2
Wisps of smoke escaping upward from the primitive chimney-holes of the nearby longhouses expanded as the ghosts of inverted cones and dissipated into the grey, windless sky that draped the entire length of the rocky flatness, stretching from the hill on which Dvalinn the Riverraider stood all the way to where the silhouettes of mountains guarded passage across the horizon. It was an expanse as empty and rough as it was indescribable, but treated honestly, without laziness, it had also become home. Dvalinn didn't think of it as Iceland anymore. That derisive name belonged to the easterners, coined in retreat by one of them who had arrived, failed and fled. Dvalinn hadn't failed. Dvalinn wasn't an easterner anymore.
He turned toward the west. That way, beyond the stillness of the sea, was Greenland.
"Are you ready, Riverraider?" The voice came from the foot of the hill, where the locals had gathered to help conduct the funeral rites for Dvalinn's wife.
Her shrouded body lay atop the prepared funeral pyre to which Dvalinn was supposedly now adding the gifts that she would take with her into the afterlife. In truth, it was a pitifully small pyre with few possessions: a comb, a dagger, several items of jewellery. He could hardly believe that the small body wrapped in cloth belonged to the same woman he'd loved, for whom he had lain down the sword and sailed here to start a new life. Faceless, she seemed anonymous. Spiritless, she was an anonymous thing. Besides, he reasoned, their life together had been a modest one. They had taken little from the land and brought into it only one son. Why should they take more out? "Ready," he said. His voice was hoarse from too much silence.
Two men emerged from the crowd of locals. They carried a pair of lit torches. Dvalinn closed his eyes, but the flickering flames persisted.
When he opened his eyes, the two men were standing on opposite sides of the pyre, ready to touch their torches to it.
A horseman appeared in the distance below.
The torchbearers knelt, awaiting Dvalinn's instructions. "Riverraider..."
Dvalinn nodded.
The torches touched the pyre.
The horseman sped toward the funeral hill, his horse's hooves beating ever more audibly against the ground.
The pyre began to smoke. The torchbearers backed away.
Dvalinn, unable to watch the kindling take, watched the incoming horseman instead. The smell of burning trickled into his nostrils. The crackling of sticks mixed with the rhythm of riding. At the foot of the hill, the crowd parted and the horseman yanked his horse's reins to come to an abrupt stop. A horse was a marker of wealth, which was an attribute of power. The horseman dismounted, bowed his head and began the hike up the hill.
The torchbearers moved to block his way, but Dvalinn motioned for them stay back. He smoothed the ends of his moustache.
"I come in the name of," the horseman began, even before reaching level ground. He was young and handsome and out of breath. "In the name of Young Chieftain Halfdan, the Revered, son of Chieftain Likvidr." Glancing back, he slid his right hand over the hilt of the sword that hung from a scabbard on his belt. Several in the crowd were petting the horseman's horse. Someone had grabbed the reins.
"Understood," Dvalinn said. "What is your purpose?"
The funeral pyre spat its first orange flames. The horseman noted them nervously. "For the tithe," he said, quickly adding, "sir," as the torchbearers took steps toward him.
"Ain't ever heard of that," one of them said.
"Me, neither," said the other.
"The tithe, Young Chieftain Halfdan says..."
"This is a funeral," Dvalinn said. "What right have you to interrupt it looking to take a tenth?"
The horseman smiled. "Oh, yes, yes. Exactly, yes. A tenth." He was slurring his words. Something in the pyre cracked. "You must pay a tenth. Such is the tithe."
"We believe in the old ways," Dvalinn said.
"Being the traditional and right ways," added the first torchbearer.
"But Young Chieftain Halfdan, he says all must pay the tithe on all religious services, true or pagan, sirs."
"Pagan?" The second torchbearer spat. "We are Norsemen."
The horseman's horse neighed.
The flames travelled up the pyre and begin nipping at the shrouded body lying atop.
The torchbearers' eyes clouded over with the possibility of violence. The horseman's hands shook. Sweat sprouted from the pores on his forehead. "Sirs, the orders of the Chieftain..."
Dvalinn stepped back.
The torchbearers stepped forward.
The horseman unsheathed his sword and did a full rotation, taking in his enemies and their surroundings. He might have been preparing a battle plan, but he was still a boy.
"Stand down," Dvalinn said to the torchbearers.
