Wild Magic (43 page)

On the Mistress of Rockfall’s orders, two huge sacks of turnips, kale, onions and wild leeks also made their way aboard, to make up for the vast, unadulterated quantities of meat, though she had little expectation that the men would cook or eat the vegetables without any women aboard to nag them to do so. Finally, a great fragrant sack of Bera’s famous yellowcakes was passed down the line, accompanied by much envious comment. It was, perhaps, the best indication that the wife of the Master of Rockfall might yet be reconciled to her husband’s perilous venture. What they did not know was that it had been Bera’s mother, Hesta Rolfsen – the woman who had taught her daughter to bake the delicacies in the first place – who had overseen the baking of the cakes.

Aran Aranson had taken on another two men: Urse, Tam Fox’s huge deputy with the ruined face, who told the Master of Rockfall he had no luck with women and needed to earn himself a fortune if he were to buy himself a wife, and Felin Greyship’s eldest boy, Gar, a well-muscled lad of nineteen who could hardly string two words together, but could tie a bowline one-handed and with his eyes shut. Against his mother’s wishes, Fent, too would indeed accompany his father. That left a bare handful of places to fill, and over a hundred men and boys camped around the steading all vying for the honour. Every time Aran came out of his doors, there were more. It had started with a dozen or so Rockfallers, men he had known for years, and their fathers, too. They were quiet and deferential to the Master, nodding their heads at him, hoping he would remember their family’s good name and the hardships they had suffered over the years. Those who arrived from further afield were less restrained. They called out, entreating, or bragging of their prowess, showing off their rowing-muscle, swearing they could navigate in fog or flood.

He spoke to them all, each one alone, quietly and at length. From these last arrivals he eventually chose another man on the day before they were due to sail: Pol Garson, a cousin of Tor Leeson’s who had been on a number of expeditions and had done well enough to have his own ship, for a time, until it had foundered off the Cullin Sey three years back during a particularly vicious storm. He could perform dead reckonings and navigate by sun and stars and the natural signs of sea and land; and the callouses on his hands showed that he was not too proud to man an oar. By all accounts, losing the ship had been none of his fault, and when he returned with his share of Sanctuary’s treasure, he would provide for Sera Wulfsen and the rest of Tor’s family: it seemed a fair and measured choice.

After this, he returned to the long house, shut the door behind him and leaned against it. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I can do no more. I’d rather go a man short.’

‘Well, tell the rest of them to leave, then,’ his wife said brusquely.

Aran looked pained. ‘Surely we should give them sustenance first.’

Bera Rolfsen put her hands on her hips. ‘There’s nothing left. It’s all on board your damned ship.’

‘Don’t let’s argue on my last day in Rockfall, wife.’

‘My concern is that it truly will be, husband. Will you not wait for the sea-thaw, at least?’

Aran fixed her with a stern eye. ‘We have had that discussion,
wife
. Hopli Garson and Fenil Soronson commissioned a ship from Danson before us: they sailed it out of his yard a month or more before Halli stole him away. And there are rumours of other expeditions. They’ll already have set sail: every day we linger here, we are farther behind them. It’s now or never.’

‘Then choose never!’ Bera’s eyes flashed.

‘You know I cannot.’

‘Cannot?
Will
not, in truth. For it is your will I see driving this venture, Aran: your bull-headed, obstinate will. I have said it before and I will say it again: the map you took from the Fair is a trick fit to gull fools. Sanctuary is not real, and neither is the gold you dream of, yet you will spend freely of all we have earned over these long hard years and, worse, you will spend that rarest of currencies – the lives of your own family and the lives of the men of Rockfall, whose families depend on them – in order to pursue this mad obsession. For that is what this quest is, Aran Aranson: it is the hunt for a chimera, a fairytale; a wildgoose chase. At the best of times it would be sheer folly; but it is the worst of times, with our eldest boy lost to the cruel sea and cries of war hailing from our capital.

‘Oh, do not look at me like that, husband, as if I am some ignorant woman relishing some ridiculous new snip of gossip overheard at the market. I have ears and a tongue and a mind to wield both, and I know what all are saying – that it cannot be long before the Istrians act upon the threats made at the Allfair, and that as soon as the ocean is free of ice, they will bring their ships north to deal flame and sword to us as they did of old. And where will you be then, husband? Here to defend your family, or chasing phantasms in the arctic seas?’

