by Ken Hagan
Wind fighting wave; wind pins our sail to the mast. The sail billows out, billows in, spinning the beam around, spinning twice; spins again; spins to meet their capsizing broken ship. Our tiller-arm, without withies to hold it to the hull, wriggles from Einar’s grip, rudder-board jammed out to the full. No one will prise it in-board, not with a tide like this, running against the beam. With rudder unmanned, our hull turns again. Wind and tide are ramming us back into the path of the broken Raven.
Rocks jagged, dashing what’s left of their ship, a half-hull rises out of the water, rises to our deck-height, higher, buffering our hull from rocks; tipping kirtle-men over the gunnels, saving them from the sea, pouring them on our deck like dregs from a pot; shields clattering on our deck; axes awry, warriors slipping, clambering for their feet.
Drak, with one giant step from his stern deck, lands on the Vigtyr, the blood of rage on his face. He is trapped like us — trapped with us — in the slowing motions of the dance. Battle lines are drawn, one ship, one deck, one victor, one spoil.
Cormac lunges in, lunges again, lunges at a heap of bodies at his feet, at the kirtle-men tipped from the Raven. His sword drips with their warrior blood. Feilan runs at the kirtled bodies, dabs, plucks at them; easy pickings on a spear, blood in water, like fishing for salmon in a shallow stream. Da and Sepp turn to tackle Drak before he runs amidships. Kol smells blood and snarls. He waits, unmoving at Da’s side.
As for Drak — this is cruel — he smites poor Gaukyr with his long-axe, splits the lad clear through the chine. Now he is after Tarkyr, to repay him for the stones, chasing the lad to the prow, stabbing pike-end of the axe lazily into his slave skull.
Now he jumps past the heifer in the hold, making for Ma and the girls amidships. He trails his axe behind, drags across the calf’s face, unplugs a gush of blood, from eye to neck, all for spite and sport. Now his sights are on the women, he means to wreak harm and havoc there, there, under the mast, before he faces Da and Sepp.
Bedwyr and Ma pull my sisters behind the sail, as if an end of flapping sailcloth will shield them from his rage. Sepp aims and hurls at Drak. Drak sees the throw, ducks, avoids the spear-head, laughs and watches it sink into the sea. The warrior was put off his stride, but the miss has left my brother weapon-less.
Da faces Drak alone, taking stance at mast and billowing sail, where Ma has crawled. There too are Bedwyr and the girls. Da steadies on the deck, grasping his spear two-handed. The hull rolls. Kol claws and slides, slides, big hairy pads sliding on the greasy spill, over blood and wet. The hound growls — a growl that shakes his throat — his barking rage unheard. He is sliding, he can’t help it, sliding back from Da’s leg.
I have to be with Da, have to go to him. I have to be with him, while he faces Drak. Beside me, Jo and Einar are struggling with the tiller. Sepp limps aft empty-handed to help Cormac and Feilan. He is going to take on the kirtle-men with bare hands.
Jo kicks a spear to him — she can’t let go of the tiller. Sepp has a spear in hand. Four, five men from the Raven are on their feet, and now another. Cormac, Feilan, and Sepp are outnumbered. I should go to them. My heart is torn between helping Da and going to my brothers.
Einar plucks the thought from my head. He grips my shoulder, makes a sign with his hand, a cutting sign: ropes — grapnels — larboard beam — ropes. Grapnels hook us to what’s left of their hull, their broken shell weighs us down; its wreckage is careering in the water, pulling us back to the rocks. I see what Einar is after: he wants me to cut the ropes.
Two strokes of the axe — larboard — first rope cut — now the second — sheared clean off. I run behind Cormac, see his jerkin soaked in blood, past Sepp, beyond Feilan to the gunnel rail — cut third and fourth — I see Feilan fall under the kirtle-man’s blade. It was the kirtle-man lean of face and long of beard, the hated kirtle-man. I cut the fifth rope and see my brother Feilan fall. The sixth rope is salt-crusted, rusty and sodden. I can’t slice it through. I have lost the power in my arms. My eye and my aim fail me.
No, it wasn’t Feilan. It was another, not he who fell. It couldn’t be my brother’s body on the deck back there. Again the violent rocking of the Vigtyr makes me miss the cutting stroke. Something has blunted my arm, my aim, or blunted the axe-edge. Still clasping my axe, I take the wood-knife from my belt and hack at it, hack at the grapnel rope, hack furiously till the hardened twines are frayed and free.
