Two Ravens (6 page)

“Partnership! Listen, Bjarni Hoskuldsson. This is the agreement. You will do as I say, and take the share everyone takes, and you will do it happily because better men than you are doing it.”

“I don’t agree to that,” Bjarni said.

“I don’t care if you do or not,” Sigurd said. His neck swelled. He spoke in volleys of words. “That is my decision. You will kneel down at Mass tomorrow with the rest of us, or I will put you in stocks on the beach.”

Bjarni went out of the hall. Ulf was outside on the boardwalk. He fell into step beside Bjarni. They walked down the rackety boardwalk toward the beach.

“Are we leaving?” Ulf said.

“Yes. Let’s hurry before he decides to take the ship.”

“Gudrun.” Ulf stopped and looked back. Bjarni caught his arm.

“Hurry.”

Jon stood on the threshold of the sleeping booth; he blinked at them as if he had just wakened. He said, “What is the matter?” Bjarni stopped at the edge of the beach. The other men from
Swan
were gathering below them on the gravel. On the hillside above them, in the mist, each of the hall lights wore a ring.

“I don’t want to leave Gudrun,” Ulf said, beside Bjarni.

“I haven’t time to argue with you.” Bjarni pushed his younger brothers ahead of him. Ulf hung back, his tongue busy.

“We can take her with us. I know she will go.”

“Later.”

“Just let me talk to her.”

“Later.”

They reached the edge of the water. The boat was already at the ship; Kristjan and another man were unloading the sea-chests from it. Bjarni and the others waded out to
Swan.

“Ulf,” Bjarni said. “Go into the bow and guide us. Put out the oars.”

On the hillside near the hall someone shouted.

They rowed
Swan
out of the anchorage. Sigurd did not chase them. Bjarni took
Swan
on her legs out to sea and turned her bow to the wind. The other men lay down in the hold to sleep. Bjarni and his brothers sat in the bow.

“What did you do?” Kristjan said. “You ruined our chances with them. It was his fault, wasn’t it?” He pointed to Ulf.

“Now we can all go back to Hrafnfell,” Jon said.

“Maybe,” Bjarni said. “We have nothing to eat and we need line and canvas. Tomorrow I want to raid Sigurd for supplies.”

Ulf opened the lid of his sea-chest and took out a bearskin. In a low voice, he said, “If we can steal food, we can steal Gudrun.”

“Why don’t you forget her?” Bjarni said. “You hardly know her.”

Ulf struck his shoulder. “Because I love her. Anyway, this will make it a real raid. We can’t go home with nothing, we will be shamed.”

Jon said, “But—” and Andres elbowed him in the ribs.

“Be quiet. With a woman aboard we will have to go back to Iceland.”

“Sigurd has a hundred men,” Kristjan said. “What you are talking about is impossible. We can fish for food.”

Bjarni said, “There is a way to do it.” To Ulf, he said, “Tomorrow they are sacrificing in their temple.”

Jon shot up onto his feet. The ship teetered under him. “You can’t fight in a church.”

“They won’t take weapons into a church,” Bjarni said.

“Isn’t Sigurd leaving soon to fight against the Bishop?” Kristjan said. He looked from Bjarni to Ulf. “Wait until he goes, and we can take everything we want.”

Ulf said, “You churlish Irish sneak-thief.”

Andres said, “Well, really, either way, it’s stealing.”

Bjarni stood and left them there to argue. He went back to the stern and fell asleep.

IN THE MORNING Sigurd’s men went to the church, and Bjarni took
Swan
back into the cove. The Icelanders broke into the storerooms above the beach and took meat and cheeses and grain. Ulf and Bjarni went up the grassy slope toward the Christian temple. Ulf was looking around them at the other ships in the cove.

“There are twice as many ships here as there were last night,” he said.

“Just move fast,” Bjarni said. “It doesn’t matter how many there are if they can’t catch us.”

