11
Erlandr squinted. With each step, he was sure he'd finally discovered the source of the mysterious voice talking to them through the trees—only to realize that he was looking at: a shadow, a bird, or nothing at all. But whomever the voice belonged to, it had been right. The forest was shallow. The birches ended, and he and Goll stepped onto a field surrounded by a ring of stumps. In between the stumps, sheep grazed, eating tufts of thick grass. There were also cows, a few goats and a wooden house. Unlike the longhouses that Erlandr knew, this house was taller and had several square openings covered by wooden slats on its walls. Piled underneath one of them was a collection of what to Erlandr could only be elephant tusks. Not that he'd ever seen an elephant.
"Stop," the voice said. "Don't move."
Erlandr stopped. Goll grumbled under his nose.
"Now turn yourselves around."
The two men did as they'd been told, until:
Standing about fifty paces in front of them, one of his feet perched atop a stump, they saw an exceedingly tall, amazingly thin boy. He held a strange bow that resembled a miniature harp. He slid an arrow out of his quiver and drew it against one of the bowstrings. "Welcome, travellers," he said. "My name is Kaspar and you will be my guests."
"What is this?" Goll yelled. "You're but a child."
"These are precautions." Kaspar kept the arrow trained on them. "I take them because I have reason to believe certain people are trying to kill me."
"We wish you no harm. We have only just arrived on the shores of your island. There are three of us. One has found shelter for the night, but we two are still searching. I am Erlandr and this is Goll," Erlandr said.
"Where have you come from? Where is your boat?"
"We've sailed from Iceland. Our boat is at the mouth of the fjord."
"Are you traders?"
Erlandr was about to say, "No," when Goll said, "Yes, indeed we are. Have you anything to trade?"
Before the boy could answer:
"Kaspar!" a woman's voice yelled. "Put down that bow."
Erlandr heard a door slam, followed by a series of even footsteps that softened once they presumably hit grass. "Who are these men?" the woman's voice asked.
Several of the sheep looked up. A cow mooed. Kaspar lowered his weapon and dropped his chin to his chest. "They're traders. I swear I was only playing with them, mother."
The body of a stout woman brushed Erlandr's arm as she walked past. She barely paid any attention to him or Goll. All of it was focused on Kaspar. "What have I told you about this nonsense? You're a herder. Your job is to look after our sheep and goats."
"One of them wandered into the forest," Kaspar said.
The woman shook her head and sighed. Then she wiped her hands on her apron—they were covered in blood—and wobbled around to address Erlandr and Goll. "My apologies. The boy is... different," she said. "But he means no harm. I hope you have not taken offence."
"No, ma'am," Erlandr said.
"Good. Now to business. Are you here for the furs or the tusks?" she asked.
"We're not—"
"For the tusks," Goll interrupted. "May we come inside? It has been a trying voyage and most of our food has spoiled."
"It is the least I can do after all this silliness," she said.
Erlandr grabbed Goll by the arm, but Goll shook him off and hurried after the stout woman. He had the look of a fox to him. Erlandr, suspicious of foxes by sheepherder's instinct, decided he wouldn't be part of any deception in a place he wanted to make his new home. He stayed outside. Let Goll alone suffer the consequences of Goll's actions.
Kaspar had taken a seat on the stump he'd been posing on and was fiddling with his bow. Erlandr walked toward him. "There's bread and meat inside," Kaspar said without looking up.
"I'm not hungry," Erlandr said. "But if you would fetch me a cup of ale to drink here, under the sun, I would be thankful. I was a herder, too. I feel at home beyond walls."
Erlandr detected the trace of a smile on Kaspar's face—before the boy leaped from his stump and sprinted off. He wasn't a fast runner, long legged and awkward, but he had the natural gift of sudden, incredible movement: an agility one couldn't predict, a swiftness one couldn't teach.
When Kaspar returned, Erlandr thanked him for the ale and sat down on a nearby stump. "You're good with that bow. I've never seen one like it," he said.
"My own invention." Kaspar strummed its strings. "It can melt the heart, or pierce it." He winked. "Twice dangerous."
"How old are you?"
"My parents say I've nineteen years, though I've not verified that myself."
The boy was sharp, for his age or any. Erlandr drank the ale. It tasted strong, not like the dinner ale he was used to drinking in Iceland. "And when you said people were trying to kill you..."
"I was telling the truth. I haven't told a single lie. I said you'd find me through the forest. Here I am. I said travellers are rare. They are. I said I'd give you food and drink, and here you sit, enjoying an ale on a stump in the afternoon air."
Erlandr wondered who could ever want to hurt this boy. Somewhere in his mind, he imagined being the Riverraider of Greenland, a wise stranger accepted into a new community, standing up to its enemies—although, he remembered with a directness he hadn't expected, standing up to his own community's enemy was what had gotten him transported across the sea. "Why would anyone want to kill you? Do you owe a debt?"
Kaspar's face turned grave. "Worse," he said, strumming his harp theatrically. "I have stolen the heart of a woman, and she has stolen mine."
"Has she a husband?"
"She has a father. I have a mother. Mine has forbidden us from seeing one another—though, of course, we meet in secret—and hers has threatened to kill me if ever we are seen together."
