Forged in Blood Read online

  No long-ships on the pier. We have seen no harriers on the estuary and no sign of them upriver on an-Shuir. Five cargo-carriers on the pier, stubby kaupships short-hulled for coastal trade. One is loaded to the gunnels with peat-coal, ready to be cast off on ebb-tide. Four livestock-ships are moored near floating ramps down-pier of the peat-carrier. No cattle or sheep onboard, but the ships are not empty. They have water-boxes filled amidships, hay bales stacked fore and aft, and straw in the hold. We hear cries of wool-backs in the air — not far off — from inside the walls of Lodin’s fort.

  We are moored and secure against the empty toll-wherries. Skip has kept sail aloft, all ropes intact, and given no orders for down-rigging. He has the crew offload bags of spelt on the pier-head, spelt harvested at Kildobhan monastery. We carry the bags across the wherries and pile them ashore at the jetties. Hakon has a banter with a skipper on the pier. He goes off to haggle with a merchant inside the palings, and returns, pleased with the price of exchange, but disappointed by news he has learned at the grain-store. His friend Lord Lodin — Custodian of the Three Rivers — is not at the fort. Lodin has taken his family on a wolf-hunt with horse and hounds. He will not be back for a week.

  Hakon gives ship’s orders to the crew, with an elaborate aside mimed for the benefit of Kru. Skip rattles out his commands, but keeps his eyes on the bubbling waters of an-Shuir, looking for any change on the darkening surface of the river. He hails Fergal to heel, as if the Erse-lad was one of the crew. ‘Coil the mooring-ropes! Look lively, young man!’ He takes it for granted that our two starved-looking runaways will have decided to stay on board.

  A change of plan. The crew will not have their night ashore at haven, whether lazing on the riverbank, at the brew-house, or inside the palings at Lodin’s fort. Hakon has decided to re-join the tide. Given a fair swell, we will sail the Meuris upriver tonight and reach the shipyard at Ekvith.

  Baldr and Kru will stay behind. They will guard our stock of spelt on the jetty till the grain-weight is checked. It will be dark before the merchant has emptied the grain-bags and weighed the contents on his scales. Baldr and Kru will join us at Ekvith. They will come on foot, following the river-bank as far as the oak forest and from there to the shipyard. Or if they are lucky, they will hitch along river on a toll-wherry.

  Hakon jumps aboard the Meuris. He hails Baldr on the jetty. ‘Use our weights for weighing the grain, not the merchant’s! I don’t trust him.’ Then he yells to the crew. ‘Make it snappy, Halpin, Thor’s sake, cast off, man! Oars and paddle, all hands, oars and paddle till we are mid-stream!’

  Dantzk and Halp have faces like thunder.

  *

  It is the morning of our third day at the shipyard. Fergal and the girl Reenoch are still with us. While Baldr was at Vadrar-fiord, seeing to the grain, he found a wherryman who will take the young pair up to Inis-tioc. It will be two weeks — or maybe three — before the wherry has a full load of wares to move upriver to the tide-head. Until then, Fergal and the girl he calls his sister will share our camp on the riverbank.

  The shipwrights at Ekvith are from one family. Thrandt — master shipwright for Lord Lodin — took an Erse-woman for his wife. They have raised three burly sons. Thrandt has had them working with him on the ships since they were able to walk. The two older brothers are sullen and rarely speak. They never work alone, always side by side with axe and chisel, stud-nails and hammers, block and mallet. They look up from their tasks to grumble or check measurements with a well-rubbed ell-stick that passes between them. Hrut, the younger lad, is talkative and friendly. He gave the names of his brothers as Vermund and Stein.

  *

  Thrandt’s horses pulled our ship off the river — from the cutting — along a roller-way of logs — and into dry dock for repairs. The Meuris is stripped of mast, rigging and sail; deck-boards removed and set aside for caulking. Two new cargo-carriers are being built on the roller-way, sea-going ships in the last stages of construction. To launch a ship — after it is built or repaired — the un-decked hull is rolled off the logs into the cutting beside the river. The cutting can be flooded from upstream when sluices are opened at high-water. Thrandt has told Hakon that he plans to have all three ships — ours and two new vessels — off his roller-way by Vali’s day. There is another new-build, a ‘horse-ship’ fitted out to transport horses, for delivery to King Orm at Vaes-fiord.