“What happens if we are caught?” Ulf said. They climbed the walk toward the temple.

“That depends on you,” Bjarni said. “I promise you that if Sigurd takes you he will take me also.”

He looked over his shoulder. His crew was scrambling up over
Swan’s
rails and settling at their places. From the bow, Jon waved to him.

“They are ready. Let’s go.”

They went into the church through the front door. The altar was at the other end of the building and the Christians were kneeling, so that their backs were to the door. Ulf and Bjarni went in among them. Gudrun knelt in the first row; three or four people were between her and Sigurd. No one noticed the Hoskuldssons until Ulf reached her side and pulled her to her feet.

A roar went up from the Christian men. Ulf hoisted the girl over his shoulder and ran down the room toward the door. Sigurd bellowed. His men swarmed after Ulf.

Bjarni went out the door. He let his brother through and slammed the door shut. The bar was tilted against the wall; he seized it and pressed it over the double door to hold it shut. Before he could fit the long bar into the iron brackets over the door, Sigurd and his men reached the other side.

Their first rush nearly threw the doors open. He strained against them. The doors bulged and he saw, through the gap into the church, Sigurd’s face red as fire. Bjarni shoved with all his strength on the bar and forced the doors shut. The bar slipped into the brackets. He wheeled to run.

A shout sounded on the other side of the building. Someone had gotten out the side window. Bjarni raced down the boardwalk; where it swerved off his course he jumped down to the marshy grass and ran for
Swan
. Right behind him came the man who had climbed out the window. Ulf had reached the water and was splashing out to the ship. Gudrun waded beside him, her hand in his.

With a splintering crash the church door gave way and spilled Sigurd and his men out after Bjarni. He glanced over his shoulder. The man behind was almost within reach of him.

Swan
rocked from side to side. Ulf was climbing inboard. Bjarni drove himself faster. The men in
Swan
were not waiting for him. Their oars ran out. They leaned into the first stroke. A body struck him from behind, just above the knees, and he fell hard onto the cobbles of the beach.

SIGURD’S MEN BOUND HIM and threw him into a storeroom. There he lay for hours, trussed up so tight his fingers went to sleep.

Eventually Sigurd came into the storeroom. He said, “That was an unfriendly thing to do.”

“I’m sorry to offend your hospitality,” Bjarni said. He was lying on his face. By twisting his head he could look up at Sigurd, but he had no wish to see him; he lay still, with Sigurd’s boots before his eyes.

“You know, your brothers are not coming back for you,” Sigurd said. “We chased them for above three hours, and they went due west, straight for the north-running sea.” Sigurd squatted down to peer into Bjarni’s face. “I only wish I had your sneaking brother Ulf as well as you. I don’t care so much for my daughter, and neither will he when he knows her better, but I want to repay him for robbing me in my own church.”

“You don’t need Ulf for that,” Bjarni said. “That was my idea.”

“Was it,” Sigurd said. “Then I will have my revenge after all.”

He walked up and down the storeroom, through the fringes of dried fish that dangled from the beams. Bjarni worked the ropes that bound his wrists. His brothers would return for him; they were only putting Sigurd off. Sigurd came back and sank down on his hams before him.

“My old friend Hoskuld was right about you, and right to send you here. You will be useless to anyone until you are broken. And I am the man to do it.”

He went out of the storeroom. When he came back he had a smith with him, and a length of chain.

During the day Bjarni was chained to the mill, and he ground the corn. At night he was chained to an anvil in the forge. The first night, he tried with all his strength to move the anvil, but it would not yield.

Sigurd loaded his men into their longships and sailed away to fight the Bishop. Ulf and
Swan
did not come back.

Every day Bjarni walked around the mill turning the millstone. Every night he tried to move the anvil. For seven days his strength was nothing to the weight of the anvil, but on the eighth night, when he heaved against it, he felt it move.

