Viking Gold (45 page)

They
spent the rest of the night listening to Hawk tell of his journey to the
Promised Land. He confirmed Astrid’s story that just over two years ago a group
of men from the Northlands had arrived in
Reykjavik
. Word had soon reached Hawk, as jarl, that they were
asking round the port if any of the sailors had visited a land far to the west,
reputed to contain more riches than the great palaces of
Byzantium
.
Their tales interested Hawk, and, disguised as an ordinary seaman in rough
linen tunic and breeches, he’d gone down to the waterside taverns to talk with
the travellers. Among their number was a monk. He appeared to be in charge.

“Not a Northman?” Koll asked
incredulously.

Hawk confirmed the monk spoke
perfect Norse. He also had a book with him, a brown leather-covered affair,
weather-beaten and water-spoiled in places, and without precious jewels to
distract your notice. But the monk and his men were entranced by this thing.
Said it held the key to wealth and happiness beyond wildest imaginings. Fired
by the monk’s talk Hawk committed to join them, with two longships and seventy
of his best men.

“What happened next?” Redknee
asked, kneeling forward.

Hawk explained that they set
sail on a fair spring day. They made good time. Within eight days they had
reached an ice-capped land. Landing they discovered the locals called the place
Greenland
– they thought it some kind of joke.

The monk became very ill on
Greenland
, Hawk
said. He suffered from an old injury in his arm and the pain had returned. His
skin turned grey and he was too weak to leave his bed. After a month of waiting
for the monk to recover, Hawk had ventured on. He reached the Promised Land
after ten days at sea, but the shores did not afford a landing place, being
comprised of fortress-like cliffs. Eventually, they found a suitable bay and
made a camp. But many of the men had fallen prey to a vomiting illness. Soon,
there were only around thirty of them left and that was when they met the
People of the Bear.

“I’ve heard this part of your
tale,” Redknee said. “From one of your men who made it back to
Iceland
,
Ulfsson was his name.”

Hawk nodded solemnly.
“Ulfsson was indeed known to me. I’m glad to hear he survived. The Bear People
came on us in the night, quick and deadly, like the lightning from Thor’s
hammer. There were so many of them, we didn’t stand a chance.” Hawk hung his
head in shame, eventually he spoke again. “Running Deer found me lying face
down in a swamp.” A tentative smile formed on his thin lips. “She thought me
dead at first.”

“And that’s how you came to
be with the Flint People?”  Redknee asked.

Hawk nodded. “I thought I was
the only survivor out of my men. Now I know there was another.”

Redknee remembered the blank look
on Ulfsson’s face as he lay across the threshold of the tavern, his head bashed
in. He decided to say nothing. “What happened to the monk?” he asked instead.
“Did he catch up with you?”

“I never met him if he did. I
assumed he either died or returned to his monastery when he was well enough to
travel.”

Redknee thought about this.
It was most likely the monk had died. “I was wondering,” Redknee began
tentatively, “if my father might have been among the Northmen who came to
Reykjavik
.”

“What was his name?”

What, indeed
?

“Erik Kodranson,” Redknee
said finally.  It was the only name he had to work with. Something told
him, if he found Erik, he would find his father.

Hawk shook his head. “I don’t
recognise it. But there were a good number of men. What does he look like?”

Redknee bit his lip. “I don’t
know.”

“
Ah,”
Hawk said,
smiling kindly. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Wait,” Redknee said. It was
likely Erik looked somewhat like Sven, so he gave Hawk a description of his
uncle.

Hawk shook his head
sympathetically. “I’m afraid that describes half the Northmen I’ve known.”

Disappointed, Redknee sat
back and allowed the others the chance to question Hawk. Predictably, they
spent the remainder of the evening asking if he’d found Saint Brendan’s
treasure. He said that he had not. Koll snorted at this, suspicious, it seemed,
of their host’s veracity. Hawk explained he hadn’t had the advantage of the
Codex
– the monk had kept it. At the mention of the book Sinead glanced at Redknee, then
moved to conceal her bag under her cloak. Had she brought it? Clever girl.

Turning back to Hawk he
asked, “Have you been looking for the treasure these two years past?”

Hawk shook his head. “I have
a new wife, I am happy—”

Astrid groaned scornfully.

“—I
am
happy with
her,” Hawk asserted. “And I’m no longer interested in treasure. You would do
well to forget it too – I doubt it can be found.”

Koll shook his head. “If
anyone finds it, it’ll be us.”

Eventually they got to discussing
the footprints in the snow. Had they been made by the Flint People or the Bear
People? They pestered Hawk for information. Hawk said the Flint People, the
Kanienkehaka, were proud, but fair. They were experts with the bow, which made
Olvir smile, and hunted wild deer and all manner of smaller creatures for their
thick, warm pelts. But Hawk had no time for the Bear People. He went to sleep
insisting that if either the Kanienkehaka or the Bear People had wanted to
attack them, they would have by now. The footsteps in the snow, he explained,
had likely been a warning.

Redknee
dreamt of a face with hazel eyes and spidery lashes. This was strange, because
he usually dreamt of green eyes and hair of flaming copper; or of standing at
his uncle’s side, fighting Ragnar.

The face leant closer. It
belonged to a beautiful woman. He felt her warm breath on his skin. This was a
realistic dream. He smiled and snuggled into his sleeping fur. His dreams
weren’t normally this good. The beautiful woman began to speak. Her words were
garbled, but she sounded panicked. His eyes shot open. A very real woman with
curtains of jet-black hair leant over him. She was frowning.

Redknee leapt up and drew
Flame
Weaver
. The woman looked startled.

“It’s alright,” Hawk said,
“it’s just Running Deer and her brothers.” He pointed to two well-built young
men standing by the door. Hawk lay on a rug, fully dressed and sipping hot soup
from a bowl. He looked perfectly relaxed. 

