Viking Gold (38 page)

“You were
supposed
to help
attack the ledge,” Redknee said as Koll and Magnus arrived, breathless, at his
side.

Olaf shook his head. “I was
distracting Ragnar so you could escape. I see it worked.”

“So why is Sinead still
bound?” Redknee asked.

Olaf cast Sinead a wary
glance. She glared at him over her gag. “Had to look authentic, didn’t it? I
was going to let her go when she calmed down …”

“I wouldn’t trust him,”
Magnus said, drawing his sword and moving closer to Redknee.  

“His trick
did
save
us,” Redknee replied.

Magnus shrugged. “I suppose.”

“And he
was
my uncle’s
right hand man.”

Olaf’s face broke into a
gap-toothed grin. “Fought with Sven for fifteen years. Not much your uncle
didn’t know about me.”

“See,” Redknee said, as
Brother Alfred, Olvir and Astrid arrived beside him. “If my uncle trusted him,
we can too.”

“Where’s Toki?” Olvir asked.

“Working hard,” said a deep
voice from somewhere in the bowels of the ship. A moment later, Toki appeared
above
Wavedancer’s
prow; hammer and chisel in his hands. “I’ve been here
since the storm finished. Fixed up the ol’ dragon good and proper – she’s just
like new. Although that buffoon,” he said, nodding in Olaf’s direction, “has
been keeping me off my work all morning, asking how many rivets I’ve used and
if I’ve left enough hemp to mend tears in the sail.”

A flicker of pleasure lit
Harold’s dark eyes. At first, Redknee thought it was because Toki had repaired
Wavedancer
.
Then he realised Harold was staring further down the beach. Slowly, Harold
raised his hand and pointed over Redknee’s shoulder.

Everyone turned in unison.
Twenty or so men ran along the sand towards them, their helmets glinting gold
in the low evening sun. They were still some distance, but Redknee saw their
armament bristling; it was a full war party.

“Alright,” Redknee said,
turning back to Olaf. “You can come. But you must give your weapons to Koll.”

Magnus shook his head as Koll
relieved Olaf of his knife and sword, but Ragnar’s men were already splashing
through the surf and Redknee had no time to deliberate further. As they pushed
Wavedancer
into the water and leapt aboard, Redknee found he was already regretting his
decision.

PART III

ABROAD

They
rowed. Rowed with strength born of desperation. Rowed until Ragnar’s men were reduced
to tiny, shadowy figures splashing angrily in the surf. Then, at Redknee’s
order, they unfurled the big square sail; the wind rushed to greet the bright
yellow stripes like an old friend and
Wavedancer
charged through the sea
with the energy of a warhorse at full gallop.

Redknee turned to face the
wind and breathed deeply. He felt twice as alive at sea as he did on land.
Maybe the vast emptiness of the ocean gave him room to dream. Maybe it was the
work – demanding and monotonous – that freed his mind to wander. Maybe it was
the motion – the water speeding by, its ever-changing surface – that made him
feel that at least he was doing something. Being someone.

Until today he had thought it
false progress. He had wondered if they were all making some terrible mistake.
Perhaps they
would
fall off the end of the earth. Be eaten by the giant
wolf Fenrir. More likely, he was leading them to an ignoble death on some
distant shore where their courage would be forgotten, never to reach the ears
of home.

Home.
Was that really what they sought? And could it be
found on some strange land far across the wild sea?

“I don’t trust Olaf.”

He turned to find Sinead
standing beside him. She cast a worried glance over her shoulder. Redknee
followed her gaze to where Olaf stood with Harold near the prow; one arm slung
over his son’s crooked shoulder, the other pointing to a spot on the horizon.
He whispered in Harold’s ear. The boy laughed.

Redknee turned back to Sinead.
“Neither does Magnus,” he said.

“I don’t trust Magnus
either.”

Redknee sighed. Magnus was at
the tiller, doing his duty as always, yet as far away from Olaf as possible.
Redknee couldn’t have the last stretch of their voyage descend into accusations
and suspicion. Eventually he said, “You would have me trust no one. Besides,
you heard what Olaf said. The trick he played with you, on Ragnar, saved us
all.”

“So why take his weapons?”

He remembered Magnus’s
allegation – that Olaf had led Ragnar to the tunnels. It was one man’s word
against another.

“To smooth things over,” he
ventured. “For the time being. I’ll return Olaf’s sword and dagger soon. Once
we’ve put a good stretch of sea between ourselves and Ragnar.”

Sinead looked unconvinced,
though she managed a small nod.

“He didn’t hurt you?” he
asked, suddenly concerned there was more to her complaint.

“No. Frightened me yes, but
nothing more.”

Satisfied, Redknee half
turned from her, braced his hands against the rail and stared out to sea. “I
fear we’re nearly there.”

“You fear that?”

“I think I’ve feared reaching
the Promised Land for a long time. What if it’s all lies?”

“What if it’s all true?”

Redknee nodded. A gust of
wind whipped his hair across his face. “There’s something about the winds
today.” He waved his hands as if to catch the very breath of the earth, and
began spinning round and round, arms outstretched. “There’s something
favourable about them, don’t you think?”

Sinead giggled as Silver
joined him, barking and hopping on his hind legs. “And what about you?” he
asked. “Excited? Nervous?”

She nodded. “I won’t be a
slave any longer. I’ll be as free as the winds.” She shook her hair until it
tumbled from its bindings and flew about her head like fireflies.

