Daughter of the Wind (20 page)

Save Hego.

Gauk must have lost full consciousness for an instant. When he was aware of what was happening, the big berserker was dragging him to the lapping waves, and flinging him down. Gasping with pain, grunting not like a bear but like a badly shaken man, Yngvar put a booted foot on Gauk's chest and cocked his sword arm, raising the blade high.

Gauk saw the blow approaching from an unexpected direction. There was nothing swift about it, and nothing skillful. Yngvar must have seen it coming, too. He looked up to see Head-Splitter held high. But the big berserker was too slow in blocking the ax with his sword, even though there was a long moment when Hego's weapon did not fall.

Yngvar gave a half-smile, as though still liking his own chances in this brawl. The salt suds at Gauk's ears hissed a loud and urgent communication. Odin's favor shifted from one man to another—
Gauk lives
!

Hego's ax split the big man's head.

Forty-one

Hego was freckled with bits of the berserker, and was moving slowly, cradling the ax in his arms. Gauk saw what had to be done. He gave a command, telling Hego to shove
Strider
off the shore, speaking right into his face, the way a steersman sometimes has to when his fellow seamen are stunned by a sudden squall. Hego moved toward the boat, but sluggishly, shoving the boat into the water and tumbling into her.

Gauk did his best to act the berserker. He seized his sword from the sand and gave out a roar, cutting great circles in the air. It wasn't real. It was make-believe—he was still only Gauk, apparently abandoned by Odin, and his right arm was tired.

But his snarling, frenzied display made the men on shore hesitate moments longer. Then, with a show of bravery, like men resigned to a desperate act, they resumed their attack.

They fought the way shield-carrying men so often do, leading with their shields, shoving. Gauk grasped the edge of a shield and pulled the man down, hammering him hard with the butt of his sword.

The crowd closed around Gauk, so bunched together, they couldn't swing their weapons but could only jab, the points cutting his tunic, stabbing, missing. And not missing—he was hurt. His act, the rolling eyes, the bear-like roars seemed pale and fake to Gauk, nothing like the real surge of courage he no longer hoped for.

But these shorerakers were not as capable as they looked. They slipped and fell in the mess that had been the berserker. Gauk backed away, falling into the water, the salt stinging, the brine blooming red around him as he swam, one-handed. His sword was heavy—far too heavy. A threat to his safety now, it pulled his arm downward, anchoring his body.

Stones splashed around him—jagged cliff rubble, smooth shore stones, a rain of rocks hurled from the beach, distant figures running up and down the tide line collecting yet more missiles.

An oar dipped into the water close by.

Hego's big hand fell on his shoulder and seized the wool of Gauk's tunic. A smooth stone, as round as a barley cake, skipped across the water and struck Hego in the face. The young man gave out a gasp and released Gauk, and the young berserker once again felt his weapon dragging him downward.

He thrashed, kicking hard, and won another breath of air.

A few more strokes of the oars, another long reach, and this time Hego had Gauk in a mighty grip that dragged him from the salt sea and all the way into the boat.

They both realized too late that they had left it behind. The great, half-carved yellow thing on the beach beside Yngvar was the wheel of cheese.

Gauk was bleeding hard. He told himself that most of what ran off his body was salt water. He shivered, and let Hego row. The blade smith was good at it, and by the time the shoremen got their boats into the water and worked the oars through the oarlocks, shouting at each other,
Strider
left them far behind. The voices of the townsmen diminished, farther and farther away, until Hego reached the breeze of the open ocean.

Hego's eye was swelling shut. It was the same eye that had been injured in a fall, he explained, when he had called the crowded ale hall outside to watch a meteor shower many weeks ago. Far from a sense of self-pity, Hego sounded amused. The eye was determined to go through life swollen shut, he said, and until a medicine woman said the appropriate charm there was little anyone could do.

Hego used the forestay to lift the mast into position. Gauk moved cautiously, his wounds stiffening, and helped raise the mast with the leather ropes. Then, with the sail making the booming, cracking music that brought a shaky joy to his heart, he sank back.