When they didn't, he repeated the command louder. This time they did as instructed. "Riverraider," one of them whined.
Dvalinn ignored him. "Step forward," he told the horseman, "and do as the Chieftain commands. If he commands you take a tenth, take a tenth. Reach into the fire and retrieve for him what is rightfully his. But, first, tell me what is one tenth of a blunt dagger, an old comb, a few pieces of worthless jewellery and an old woman's dead body?"
The horseman stared at Dvalinn; the torchbearers; and the pyre, which was now almost in full flame.
Dvalinn turned toward the pyre, too. He let its hissing fill his ears and its heat warm his cheeks. He also could reach inside. He could walk into it. He could lie down on it, beside the burning body that last week was still his sickly, beloved wife but that by the morning would be nothing but a mound of ash...
"I... I was," the horseman stammered out.
Then he slid his sword back into his scabbard, backed away several paces and spun, before marching the rest of the way down the hill with his red face forced upward. The grey sky was unmoved. The crowd gave him back the reins to his horse, which he mounted, slapped on the haunches and rode off on, as quickly and unexpectedly as he had appeared. The sound of his horse's beating hooves receded.
"We should have killed him," the first torchbearer said to Dvalinn, who was still staring into the fire. He blinked and kept his eyes shut. Again, the flames persisted.
"He will return," Dvalinn said.
"And if we don't kill him then, he'll keep returning," the second torchbearer said. "So I say we should kill him once and for all."
"His death solves nothing," Dvalinn said. "He is merely a follower. If you kill him, another will come."
"So we kill that one, too."
"And so on, killing after killing for eternity?"
"Until Ragnarok," the torchbearer said.
I do not believe in Ragnarok, Dvalinn thought. "That may be many killings from now," he said.
"So what do you propose, Riverraider?" the first torchbearer asked.
In the distance, the horseman had become a black speck on the grey ground. Closer, the pyre burst into an orb of fire, with tongues that covered Dvalinn's wife's shrouded body and licked like rabid hounds at the surrounding air. "I do not know," Dvalinn said. "But it is no longer my answer to give." Without his son and without his wife, Iceland no longer felt like his home. He sighed. He was still an easterner after all.
"What are you saying?"
Dvalinn didn't answer. He had already turned his back on both the torchbearers and the pyre. Walking down the hill, he looked once more toward the west. That was where his son had sailed. That, Dvalinn decided, was where his future lay. To Hell with Chieftain Likvidr and to Hell with his sadistic son, Halfdan—if Hell is what they now believed in.
At the foot of the hill, the funeral crowd closed around Dvalinn. "Riverraider," people whispered. Young people, old people. Men, women. They offered their condolences and sincerely said trite things that moved Dvalinn nevertheless for being trite. He would return their warmth. He would keep the custom. In seven days, he would give them their feast. Then, on the eighth day, he would sail. "Thank you," he said, nodding and cupping warm, grateful hands, until—
His old knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
He covered his face with the leathery palms of his hands and started to cry.
But his tears were tears of hope, not sadness, for his heart, though hurt, was not empty. Somewhere, he knew, Framarr was still alive. Some day they would find each other. Somewhere, someday...
A pair of strong arms hooked themselves under Dvalinn's armpits and lifted him up.
He was disoriented for a second.
Then he saw the pyre burning brightly on top of the hill and remembered his wife and recognized the plain face of Erlandr, son of Jokell the sheep farmer, staring warmly into his eyes. Erlandr smiled. It was an innocent smile, a labourer's smile. "I must get home. I have matters I must arrange," Dvalinn said.
"Of course, Riverraider," Erlandr said.
Other faces were looking at Dvalinn and smiling, too. All of them were innocent. Even the torchbearers' faces, which had been so eager to kill the horseman yet so ignorant of the consequences of such an act. But worse even than the stew of smiles was their collective expectation. They expected him to lead, to take responsibility. I don't owe you anything, Dvalinn thought. I never agreed to lead. The fate had befallen him gradually and naturally, like rain darkening a stone, drop by drop. Maybe it was because he was from the east. Maybe it was because he brought with him a reputation. Except that his reputation should have elicited fear, not smiles and the expectation that he would do what was best for the community.
When he was out of their reach, on his way back to the small house that now stood empty, he struggled with this sense of duty. He resented it. Even when he reasoned his way out of it, his heart refused to listen. Why, he asked almost aloud, do I feel guilty?