by Tom Holt
‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I like it here. I think this is where I’d like to build a farm.’
Well, we didn’t say anything, but you didn’t have to be clever to guess he’d finally come loose from his pins, as we say back home. Not difficult to see why: winter at Leif’s Booths, the worry about the ship, everything going wrong and the tension in the crew Obviously he was somewhere else inside his head, because that was no place for a farm: no grass, no meadows, just a rocky finger covered in trees stuck out into the sea. No, my .guess is that, just like all of us, he had a picture of his farm which he’d been carrying round inside him for God knew how long, the place he went back to when he shut his eyes. Now we were going home and the whole trip had been a failure, he must’ve known deep down that he was never going to find his imaginary house, same as the rest of us; so I think he’d got to the stage where, instead of it just being there when he closed his eyes, it was starting to be there all the time. It’s sad when somebody goes like that, and it makes things awkward even if he isn’t supposed to be in charge of the ship and everything.
Just then, somebody (Big Thorbjorn I think it was, the man who followed the bees) got all excited and started pointing at something a way up the beach. Once we realised he wasn’t kidding around we looked where he was pointing, and sure enough there was something.
First off, it looked like three small sand dunes; except there weren’t any dunes anywhere else on the beach. We went a bit closer and saw it was three little boats upended. Funny things they were, too. Not made of wood, like proper boats; they had frames made of skinny old poles with hides stretched over them. Sigurd Squint reckoned he’d seen something of the kind in Ireland, or rather his grandfather had. Not that we could give a damn.
For a moment, I thought maybe they’d been washed up there; but as we got closer, I knew I could forget about that, because they weren’t just thrown up on the beach like driftwood, they’d been hauled up and set carefully straight and side by side.
Question was, of course: who by?
We couldn’t see anybody, naturally So we stood around for a bit, talking in whispers; then Thorvald seemed to remember who he was supposed to be, and started giving orders. He told Big Thorbjorn and Kari and me to come with him, and fetch along our axes just in case.
Must admit I felt a bit of a fool, creeping along the beach in broad daylight like I was stalking birds. A few moments earlier we’d all been strolling up and down talking out loud, so it was a bit late for stealth; also we could see a long way up and down the beach, which was open and flat, no place to take cover, and there wasn’t anyone besides us. But what the hell, we crept along on the sides of our feet until we were right up close to the first boat. Thorvald held up three fingers, then folded them down one by one to count us down, and when he’d folded down the third finger we jumped on the boat and turned it over.
Bugger me if there wasn’t someone under it, fast asleep. Three men, all snuggled up together like puppies in the barn. Can’t say they looked all that different from us; they were dressed in buckskins and furs, with hide boots on their feet and their hoods pulled up over their heads. Their skins were a bit darker than ours and they didn’t have beards. Sound sleepers, though, because they didn’t wake up.
When he’d done staring at them, Thorvald turned round and beckoned to where the rest of our lot were standing by; so up the beach they came, obviously wondering what the hell was going on. Between us we lifted off the other two boats, and sure enough there were another two lots of three men, also sound asleep.
It’s a good many years now, but I still can’t really figure out what happened after that. Kari reckons he saw one of the men reach for something inside his coat, and the way he did it made it look like he’d got an axe in there, or a knife. Helgi Thormodson told me afterwards that Thorvald gave the order, but if that was the case I didn’t hear him, and nobody else remembered it either. Sigurd Squint said many years later that Thorvald started it and we all pitched in after him, and that’s how I prefer to remember it. Doesn’t make a great deal of difference. You look for a moment, a point where the balance tips or something gives way and breaks, but generally it doesn’t matter, the details. It’s the main thing that leads to all the stuff that comes afterwards, and you’re just acting like kids if you try and say it was his fault more than mine.
Anyhow, we killed them; any rate, eight out of nine. The ninth one sort of got overlooked. He stayed there quite still while we were laying into his mates with our axes and our boots and what have you, and I guess we all thought someone else had seen to him; then, quick as you like, he jumped up and started running like a deer, not looking round to see if anybody was chasing him. He just ran, and we charged off after him, of course; he led us up the beach a fair way - he was quick, light on his feet - then suddenly doubled back and slipped through between us, neat as anything. We tried to grab him, but he was too nimble - it was like when you’re trying to catch up the chickens, and the last one always nips in between your legs and darts off across the yard before you can lay hold to her - and next thing we knew, the cheeky bugger’d dragged down one of the boats into the water and was paddling away like mad.