No need for me to sever the two ropes remaining. The shell of the long-ship’s hull dashes the rocks. At one stroke the remnant is lost into waves and we are freed from the dead weight of the Raven, two rope ends trailing in the water.
Leave them, leave the damned ropes. Our hull is rolling crazily, blood, sea water and body-swill on deck. I slip, fall; hit my chin; bite my lip; up again; axe in hand.
Drak has felled Kol; the hound writhes at his feet. Surely Da will make Drak pay the price — he lunges, raging, into the Raven’s shoulder — but too far — he loses grip on the haft. Drak, grimacing with fury at the pain, comes down with his return, a telling blow on Da’s chest, a massive, gaping wound. Da is down, slumped to his knees at the ram’s cage — a second blow will finish him. Drak spins axe-handle in hand, once, twice — a scornful flourish of victory — and aims the pike-end at Da’s naked head.
I run, scream, hurl forwards, upwards at Drak, stretch towards his giant height, aiming high as I can — to his chest, to his head — hoping a scream, a scratch from my axe, will distract him from his task. He doesn’t see me, doesn’t see the axe; doesn’t hear my screaming. I have no idea what I’m doing, only that I am the one with the axe, that I’m the one reaching for Black Raven’s head. The axe finds the bridge of his nose, splits the skull. Drak stalls, tumbles; sprawls, face down over the ram’s cage, his blood gushing on the ram, showering snout and horns, staining fleece and fodder.
Drak’s unmoving body sprawls over the cage, his back to me. I see the wrinkled nape under his helmet, hairy, un-weathered, pale and thick. I strike down on it for all I’m worth, axe sinking deep, crunching through his neck. Blood spurts from the opening of bare flesh. Bone and gristle yield soundlessly under my blade. Don’t know what comes next — can’t see a thing with my eyes burning in a red blindness of despair.
Chapter 8
The island where we have put ashore lies to the west of the Lundies, a group of rugged rocks and isles scattered in open sea about half-way to the ice lands. It is small and remote. We are hoping to find no settlers or fishermen this far out.
As far as we can tell, the island is a mass of hard grey stone that no one would inhabit. Above us, on the east coast, there is a sharply rising fell, thick gorse and ferns at the top, and a waterfall spurting down from the mull. The headland is sheer-faced, black with mist, too steep to allow access to the other side of the island.
This morning Ma climbed up beyond the falls near the line of gorse and ferns to keep vigil by the freshly built cairn. She took herself off at daybreak in mist and rain to sit at the grave, to sit alone with her grief.
We are on the lower fell, standing under ice-cold torrents flooding from the forse. Earlier, while down at the shore, it took us the best part of a day, scrubbing and flushing with sea-water, to rid the ship’s innards from the stains and stench of slaughter. We are famished with hunger, relieved to see an end to that distasteful task.
The girls dry each other by the fire, untangling and combing their matted hair, while steam rises above their heads into the cool air. We men are desperate for food. It is obvious Ma won’t be coming down to eat with us. I can see her through the mist, hair unloosed, shawl and skirts soaked through. With one hand she clutches her shawl and with the other she gently feels the stones of the cairn. At times she withdraws her touch on the stones to wipe rain from her eyes, or to run her fingers through the prayer beads on her neck.
Ma prepared our men’s bodies for burial. She wouldn’t let anyone help. She followed exact custom, as taught by her mother, right down to trimming toe-nails and finger-nail
s. This final task she did in the last moments before the corpses were covered in earth.
Feilan and my father are in shallow ground under a weight of stones. In a separate grave at Da’s right hand lies Kol the dead hound and next to him our young slaves murdered by Drak. The carcasses of the kirtle-men and their beheaded leader were dumped yesterday at sea. ‘Flesh for fish,’ said Jo with a bitter grin, while she watched us push their bodies overboard. ‘Chew them, chew, jaws of the sea.’ She hissed the curse under her breath. ‘Spit them on the rocks.’
If we hadn’t caught sight of running water, we would never have put ashore on this isle of rock. The white forse was visible from the sea. We sailed closer and heard a rushing noise from the falls. Not ideal moorings near a cliff face or easy to take animals off ship, but we are to leeside, on the east, and well-sheltered from the west wind. Einar wouldn’t have risked the Vigtyr close to shore if he didn’t think it safe. He had us drop both anchors, stern-side, to hold the hull from the rocks.