Strider
was taking on water. The sleek sailboat needed to be recaulked, her strakes sealed. Even the stoutest ship needed to be waterproofed, sometimes several times during a lengthy, storm-punished voyage.

Gauk fumbled for the bailer, a wooden scoop, and tried not to notice the bloody tint of the salt water he worked over the side.

Forty-two

Hego was chilled through, but he liked the feeling. He was very much alive.

The wind was with them, gale strong and cold. Hego kept a steady hand on the tiller, savoring the salt spray on his lips. From time to time he drank from the skin of Spjothof well water. Gauk rubbed saliva into his wounds and, like any fighting man, said they did not hurt.

They made the crossing from the land of Norway to the kingdom of the Danes in one night, following the route every Spjotman knew by heart. No traveler sailed with a chart or written list of ports, although Hego had heard that kings and tax collectors in distant lands kept such arcane items. Real seamen set their courses by lore alone, telling north and south by the habits of the waves around them, as remembered in way-poems and songs. Boats were rarely lost, although some journeys were easier than others.

Their passage was remarkably swift, but not unheard of. In a gale blowing from the northwest, Errik No-Lip, a legendary boatman who had been scarred by frostbite, had sailed from Akerri to the land of the Franks in the same amount of time, but that was in the era of legends, when such feats were possible. Nevertheless, Hego took their own speedy sailing as proof that the gods favored their efforts.

Dawn sun climbed the sky. The water behind them boiled, the crests of waves stirred by the breeze. Hego could not see the horizon clearly, one eye closed tight again, and the other weeping from the salt waves that had swept the craft all night. Gauk trailed a fishhook on a line in the early morning, when the fish are hungriest, and snagged a large fish of a sort Hego had never seen before—surely another omen.

They ate the raw flesh gratefully, savoring even the innards. The food made them feel strong again. A protocol, unwritten and only half-understood, dictated their near silence on a day like this, battle behind them, and possible bloodshed yet to come. Hego would have to choose his words carefully, or he would offend the divine powers and cause ill luck.

Speaking sparingly, the two young men worked closer to the land as the sun climbed toward noon. Hego could make out the shapes of drift logs, whole trees, that bumped and groaned together in the easy swells.

Hego was concerned about his friend. All morning Gauk moved like a very old man. Sometimes he paused to flex his arms with a gasp.

Gauk caught Hego's expression of concern and laughed. “I'll have a few scars to show Astrid,” he said.

Hego wondered if it would be appropriate to share his feelings now. “Do you think,” he asked at last, “a death blow hurts?”

Instantly Hego hated himself for asking such a question, sure he would bring bad luck with his thoughtlessness.

But Gauk considered, licking his lips, blistered from the salt in the air. “Did the rock hurt you,” he asked, “when it hit your eye?”

“Not at first,” said Hego.

“So I don't think,” said Gauk, “Yngvald lived long enough to feel the blow.”

This reassured Hego. He did not like to think the big berserker had felt great pain. Hego wanted to think that the offensive, unruly berserker had left this life the way a drunken man leaves his senses: confused, muddled, and then at peace.

“You fought well,” said Hego.

“No, I did not.” Gauk grunted and, moving deliberately, he removed the bear pelt from over his shoulders and around his hips.

“You lured your attacker by pretending to be weak,” Hego protested, disturbed by Gauk's show of humility. “Yngvar put on a brave show, but he was no match for you. You wore him out, so it was easy for Head-Splitter to live up to its name.”

“You preserved my life,” said Gauk, “and your own.”

Hego laughed at this. When Gauk's saga was woven, Hego would count himself fortunate to be mentioned at all.

“The god took his favor away from me, Hego,” said Gauk.

Hego did not like to hear the gods mentioned, except in song or prayer.

“Who knows what Odin will enable me to do,” said Gauk, “against the Danes?”

“Oh, great deeds,” Hego assured him uneasily.

How could Gauk explain to his old friend and neighbor that Odin had left an empty place in Gauk's heart, the way a bear leaves a footprint?

Against the Danes, Gauk feared, the two of them would be helpless. It was best, Gauk believed, not to weigh this thought too clearly, unless it become all too true. Hadn't Thor walked into the Ice King's cave and, challenged to show his prowess, wrestled with the cat of the world?

