by Tom Holt
I could feel that I was onto something; not, perhaps, something I’d actually want to know, but I’ve got this confounded itch of curiosity. ‘Well?’ I said.
‘It wasn’t his fault, really,’ Eyvind snapped. ‘Mostly he was just doing someone a favour. Like I said, he needed women for the expedition, and they were all he could get. And then, just before we were due to leave, he got word from one of the other farms that a viking’d just put in, and he’d been to Ireland and he’d got slaves for sale. Females.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
‘Well.’ Eyvind pulled a strange sort of face. ‘The story the viking told him was, they’d been raiding on the west coast of Ireland - used to be a good place years ago, but it’d become too much like hard work. Anyhow, the viking attacked this abbey out in the middle of nowhere, soft target; and those Irish abbeys always used to have loads of gold and silver plate, stuff like that. Not this one, though; the viking said he’d seen richer cowsheds. But he’d gone all that way, spent a small fortune fitting out the ship and all, he had to do something. So he grabbed a bunch of the nuns, for ransom. Seemed like a good idea, he said. But it turned out that this abbey’d fallen on hard times. Some sort of religious thing; it wasn’t, you know, in the mainstream. Point is, they’d fallen out with the local church bosses years ago, which meant that they weren’t getting any money, and nobody’d joined up for a very long time, so all that was left was a bunch of old crones; and when the viking sent a message to the bishop demanding a ransom, the bugger practically laughed in his face.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Not very good, then.’
‘Not really For two pins, the viking would’ve turned them loose and told them to get lost, but that’d have been really bad for business - set a precedent, if you follow me. So he was stuck with them: six leathery old nuns that nobody wanted. All he could think of was, take them to Greenland because not many slave traders bother going up that far, someone might give him something for them. Two of them died on the way which really didn’t help. By the time he got there he was willing to give them away to anybody who’d take them. Which was a shame, really, because they were tough old things, hard workers so long as you let them do their praying and stuff. And Bits knew Gudrid’d be pleased, because she was really into religion, like women so often are.
‘And was she?’ I asked. ‘Pleased, I mean.’
He shrugged. ‘Once she’d got used to them, I think,’ he said. ‘Of course, they only spoke Irish and a bit of Latin; and Gudrid only spoke Norse and a tiny bit of Latin that she’d learned off priests, so it was a bit fraught for a while until they figured out how to talk in sign language. But anyhow, that’s the answer to your question. Having them along really wasn’t a problem in the way that you meant.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Thank you for explaining.’
Anyway (Eyvind continued), life went on nice and pleasant over the summer. Nothing much happened after Gudrid had the baby and we didn’t see anything more of the leather-boat people. Not till autumn was beginning to set in.
I can remember where I was, the second time they showed up, because of what happened just before.
There was this man called Ohtar; he’d been the captain of our ship on the way over, and a pretty good job he’d made of it. He’d been with Bits for years and years, practically his right-hand man. After we’d been in Meadowland for a bit, though, he turned a bit strange. Moody; sometimes, instead of getting on with what he was supposed to be doing, he’d sit up against the wall of the house and stare out at the sea; or else he’d go off into the woods for a whole day and only come back when it was getting dark. I think Bits tried to find out what was bugging him, but either he didn’t answer or he said he’d got the guts-ache or something. Eventually Bits decided that the best thing to do would be to leave him to work out whatever it was for himself.
Anyhow, I always got on reasonably well with Ohtar, though for some reason I’d always given him a wide berth when he was in one of his funny moods. You get a feeling about people sometimes, as though there’s a thick thorn hedge all round them that you can’t actually see, but you know it’s there all right whenever you blunder into it.
