Forged in Ice Read online

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  Forged In Ice

  Ken Hagan

  © Ken Hagan 2015

  Ken Hagan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2015.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Three

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Our kaupships are anchored in the fiord — I can’t look on them without a swell of pride — all six of them sea-going vessels of latest design. ‘Best cargo-carriers ever built’, my brother Einar says, and he should know. They lie full-rigged at moorings, with draught to spare, keel-heads showing the waterline. The hulls will weigh deeper in the water after our livestock goes aboard, deeper still once the decks are packed with every man, woman and child. Each ship will depart with a full lading. Nothing of worth will be left on shore. None of us can expect a return from our voyage to the ice lands.

  The Vigtyr, our family’s ship, is what catches my eye. It lies shoreward, second mast on left, grey sail furled shipshape to the yard. From here, high above the fiord, I can tell it’s ours from creels of loose ballast on deck, water butts fore and aft. We have bales of hay amidships to feed our livestock at sea. Out of sight, below deck-boards, precious seed and grains are stowed in woolsacks, safe from wave and weather, under tarps in the hold.

  The tide is at slack water, leaving the stony beach exposed to the eye. No morning wind to speak of, not even a breeze from the fells. Our men are fed up, everyone on edge, even on Da’s face a frown of impatience. We need an end to calm weather before we can think of boarding our livestock and horses. We pray to our guardian god Thor, who hammers storms on his anvil, that he will gather a wind from the east, ‘spill a fair tide with his paddle’, as the old saying goes, and carry our ships out to sea. We are camped with the other families on dry shingle at the head of the fiord, below Thwartdale, only bare necessities to hand — a constant gripe from my mother these last three weeks — since all tools and cookware are on board already so that we may sail at a moment’s notice.

  Once this weather turns, we will put on a spurt and move our livestock from shore to ship. The men have built a floating platform of birch, withied end-to-end, a makeshift raft and ramp to board the animals. The ramp is folded flat, like it has been for weeks, the whole thing rolling languid on the waves in the shallows.

  There are three families waiting for wind and tide, I’d say more than fifty folk, not counting infants or slaves. The scale of our voyage prompted me to ask yesterday: ‘With such a crowd going, Da, are we big enough to be called a tribe?’ Da took his time to reply. ‘These things, boy,’ he said, ‘these things are not determined by numbers alone: a tribe isn’t worthy of the name unless it is forged by ties of family and blood.’

  Since yesterday I have been trying to puzzle out what Da means. We are branded with the likes of old man Jarl and Grey Skar. We are part of their number and yet we have this sense of being apart. Tribe or not, it has to be said that, to all appearances, the three families gathered on shore, the Jarlsons, the Skarsons and us, the Thralsons, are mindful of each other’s needs. It’s almost as if we were a tribe. Driftwood is shared among us for the beach fires, and fish, hardened cheese, soured butter or salt pork given freely in return. We have run out of grain for bread ashore. Two days back, the last of our oats and barley was loaded on from the boarding-skiffs; flaxseed, lentils and rye a week ago. We won’t touch grain during the voyage. Salt pork and dried fish will be our staple. Seed grain will be a mainstay on whatever land we find to settle. If all goes according to plan, we will have our first harvest of rye in the ice lands fifteen months from now.

  We are bound for a strange land, weeks away over the water. Who wouldn’t relish it: the prospect of departure, the anticipation of danger, the lure of a long sea voyage, running west under sail?

  I keep thinking of why Da says we are not a tribe. Even if we are not a tribe, other than by force of circumstances, all of us, old and young alike, seem in good heart, bound by common purpose. It’s the strong ale that makes us hearty. The women have done us proud with their brewing, and loading ships is thirsty work.

  The fathers of the three families are charged with breaking the King’s laws. They encroached on his trade of walrus ivory, sealskins and reindeer hides in Finnmark, the King’s private preserve — and an easy income for his war chest. The King has handed down a judgement which drives us to exile in the ice lands.

  ‘Encroaching,’ said Einar in disgust, when he heard the verdict, ‘all we did was help ourselves to a few hides and skins. The ice-farers were more than willing to part with them.’ In a late show of mercy, the King has offered renegades — like Da, Skar and old man Jarl — the chance to pay a ‘gift’ to the royal treasury and pledge a share of future plunder in the outer isles, as if paying tax is better than exile.

  Some harrying crews have accepted the royal amnesty, but ours are proud men: they refused outright. They would rather try their luck abroad than stay at home in comfort and bow to a king’s demands.

  ‘Hey, nipper,’ says my father this morning — I am the youngest of his sons — ‘make your way to the tops. See that craggy rock above where our sheep are grazing? Go! Keep lookout there. I want to know as soon as there’s grey in the sky eastwards. Do you hear me, boy?’

  Da is lean and sinewy, which makes him appear taller than he is. He doesn’t expect an answer, but from force of habit I look into his eyes to show I am paying attention. Da waits, as usual, to see that I am taking notice, and carries on.