  *

  Back of the dry dock, in the space between forest and river, is a clearing overgrown with reeds and ferns. The area is littered with frames and hulls of long-ships — they were removed from the roller-way to make space for Thrandt’s new ship-work, and are now abandoned. Moving them across dry land has gouged ruts on the peaty ground over which they were hauled. The ruts are filled with stagnant rainwater that doesn’t dry out or drain away.

  Of the abandoned ships I count five fit for the water — seaworthy but never launched — hulls straked and caulked; carved serpents’ heads menacing proudly at the prow. The steering-gear has been put in place, oar-holes set-in along the length of each ship, even innards fitted out with row-benches between beams. The remainder — maybe up to a dozen long-ships — are nothing but bare frames: skeletons of keel, sternpost, and stem: an empty cage of ribs, buttressed by mouldy staves.

  A stock of wood for the unfinished ships was cut in the forest and assembled — all light-weight timbers from which long-ships are built — stacked in piles by length and shape. Some planks were shaved to slim strakes, and have since warped or shrunk into misshapes. The woodpiles are overgrown with grass and ferns. The thinning forest behind the clearing — the abandoned long-ships and oak timbers — remind me an old saying, which I often heard from Einar, while I was a child.

  ‘Can’t build a ship without felling oaks; can’t build a fleet without flattening a forest.’

  *

  Reenoch has scrubbed the hold of the Meuris. Her fingers are raw. She has scraped the bilge down to the bare wood. But her scrubbing and scraping haven’t purged the timbers from the reek of walrus blubber that once filled the hold. Fergal took a hand yesterday at scraping barnacles off the hull. Hakon was not impressed. Fergal’s endless chatter, and habit of breaking into song, held the rest of us back from our work. This morning, Hakon packed him off to spear fish for our supper.

  Thrandt has built an ebb-trap at the river, a simple yair of stones to attract fish at the weir. Fergal borrowed a seine-net from Hrut and bodged up a makeshift blade-and-stick. To our surprise, the young Erse-man returned before noon with a net full of silvery shad and was promptly sent off to gather wood and kindling for our night fire.

  ‘Young fella!’ Hakon shouts after him. ‘While you are in the forest, see what wood-game you can snare for us. Don’t come back empty-handed!’

  ‘That should keep drummer-boy busy,’ mutters Dantzk.

  Reenoch looks up from her sail-work — Hakon has her re-braiding the reefing cords — she cannot hide a smile, as she watches Fergal disappear into the forest.

  ‘Where’s Fjak got to?’ This is the second time that Hakon has asked. Skip is teasing. He knows that Fjak is flat out on his back — in hiding on the opposite side of the ship — where he is supposed to be scraping the hull. We hear our shipmate groaning and muttering; we hear his pretence of blowing shell dust from his face as if barnacles were flying off the strakes under his busy hand.

  ‘Tell Fjak.’ Skip has a mischievous smile. ‘Tell Fjak when you see him, if he wants another season on the Meuris, I might find a place for him on the crew.’

  Fjak makes a show of throwing down his scraper. He peers over the gunnels, stands in full view. ‘Come Vali’s day, I might join you, Skipper Hakon,’ he replies ungraciously. ‘But who knows? There might be better offers elsewhere for good men like me!

  Hakon returns Fjak’s cheek without batting an eyelid. ‘Smack hands on that! If, in the meantime, I find someone better to hire, I will be happy to let you go!’

  ‘I have known crewmates like Fjak all my l
ife,’ says Halpin. ‘Once they are on a ship, they stick like limpets; they won’t let go!’

  *

  Tide ebbs past the shipyard and down-river to the sea, running swift and dark from the upper reaches of an-Shuir. A river-wind chases the ebb downstream. It shortens the flames of our night fire. The unfinished hulls of the new cargo-carriers are caught between low, darting flamelight and shadow. The prow of the Meuris juts out from behind the other two hulls. In sparse flamelight — by a trick of the eye — all three ships appear to be in motion. The ships are held firm by chocks, and trestled securely between gangways and staves — they can’t be on the move — but they seem to tilt and roll as if on a swell, and the solid roller-way, on which they stand, flows like a dark sea under their hulls.