When he thought of his brothers, he clenched his fists around the spoke of the millstone; he set his shoulders and ground his anger with the oats and rye. He thought much of Hiyke, in Hrafnfell, his father’s wife.

She was not really Hoskuld’s wife. She had come to live with them four years before. Hoskuld’s second wife had been long dead; at Hrafnfell they were used to being bachelors, although Bjarni knew that his father was blanket-wise with a woman beyond the mountains. Then one spring she came across the pass to Hrafnfell, leading her black-haired boy by the hand. In the summer, she miscarried. She and Hoskuld never married.

As he trudged behind the spoke of the millstone, he tried to make poems of her. He made one for his father.

Odinn slew
 

The son of Loki
 

Made ropes of his guts
 

To bind his father
 

Would you were Loki
 

I would lust for death

He had no words for Hiyke.

On the fifteenth night, he moved the anvil five feet across the forge to the hearth.

He laid the chain in the coals and pumped the bellows. When the links began to glow, he stretched them across the anvil. He knew some charms for smiths and said them, although he could not hammer the links for fear of bringing down the Christians; he wrapped his hands around the cooler part of the chain and pulled, heated the links and pulled them until the stretching iron broke.

Dawn was coming. He found a knife and an axe in the forge and took them down to the shore. The cove was deserted. It looked much wider with the longships gone. Three or four smaller boats were drawn up on the beach.

He found oars in one, sails in another, and put the oars into the boat with the sails. All the while he considered what he might do to avenge himself on Sigurd. He could fire some of the buildings, but that would waken the people in the place just as he was trying to steal away. He would have to wait for his revenge. Bjarni filled a bucket with fresh water from the rainbarrel and stowed it into the boat. In the silent dawn he rowed out of the cove.

When he left the lee of the island, the wind freshened, and he stepped the mast and raised the sail. The boat flew before the wind. The islands shrank in the distance and slid below the horizon. The rigging sang like harps. The rudder worked in his hands. Until well into the day he let the boat go where the wind blew.

His wrists were still locked up to the chain. He wrapped the dangling lengths of the chain around his arms and tied them to keep them out of his way. In a locker under the stern thwart there were line and hooks of fishbone. He stabbed his finger with the hook to bloody it and cast the line out behind his boat.

The wind was out of the north. Dark cloudbanks lay along the horizon. He put the boat on a broad reach, running to the east. In the afternoon he caught two stockfish. While he was boning them with his knife the humps of a mountainous island rose out of the sea to the east. He took the sail down and ran out the oars.

He spent the night on the shore. In the morning the wind was foul and he rowed the boat northward. Islands dotted the water. His fishing line snagged on hidden rocks. He kept watch for reefs. The wind was so cold he could not sleep all that night; he rowed to keep warm. In the sunlit morning he landed on a little island and slept.

Clouds covered the sun. The wind veered around to the southwest. Bjarni raised his sail. The boat ran north over rising waves. The water chuckled past the rudder. Rain began to fall. Bjarni was reluctant to give up the fair wind; he did not run into the shelter of an island.

The wind rose. The boat began to buck and shy along the waves. Water spilled over the railings. He brought in the sail. Gradually the dark was settling over him. There were islands to his left, but the battering waves burst in plumes of spray along their shores. If he landed he would lose the boat. The storm roared around him. He flung the sail over to act as a sea-anchor. He bailed with the bucket, his knees wedged against the thwarts to keep him with the boat. The boat sounded and swooped over the wild sea. His hands were numb and his mouth was full of salt. With the coming of daylight, the storm passed.

He lay exhausted in the boat with his head on the gunwale rail. In fitful sleep he dreamt of giants and of burning in the wolf-sister’s hall.

When he woke the boat was floating on the open sea. The sun rolled through clouds. The mast was gone, lost overboard in the storm. His knife was gone, and the bucket and the fishing line. The wind was blowing out of the north again. He put out the oars and poled the boat north.