  ‘Once you catch sight of a cloud rising inland, tell the herd lads to drive our sheep down to the strand. I don’t want you to hang around. Don’t wait on them slave-hands rounding up the woolbacks — if you see grey in the sky eastwards, run ahead, nipper. Do you hear? Hurry down, sharpish, and come straight to me.’

  Without a word I am off, scrambling up the scree to reach the tops above the fiord. It is hard going on loose rocks, but I’d rather tackle it by the fell-side than walk by the dale. I will have a heck of a climb going straight up, but coming down I know of a dare-devil drop where I can slip-slide all the way. Great sport that will be, skidding, hell for leather, hot on my breeches!

  The slave-hands who tend my father’s sheep are lads younger than my ten years, the gap in our ages more marked by their being stooped and under-grown, while I am tall, well fed, and only three summers off from being a man.

  The tallest slave Bedwyr grins shy
ly, but the others utter barely a grunt of greeting. Elgyr and Tarkyr are surprised to see me but they would never say so. Gaukyr — you can tell he is a shirker — makes a show of moving about, being busy with the woolbacks among the gorse and pines. I suspect all four are scared shitless of being taken over the water to the ice lands. Maybe that’s what they were talking about before I arrived.

  Unlike their fathers and mothers, these lads were born here. They are used to hard graft in plough or pasture, digging bogs, clearing cesspits, all that stuff, but they have never been out on a rowboat to fish, or sailed, as I’ve done with my brother Cormac, to havens farther down the coast. No wonder the thought of being on an ocean-going kaupship fills them with dread.

  I can’t look at lads like this without thinking of my father. You see, Da was a slave at birth. Everybody knows his story. I say everybody, because it is part of the skald-man’s tales, spoken of in verse.

  Da saved the life of old man Jarl, not as he is now, you understand, fat and bald and slow on his feet, but years ago, while Jarl was a young warrior and kept a slave by him as a ‘shield-lad’ to guard his flank, and carry his helmet and arms into battle.

  Jarl’s storyteller, the skald-man who keeps a record of the great man’s deeds, recites it on feast days, so that Da’s courage, not to mention Jarl’s good fortune, can be remembered for generations to come. Da never talks about it. He doesn’t have to, not with the story being told blow-by-blow in verse.

  The thing is, he saved Jarl’s life not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions: the first time during a failed raid on Saxon soil, and later the same summer in two battles fought in Erinland. Jarl rewarded him with freedom and the offer of becoming a warrior, a great privilege in those days for a freed slave.

  Before Jarl’s war party sailed to home shores, my father had earned his share of the plunder, enough to stock a farm here in Norvegur, and by then he had with him the pick of the girl hostages plucked from Erinland.

  That’s when Raff Thralson, the son of a thrall, chose Ma to be his wife. My mother Auda always says it with a sigh, and yet a twinkle in her eye. Da calls her Audeen, a soft word by his standards, no doubting how much he treasures her.

  Sitting high on a boss of rock, within sight of the herd boys, I keep lookout for a sign of grey in the sky eastward. No one can gaze forever into a pale horizon. At times I chafe idly on a stick, glancing up now and then, but mostly my eyes are drawn down to the fiord and to the kaupships at their moorings. The tide went out early, and we are at slack water, but soon it will be on the flow. Today, incoming waves will barely reach the strand. We are in third quarter, a week before moon tide. A trail of wrack has left its hairy mark where last night’s breakers retreated from the shingle. The seaweed looks like a man’s beard on the curving jowls of the beach, and I imagine our six ships on the water as dark slants for his eyes, lips, and nose. The keels are anchored stern-end, bows turned seawards by the outgoing water, pointing to the mouth of the fiord. From way up here, I have to admit, they look small, too frail to be taken over an ocean.

  I shrug off any thought of weakness on my part: Einar says it is bad luck to worry about safety at sea. Einar is the master seafarer among us Thralsons, and a seasoned warrior. From him I have heard all there is to know about kaupships: how broad-keels are built of finest oak to withstand wind and wave, how their crossbeams and hulls can take a battering from ice floes in the water. Einar has not been as far west as the ice lands, but he knows what to expect on the voyage. Last week, I overheard him say to Da, ‘We are sure to encounter sea-ice, near the coasts, even in summer.’ Something weighs heavy on Da’s mind, and it is not sea-ice. The real burden is the debt on his shoulders. We talk of the Vigtyr as our family’s ship, but it doesn’t belong to us, not outright. The two that will be sailed by the Skarsons aren’t theirs either. The funds came from Jarl — Da wasn’t able to raise a scrap from selling the steading. The King has an eye on our land. He means to have the vacant fells by Thwartdale for his own. He will snatch the farms after we have gone. No one with an ounce of sense will put a price on house or barn, or offer to buy a field in our dale. I suppose this is how things happen when men are forced to flee the country. Da was left with nothing, other than what little he made from the sale of livestock and a trade of hay, the same for Grey Skar and his sons. Lucky for us, old man Jarl was able to trawl deep from his years of booty. He had all six kaupships built from new. Three were for him and his kin, two for Skar and his sons, the last one, ours. Once we settle in the ice lands, Jarl will claim back double the loan for the ships; he will be paid in produce, animal feed, wool shearings and the like. Da and Grey Skar will stump up, harvest-in, harvest-out, till their debts are cleared.