  The shipyard reeks of a day’s toil — from Reenoch’s scrubbing, our hull-scraping, and the labours of Thrandt and his family. Smells cling to our beards and clothing: stale odour of crushed barnacles, sweetness of sawdust and shavings from oak, boiled pine-tar and glue, forge-wood blackened to char. Thrandt and his youngest son Hrut have rived timber off a newly felled oak, splitting wedges from the centre of the trunk. His older sons, Vermund and Stein, have been on the roller-way, fitting strakes to the cargo-carrier. The curving bows are taking shape. Thrandt’s wife, Sae-Unn, is no stranger to work. She has been at the other cargo-carrier, sealing clinker joints. She made an oily paste of sheep’s wool mixed with pine-tar, and trowelled it into gaps between strakes. The paste boiled over and caught fire. The smoke from it stings our eyes.

  *

  Our cooked shad-fish are fleshy. They taste good, but stink of river-mud. Reenoch gutted the bigger shad caught by Fergal, and buried them under wood-ash to bake at the edge of the fire. Smaller fish she roasted whole like sprats, holding them to the flame to let the skin sizzle on the end of a stick. Thrandt’s wife sends her son Hrut from the family’s long-house with a half-kettle of barley left over from their supper. She makes a fuss of scraping out every last husk of barley from the pot: ‘Waste not, want not,’ she spits accusingly at the crew. ‘Good victuals shouldn’t be left in the pot.’ Kru eats the scrapings.

  Mother and son linger at our fire, waiting for Reenoch to begin her song. Wood-smoke from the fire smells of shad scorched under cinders, and of discarded fish-bones thrown back on the flames. In daytime the river gives off an odour of mud, tainted by brackish water carried upstream by the tide, but, after dark, forest smells, dank and sweet, twitch our noses. Dew settles on claggy peat and nettles. The night air is sweet with fallen oak-twigs and green acorns, early windfalls off the trees.

  Mists creep into the clearing from the woodland floor. Wood-smoke fills the gaps between trees, where tall oaks have been felled. Trapped within the gaps, and sheltered from river-wind, smoke and mist settle like an array of war-shields along front of the trees, as if a band of warriors was about to emerge silently from the forest.

  While we sit about the fire, Fjak nods off, head slumped between his knees. Hakon has eyes closed, back rigidly upright — his stance strangely alert — as he does while he sleeps on ship. The rest of the crew are awake. Hrut and his mother have stayed in our company. Fergal beats the drum softly. He rattles out the drummer’s ‘once-upon-a-time’, the ‘rah’tuh-rah’tuh-tah’ to introduce his sister’s tale.

  ‘He who has travelled has stories to tell…,’

  Reenoch sings a dirge in the Erse tongue — ‘the lament of the mountain doe’— telling of a herd of startled deer, running to escape the hunters. The doe leads her brothers and sisters to a wooded valley of safety, but is herself chased to exhaustion by hounds, who gain on her with every passing verse of the dirge. Halp taps his knee lazily in time to the drum. Dantzk and Baldr sit unmoving, intent on the words. They gaze into the fire.

  Fergal’s wrist flicks across the drum-skin. The pitch of his drum-roll is soft and low — a slow, unceasing rumble — an insistent beat. Kru studies the tipper-bone in the drummer’s hand. He stares at the beating bone; stares at the bodhrán drum, as if by fastening his eyes on them, he can sense the throb on his deaf ears; as if he can see from Fergal’s accompaniment the reflected image of the song. I would make an attempt to tell Kru the story of the dirge — make signs to describe how the lone doe runs from the hounds — but Kru’s eyes remain fixed on the drum.

  Fergal taps lightly, taps with greater speed of wrist. He raises tempo; plays faster. The drumming falls to a dull, quiet moan —echoing the call of the doe. Thrandt’s wife — as if waiting for this very moment — gets to her feet and stands before the wind-battered fire. Fire-smoke swirls around her. River-wind billows the hems of her apron. Sae-Unn throws shawl off her head; gives vent to a moan. She begins plaintively. The quiet rhythm of the drum and the deep matronly drone from Hrut’s mother seem to chase Reenoch’s girlish tones to a wilder, darker melancholy.

  Cornered by the hounds, the doe leaps over the precipice to her death.

  *

  The shipyard is silent but for a crackling from the fire. Our fire burns bright. Flames reach high into the night. The air is still. The wind off the river has died, the rush of waters fallen to a gentle flow. I am wakened by the howling of a she-wolf that has strayed to the eaves of the forest. The howl fades. The wolf retreats. She doesn’t fear us, but she fears the fire. A huddled shape passes across the fire. The leather sleeping-sack on the other side of Kru is empty. It is where Fjak beds down. The man, whom I take to be Fjak, crouches for a moment, as if to keep hidden. Whoever it is, he’s up to no good. I watch him, still skulking low, heading stealthily towards the river.