“Truly, I don’t think you’ve
ever really been a slave.”

“No?” She stopped spinning; a
frown marred her face.

“Isn’t it a state of mind?”

“Oh, Redknee, you’ve been
spending too much time with Brother Alfred. That sounds like something he would
say. But when you work sixteen hour days, and you’re so tired you can’t even
make it back to your bed before you fall asleep. Then you know that slavery is
more than a state of mind. It’s real.”

“I’m not sure I got off much
lighter. My mother always set me more tasks than I could do in a day … and my uncle
expected me to train long after it was dark.”

“It’s not the same. But
listen,” she said, grabbing Redknee’s outstretched arms, tumbling into him, “I
think I’ve found the map Ragnar wanted Mord to find.”

Redknee
stared at the picture of the unicorn with the ivy border draped around its
head, straining to understand. “It just looks like a pretty picture to me.”

Sinead sighed. “You’re
looking but not seeing.” She pointed to the ivy border. “Look at the leaves;
does their pattern remind you of anything?”

“Not really.”

“Think of where we’ve been:
First the Sheep Islands, to the west of the Northlands, then
Iceland
, a
little to the north.” As she spoke, Sinead traced the pattern of the ivy with
her finger, pointing to each new leaf in turn, working from right to left
across the top of the page. “And, lastly,
Greenland
,” she said, resting her finger on a big, pointed leaf
near the top left-hand corner of the page. Redknee squinted more closely at the
drawing. It was a crazy idea, so crazy, she might just be right.

“If you look closely at the
leaves, you can see they’re edged in different colours. Brown for the sheep of
the
Sheep
Islands
, red for the fires of
Iceland
—”

“
Greenland
in
white for the ice …”

“Yes. And, if you look to the
left-hand side of the page,” she said, pointing to the biggest leaf of all, “to
the south-west of Greenland, you’ll see that leaf, the one the unicorn’s horn
points to, is edged in gold.”

“You think that means the
Promised Land?”

Sinead shrugged. “What else
can it signify?”

Redknee scratched his head.
If Sinead was right, they were only days from the Promised Land, the lion’s
share of their journey behind them. “What are those markings beside what we’re
assuming are the
Sheep
Islands
?” he asked, having given the map more study.

Sinead peered at the faint,
grey crosses. “I think someone has added them later, in charcoal. Maybe they’re
the hermit rocks we saw before reaching the
Sheep
Islands
.”

“Could be,” Redknee agreed.
“Or they could just be a dirty mark.”

“I don’t think that matters.
The important thing is, this means we’re nearly there.”

“We’ve
been at sea over a week since Sinead found her supposed map, and still no
land,” Olaf said, staring out to sea. “We’ve only water enough for two more
days.”

Redknee had opened the
Codex
on an up-ended barrel and was studying it … with little success. Consequently,
he didn’t have an answer that would allay Olaf’s fears.

Toki peered over Redknee’s
shoulder. “Let me have a look,” he said. “I studied a map when I sailed down
the
Volga
with Ragnar.”

Redknee shuffled aside. Koll
still thought Toki’s association with Ragnar as a soldier for hire meant he
wasn’t to be trusted. But if he knew how to read a map, that made him
invaluable.

Toki furrowed his brows, held
a huge, grubby thumb up to the picture and closed his left eye.

“What’s he doing?” snapped
Olaf. “He looks like he’s about to take aim.”

“I’m measuring the distance
between what Sinead thinks are the
Sheep
Islands
and
Iceland
. It took seven days to sail between them, right?”

“So?” Olaf said.

“Well, on the map, the
distance between the
Sheep
Islands
and
Iceland
is half the length of my thumb.”

“What’s the distance between
Greenland
and
the Promised Land?” asked Redknee.

Toki measured up again. “It
depends where I take the distance from, but about the length of my thumb, due
south west.”

“Does that mean it should
take us about another four or five days?” Redknee asked.

“I reckon so.”

Olaf turned to face them properly.
“If it does,” he said. “We’ll all be dead, for we’ve only water for two.”

That
evening, Redknee found Toki by himself, making repairs to his deerskin boots
with a bone needle and waxed thread. Redknee shot a glance round the deck.
Everyone was busy, they wouldn’t be overheard. “I must speak with you,” he
said, sitting down.

“If it’s to do with the map,
my reckoning was very rough—”

Redknee shook his head. “I
wanted to ask about my family. You knew my parents before I was born.”

Toki nodded and continued
sewing his boot where it had split.

“When I was at the waterfall,
Ragnar said something I thought strange.”

“Go on.”

“He said he looked after my
mother when my father left her to go raiding sixteen or so years ago. He said
he and I were more alike than I knew.”

A faraway look came over
Toki’s face; he paused in his work, his needle glinting in the fading sun.
“Yes,” he said eventually. “I do remember that. But it doesn’t mean—”

“There’s more.” Redknee
lowered his voice. “Right before my uncle died …” Toki leaned in. “… when he
was showing me how to use his battleaxe … my uncle said that Erik Kodranson was
not …
was not my father
.”

Toki turned white. After a
long moment, he managed to speak. “You sure he said that?”

Redknee nodded. “Do you think
he meant—”

“That
Ragnar
is your
father?”

“I’ll not believe it.”

“As you shouldn’t.” Toki
looked thoughtful. “Have you considered Sven was lying?”

Redknee shook his head.

“Then again,” Toki added,
“there is another man he could have meant, who stayed with Ragnar around then.”

“Who?”