Four or five of us went splashing in after him, but they were too late, they just got wet and gave up. Thorvald dashed back to the ship after his bow and arrows, but he was wasting his time. The rest of us stood and watched the little boat getting smaller, and I was saying to myself, What the hell was all that about? We just killed eight men and I haven’t got a clue why
I say we. Me, I know I killed one of them for sure. He was right there at my feet, and I bent my knees and scat my axe into the top of his head, like you do when you’re cutting coppice and you stick your axe into a stump so you won’t lose it in the brash. I’d never done anything like that before, and I remember how it jarred my arm right up to the elbow, and I thought, Fuck me, that hurt - Then it was a bit of a struggle getting the axe out again, and he was twitching even though he was dead; and by then it was all done, and we had the ninth man running away to take our minds off it. I’ve thought about it a bit since then, and for some reason it seems to matter to me whether I killed that one before or after everybody else pitched in; but to be honest with you, I’ve got no idea. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been losing sleep all these years, or burning myself up with guilt. I’ve done worse things in my life, specially since I’ve been here in the Guards with you Greeks; got the commendations to prove it, too. And back home, of course, people are always a bit free with their axes, which causes no end of trouble; but there always seems to be a reason, just like when you’re a soldier and the officer says, ‘That lot over there, and don’t let any of them get away,’ so you don’t. No: I think that what’s stuck in my mind was the way that bugger ran. It wasn’t human, it was like an animal; the way, I don’t know, the way they’re always expecting to get attacked, so when you startle them they just run, no panic, no fear; and if you don’t happen to get the deer or the pig or whatever, you watch it into the distance, and when it’s half a mile away and it knows it’s safe, it just stops and drops its head and starts feeding again, because that’s how life is.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘What?’ Eyvind had been squinting up at the sun. In the distance, Kari and Harald were playing some sort of bastard chess with only one king. Their games tended to last a very long time, and always ended in bad temper and sulking. I noticed that both of them, the old man and the young, sat with their sword-scabbards pulled round on their belts and laid across their knees, the right hand resting on the grip. I’d always assumed that it was more comfortable that way
‘So what happened next?’ I asked.
Eyvind smiled, though not at me. ‘Ah,’ he said.
For a while nobody said anything; we just stood, catching our breath. Then someone or other - it may have been Saemund Limp, but who cares? - someone said, ‘So who do you reckon they were, then?’
Helgi Thormodson turned one of them ov
er with his boot. ‘Leather boats,’ he said. ‘I think they could be Irish.’
‘That’s right, said Sigurd Squint. ‘They use leather boats in Ireland, for fishing and hauling peat.’
Thorvald shook his head. ‘You’re trying to tell me they came all the way from Ireland in those?’
‘Not necessarily, someone else said. ‘Maybe these are just, you know, lighters. Like, we’ve got a small boat of our own, for coming ashore when you can’t beach the ship-‘
‘Thank you,’ Thorvald snapped, ‘I know what a boat’s for:
‘That’d mean there’s three Irish ships,’ Sigurd said.
‘Or a big ship with three boats,’ someone else suggested.
Helgi was kneeling down beside the dead man, turning his head back and forth by the chin. ‘Doesn’t look Irish to me,’ he said. ‘And no, I haven’t been to Ireland, since you ask. But I never heard the Irish don’t have hair on their chins.’
‘Maybe they’re monks,’ someone said. ‘Monks shave their beards off, someone told me once. And there’s loads of monks in Ireland. They live on remote islands, for the peace and quiet.’
Someone said he’d heard that, too. ‘I heard tell there were Irish monks living in Iceland when the first settlers came,’ he added. ‘They go places where nobody lives, so they can pray without being disturbed. Then, when anybody shows up, they move on.
Thorvald thought about that. ‘Might account for why we haven’t run into them before,’ he said. ‘But if they’ve been living here any time, you’d have thought we’d have seen something.’
Helgi reminded him about the rick-cover we’d found last summer. ‘That could’ve been them,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it’s hard to tell from a few sticks and bits of bark.’
‘If we’d caught that other bugger, we could’ve asked him,’ Big Thorbjorn said. Nobody pointed out that we could have asked all nine if we hadn’t been in such a hurry to split heads.
‘Anyhow,’ Thorvald said, ‘we’re going home, so who gives a damn? Whoever they are, I don’t suppose they know the way to Brattahlid.’
Nobody had anything to add to that; so we made a fire and burned the leather boats, then got back in the ship and cast off. We were all ready to get started for home, but the wind had dropped away completely, and all we could do was sit and wait.
We’d been there a while, when Helgi, who was down in the stern by the post, called out, ‘You know those Irish boats?’
‘Well?’ Thorvald said.
‘There’s a whole lot of them,’ said Helgi, ‘coming down the fjord.’
That wasn’t so good, we thought. Helgi counted them; there were thirty at least, he said, and they were cutting along at a great lick, headed straight at us. As they closed in, Helgi added that he could see a lot of the men in them were waving bows and arrows at us.
‘We’re screwed,’ someone moaned and, to be fair, he had a point there. My guess is that they saw the smoke from the fire when we burned the boats, or else the one who’d got away had raised the alarm. If we were dead in the water and they had bows and arrows with them, they could simply buzz round us and sting us to death, if that was what they had in mind - and something told me they weren’t rushing up at us just to see if we wanted to buy any local pottery or baskets.
