Troll Blood (3 page)

“He mocks his enemies!” says Sinumkw in deep appreciation.

But Kwimu isn’t so sure. He’s got a cold feeling that if he could understand, the child might be screaming, “Come back, come back! Don’t leave me!”

For a second, the crawling motion falters as some of the men lift their arms to point. Then it picks up again. They’re not stopping; they’re not turning. They’re leaving the river now, heading into the bay. There’s still a lot of haze on the water: You can’t see the horizon.

They’re doing something else now: casting off the rope. A feather of fire flies through the air, curving into the red Serpent. A moment later, flames splutter fiercely up.

“Oil.” Sinumkw nods. “They poured in oil to make it burn.”

Kwimu can actually hear it, crackling like a hundred spits. Black smoke pours up in a tall column. The neck and proud horned head show clearly, but the long serpent body seems writhing in flames.

Down below, the child is scrambling off the roof. He drops the last few feet and goes racing down over the ravaged grasslands toward the beach.

“Let’s get him!” Kwimu turns to Sinumkw. “Please,
nujj
…”

His father shakes his head. “No.”

“Oh, please,
nujj
. He’s only little, and he’s brave….”

“A bear cub is little and brave,” says Sinumkw grimly, “and if you take one for a pet, it will grow up into a big bear and claw your arm off.”

Kwimu swallows. “I know, but … can we leave him to die?”

“They
have.” Sinumkw nods toward the bay. “He’s not one of the People, Kwimu. Not one of us.”

“You like him, though,” says Kwimu desperately. “You laughed at the way he tricked the warriors. See—Fox approves!” Fox twists his head and licks Kwimu’s hand suddenly, as though to encourage him. Kwimu hardly dares to go on, but the words come anyway, forcing their way up from deep inside him, like a spring of water that has to bubble out. “He might become your son,
nujj.
My brother.”

Sinumkw looks at him. His chest rises and falls in a sigh. “Well, we can try. Perhaps the cub is young enough to tame. Don’t be surprised if he bites you.”

They turn, for the slope ahead is too steep to descend, and it will be necessary to go back into the woods and find another way down. Kwimu casts a backward glance at the burning vessel, and is in time to see it tip up and slide neatly backward under the water. The snarling serpent head vanishes last, and then it’s as though it has never existed, except for the smoke drifting higher and higher, a fading stain against the sky.

The other
jipijka’m
is already out of the bay and turning up the gulf toward the open sea; and from this distance it looks more like a serpent than ever—a living serpent, swimming quietly away through the haze.

Down on the shore, nine-year-old Ottar, young son of Thorolf the Seafarer, stands knee-deep in the cold waves. Tears pour down his cheeks. He’s alone, orphaned, desperate, stranded in this horrible place on the wrong side of the world. He hears a shout from the beach behind him. He turns, his heart leaping in wild, unbelieving hope. Somehow it’s going to be all right—it’s been a bad dream or an even worse joke—and he won’t even be angry. He’s going to run to whomever it is, and cling to them, and sob until the sobbing turns into laughter.

And then he sees. His mouth goes dry. Coming toward him on the rising ground between him and the houses are two terrible figures. Their long hair is as black as pitch, and tied with colored strings. Their clothes are daubed with magic signs. Furs dangle from their belts. They are both carrying bows. But the frightening thing—the really frightening thing about them—is that you can’t see their expressions at all. Half of their faces are covered in black paint, the other half in red. Their eyes glitter white and black.

“Skraelings!” Ottar whispers. “Dirty Skraelings!”

He prepares to die.

CHAPTER 2
Water Snake

T
he green sea wrapped itself around Peer Ulfsson’s waist, and rose to his chest with a slopping sound. “Yow!” he yelled. As the wave plunged past he sucked in his breath, and bent quickly to look through the water.

There! In the heaving brown-green glimmer he saw it: the hammer he’d dropped, lying on the stones. He groped with his arm, his fingers closed on the handle, and the next wave swept past his ears and knocked him over. There was a dizzy moment of being rolled backward in a freezing froth of bubbles and sand. He struggled up, spluttering but brandishing the hammer in triumph.

“Got it!”

“So I see.” Bjorn’s face was one wide grin. “If you’d tied it to your wrist like I told you, you wouldn’t have had to do that.
Get dressed: You look like a plucked chicken.”

Peer laughed through chattering teeth. He bounded back to shore and dragged his discarded jerkin over his head, fighting wet arms through the sleeves. It fell in warm folds almost to his knees, and he hugged his arms across his chest. “Aaah, that’s better. I’ll leave my breeches till I’ve dried off a bit…. What’s that? Who’s shouting?”

Torn by the wind, an alarmed cry had reached his ears. He couldn’t make out the words. Up on the jetty Bjorn stiffened, shading his eyes to look down the fjord. “It’s Harald. He’s seen a ship. Yes—there’s a strange ship coming.”

Peer jumped up beside Bjorn, noticing with pride how firm and solid the jetty was. The two of them had been building it for almost a month now, in between their other work, and in Peer’s opinion it made the tiny beach at Trollsvik look like a proper harbor. It was a stout plank walkway between a double row of posts. Bjorn’s new faering, or fishing boat, bobbed beside it.

He joined Bjorn at the unfinished end, where the last few planks waited to be nailed down. It was late afternoon, the tide flowing in. Out where the shining fjord met the pale spring sky he saw a large reddish sail, square-on, and the thin line of an upthrust prow like the neck of a snail. A big ship running into Trollsvik before the wind.

“Who is it?” he blurted.

Bjorn didn’t take his eyes off the ship. “I don’t know. Don’t know the sail. Could be raiders. Best not take chances. Run
for help, Peer. Tell everyone you can.”

