by Norman Crane
intimidated by the solitude of being surrounded by open water, but he wasn't. It was a surreal solitude that matched his surreal state of mind. That he was leaving everything he knew, probably forever, hardly seemed true. Instead, he was dreaming. The sky was the colour of the sea, which was the texture of the sky, and their boat was suspended somewhere in the illusory space between. They were sailing on water but could just as well be sailing on air. Maybe they were. In the middle of a great nothing there are no points of reference.
The Riverraider was equally content to stay silent. Erlandr assumed this was because he'd been on so many sea voyages in his long life that an ordinary one bored him.
Goll perhaps wanted to talk, but the slow, constant rolling of the water, which Erlandr found soothing, turned his face pale and regularly caused him to lean his head out of the boat and vomit into the sea. It wasn't until the third day that his stomach settled, and when the wind had stopped and night fallen, he took a swig of his ale and said, "It's strange, isn't it? The three of us in the middle of a liquid darkness we can't drink and that wants little else but to drown us."
Erlandr huddled tighter under his cloak, chilled by the words and the cold, still air. He didn't reply. Beside him, the Riverraider appeared to be sleeping.
"Doesn't it make you wonder whether we're not making a mistake by leaving our land?" Goll continued. Behind him, the sea was flat as a table top and black as coal. "It's a risk, a gamble. Attempting to evade death might end up being the death of us. I'm not particularly fond of either drowning or dying of hunger. Are you a gambler by nature, Erlandr?"
Erlandr didn't want to answer, but when Goll didn't stop staring at him, he gave in and said, "I'm not making a mistake, but I speak only for myself."
"Of course. Except, you and me, we are both escaping."
"What are you escaping from?"
"We," Goll said, emphasizing the word, "are escaping from the wrath of Chieftain Likvidr." He slid his knife out of his sleeve and tried to catch a trace of starlight on its blade. "Remember that mine was the knife you stabbed Halfdan with."
The Riverraider stirred. Erlandr was no longer so sure the older man was asleep. He might only be resting, ready to act at the slightest provocation.
"We are partners in crime," Goll said.
Erlandr felt his fingers make fists under his cloak. Goll was no partner of his. He'd been just as cowardly as the rest of the bystanders. He, too, had merely stood and watched. There was no equality between tossing a knife and using it to make a man bleed. Moreover, what Erlandr had done to Halfdan was not a crime. It was justified. He'd stood up to a brute. He was about to put that into words when something hit the deck from below.
Goll slid away from the side of the boat. The Riverraider opened his eyes, looked at both men and said, "It was only a fish."
"It's always only a fish until it's something else. It's a deep and mysterious place under the surface. I've heard stories of creatures that live there, breathing water like we breathe air, that prey on the blood of men who cross their watery territory," Goll said, holding his knife at the ready.
Erlandr didn't know whether he was being serious or fooling, but a chill ran up his spine anyway. "Have you ever heard of a creature like that?" he asked the Riverraider. He felt childish asking such a silly question, but it was nonetheless comforting when the Riverraider answered.
"I have heard," he said, his eyes closed again, "but never seen. The only monsters I have ever known were men as flesh and bone as us."
Nothing more hit the bottom of the boat. In the morning the wind returned.
7
Erlandr was the first to sight land—or if not sight it, then at least the first to yell, "Look, there!" while pointing with an outstretched finger at a hazy shape looming on the horizon. He felt like an explorer. The Riverraider's expression didn't change. Goll drank the rest of his ale and hid the empty water skin under his shirt.
It was the fifth day of their voyage.
As they sailed nearer, Erlandr made out the shapes of low hills and brown, jagged mountains covered by patches of blindingly white snow. His first impression was one of frozen desolation.
Rather than make landfall, they sailed perpendicular to the coast. It was littered with tiny islands and cut into by inlets and deep fjords.
Around the fjords and on the hills grew patches of trees, strips of vibrant green on what Erlandr knew must be Greenland.
"Look for signs of settlement. Until we find one, we stay in the boat," the Riverraider said.
They looked all afternoon and into the evening but found none. At night, they took turns sleeping and keeping watch. Still there was nothing. Then, in the early hours of the next morning, illuminated by the first rays of the rising sun, they saw it, the backlit outline of a familiar thatched-roof building: a Viking longhouse.