Well, this time I’m telling you about, Ohtar was sitting on a barrel in the doorway of the long house; not doing anything, just sitting with his hands on his knees, looking up at the forest. Just inside the door, the baby was yelling its head off; but Ohtar didn’t seem to notice. I’d have carried on by and left him to get on with it, but I’d just been sent back from the home meadow - we were turning the second cut of hay - to fetch Bits’s hat, which was hanging up on its usual hook in the back room, so I had to go past Ohtar to get into the house. Maybe he heard me, or I brushed against him on the way through; he jumped up and grabbed my shoulder so hard that I felt something give way under his fingers.
‘Watch it,’ I said. ‘That hurt.’
He looked down at me - he was a tall bastard - and for a moment it was as though he was having a problem remembering who I was, or what business someone like me could possibly have around a well-ordered household.
‘Sorry,’ he said quietly ‘I thought you were someone else. That friend of yours.’
I hate it when people say that. For some reason that I’ve never been able to get my head around, people quite often get Kari and me mixed up. Which is bloody ridiculous; all right, we look a bit alike, and maybe we sound a bit similar, which is only to be expected when you think we were brought up together, we’ve been everywhere together, done the same things, shared the same experiences. But anybody with enough brains to fill a walnut shell can tell he’s nothing like me.
‘Thorfinn sent me back to get his hat,’ I said.
Either that didn’t register with Ohtar or he wasn’t interested. ‘Your friend,’ he said, ‘is a menace.
I nodded. ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
‘It’s all his fault,’ Ohtar went on. ‘Everything that’s happened here, and everything that’s going to happen, too. That’s why I’m waiting here, see.’
I agreed with a lot of what he was saying, but even so there was something about him that was worrying me. ‘Is that right?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Olitar said. ‘I’m going to kill him.’
That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. ‘What’s he done to you?’ I asked. ‘Been borrowing your boots without asking?’
‘He’s bad news,’ Ohtar replied, looking at me thoughtfully ‘He was the one that found this place, wasn’t he? Bjarni Herjolfson told you all to stay on board the ship, but he sneaked off and swam ashore.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Just the sort of stupid thing he does.
Like, suppose he’d got lost or swept down the coast in the current. We could’ve been stuck there a whole day looking for him.’
‘Wilful,’ said Ohtar. ‘That’s going to be the death of me, wilfulness. Oh, it’s not such a bad thing, knowing what you want and making sure you get it. But thanks to him, I won’t be going home with the rest of you. I’m upset about that.’
He was still gripping my shoulder like a foresters vice. ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I saw my fetch today,’ he said. ‘No mistaking it.’ He made it sound like a tiresome thing, an unpopular relative announcing he’s come to stay the winter. ‘I was stacking cordwood behind the house and a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see who it was, and there was your friend Kari. He looked at me for a moment, and I knew it wasn’t really him.’
There’s not a lot you can say to someone who’s in that sort of mood. ‘You sure about that?’ I said. ‘I mean, people are always thinking they’ve just seen the fetch, and then nothing happens to them and they realise it was just their imagination. Then, one time in five hundred, they think they’ve seen the fetch and next day they’re dead, and everybody says, “You see?”’
‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted. ‘What’s a-?’
‘When you’re about to die,’ Eyvind said patiently as though he was tea
ching the alphabet to a backward child, you see the fetch. It’s a sign, to let you know’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What does it look like?’
He shrugged. ‘Could be almost anything,’ he said. ‘Or anybody Quite often it’s someone who looks just like you, as though you’d looked in a pool of water. Or it could be someone who’s already died, or a friend you haven’t seen for years and who was miles away at the time you thought you saw him. Sometimes it’s a person you met once, years and years ago, and suddenly bump into again, for no reason. Or just a stranger; or someone you see every day Point is, when you see the fetch, you know.’
‘That’s silly’ I pointed out. ‘If it can be anyone at all-‘
‘Mphm.’ Eyvind moved his head slightly ‘That’s what I used to think.’