  Da named our ship the Vigtyr, man-of-war, an unlikely name for a ship built for voyage and trade. Not in Da’s eyes. To bring us luck, he even had warlike runes carved by Jarl’s skald-man at the bows. When the runes were done and blessed, my brother Feilan murmured into Ma’s ear — it was like a child’s secret, though we all heard: ‘It makes no difference, Ma, what has been written.’

  ‘Why is that, Feilan?’

  ‘We don’t need war-runes to tell which ship is ours, do we, Ma?’

  ‘No, son, we don’t,’ she replied, and stroked his manly beard as though he were a child.

  *

  A young girl is climbing the fell. She is my age, by the shape of her. She is on all fours, haring towards me, up the scree. Her bright face is all smiles, when she catches my eye. She slips and slides, clambering over the stones. It is Helga Idgars-daughter.

  I thought she might follow me here, when she saw me making off from the camp: she has run away from her chores as soon as her mother’s back was turned. Helga is a grand-daughter of Grey Skar, and daughter of Idgar Skarson. I watch her climb the scree.

  Helga and I have been friends since we were big enough to escape our mothers’ apron strings. My father and hers have farmed neighbouring steads, cheek by jowl, in the same dale for years. It is sad to think that Thwartdale and the fells, where we know every stone and clump of grass, will no longer be our home.

  For as long as I remember, Idgar and Da have been absent steadmen, always away at sea with Jarl and his sons, from spring to early winter; trading north, raiding south, while stock and stead at home was looked after by women, children and slaves. In our case it was different; or rather it came to be, once my eldest brother was able to take care of things. In Sepp, Da had a son of manly age he could leave behind in Thwartdale. That’s why we look up to him, all of us, Ma and Da too.

  Sepp is a gold solid man: any father would be proud to call him their son. He is strong as an ox from the waist up, but too lame for seafaring and raiding. I do pity Sepp, but don’t get me wrong. I don’t pity him because of his deformity, rather because, of all us Thralsons, my brother has suffered most for having to abandon his native stead and dale.

  It breaks his heart to leave. It torments him that he has had to part with our cows for next to nothing. We are taking two calves. They are all we have left from the herd. Of the sheep there will be six ewes and a ram for breeding, only six wethers for wool; lambs and yearlings gone, pigs sold or salted for the journey. We have to consider the weight of the lading. The Vigtyr has a broad beam, a deep draught, straked high above water, but the hold can’t be over-laden, not when we face the likelihood of heavy seas.

  I take my eyes off the eastern sky and look down from the fell.

  ‘Helga,’ I yell down to her, ‘not that way, the scree is too steep! Climb round the other side, where I came up, see, by that flat rock!’

  She laughs at me, she’s near the top; she won’t heed my advice. I feel a tug at my arm from behind. It is Bedwyr; he is tall for a slave-hand, though barely up to my shoulder.

  ‘Look out there, young master,’ says the boy, ‘see, in the fiord!’

  I follow his hand pointing west, seawards beyond the kaupships. I stand and stare. Darting in at the mouth of the fiord towards ou
r moorings, a fighting ship, long and slender, not under sail on account of the calm weather, but rowed inshore at full-pelt, the blades of its oars tipping the surface of the water.

  Long-ships never turn up alone. There must be others hidden behind the headland. I scan westerly, far into the offing, beyond the ness, looking out past the islets and skerries. No ships are in sight. I see nothing where the fiord bends south and narrows at the sill, nothing but a thickening haze over the sea.

  ‘Kregin, Kregin, help me!’ She’s panicking; Helga is losing her foothold on the scree.

  ‘I won’t let you fall, I will come to you,’ I shout back.

  I have shouted without thinking: I won’t be able to stretch that far. Before I know it, Bedwyr has grasped my hand. The slave lad tightens his hand over my wrist. I have a grip on his, our hands overlapping for strength. With Bedwyr anchoring from above, I take one step over the crag, then another, crouching sideways. I stretch down over moss, over gorse and bracken, straining closer towards Helga, leaning back for balance, risking my whole weight on Bedwyr’s wrist. The first thing I grab is the hood of her cape, just enough to stop her from slipping. She clutches at the yellow gorse — thorns, petals, roots and all —her fingers snatch for something firmer. She finds a cleft in the rock.

  With one bound, then two, she climbs over me, over Bedwyr. All we see is her bare legs leaping in the air as she gets to safety on the top. I fuss over Idgar’s daughter and rub her hand. She is bleeding from the spines.

  ‘Helga, what got into you? That was just plain stupid.’

  Her smile broadens to a grin and her face is all dimples, freckles and mischief.

  I look past her to the eastern sky. I see grey on the horizon; clouds gathering. To Bedwyr I give a sharp nod of command, the way my father would do.

  ‘Follow me down, lad, bring the sheep, do you hear? We are boarding today!’ And to Helga, ‘Look! A long-ship in the fiord; it’s going to beach on the strand.’