8
They approached the longhouse after having pulled their boat ashore and retrieved their weapons. It looked ordinary, windowless and indistinguishable from the ones in Iceland, save for its smaller size. Surrounding it was a farm. A few sheep grazed. Barley grew. But even Dvalinn held his breath as they approached, for the ordinary was still a sight to behold if you happened to come across it at the end of the world.
"Stay ten paces back and keep your weapons down," he said. Iceland had taught him that remoteness could make even a good man prone to panic. "I expect hospitality, but if we should be met otherwise we retreat to the boat. No fighting unless we have no choice."
Erlandr and Goll nodded in agreement.
Dvalinn walked the ten remaining paces to the longhouse door and knocked.
The door opened.
A bald, bearded man older than Dvalinn appeared. He had alert, weary eyes that did their best to mask his surprise at seeing three unannounced visitors. "Icelanders?" he asked.
"Yes," Dvalinn said.
He had expected the man to ask their names or for news from the east, but he did neither. "I don't want to know anything about you," he said. "I was raised to give bed and board to travellers and that's what I'll do, but I only have room and food for one, so the others will have to knock on doors that aren't mine. They'll find more farms further up the fjord."
It was a fair and safe decision. Dvalinn wouldn't have let three strangers into his home, either. "Thank you," he said.
He told Erlandr and Goll to continue further inland, toward the other longhouses. Then he bowed and under the watchful gaze of the bald man walked inside this one.
The interior was dark and dry, cozy. By a table, a woman with long red hair was stirring the contents of a pot and humming to herself. She stopped humming when she saw Dvalinn. He bowed. "Greetings."
The bald man cleared his throat. "Prepare an extra seat at the table. We have a guest. If there isn't enough food, Drudge can go without." He turned to Dvalinn. "That's my daughter, Agata. She is without a husband."
The words flushed Agata's cheeks. "Kaspar," was all she managed to say before the bald man cut her off—
"Kaspar is a boy. You are a woman."
"And you are an old lecher."
This time it was the bald man's cheeks that turned ruddy. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and ground his jaws together before forcing out a smile. "Please excuse our squabbles, stranger. A family is a rocky plot of earth. Are you married, by chance?"
"I am," Dvalinn lied.
Agata laid out three bowls and filled each with stew from her pot. She placed them on the table.
The bald man rubbed his temples. “And the men with you?"
"They are not."
Dvalinn guessed the bald man was ruing not inviting Erlandr or Goll into his home, but it was too late to extend an invitation now. "Perhaps at another time I may meet them," the bald man said. "In the meantime, stranger, eat our stew. You must be hungry after your voyage."
Dvalinn thanked him and took a seat at the table. The bald man and Agata sat, too.
The thick aroma drifting up from the bowl made Dvalin
n's mouth water. It reminded him of his wife's cooking. Three bowls on one table reminded him of the family he'd once had. He dug in with his fingers and shovelled the stew greedily into his mouth. When the bowl was empty, the bald man said, "Are you staying permanently? Are you settlers? The soil here is harsh but tameable, and there's ample wood for construction."
"I am looking for someone," Dvalinn said.
"There aren't many of us here, but the ones who are know each other well," Agata said. Her voice was as red as her hair.
The bald man shot her a look to shut her up. "If it's an outlaw you're after, that business is your own," he said to Dvalinn. "Men escape their pasts in Greenland. We believe in second chances."
"I am not hunting a bounty. I am searching for my son," Dvalinn said.
The bald man's expression softened. "A much less despicable pursuit, to be sure, and one with which we'll help in any way we can. What is your son's name and when was he last known to be in Greenland?"
"Framarr," Dvalinn said. "He arrived seven years ago as part of a settlement expedition led by Rikard the Scargiver. That is the last I know of him. Do you remember this expedition?"
Agata looked down. The bald man's voice became grave. "Yes, I remember it. Rikard and his people settled the Birchwood Fjord."
"Is that far from here?" Dvalinn asked. His fingers clutched his empty bowl, lifting it slightly off the table. His hope was rising.
"A day's sailing. But you'll find nothing but ruins there now. The settlement was abandoned."
Dvalinn let the bowl drop. "And what of the people who lived there?"
"Birchwood Fjord was always only temporary. A few of their number stayed, integrating into our other settlements, but most of the men sailed on."