Ohtar looked at me (Eyvind said), and he frowned a bit, and then he said, ‘So anyway, that’s why I’m waiting here for your friend Kari. I suppose you’re going to go and warn him now
I shrugged. ‘But hang on,’ I said. ‘If it really wasn’t him you saw but the fetch pretending to be him, what’s the good of killing Kari? Won’t solve anything.’
‘It was all his fault,’ Ohtar said. ‘Least I can do is take him with me.’
It wasn’t the moment for it, but I laughed. ‘I know the feeling,’ I said. ‘Strikes me I’ve been taking him with me all my bloody life, like those little round hairy seeds that snag on your sleeve as you go by Has it occurred to you that if you’re about to die soon and you kill him first, maybe you’ll be stuck with him in the next world for ever and ever?’
Olitar sighed. ‘I can’t help that,’ he said, ‘I don’t make the rules. You know, it’s a funny thing. When you’re a little kid, your dad tells you about Valhalla; and when you’re older, the priest tells you about Hell, and the strange part is, both of them sound pretty much alike, except that your dad says that’s where you’ll go if you’re good, and the priest says that’s where you’ll be headed if you’re bad. You know what I’ve figured out? It’s only just occurred to me, but it makes good sense. Both of them, they’re actually one and the same place; but if you’re a viking you want to go there, and if you’re the quiet, peaceful sort you’d hate it there, and Heaven’s the place for you, sitting still and quiet indoors on the right hand of God for ever and ever, like it’s a winter that never ends. And of course, a viking’d hate that.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘where you are depends on who you are, and that’s all there is to it. Like us being here,’ he added. ‘Once you look at it in that light, of course, it all starts to make sense.
I’m an old man now, and one of the rules I’ve lived by is that as soon as someone starts telling you the world makes sense, you can bet anything you like that his brain’s come undone. Mind you, I’d come to that conclusion already
‘I see what you mean,’ I said. ‘But maybe you should hold off on killing Kari, just for now I think it’d be better that way’
Ohtar looked down at me. ‘You’re saying that because he’s your friend,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Fine.’ He yawned. ‘That’s as good a reason as any I suppose. You’d better take Thorfinn his hat, before he starts wondering where you’ve got to.’
I got the hat and started off back to the meadows, thinking how awkward it was going to be having a nutcase around the place, and wondering what Bits could do about it. I hadn’t got very far, though, when I heard a woman screaming.
I knew it wasn’t Gudrid, because she was in the house with the kid, and the screams were coming from out front, in the yard. Had to be one of the Irish women, not that it mattered particularly who was doing it. I dropped the hat and raced off round the side of the house, just in time to see a big furry bundle sail over the top of the palisade and land in the dirt, just shy of the midden.
There was another bundle lying close to it, and one of the Irish women standing by yelling her head off; hardly surprising, of course, but I wasn’t fussed about it because I knew the bundle for what it was. The leather-boat people had come back for more trading, and since we’d built the palisade and they couldn’t get in the yard, they were slinging their wares inside to show us what their intentions were.
‘It’s all right,’ I called out, but of course the stupid old cow hadn’t got a clue what I was saying. Then a third bundle flopped on the ground right by her feet; she screeched like a chicken with the fox on her tail, and scuttled towards the house.
Nothing to worry about, I thought, but I’d better go and fetch Bits; so I ran off through the back gate and down to the meadow, and found him and the rest of the gang coming back up. They’d seen the leather-boaters coming down out of the woods, they said, and this time there were quite a few of them, perhaps two dozen.
‘But that’s all right,’ Bits added. ‘We’ve got plenty of cheese.’
When we got back to the yard there were loads of bundles lying there. Bits knelt down and opened one up; beautiful furs they were, and cured better than we could’ve done it. Bits grinned.
‘This is a stroke of luck,’ he said. ‘If they’ll trade us stuff like this, we could fill a ship and send it back to the Old Country’ (He meant Norway, of course, not Iceland.) ‘With what these’d fetch over there, we could buy everything we’ll ever need for the settlement; and we’d get traders coming out here to buy before long, once the word gets about.’ He stood up. ‘Better open the gate and let them in,’ he said. ‘It’s bad business, keeping customers waiting at the door.’