  I slip out of my sleeping-sack and follow.

  *

  Fjak is on a stony bank, which overlooks the cutting beside the river. The cutting is caked in mud. It has dried out from when it was last used to dock the Meuris. Fjak has stretched out face-down on the bank and peers into the cutting. He is engrossed by something he sees in the shadows and doesn’t hear me walk up behind.

  ‘What can you see? Is it an animal? An intruder? Who’s down there?’

  Fjak turns, startled at first, but, having seen me, he puts a sly finger to his lips. ‘I knew it, Thralson,’ he replies in a leering whisper. ‘They are runaways — like I said.’ He points down into the cutting. ‘Look at them! Fergal and the young hussy. Now, tell me plainly. Is that the way of brother and sister? Raw naked, the pair of them — him on top of her — and going at it, hammer and tongs!’

  Chapter 17

  ‘They had you fooled, Baldr,’ says Fjak. ‘But not me! I never took them for brother and sister.’

  ‘They are long gone,’ replies Baldr, annoyed at the goading. ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘You are a soft touch,’ says Halp. ‘All you white-livered Christians are! You went out of your way to help them, and how were you re-paid? That rascal Fergal ran off with your jerkin.’

  ‘I told Fergal yesterday that he could have the jerkin,’ returns Baldr. ‘Getting too small for me. The skin was coming apart at the seams. Poor lad, he owns nothing but the serk on his back.’

  ‘But they took our spare ship’s rope too,’ says Halp. ‘That wasn’t theirs to take.’

  Dantzk grunts and spits out barnacle dust. Among us, only he and Kru are scraping the hull. ‘Yeah,’ says our tall jib-man from under the stern. ‘Thanks to Baldr, they got clean away on the tide.’

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ says Baldr. ‘All I did last week was speak to the wherryman. He would have taken them upriver to Inis-tioc — this week or next week — whether I asked or not. Anyone who works passage on his wherry is welcome.’

  ‘They won’t do much,’ says Halp. ‘They ain’t cut out for work. The wherryman will take the rope off them as payment. It was a fair length of coil they filched. Skip will go mad when he finds out.’

  ‘Cunning little pups,’ murmurs Fjak. ‘They must have skulked off while it was dark.’

  ‘No wonder they ran away,’ says I at last.

  ‘How’s that?’ croaks Dantzk,
throwing down his scraper.

  ‘Better ask Fjak,’ I reply. ‘He was the one, who went spying on them in the middle of the night.’

  ‘You were there too. Thralson!’

  ‘Yes, but only to see what you were up to.’

  ‘Well, come on, Fjak,’ says Dantzk. ‘Don’t beat about the bush. Tell us what you saw.’

  Chapter 18

  From the forest — distant, within the canopy of oaks, comes the sound of wood-horns and hounds: huntsmen’s cries, whooping hurrahs, yells and yowls to urge on the hounds.

  ‘The hunt might be heading our way, father,’ says Hrut excitedly. He steps back from splitting the oak, sets down his riving-tool and listens.

  Thrandt drives the wedge deeper on his side of the oak. With one stroke of the mallet he splits off a length of timber. ‘Come on, son, back to work. A wolf can outrun huntsmen and hounds. He may lead them far from the forest — even into the mountains.’

  ‘Your father is right,’ says Hakon. ‘There’s no knowing where the hunt will end or whether they will catch the quarry. They might go on till dusk. Lodin’s wolf-hounds chase by sight, not by scent. The lead-hound has to keep his eye on the prey, or the entire pack may lose the kill.’

  *

  The sounds of the hunt fade away, fade into the distance. But for squirrels fristling for acorns; wood-peckers rattling on bark; ground-fowl in the thickets, the forest falls silent. The huntsmen’s prey has escaped to the mountains, or run west along the river — or even hidden in a lair among the oaks.

  *

  The forest floor trembles. Thud of horses heavily-ridden. The hunt is close. Barking of hounds, bleating of horns, stomping of hooves, churning of peat and stones, rustle of branches and bracken, snapping of dry boughs among the undergrowth. Hounds again have sight of the prey. Huntsmen yowling them on. Above the hunt’s raucous cries, the lingering yelp of a wolf — high-pitched, like the cry from a husky-voiced woman — the same piercing yelp as woke me through the night. A she-wolf is skirting the eaves of the forest.