"Sailed on west?" Dvalinn asked.
"West," the bald man said, letting the syllable fill the entire volume of the longhouse.
Dvalinn's hope evaporated. The already pale outline of Framarr's face to which his mind was clinging paled even more. Soon, it would vanish. His son would be gone forever. Then what? A life without purpose was no life at all. "They never returned," Dvalinn said. It was a question posed as a statement.
The bald man filled the entirety of the room with two more syllables:
"Never."
"Drudge would know more," Agata said.
The bald man handed her his bowl. She picked up Dvalinn's and her own and got up from the table.
"I apologize for being unforthcoming, but we common Greenlanders know little about any of this," the bald man said. "Just that the settlement existed and was a shadowy business. The things rumoured to have gone on in Birchwood Fjord should remain unspoken. One mustn't tempt evil. But my daughter is right. If you must know more, speak to my servant, Drudge. He was one of the few in the expedition who stayed. You'll find him in the nearby woods, felling trees. If he refuses to answer your questions, you are free to beat him."
Dvalinn stretched his legs. "Thank you for the good stew," he said.
"You're welcome for supper too, stranger."
9
A short width of empty shoreline separated the edge of the fjord from the birches sprouting up from the soil on either side of it. The trees were sparse but tall, and loomed overhead like white spears that had been thrown into the ground by the gods. At least that was Erlandr's opinion, which he kept to himself, concentrating instead on staying in the emptiness and reaching the longhouses that the Riverraider had told them were nearby.
Beside him, Goll was being a little less romantic. "It's hardly green here at all. Wouldn't you say the name's a tad deceptive?"
Erlandr wouldn't say it. Although his first impression of the island had been grim, he was warming to it quickly. The sun, the sky, the wilderness. He was already trying to convince himself that this was a place in which he could live. It was certainly no worse than Iceland, and filled with a potential that he felt even without being able to explain it. He would find a pretty woman to be his wife...
Goll kicked at a clump of sod. "The dirt doesn't look the richest, either. To me, it looks like nothing would grow better here than back on our island, but you're the expert on that, so what do you say, Erlandr, son of Jokell the farmer?"
"I say my father raised sheep, not cabbage."
"Raises," Goll corrected him.
If Halfdan keeps his word, Erlandr thought. Even then, he wondered if he would ever see his father again.
As if on cue, a sheep bleated and they caught a flash of movement through the birch trunks. It was a tall movement, human. The opening words of a song followed, accompanied by the sweet, sharp sounds of a stringed instrument. Goll drew his knife. Erlandr put his hand on his axe and shouted out, "Greetings to whoever goes there. We are two travellers in search of hospitality. Do not be alarmed."
The song ended. The sheep bleated again. There was another flash of movement, and the voice that had been singing said without a melody, "Do not be alarmed yourselves, because, you see, travellers are a treat and a rarity." Then, from a different place, it continued, "Alarmed? Neither should you be armed. There's no need for axes and knives." And, from a third place: "I see you without you seeing me. I like it that way. So lower your weapons, walk through the trees, and I'll feed you according to your needs."
Erlandr looked over at Goll, who was staring into the forest. Erlandr stared, too. The trunks were so far apart and the voice had seemed so close at times that it was nearly impossible for them not to have identified its source. But they hadn't.
"Come, come," the voice said.
Goll stepped toward the nearest birch. "Show yourself first."
"Lower your knife first," the voice said.
"Lowered," Goll lied, crouching and getting behind as much cover as possible. In fact, he was nearly hugging the birch tree, when—
An arrow slammed into it!
Goll jumped backward, slipped and fell on his butt.
The voice laughed.
Erlandr took out his axe and laid it on the ground in front of him.
"What are you doing?" Goll asked.
"I'm lowering my weapon."
"Pick it up and walk through the forest," the voice instructed. "It's not a deep forest. When you find yourself on the other side, you'll find you've also found me."
Goll sprang to his feet. As far as Erlandr could tell, his knife had disappeared up his sleeve again. "And what do I do?" he asked.
"Go with him knowing that the next time you break one of my rules, I won't miss," the voice said. Before adding a few seconds later, "Also, if you'd be so kind as to retrieve my arrow..."