The forse water runs from inside the mull, thundering its rapid course over a ledge of rock before plunging headlong into the sea. There is a strip of sparse turf to graze the sheep and a patch of gravel to let the ram run among the ewes. We might have searched for ages among these rugged isles, and found nowhere before dark. At least we have water and scope for grazing. After the battle at sea we had no choice but to make landfall and hurriedly bury our dead.
The water butts on ship need re-filling. We cannot resume our voyage till that is done. Cormac and I have been given the painstaking job. We carry pails of water from the forse to the foot of the cliffs, and use our skiff to ferry them out to the ship. I am happy to be busy. Fetching pails up-fell and down, however tedious, is a welcome respite from the quarrel between Cormac and Einar. They were at it again this morning, arguing non-stop.
Cormac and I could never be at loggerheads; my love for him is unquestioning. Until now he has taken my worship as something expected, my boyish remarks humoured or ignored, but since my lucky blow with the harrier axe, he has come to think of me in a different light; he treats me on almost an equal footing.
‘Another thing,’ says Cormac in a grumbling voice, heaving a pail up from the skiff, and thrusting it above his head to me on deck. ‘What Alu said was right. Why do we let Einar and Jo get away with it? They think they can drop what they are doing and sneak off on their own. The rest of us have to work our boots off.’
Since Einar and Jo were married, Cormac cannot hide his envy of our older brother. I nod and grab the brimming pail of water. I don’t encourage his gripes or hear bad words against Einar.
Helga is on my mind, but in a vague way, unbearably distant. I can recall her words, but I cannot picture her face. In my head I keep hearing her warnings, and my dumb answers in return, as we sat in the rain at the beck, close-whispering under the blackened branches of the birch.
My thoughts take me back beyond that morning, back to our days at Thwartdale, and yet Helga herself is lost to me. I find it impossible to call up the image of her face. I can smell the tree, the rain-sodden birch, old and crumbling, struck by lightning. I can smell beck water on Helga’s wet hands, see the skin bruised on her knuckle, where it was scraped by gorse, but try as I might, I can’t bring her face to mind.
‘Here-Kol-here!’ I call him to heel, but there’s no hound with me, and no beck. I wake to the thundering forse of water here on the rock high above the sea.
*
The she-calf had to be slaughtered; she had the eye wound inflicted by Drak and couldn’t be saved. We will roast the carcase, every last scrap of veal, belly and bone, and render the fat before we sail. The task will take three, maybe four days cooking at the fire. The fat won’t go to waste. Einar plans to rub it on the ship’s ropes. He has brought ashore forty ells of spare rigging from the Vigtyr.
Because of the shortage of wood we can afford only a modest fire. We have used the ram’s broken cage. We are burning planks and boards lifted from the ship’s deck. There are no trees on this island fell, and no beaches for driftwood to wash up on.
Einar argues constantly with Cormac about how long we need to stay on the isle. He and Sepp want to lie low, camped by the forse, taking two weeks, or longer if needed, to recover from our ordeal. We should rest, they say, and put our mourning behind us. What’s more, Sepp is anxious for the bull-calf. The poor animal was badly distressed by the smell of blood on the Vigtyr, and quakes even yet from having witnessed the sights of battle. Sepp says the beast must be allowed to settle on grass — or he may cause trouble later on when he is mature. Ma agrees.
Cormac is dead against Einar’s plan and even more annoyed at Ma and Sepp for having supported him. He wants to be off as soon as fresh water is on board. He wants us back at sea and under way to the ice lands. What he’s really after is to confront Jarl and his sons, face the Skarsons, sword in hand, and have it out with them. He is sore as hell at what happened. He believes we were sold out by Da’s so-called friends. He won’t listen to reasoning.
Sepp has butchered the she-calf. Alu will smoke its flesh on the spit over a low fire, and melt the veal-fat into a pail. A constant downpour on the isle makes for slow cooking. Sepp and Einar have buried the remains of the calf twelve paces from the shelter, placing her hooves at four corners of the grave-pit. Sepp says she will be sure to find pasture in the nether-life. We ate the tail yesterday. The beast’s fly-swapper has good meat and gristle, and it doesn’t need a special burial.