"It's important to obey one's parents," Erlandr said. He meant it sincerely, but when Kaspar looked at him with lovesick eyes, he felt as if he'd repeated a hopeless platitude. He tried again. "The gods will act to set right what's wrong." Maybe there was a third piece of advice...
"Kaspar!" the stout woman yelled, interrupting Erlandr's thoughts, and Kaspar jumped obediently to his feet as unpredictably as before. He'd been sitting; he was up. "Help these men load the tusks onto their boat," she instructed.
"Oh, no, ma'am, that won't be necessary," Goll said, walking out of the house with bits of food and other things stuck in his beard. "We can handle that ourselves. You've already been too kind." He showed his teeth much like a snake shows its tongue.
"As you wish. There will be more next season," the woman said. Then she yelled at Kaspar, "As for you, get back to herding, you lazy bones! There are skins to prepare," and disappeared into the house.
Kaspar smiled; and he was gone.
Erlandr strolled over to Goll, who was standing beside the pile of tusks stacked against the house, beaming. "How much did you pay her for these?" Erlandr asked.
Goll lowered his voice. "We didn't pay a thing. We've come to collect what we've already bought. You see, the two of us, we work for a certain regular customer who always leaves his payment in advance."
"But we don't work for anyone," Erlandr said.
"Keep it down. She doesn't know that. We work for who I say we work for. Besides, we aren't cheating this lovely woman out of anything. She's already been paid. We're cheating the trader."
"Who'll collect in other ways when he arrives and finds no elephant tusks for him to take."
Goll slapped Erlandr on the back. "Believe me, my noble farmer, we cannot be responsible for the darkness that may lie in the hearts of other men. And they're not elephant tusks," he said. "They're walrus tusks."
"What's a walrus?"
"It's a snow cow with horns." Goll picked up one of the tusks and weighed it in his hand. "Heavy, but you'll manage."
"Manage what?"
"To haul these back to the boat. That's what thralls do. They haul."
Thrall? Erlandr felt a fury starting to rise like bile in his gut. He was no thrall! He was a free man. He pushed Goll against the tusks and reached for his own axe.
"Careful, or you'll have committed a crime on this island as serious as on the last..."
As much as Erlandr hated it, Goll was right. If Erlandr wanted to make a life here, he could hardly start under the shadow of a crime. Still, he was no thrall and he would not haul any walrus tusks, especially not stolen ones. "Haul them yourself. Sell them yourself. Take the profit for yourself. I'll have nothing to do with this."
Goll straightened himself, fixed his shirt and cleared his throat. He had the fox look again. "I will have the profit, you're right about that. But you will haul them, and you'll do everything else I say, too."
Erlandr turned to walk away.
"Why do you think I left Iceland?" Goll called after him.
"You threw the knife that almost killed Young Chieftain Halfdan," Erlandr said, still walking.
Goll cackled. "Except I didn't throw it to you, you idiot. I threw it to him. He was supposed to stab you with it. I wasn't helping you attack him. I was defending him. If he wasn't such a bloated slob, you'd have a gash across your neck and I'd have a sack full of silver to spend on women and games."
Erlandr stopped dead. Surely, Goll was lying.
"I know you're a farmer and farmers are stupid, but even you must know that power can't sustain itself. It needs support. Likvidr has spies, agents working for him. They live among you. They're your friends, your family. Do you think I was the only one in that longhouse ready to see you dead?"
Erlandr remembered the faces that had been around him, yelling, beating drums, followed by the Riverraider's words that these people were regular people and that regular people can be bought or intimidated into doing bad things to people they otherwise care about.
Goll went on, speaking faster, "You're here because you raised a hand against your better. I'm here because I failed to prevent it. We are both outlaws, Erlandr. The only difference is that my crime is unofficial, my punishment unwritten. Your crime is legal. Your punishment is clear. Your capture is just. By this time, there's a bounty on your head in Iceland because power needs to make examples of people who challenge it. The bounty will be enough to turn Greenlanders against you." Goll drew a breath. "If," he said, "they know it's in their interest. Information can travel slowly. But that's the sword I hold above your neck. In Iceland, you're a dead man. Here, you're my man. Wherever you go, your life is no longer in your hands."
Erlandr felt his ribs turn inward. Just like that, his future in Greenland was gone. Indecision flowed through his bones, which felt empty, a system of delicate tubes ready to snap. If he killed Goll, he'd be a Greenland murderer. If he didn't, he'd have to do as Goll commanded. How easy it would have been to have pushed him over the side of the boat, into the sea along with his streams of vomit. If only Erlandr had known then...
"You have no choice—if you want to live, that is," Goll said.
But there was always a choice. East was a choice. Erlandr would bargain with the Riverraider for ownership of his boat, working off the cost with labour if necessary, or he'd scour Greenland for another boat. If he didn't find one, he'd construct it. He'd learn how. Then he'd sail to the mainland, bypassing Iceland, with its great and horrible past. What's the worst that could happen, an anonymous death on the seas?
In the meantime, he walked silently away.
"You'll come back," Goll said, picking up one of the walrus tusks. "You'll see reason. And when you do, these will be waiting."
Erlandr didn't look back.