10
Dvalinn watched the bald man's servant from the privacy of a birch grove before approaching him. The servant was muscular, with broad shoulders that came together to form a thick neck holding up a round face made up of exotic, foreign facial features. Looks, however, were often deceiving. More telling was that the servant swung his axe powerfully but without technique. He didn't breathe as much as gasp. When he walked, it was with the subtle limp of a man whose leg had been severely injured in childhood.
The servant applied the last axe blow to the tree he was cutting, and it fell gracefully to the ground.
"Are you the one they call Drudge?" Dvalinn asked.
The servant turned, leaned on his axe and studied Dvalinn for what seemed like a full minute before answering. "Yes." He had an accent Dvalinn couldn't place.
"You came to Greenland as part of the Rikard expedition?"
"Yes," Drudge said.
"From Iceland?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember a man called Framarr?"
"Tall man, young, loud voice," Drudge said. "I remember."
"What happened to him?"
"He left with the others."
"To where?"
"West, across the sea."
"When?"
"Many years ago."
Dvalinn scratched his beard. "He never returned?"
"None of them returned," Drudge
said.
"Is he dead?" Dvalinn asked. He had to concentrate to keep his voice from breaking.
"I don't know. I didn't go. I stayed. He could be alive, he could be dead, or he could be worse."
Dvalinn wondered what was worse than death. "Why did you stay?"
Drudge stopped leaning on his axe. Standing upright, he was taller than any man Dvalinn had ever seen. "I was brought to Greenland as Rikard's thrall. I served him until I was sold. Now I serve another. To stay was not my decision."
"One man cannot belong to another."
"In another world."
"In this one," Dvalinn said. "Why did Rikard and the others sail west?"
"They sailed to Vinland. Who is Framarr to you?"
So, Drudge was capable of asking questions as well as answering them. Dvalinn decided there was no reason to lie. "He is my son."
"You are Dvalinn the Riverraider," Drudge said.
"Yes." Dvalinn's heart leaped. Drudge was telling the truth. "What is Vinland?"
Drudge shrugged his massive shoulders. "It is the land that lies to the west of Greenland, just as Greenland lies west of Iceland."
"Nothing lies to the west of Greenland," Dvalinn said. And nothing did—not on any map that he was familiar with.
"You and Rikard disagree about this."
That much Dvalinn knew. He also knew that before the discovery of Iceland, Iceland didn't exist on maps, either. Cartography was a record knowledge. Mapmakers didn't create continents. "Why did Rikard sail to Vinland?"
"For the same reason," Drudge said, "that Dvalinn has sailed to Greenland. He was searching."
"I am searching for my son. Who was Rikard searching for?"
"What," Drudge said.
"He was searching for a thing?"
"He was searching for neither a person nor a thing. Rikard and his followers sailed to Vinland searching for a power."
Men usually sought power amongst themselves. They sought it through learning, politics or violence. Knowledge was power. The laws were power. Fear was power. "What kind of power did they seek?" Dvalinn asked.
"I don't know," Drudge said. "I suppose the kind a man cannot find elsewhere."
"Or at all…"
"Or at all."
There was nothing more to ask. Framarr had set foot here, and he'd sailed on toward a land that doesn't exist with a man who'd likely gone mad. Dvalinn's search would end here. His life would end here. "Was Rikard a foolish man?" he asked, mostly to push away the silence and the infinite blue of the sky of the oppressive sky.
Drudge's lips spread themselves into a giant's smile. "You're asking me if he was touched in the head."
"Yes."
Rikard," Drudge said, "was the sanest man I've ever met."
"Do you like your life?" Dvalinn asked. Actually, the question had asked itself while Dvalinn was still privately sulking. Reason had slipped out from under a blanket of emotion. A sane men would not sail knowingly into an abyss. He would not sail without a justifiable reason. Or was that itself a blanket?
The question seemed to surprise Drudge. "I'm a thrall. I cut trees, I haul, I obey, I—"
"Do you wish for freedom?"
Drudge stretched out his arms and picked up his axe. "In another world, Dvalinn the Riverraider. In this one, I return to my labour."
"Yes," Dvalinn said without a hint of metaphor. "In another world."