As for the ram, this is the happiest the old buffer has been since we left home shores. The surviving ewes are in heat. No one expected it. It is not their season. The ram has been set free on the fell-side to pursue them at will. The wethers have no interest in their sisters and are roaming off among the ferns, keeping out of the ram’s way.
*
I’ve had to turn back from the falls — I was carrying pails to fill up from the forse and I caught a glimpse of my brother and his wife. They didn’t see me. Einar had Jo bare-ass over the ferns and he was tupping her, as a ram takes the ewe, in the falling rain.
*
‘Where’s Feily-fumble?’ asks Mel. She has gone back to talking in a baby voice, and her baby words break our silence around the night fire. ‘When is he coming back?’ Vrekla gives Alu a look; neither she nor Ma knows how to answer.
‘Feilan has gone off with Da, little one,’ replies Sepp gently. ‘It might be a while before we see them again.’
‘But I didn’t see them go,’ insists Mel, with a sobbing cry. ‘Dada didn’t give me a kiss before he took off. I have asked my crows in the cage. They have eyes for everything, but the birds won’t say where Dada has gone.’
‘Someone should tell her,’ Cormac whispers in the darkness. Alufa jumps up suddenly. Her long red hair flashes by the glow of flame-light. Unlike Vrekla, she hasn’t tied it back since we did battle with harriers. Alu lifts Mel in her arms, takes her out of the wattle shelter and into the rain.
‘Why torture her with the truth?’ says Ma angrily, as soon as the two girls are outside. ‘Time enough to break the news. In her little heart she knows they are gone.’
‘Mel should have been with us while we were digging the grave,’ says Cormac. ‘She should have seen their bodies put under earth, instead of her being asleep at the fire. If she had seen the burial, there would be no doubts in her head.’
*
At the foot of the sea-cliffs below incoming waves we came across a stretch of stone no wider than a ship’s deck. Seaweed and wrack clings to the rock and swaying fields of soft brown kelp grow on the seawards side. The stone is a natural jetty where we can launch and beach the skiff — a safe landing whatever the tide.
Behind the jetty, above the shoreline, storm waves have split a cleft between the cliffs and made a trench wide enough for people or animals to pass. The opening, banked with shingle flung in by storm tides, is our pathway to the foot of the fell. It is a precarious walk up or down, and heavy going underfoot, as we sink
in the shingle, but this is how we chased the sheep ashore, and dragged our ram and bull-calf up-fell.
*
The decision has been made today. We are going to sit it out ashore. Sepp and Einar have dropped the mast of the Vigtyr. The sturdy oak has been laid flat. It runs the length of the ship, stem to stern. Einar has lashed it to cross-beams fore and aft. The masthead, tapered like a snake’s tongue, juts over the prow.
The rain held off while we did the job, but now it’s teeming again. Before the mist and rain closed in, we caught sight of Cormac. We saw him climbing the face of the mull, a small figure on the heights above us, more than half-way to the summit.
‘He took off in a rage,’ says Einar, ‘he is mad at me, mad as wild boar. We asked him to come with us to the ship, but he refused to help.’
Only someone as brave or as angry as Cormac would attempt a sheer climb on the mull. He is risking his life. He can’t keep a safe footing or find a proper grip on the rock. The greasy ledges are all bird droppings, mossy and slimy wet.
*
‘Save them for Cormac,’ says Ma. ‘They are his favourite. Do you hear me, Sepp? Hands off! I don’t want the veal bones touched. Your brother will scoff them when he is back. I am putting farls in a bag for him. You wait and see. He will turn up.’
The forced cheerfulness was Ma’s brave effort to sound like her old self. We were glad to see a smile from her last night, the first to light up her face since she has been on the island. But her attempts to raise our spirits fell on deaf ears. No one will speak the truth. We are afraid to say out loud that Cormac has fallen from the rock or leaped to his death. There has been no sight of our brother since the day before yesterday. We fear the worst. No man could scale the ridge, or make it down from the summit in one piece. No one could live to tell the tale, not even Cormac.
Chapter 9
Mel shakes me till I am awake in the early-morning shadows. My answer is a firm no. I turn my back to her, cover my head. Within our stuffy shelter, familiar grunts and snoring from my brothers. Vrekla has a hissing in her throat, Alu sniffs softly through her nose, and Bedwyr, restless with fever, makes a croaking cough while he sleeps.