During this tirade, Aran had been clenching his fists together ever more tightly so the skin over his knuckles showed taut and white. Now, as Bera stopped to draw breath, the knife he had been holding snapped in two with a great crack of noise, and splinters of ivory spun out across the room. One struck Bera in the cheek, just beneath the eye and drew blood, though the wound was not deep. She put her hand to her face and the fingers she brought away from the site were wet and red and she shrieked.

‘Bones and blood, broken and spilled!’ she cried. ‘It is an omen, but not one I expect you to heed, for you are deaf and blind to all except your dream.’

‘Be silent, wife!’ he roared. ‘I have no time for such nonsense!’ He turned and made to leave, but at that moment, someone bellowed, ‘Break a knife, lose a life!’

Aran spun around. Gramma Rolfsen, who had been sitting unwontedly quiet throughout the exchange, hidden behind the loom, now got to her feet, planted herself squarely in front of her son-by-law and took him by the arms with such a fierceness of grip that Aran winced visibly. They made a strange tableau, like two frozen dancers; or a pair of snowbears in mock-fight on their hind legs, except that the old woman came barely as high as the big man’s chest. Unfazed by the difference in their relative sizes and powers, Hesta Rolfsen shook him with all her might.

‘Will you bring all to ruin, Aran Aranson, with your wild scheme?’ she demanded. ‘Halli is already lost to us as a result of your madness; and now you would take Fent as well. For myself, I care not a whit that you may perish yourself on this venture, for clearly your wits – such as they were – have already fled to the bottom of the sea in advance of the rest of your sorry hulk; but think of your wife and your daughter: how will they fare without the Master of Rockfall; how will the other women of the islands raise their children and their livestock when you have taken away their husbands and fathers and sons to be swallowed by the ocean tides? You are like your father in all the worst ways, and that man was as obstinate as a blinkered horse and as witless as a hare when the mood struck him. And you’ll recall the outcome of his last mad venture.’

The previous Master of Rockfall had almost perished in the hunt for a giant narwhal which was reputed to bear a golden horn. Fully three dozen men had seen the beast and attested to the existence of this wondrous appendage; many of them had been part of his crew when the narwhal had been sighted again; and they had given chase and succeeded in harpooning the monster – which was larger, it was claimed, even than the whale which had been washed ashore on the shingle beach on Rockfall Island in the year of the great storm, from which the strand took its name – only for the beast to ram its ‘golden’ horn right through the beam of the ship and hole it beyond hope. Water rushed in, the strakes sprang apart and the ship ploughed a straight course for the seabed. Of a crew of thirty-eight, only four men survived, including the Master. The narwhal left a large part of its horn embedded in the ship’s timbers. Remnants of these, along with the shard of horn, fetched up among the skerries north of Black Isle: but when men found the wreckage, all agreed that far from being made of gold, the horn was yellow with age and algae only: and was of less worth than a walrus’s tusk, for it was so old and friable, it would not even bear carving.

The old Master had almost died of the shame and had lived on at Rockfall, barely speaking, hollow-eyed; a husk of his former self. He had died three years later in the war against the Istrian Empire. Some said he saw the blow coming and made no effort to defend himself; others said he fought bravely and tenaciously. His son had seen him fall, and knew the truth.

Aran Aranson bowed his head. For a moment it seemed he would waver in his intent. Then, very deliberately, he pried Hesta Rolfsen’s fingers from his arms and set her away from him. Without a word, he turned and left the steading.

Katla watched him come out into the home enclosure with his brows knitted into the single black line that marked the onset of his stormy temper; watched the hopeful men gathered there crowd around him like pied birds drawn to a fresh kill, listened as her father yelled at them to pack up their belongings and go home to their families, for he had no need of them. She saw the astonished looks on their faces at the Master’s unmannerly words, then Aran was striding off down the track to the strand, his gait all stiff-legged with fury. Fent joined her at the enclosure rail, a whetting stone in one hand and one of her best daggers in the other. She had given it to him to appease him over the knock on the head that had enabled her to take his place on the
Snowland Wolf
; and had then regretted it. It was a pretty piece, one of those she had made before the wreck; but in her twin’s hands it had become an extension of him, a weapon that had already drawn blood in two brawls.