11
Erlandr squinted. With each step, he was sure he'd finally discovered the source of the mysterious voice talking to them through the trees—only to realize that he was looking at: a shadow, a bird, or nothing at all. But whomever the voice belonged to, it had been right. The forest was shallow. The birches ended, and he and Goll stepped onto a field surrounded by a ring of stumps. In between the stumps, sheep grazed, eating tufts of thick grass. There were also cows, a few goats and a wooden house. Unlike the longhouses that Erlandr knew, this house was taller and had several square openings covered by wooden slats on its walls. Piled underneath one of them was a collection of what to Erlandr could only be elephant tusks. Not that he'd ever seen an elephant.
"Stop," the voice said. "Don't move."
Erlandr stopped. Goll grumbled under his nose.
"Now turn yourselves around."
The two men did as they'd been told, until:
Standing about fifty paces in front of them, one of his feet perched atop a stump, they saw an exceedingly tall, amazingly thin boy. He held a strange bow that resembled a miniature harp. He slid an arrow out of his quiver and drew it against one of the bowstrings. "Welcome, travellers," he said. "My name is Kaspar and you will be my guests."
"What is this?" Goll yelled. "You're but a child."
"These are precautions." Kaspar kept the arrow trained on them. "I take them because I have reason to believe certain people are trying to kill me."
"We wish you no harm. We have only just arrived on the shores of your island. There are three of us. One has found shelter for the night, but we two are still searching. I am Erlandr and this is Goll," Erlandr said.
"Where have you come from? Where is your boat?"
"We've sailed from Iceland. Our boat is at the mouth of the fjord."
"Are you traders?"
Erlandr was about to say, "No," when Goll said, "Yes, indeed we are. Have you anything to trade?"
Before the boy could answer:
"Kaspar!" a woman's voice yelled. "Put down that bow."
Erlandr heard a door slam, followed by a series of even footsteps that softened once they presumably hit grass. "Who are these men?" the woman's voice asked.
Several of the sheep looked up. A cow mooed. Kaspar lowered his weapon and dropped his chin to his chest. "They're traders. I swear I was only playing with them, mother."
The body of a stout woman brushed Erlandr's arm as she walked past. She barely paid any attention to him or Goll. All of it was focused on Kaspar. "What have I told you about this nonsense? You're a herder. Your job is to look after our sheep and goats."
"One of them wandered into the forest," Kaspar said.
The woman shook her head and sighed. Then she wiped her hands on her apron—they were covered in blood—and wobbled around to address Erlandr and Goll. "My apologies. The boy is... different," she said. "But he means no harm. I hope you have not taken offence."
"No, ma'am," Erlandr said.
"Good. Now to business. Are you here for the furs or the tusks?" she asked.
"We're not—"
"For the tusks," Goll interrupted. "May we come inside? It has been a trying voyage and most of our food has spoiled."
"It is the least I can do after all this silliness," she said.
Erlandr grabbed Goll by the arm, but Goll shook him off and hurried after the stout woman. He had the look of a fox to him. Erlandr, suspicious of foxes by sheepherder's instinct, decided he wouldn't be part of any deception in a place he wanted to make his new home. He stayed outside. Let Goll alone suffer the consequences of Goll's actions.
Kaspar had taken a seat on the stump he'd been posing on and was fiddling with his bow. Erlandr walked toward him. "There's bread and meat inside," Kaspar said without looking up.
"I'm not hungry," Erlandr said. "But if you would fetch me a cup of ale to drink here, under the sun, I would be thankful. I was a herder, too. I feel at home beyond walls."
Erlandr detected the trace of a smile on Kaspar's face—before the boy leaped from his stump and sprinted off. He wasn't a fast runner, long legged and awkward, but he had the natural gift of sudden, incredible movement: an agility one couldn't predict, a swiftness one couldn't teach.
When Kaspar returned, Erlandr thanked him for the ale and sat down on a nearby stump. "You're good with that bow. I've never seen one like it," he said.
"My own invention." Kaspar strummed its strings. "It can melt the heart, or pierce it." He winked. "Twice dangerous."
"How old are you?"
"My parents say I've nineteen years, though I've no
t verified that myself."
The boy was sharp, for his age or any. Erlandr drank the ale. It tasted strong, not like the dinner ale he was used to drinking in Iceland. "And when you said people were trying to kill you..."