Silver still slept at
Redknee’s feet, paws twitching. Some guard dog, Redknee thought, lowering his
sword.

A scream came from the back
of the hut. Koll jumped to his feet, instantly awake, swinging his battleaxe in
front of him, knocking over the pot of soup.

“Wait!” Redknee shouted as
Toki and Olvir began to stir. “They’re our friends.”

The young woman with the raven
hair spoke. “My name is Running Deer,” she said in halting Norse. “These are my
brothers, Crouching Wolf and Thinking Owl. A Bear People war party is heading
this way. They know about your camp on the beach. They are coming for you. You
will be safer if you come with us.”

“She lies,” Koll said, his
battleaxe still in his hand.

Hawk uncoiled his long legs
and stood. “I doubt it,” he said, crossing the room and planting a kiss on his
wife’s forehead. “We will be safest if we go with them.”

“If anyone is coming for us,
we’ll fight them ourselves,” Koll said.

Hawk folded his arms. “Suit
yourselves. But this war party is more than thirty men.”

“We can’t leave Olaf and
Magnus to fight a war party on their own,” Redknee said.

“The longhouse is two days’
walk,” Toki said, pulling on his boots and looking outside. “And the weather is
closing in.”

Thinking Owl spoke to his
sister, and she translated: “My brother says if you come with us, the war party
will follow your tracks – they won’t go to your longhouse. You’ll be saving
your friend’s lives.”

“What about
your
village?” Redknee asked her.

Hawk snorted. “Don’t worry,”
he said. “Running Deer’s father is chief. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

The
village lay in a wide valley, surrounded by snow-covered meadows. A wall of
tall stakes protected four longhouses. The longhouses were set out at right
angles to form a large square in the centre. Wood-smoke fluttered from a
central hole in each roof, a smudge on the blank grey sky.

Even from the surrounding
hills, Redknee could see children playing in the snow. Old women watched,
fingers ever busy with some task or other. Already, it reminded him of home –
of his village in the Northlands before Ragnar came and changed everything.

“We plant the three sisters
in spring,” Running Deer said as they started on the path to the valley floor.
Redknee must have looked puzzled, for she laughed until her eyes watered.
“They’re not
real
people
,” she said eventually. “They’re crops –
maize, squash and beans. We call them the three sisters because we plant them
together. The beanstalk supports the maize and the squash, and they grow
leaning on each other, like sisters.”

“I’ve never had a brother or
sister,” Redknee said, treading carefully on the frozen slope.

“I’m sorry to hear that,”
Running Deer said. “I have four sisters in addition to my two brothers.”

A sentry nodded to Thinking
Owl as they passed through the main gate. Close up, Redknee saw that the four
longhouses were made of elm bark stretched over wooden frames. They were big,
each perhaps able to hold as many as forty people. He caught a whiff of a rich,
meaty smell. Three women were stirring a large pot outside the nearest
longhouse.

Koll sighed audibly.
    

“You ever think about
anything but your belly?” Redknee asked, laughing as Koll loped over to the
women, a hopeful grin on his face.

A
group of children ran up to Sinead and Astrid. The youngest held out a small
leather ball. Astrid shook her head and turned away. Sinead rolled her eyes and
handed Redknee her bag. He watched as Sinead kicked the ball high into the air,
and then sped after it, copper hair streaming. Silver stared after her.

“On you go,” Redknee said,
and the pup tore into the fray, nose down, tail wagging.

Astrid hung about awkwardly.
Her eyes had never left Running Deer since they set out that morning. Redknee
frowned as she made a circle in the snow with her toe. Hate seemed to rise off
her like steam.

“We’re going inside.”

Redknee turned to see Toki
standing at the entrance to the nearest longhouse, beckoning him in.

“We’re going to meet their
chief.”

Redknee’s
eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. A corridor dissected the hall in two.
Stretching along each side of this corridor, at knee height, were two wide, fur-covered
platforms. Sacks of food, clay jars and extra furs lined a second, higher
platform beneath the roof.

Thinking Owl and Crouching
Wolf emulated a small, grey haired man sitting cross-legged on the lower
platform. The grey haired man indicated to Redknee, Koll and Toki to do
likewise. Running Deer sat beside her father, lowering her eyes as Hawk joined
them.

Sitting opposite him, Redknee
saw the chief clearly for the first time. His long, straight nose was held regally
aloft, as if in defiance of the world. Yet his eyes held the shrewd sparkle of
ambition. Even before he spoke, Redknee sensed he was in the presence of a true
leader of men, a force that could turn the wind and halt tides.

The chief turned to his daughter
and spoke in the same strange language Redknee had heard Hawk use with her. She
listened with her head bowed and hands folded across her lap. When her father
finished, she raised her eyes until they met Redknee’s. “My father, Hiawatha
the Wise, wishes to know your purpose here.”

Redknee
cleared his throat. He’d known they would be asked this and had prepared his
answer.

“We have travelled across the
sea to—”

Hiawatha raised his hand for
silence.

Running Deer leaned in to
listen as her father spoke. When he finished, she looked awkwardly round the
circle. “My father,” she said, her accent thicker than before, “wants to know
why…
a boy
… speaks for …
men
.”

Hiawatha was testing him.
“There is no boy here,” Redknee said, glancing at Toki, wondering if he would
challenge this.

A half-smile played on Toki’s
face. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, evidently unwilling to support or deny
Redknee’s statement. From the corner of his eye, Redknee saw Koll quietly draw
his dagger. Running Deer’s brothers looked confused, but Hiawatha studied
Redknee with narrowed eyes.

Eventually, Toki flicked his
hand dismissively. “The lad is right,” he said. “He speaks for us all.”