamn thing about them.”

  I raised my hands. “Stop it, both of you. I won’t have breakfast ruined by your bickering.”

  Stolli glanced at me with those pristinely clear blue eyes, eyes I could at one time have gotten lost in until I realized the lethality that lurked behind them. He looked benign, but I knew he must have teeth marks on his tongue. “Sorry Graham, I was out of line. Go on, drink your kaffi.”

  “I don’t want coffee,” said Graham, who typically consumed at least three cups to start the day. “My stomach’s upset already.”

  A few minutes later, while Graham walked off to find a private place to squat, I cornered Stolli. “We aren’t alone. I saw a man out there last night.”

  “One man? On a horse or in a four wheel drive vehicle?”

  “None that I saw.”

  “On foot? Impossible.”

  “I saw him, Stolli. He was carrying a knife. He scared me witless.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No, I was too focused on the knife. But he was injured and disoriented. I offered to help him, but he ran off.”

  A sarcastic grin stretched thinly across Stolli’s mouth. “Outlaws used to hide out here. Maybe you ran into a tivar, one of our mountain spirits.”

  “Don’t start, Stolli. This guy was as real as I am.”

  Stolli shrugged. “Makes no difference what you saw. The plan’s b
een set. We stick with it.”

  “We can’t! Not if there’s someone out here.”

  He took a deep breath, expelled it. I smelled the remnants of last night’s—or maybe this morning’s—gin. “It’s too late to change your mind, hon. I’m not going back without earning my two hundred thousand.”

  “What two hundred? We agreed on one fifty.”

  “I want more for the aggravation of having to put up with Graham’s bitching.”

  “Fine then, just do it.”

  “That’s more like it. I earn my money, you get your widow’s weeds, and everybody—well, almost everybody—goes home happy.” He ran the back of his fingers across my cheek. Nothing like the way the strange man had touched my face the night before. It was a gesture of smug arrogance and power, with no a hint of anything resembling affection. Not that I expected any. For a long time, I’d thought Stolli was gay—and concealed the fact with his hard drinking and over the top machismo. He wasn’t. He liked females all right, but I had a terrible suspicion they weren’t the kind you find in centerfolds. At the horse shows in Reykjavik, when he thought I wasn’t looking, I’d seen the way he watched the young girls up on their pretty ponies. When we’d talked about the money, he’d told me his plan was to move to Cambodia where “a man can have anything he’s ever dreamed of.”

  I shrugged off Stolli’s hand and turned to collect the breakfast plates.

  “And by the way,” he added, “I need some more of those veterinary tranquilizers you swiped back at the horse show. He didn’t drink his kaffi.”

  ««—»»

  An hour later, we set out again across terrain so desolate we might have been on the moon, a comparison not altogether farfetched since the Apollo astronauts had actually once trained here. We skirted a thermal area, where the earth puckered and spat up globs of boiling mud, then followed an icy river that twisted like a convulsing snake along frozen banks. Driving the herd ahead of us, we forded it at a point that appeared shallow, but frigid water still splashed up to our knees. In the distance a stretch of basalt cliffs rose up like the silhouette of a great city, but I knew that when we reached it, the only inhabitants, if any, would be plump, brown-feathered ptarmigans.