"I was telling the truth. I haven't told a single lie. I said you'd find me through the forest. Here I am. I said travellers are rare. They are. I said I'd give you food and drink, and here you sit, enjoying an ale on a stump in the afternoon air."
Erlandr wondered who could ever want to hurt this boy. Somewhere in his mind, he imagined being the Riverraider of Greenland, a wise stranger accepted into a new community, standing up to its enemies—although, he remembered with a directness he hadn't expected, standing up to his own community's enemy was what had gotten him transported across the sea. "Why would anyone want to kill you? Do you owe a debt?"
Kaspar's face turned grave. "Worse," he said, strumming his harp theatrically. "I have stolen the heart of a woman, and she has stolen mine."
"Has she a husband?"
"She has a father. I have a mother. Mine has forbidden us from seeing one another—though, of course, we meet in secret—and hers has threatened to kill me if ever we are seen together."
"It's important to obey one's parents," Erlandr said. He meant it sincerely, but when Kaspar looked at him with lovesick eyes, he felt as if he'd repeated a hopeless platitude. He tried again. "The gods will act to set right what's wrong." Maybe there was a third piece of advice...
"Kaspar!" the stout woman yelled, interrupting Erlandr's thoughts, and Kaspar jumped obediently to his feet as unpredictably as before. He'd been sitting; he was up. "Help these men load the tusks onto their boat," she instructed.
"Oh, no, ma'am, that won't be necessary," Goll said, walking out of the house with bits of food and other things stuck in his beard. "We can handle that ourselves. You've already been too kind." He showed his teeth much like a snake shows its tongue.
"As you wish. There will be more next season," the woman said. Then she yelled at Kaspar, "As for you, get back to herding, you lazy bones! There are skins to prepare," and disappeared into the house.
Kaspar smiled; and he was gone.
Erlandr strolled over to Goll, who was standing beside the pile of tusks stacked against the house, beaming. "How much did you pay her for these?" Erlandr asked.
Goll lowered his voice. "We didn't pay a thing. We've come to collect what we've already bought. You see, the two of us, we work for a certain regular customer who always leaves his payment in advance."
"But we don't work for anyone," Erlandr said.
"Keep it down. She doesn't know that. We work for who I say we work for. Besides, we aren't cheating this lovely woman out of anything. She's already been paid. We're cheating the trader."
"Who'll collect in other ways when he arrives and finds no elephant tusks for him to take."
Goll slapped Erlandr on the back. "Believe me, my noble farmer, we cannot be responsible for the darkness that may lie in the hearts of other men. And they're not elephant tusks," he said. "They're walrus tusks."
"What's a walrus?"
"It's a snow cow with horns." Goll picked up one of the tusks and weighed it in his hand. "Heavy, but you'll manage."
"Manage what?"
"To haul these back to the boat. That's what thralls do. They haul."
Thrall? Erlandr felt a fury starting to rise like bile in his gut. He was no thrall! He was a free man. He pushed Goll against the tusks and reached for his own axe.
"Careful, or you'll have committed a crime on this island as serious as on the last..."
As much as Erlandr hated it, Goll was right. If Erlandr wanted to make a life here, he could hardly start under the shadow of a crime. Still, he was no thrall and he would not haul any walrus tusks, especially not stolen ones. "Haul them yourself. Sell them yourself. Take the profit for yourself. I'll have nothing to do with this."
Goll straightened himself, fixed his shirt and cleared his throat. He had the fox look again. "I will have the profit, you're right about that. But you will haul them, and you'll do everything else I say, too."
Erlandr turned to walk away.
"Why do you think I left Iceland?" Goll called after him.
"You threw the knife that almost killed Young Chieftain Halfdan," Erlandr said, still walking.
Goll cackled. "Except I didn't throw it to you, you idiot. I threw it to him. He was supposed to stab you with it. I wasn't helping you attack him. I was defending him. If he wasn't such a bloated slob, you'd have a gash across your neck and I'd have a sack full of silver to spend on women and games."
Erlandr stopped dead. Surely, Goll was lying.
"I know you're a farmer and farmers are stupid, but even you must know that power can't sustain itself. It needs support. Likvidr has spies, agents working for him. They live among you. They're your friends, your family. Do you think I was the only one in that longhouse ready to see you dead?"
Erlandr remembered the faces that had been around him, yelling, beating drums,