And Gauk still possessed sharp eyes, and a hunter's instinct. When he saw the vessels, and pointed them out, Hego squinted, startled. “I can't see them!”

“I see well enough,” said Gauk. “Danish ships—they have red-striped sails and bright yellow markings.”

Gauk helped Hego lower the mast, and the two of them lay side by side in the wet bottom of the boat. Drift logs, birch and spruce, lanced the tops of the swells, dangerous to a small boat like
Strider
, but excellent cover for the vessel, too.

Gauk peered over the side when
Strider
ascended a wave. It had been a while since he had seen warships, and he was astonished at how large they were, how the oars gleamed in the sunlight, beating in unison through the water.

The ships—three of them, with two more in the distance—crept along the coast as
Strider
bobbed among the swells. It was like the sorrowful poems recalling the search for missing comrades, the boats nosing every inlet.

“I can see them now,” whispered Hego.

An archer, bow in hand, gazed out, in the direction of their hiding place.

The whispering water slowly leaked into the vessel. Hego let the sun warm him, and told himself he was not afraid of any Danish archer. Spjotfolk used arrows, too, sometimes. The Danes were cunning, but mere men, after all.

When Gauk assured him that Danish ships still coursed the far-off shoreline, Hego began to silently wonder what it would be like to grow old, full of stories, bright faces listening to his voice. Hego was confident, but not as self-assured as the heroes of sagas, who met every challenge with determination. Given a chance to slaughter a shipload of Danes, Hego would rather drift among the tree trunks like this, even the most dangerous logs, with bristling stumps where branches had torn free.

Hego could see more clearly now. Two mammoth drift trees closed in on the vessel. Each was still cloaked in moss, and a bark beetle scurried along the side of one of them. The great forest trees groaned against
Strider
. The vessel had been constructed by Njold the village shipwright for voyages in the ice, where drifting floes sometimes locked around a craft. The sailboat shivered along its length under the press of this drift timber, but she remained strong.

The Danish ships did not make the familiar sound of the ships Hego knew best. Something about the way the oarlocks were greased, and the sort of leather used in the rigging. And the songs the Danes sang as they worked, lilting tunes, bittersweet. A Dane spat, and the sound of it struck a log like a hand slap. Too close. They were drifting too close.

Hego huddled beside his friend, praying to Thor that, by sword or by sea, their deaths might be painless.

Forty-three

All day,
Strider
took on water, the Danes rowing ahead, trying to avoid the tangled mat of floating logs. The Danish seamen shoved at the drift trees with oars, and rowed well away, searching the shore. Hego and Gauk took turns, bailing as silently as possible. Hego found that bark stripped from the trees, silently pressed into place, served to slow
Strider
's leaks.

Then as the cool wind of late afternoon sharpened, the drift trees parted.

The Danes lifted sails and tacked seaward, each warship leaving long, foam-spinning wakes.

Gauk and Hego made short work of lifting sail and approaching the land, the surf along this low-lying coast weak and harmless, the seabirds giving way to broad-winged cranes, spearing the shallow water for fish.

They agreed that, while they were not lost, they did not know exactly where they were. The ancient way-poems told how to approach any port, by river marsh or open sea, including Gudmund's settlement.

Black sea, blue sea, past the stumps of trees
,

when the scent of marsh is strong
,

guide the steer-oar landward

and the brackish tide is yours
.

Hego remembered the poem exactly that way, except for one detail. “Past the tall white stone,” was the version he recalled. He sang it that way, and was met with Gauk's silence.

“Everything else you sang is correct,” Hego added quickly, not wanting to hurt his friend's feelings.

“How can we see a ‘tall white stone' from here?”

Hego was not sure how to explain such matters. “How could you see tree stumps?” he queried.

Night fell.

They smelled marshland—it was impossible to mistake sulfuric odor. Mud and decay, and that odd scent of fresh and salt water when they flowed together. They were close to their destination, as sea lore indicated, close to Gudmund's customary lands. But to be close to a destination was not enough, where sailing was involved. They needed to be certain.