A lonely little village like Trollsvik could expect no mercy from a shipful of Viking raiders if they took the place by surprise. The best thing was to meet them with a show of force. Peer turned without argument. Then he saw a scatter of people hurrying over the dunes. “Look, Harald’s raised the alarm already. Here he comes, with Snorri and Einar….”

“Hey, Harald!” Bjorn bawled at the top of his voice. “Whose ship is that?”

A bandy-legged man with straggling gray hair raised an arm in reply as he puffed across the shingle and climbed painfully onto the jetty. “No idea,” he wheezed, bending double to catch his breath. “I was cleaning my nets—looked up and saw it. Shouted at you and ran for the others. You don’t know it either?”

“Not me,” said Bjorn. Peer looked at the ship—already much closer—then back at the little crowd. Most of the men had snatched up some kind of weapon. Snorri One-Eye carried a pitchfork, and old Thorkell came hobbling along with a hoe, using the handle as a walking stick. Einar had a harpoon. Snorri’s fierce, gray-haired wife, Gerd, came limping after him over the stones, clutching a wicked-looking knife. Even Einar’s two little boys had begun piling up big round stones to throw at the visitors. Peer wondered if he should join them. Then he realized he was holding a weapon already. His hammer.

He hefted it. It was long-handled and heavy. The dull iron
head had one flat end for banging big nails in. The other end tapered to a sharp wedge. When he swung it, it seemed to pull his hand after it. As if it wanted to strike.

Could I really hit anyone with this?
He imagined it smashing into someone’s head, and sucked a wincing breath.

The neighbors were arguing. “No need to fear!” yelled Gerd, lowering her knife. “See the dragonhead? That’s Thorolf’s ship—that is, the old
Long Serpent
that Ralf Eiriksson sailed on.”

“It is not!” Snorri turned on his wife. “Thorolf’s been gone two years now, went off to Vinland.”

“So what?” Gerd was undaunted. “He can come back, can’t he?”

“Fool of a woman,” Snorri shouted. “That’s not his ship, I say!”

“How d’you know?” Gerd shrilled.

“Because this one’s as broad in the beam as you are, that’s why—the
Long Serpent
was narrower…”

“That isn’t the
Long Serpent
,” said Peer. “I should know. My father helped to build her.”

“This ship looks like a trader,” Einar said. “Built for cargo, not war.”

“That’s all very well, Einar. Plenty of traders turn into raiders when it suits them—doesn’t mean her crew won’t fight.”

“What do you think, Bjorn?” asked Peer in a low voice.

Bjorn gave him an odd glance, half humorous, half sym
pathetic. “I don’t know, Peer. Let’s just put on a good show and hope they’re friendly.”

Peer stood unhappily clutching his hammer. The ship was so close now that he could see the sea stains on the ocher red sail. The hull was painted in faded red and black stripes. A man stood in the bow, just behind the upward swoop of its tall dragon-neck.

We could be fighting in a few minutes.
A gull shrieked, swooping low overhead, and its keen cry made him jump. Odd to think that the gull might soon be swinging and circling over a battle, and that its shrieks might be joined by the screams of wounded or dying men and women.
I might die
… And with a jump of his heart he thought of his best friend, Hilde, safe for the moment at her father’s farm on Troll Fell. What if he never saw her again? And what would happen to her if these men were dangerous?

There was a flurry of activity on board. The yard swung and tipped, spilling wind. Down came the sail in vast folds. Oars came out to guide the ship in. Behind Peer and Bjorn, the villagers bunched like sheep.

The man in the bow leaned out, cupped a hand around his mouth, and yelled, “Bjorn!”

Bjorn threw his head up. “Arnë!” he shouted back. “Is that you?”

Arnë, Bjorn’s brother! The villagers broke into relieved, lively chatter. Peer unclenched stiff fingers from the haft of his hammer. He wouldn’t have to use it as a weapon after all.
And
a good thing, too
, said a secret little voice at the back of his head,
because you know you couldn’t have hit anyone.

The thought bothered him. Was it true? Would he be no good in a fight? The word
coward
brushed across his mind. Then, with a shrug that was half a shudder, he dismissed the idea. It didn’t matter now.

“The ship’s called
Water Snake
” Arnë shouted across the narrowing gap of water. “Gunnar Ingolfsson’s the skipper. I’ve brought him here to meet Ralf Eiriksson.”

“Who’s this Gunnar? Why does he want Ralf?” Peer wondered aloud, as the ship closed on the jetty.

“Gunnar Ingolfsson. Gunnar …” Bjorn snapped his fingers. “He’s the man Thorolf took on as partner a couple of years ago. Got a name as a sea rover, a bit of a Viking. Thorolf and he sailed off to Vinland together in two ships. So what’s he doing here, and why’s Arnë with him?”

Peer shrugged. He wasn’t curious about Arnë.

“Vinland? Vinland?” muttered Einar. “Where’s that?”

“Don’t you remember?” Snorri said helpfully. “A few years back, Ralf and Thorolf got blown off course and found a new land all covered in forests….”

“The land beyond the sunset,” Peer said eagerly.

“I knew that,” Einar huffed, “but I thought they called it Woodland.”

“They did!” Snorri waved a triumphant finger. “But other ships went there and found vines. Vines—Vinland, see? It’s all the same coast. This Gunnar must be making a second trip.
I’ve heard you can bring back a fortune in timber and furs and grapes. I’ve got half a mind to go myself.”

“Ho, yes,” scoffed Einar. “And how would you know what a grape looks like? Have you ever seen one?”

“Arnë’s a wild one,” Bjorn said to Peer. “What’s he done with his fishing boat? Sold it, I suppose, to join this trip. Well, he’s crazy, that’s all.”

“He always wanted to go a-Viking,” Peer pointed out.