So a couple of the men went to open the gate, while someone else ran inside to tell them to fetch out all the cheese and butter we could possibly spare. When the house door opened, I saw Ohtar peering out round the door frame; and he had his axe in his hand. I didn’t like the look of that, because I wasn’t absolutely sure that I’d talked him out of killing Kari; he’d given in a bit too easily for my liking.
They didn’t look much different from the first lot, those leather-boaters. Shorter than us, for the most part, and thin; but well-built and wide across the shoulders, lean like dogs rather than scrawny They seemed nervous but anxious to be friends; and bearing in mind what Bits’d just said, we were keen to be friendly back. Out came the butter dishes and wooden plates full of cheese, and jugs of milk with the cream on top. To start with, the leather-boat people were happy just to stuff their faces, like the last time; but while they were eating and drinking, I noticed that they were looking round, taking an interest. Mostly I saw, they were looking at all the things we had that were made of metal; when the sun flashed on a brooch or a buckle or an axe-head, they’d look up and stare for a bit, as if they’d never seen the like before.
Then I studied them for a while, and thought maybe they hadn’t.
For instance, there was one tall man with grey hair. Instead of a belt round his middle he had a strap of twisted hide, and it was tied in a knot rather than fastened with a buckle. In it was tucked an axe, but the head wasn’t steel, it was chipped stone - some kind of flint or agate. That made me look at the rest of them, and sure enough, there wasn’t a single bit of metal to be seen. Our lot, on the other hand, were positively sparkling, because the sun was out; we Northerners like showing off, you see, and anything made of metal’s valuable, so you like to wear it where people can see. We like shiny brass cloak-pins and finger-rings, or silver or gold if we can afford it; and of course you don’t go anywhere without your knife and your axe, they’re your basic everyday tools you use for most everything you do. Also, the men who’d come back from the meadow had their pitchforks, and some of them had billhooks for splitting withies into ties. All the sort of thing you’d never usually notice; unless, of course, you’d never seen bright, shiny things like that before.
I looked over at Bits, and I could see that he’d reached the same conclusion; but he was worried. ‘Listen, all of you,’ he said - he could say what he liked, because of course the leather-boats couldn’t understand a word - ‘I want it understood, nobody’s
to trade anything made of iron or steel with these people unless they check with me first. Butter’s one thing, but weapons are a different matter entirely’
Common sense, really; still, it had to be said, in case there was anybody who hadn’t figured it out for himself. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before a couple of the leather-boats started pointing at things like axes and knives and making unmistakable how-much-for-that gestures with their eyebrows and their hands. But Bits just looked stern and shook his head, and they seemed to be getting the message. So they went back to wedging cheese into their faces, while we cut the bindings on the bundles and had a look at what we were getting.
I was knelt down over a thick wad of squirrel pelts when a man called Ketil Mordsson came over to me. He looked worried, and I asked him what the matter was.
‘Don’t suppose you counted them on their way in,’ he said.
That seemed a funny thing to ask. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why?’
‘I did,’ he replied. ‘Eighteen, I made it. And there’s only sixteen now
I thought: that’s an odd thing to be worrying about, and an odd thing in itself. ‘Maybe two of them ate so much butter they’ve gone outside to throw up,’ I suggested. ‘If I was stuffing myself like that, it’d only be a matter of time.’
Ketil shook his head. ‘You seen the way they’ve been eyeing up our knives and axes?’ he said. ‘You heard what Thorfinn said just now I don’t like that there’s two of them missing all of a sudden.’
Now I could see what he was getting at; and I thought about Ohtar, inside the house with his axe and in a funny mood. ‘Where’s Gudrid,’ I asked, ‘and the kid? I can’t see them, they must be indoors still.’
He frowned. ‘That’s a point,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’d better have a look.’