‘It looks as if we’ll be under way sooner than later,’ he said cheerfully, holding the blade away from his face to inspect the edge. The dagger gleamed in the cold sun with a deadly glint. ‘Ma and Da have had a tremendous fight: I could hear it from the barn!’ When Fent looked up, he found his sister’s eyes on him, and the expression in them was not kindly. ‘What?’ he said.

‘I know you well remember the seither’s words to you.’

Fent flushed an unpleasant red. To cover his confusion, he busied himself with sheathing the dagger.

May all your ventures meet with disaster.

‘And you’re still intent on accompanying Da?’

‘It’s his venture, not mine,’ Fent said shortly. ‘So that doesn’t count.’

‘But you don’t really want to go,’ Katla urged. ‘You hate ships, you’ve always said so. You could run the farm while he’s gone, be the man of the family . . .’

Fent laughed. ‘Why, so that you can go in my stead? Haven’t you already done enough? Everyone’s telling stories of how my brave sister took on a sea-monster with one of the swords she forged herself, after we pestered Urse for long enough for the true tale. You took my place on the last voyage: this time it’s my turn to prove myself.’ His head came up and there was a sharp jut to his chin. ‘Da’s told me as much himself, after the business with Fela’s father.’

Fela was a pretty, slight lass of sixteen, the daughter of a bondsman farmer who worked the land two valleys away. In the spring she would be somewhat less slight: she was already beginning to show her three months’ child, and after she had missed her courses and come crying to the steading, Fent had turned her away with a hard face, declaring he would not wed her. After which, her father had come to see Aran, and the two men had exchanged harsh words.

Katla nodded once. So that was it: for her brother it was simpler to face the wild seas of the North than it was to deal with an angry man and his heartbroken daughter.

‘He won’t take you, you know,’ Fent said, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘You’re just a girl.’

Gone were the days when Katla would have reacted with a roundhouse punch to such a remark. Instead, she glared at him steadily. ‘At least I’m a girl who knows a bowline from a reef, and a carrick from a clove hitch.’

An unreadable expression passed across her twin’s face. ‘I have a challenge for you,’ he said after a moment’s pause and there was a strange glint in his eyes. ‘Meet me at dawn tomorrow on top of the Hound’s Tooth. And bring a length of rope with you.’

Katla regarded him curiously. What was he up to? Her brother had never shown the slightest interest in climbing before. But Fent met her gaze square on, his grin as wide and guileless as it had been when they were children.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I will.’

Katla Aransen could never turn away a challenge.

The
Long Serpent
would sail at high tide the next day, Aran Aranson announced, when the seas would run her clear of the circling reefs and out into the ocean swell with the offshore wind. His wife’s eyes were red-rimmed and there was an inflamed cut on her left cheek, but she went about her tasks with her head held high as if nothing were out of the ordinary, though men averted their eyes from her and women whispered behind their hands that she must have provoked the Master terribly for him to hit her hard enough to draw blood. Aran turned a deaf ear to them all, and took himself off for a long walk on the steading as the sun started to dip, giving orders to the lads left behind to tend the land and livestock; then he walked into the next valley and settled his debts with Bera’s brother Margan, and talked to him until the moon was high.

Katla met him on the way back. She had waited in the crook of the old apple tree for three hours. After the first hour, Ferg had given up whining at her to come down and had fallen asleep among the tangled roots. Every so often, his feet would twitch and his breathing would quicken as he chased phantom rabbits this way and that. Katla envied him the simplicity of his dreams. She knew she would not sleep this night, not until she had spoken to her father one more time about taking her aboard his ice-breaker.

But the Master’s face was grim in the moonlight as he strode through the bracken, and when Katla dropped down out of the tree in front of him, waking Ferg, who leapt up barking loudly enough to wake the dead, Aran cursed roundly and foully and walked straight past her so that she had to run to catch him up.