‘Right,’ Thorvald said, suddenly, like he’d just woken up. ‘We’ll need to run out the spare sail along the gunwales. If we rig it pretty slack, their arrows’ll just get snagged up in it.’ And that’s true, too: a good tip, if you’re ever in that situation. Kari and me jumped up and fetched out the sail, while some of the others set up posts to hang it from. We didn’t have any proper shields, of course, or any armour or stuff like that, since the last thing we thought we’d be doing was any fighting. As for weapons, Thorvald was the only man with a bow, and it was a pissy little short-range deer-hunter’s job; the rest of us had our hand-axes and knives. Like the man had said, we were screwed, really
They started shooting at us from about seventy yards, and sure enough, the sail stopped most of the arrows; they got tangled up and fell on the deck, or into the sea. I got the impression they weren’t aiming at any of us in particular, just loosing away at the ship generally Even so, one arrow came a bit too close for my taste. It cut through the sail and buzzed past the end of my nose, so close I could smell the bloody thing. Then it stuck into the deck-boards and the tip of the head snapped off. There wasn’t anything sensible I could do, so I picked it up and had a look at it. Very thin in the shaft it was, like some sort of very tough reed. The fletchings were long and tied on with backstrap sinew, and the reason it’d bust off in the deck was that the head was made of grey flint.
I was crouching there with that stupid arrow in my hand when someone started to yell, and I looked up to see that the sail was beginning to fill. That was a welcome sight; the wind just sort of picked up out of nowhere, just at the right time, and almost immediately we were whisking along at a good pace, leaving the leather boats behind. A few more arrows sailed over and flopped down, but there was hardly any force behind them. Pretty close, I said to myself, but we’d got away with it, so that was all right.
‘Did anybody else get hit?’ Thorvald called out.
We all sang out that no, we were fine; then it struck me what he’d said: did anybody else get hit. I stood up, and I wasn’t the only one.
Thorvald was leaning against the rail, with his left hand pressed into his right armpit. There was blood running out between his fingers, and it wasn’t looking very good. I was thinking, that ought to be seen to, before he loses any more blood. Then he wobbled a bit, like a drunk, and sat down hard on his arse.
The arrow, he told us, was a ricochet; it’d hit the gunwale and flown up, and of course, as soon as Thorvald had seen arrows incoming, instinctively he’d raised his right arm to shield his face. It’d gone in pretty deep, and when he’d tried to pull it out the shaft had busted off in his hand. He was as surprised as any of us when we showed him the flint arrowheads; you wouldn’t have thought a bit of old flaked stone’d cut so well, he said. He was genuinely relieved, I think, that nobody else’d been hurt. The impression I got was that he didn’t reckon he mattered very much by that stage; no great loss, he said, with a grin, which was his way of telling us he didn’t want us to go back and take it out on the leather-boat people. We were glad to hear him say that, because none of us fancied the idea much, I don’t think.
Anyhow, Thorvald died pretty soon after that. We put in at the next headland we came to and buried him there. Then we realised, none of us could remember if he was a Christian or followed the old ways; fair enough, I guess, because it’s not the sort of thing you talk about much, since people can be touchy about that stuff. In the end, we decided that our Heavenly Father tended to be a bit fussy about doing things properly, while Thor couldn’t give a toss how you get rid of a dead body; so we made up a pair of crosses out of cordwood and stuck them at Thorvald’s head and feet, and someone said a bit of the Mass, and then we left him.
Well (Eyvind went on, after a while), that’s about all there is to tell about Thorvald’s trip to Meadowland. All of us except Thorvald got home all right; we picked up the wind a few days later and it blew us back to Greenland, about three days up the west coast from Eiriksfjord. We hadn’t been looking forward to telling the Eiriksons how we’d come home without their brother; but Leif took it pretty well, said it couldn’t be helped and anyhow, it wasn’t our fault. Thorstein Eirikson didn’t say anything, just stumped off and sat on his own. Freydis, the sister, got in a bit of a state, but she was like that. Anyhow, nobody seemed inclined to get stroppy with us, so that was all right.
Thinking about it - I’ve done a lot of that over the years, thought about some of the things that happened on that trip, and what keeps coming back to me is that it all started to go bad on us once we’d already decided to go home again: first the keel getting smashed, which meant we were stranded there another winter; then the whole thing with the leather-boat pe
ople, and Thorvald getting killed right at the very last moment, if you see what I mean.
Sometimes I think that maybe Meadowland didn’t want us to go, like it’d grown fond of us or something stupid like that. When we got there, that first time we landed, with Leif, we found everything we needed to live laid out for us ready and waiting: food you could just go out and help yourself to, wood and turf for building and fuel, right down to the iron ore in the bog. It even tried to give us booze when it found we couldn’t get along without it. Then, when we made up our minds to leave, it got nasty with us - or how else do you explain that we’d been there three times, stayed for several years in Thorvald’s case, and it was only when we were sailing away that we ran into the locals for the first time? Oh, they weren’t Irish after all, the leather-boat people; Sigurd Squint had got that completely wrong. We found that out right enough the next time we went there.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said.
Kari looked up from his bowl of porridge. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anything you like.’
