Hawk Quest (71 page)
Vallon played out the pretence. ‘I’m worried that something’s happened to my missing men.’
Gleb went along with the fiction. ‘Ten of them, you said. Enough to protect each other. So forget them and share our meal. By the time we’ve finished, they might have returned. Who knows?’
‘Now I think of it, there must have been a misunderstanding. They’re probably waiting for us downriver.’ A glance to the rear
showed that everyone was in the boats. ‘We’d better make haste to join them. I’m sorry to refuse your hospitality.’
Gleb stared at the ground and when he raised his face it had grown sad. ‘But there is a problem. You’ve strayed onto Polotsk territory. Do you have permits to travel through Prince Vseslav’s land?’
Vallon played for time. ‘I carry a safe conduct from Lord Vasili of Novgorod.’
‘Lord Vasili’s letters don’t entitle you to be in this place. I’m surprised he didn’t provide you with a guide.’ He said something in Russian that made his men snigger. He composed his own features into seriousness. ‘The law is clear. A caravan that enters Vseslav’s territory without authorisation is liable to arrest, its goods subject to seizure.’
‘Let’s cut the play-acting,’ Vallon said. ‘It was Vasili who sent you.’
Gleb grinned. ‘And you don’t have ten men hidden in the forest. By Oleg’s count, there are only two, and one of them is a girl.’ He shook his head in mock sorrow. ‘You should have listened to Lord Vasili and sold him the falcons. I’m saving you a wasted journey. You’d never have got past the rapids and the nomads.’
He motioned with his hand and his men rose like a company released from a trance and drew their swords and strung their arrows and advanced.
Vallon drew his own sword and heard steel rasp behind him. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. You won’t live to profit by your treachery.’
‘Get in the boat!’ Drogo shouted.
It was too late. The Russians were only thirty yards away and would catch the boats before they reached deep water.
‘There’s no need to fight,’ said Gleb. ‘Give me the falcons and I’ll let you go on your way.’
Vallon backed to the water’s edge. ‘Hero, be ready to throw the falcons into the river.’
Gleb halted the advance. ‘Don’t be foolish. The falcons are the only thing that can save you.’
Vallon stepped into the river. ‘Cast off.’
As Gleb raised his hand to launch the attack, the dogs began to yelp and tug against their leashes. A horse whickered and tossed its head. Gleb glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at Vallon.
‘The falcons.’
‘Do I look like a fool?’
A shout from one of the Russians cut off Gleb’s answer. The horses had begun to whinny and tread, their ears pinned back and the whites of their eyes showing. The dogs howled and bit each other as they fought to break loose. A deep lowing came from the forest.
‘What in the …?’
Out of the trees streamed a bawling herd of aurochs led by a giant black bull that seemed to fly over the ground. They poured down the meadow, hell-bent on reaching the ford. Gleb shared a last astounded look with Vallon, then shouted an order and sprinted towards the squealing horses.
‘Get rowing!’
Vallon’s boat was clear of the bank when he reached it. Richard and Hero dragged him aboard and he turned to see the aurochs halfway down the meadow and the Russians still struggling to free their terrified horses. Some of them realised that they wouldn’t do it in time and began legging it to safety. Others managed to untie their plunging steeds but found it impossible to mount them. Two men subdued Gleb’s horse long enough for him to climb into the saddle. By then the aurochs were nearly upon them. One Russian stood in their path waving his arms in a doomed attempt to turn the tide. They flattened him like a skittle. Gleb’s horse spun and reared. He whacked it and sawed at the reins, one foot out of the stirrup. The black bull took horse and rider square on, one horn spearing Gleb’s thigh to his mount. It hoisted them clear of the ground and tossed them aside as if they weighed no more than dolls. Vallon saw a man give up on his horse only to dash into the path of a cow that swept him aside and left him lying with his limbs the wrong way round. A half-grown bull stotted down the meadow in a crazy prance and stove in a man’s face with a kick from its hind hooves. Bedlam. Aurochs bellowing, horses screaming, men yelling, dogs yelping.
The old bull hit the river at full gallop, parting the water in two great waves that fanned up like wings. Most of the herd followed his path, but some plunged perilously close to the boats, drenching their occupants with spray.
‘Row for the opposite shore,’ Vallon yelled.
‘What about Wayland?’
‘Don’t you worry about him. He’s the one who whipped up the storm.’
By the time the rowers had settled into a rhythm, some of the Russians had caught up their horses and were riding in pursuit, shooting arrows at a gallop. A few pounded ahead and dismounted at the end of the meadow so they could take surer aim as the boats passed. Every stroke carried the boats further across the river and by the time they drew level with the archers, the lofted arrows dropped short. From here the forest came down to the river and hindered pursuit. Gradually the yells grew faint with distance.
‘Stop rowing,’ Vallon ordered. ‘Blow the horn.’
Three times the notes blared out before the voyagers saw two figures flitting down to the bank. Vallon brought the boat in close and Wayland and Syth waded out and boarded while it was still moving. Their clothes were muddy and torn, their skin scratched by briars and blistered by nettles. They sat side by side, fighting for breath.
‘Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you come when we blew the first signal?’
‘I didn’t hear it,’ Wayland panted.
‘Didn’t hear it? What were you up to?’
Syth choked off laughter with her fist. Vallon and Hero exchanged looks, only their eyes moving, then simultaneously they reached the same conclusion and stared off as if some distant event had seized their attention.
Vallon scourged them on like galley slaves, the women as well as the men. They lay up overnight in a side-creek and were back at their oars before they’d properly woken. Only the Vikings could sustain the effort. Rowing was their life’s work and their hands were as callused as a dog’s paws.
For everyone else it was more than muscles and joints could stand. Something tore in Richard’s back, forcing him to row one-handed. Hero jerked upright at Vallon’s shout to find that he’d been rowing
while asleep. They hobbled ashore that night with their hands crooked into claws and their backs as rigid as boards. Each boat’s company cooked separately. An occasional snatch of conversation or laughter carried from the Vikings’ hearth, but everyone else was silent. Wayland and Syth were keeping watch on the river. Hero and Vallon drooped by their fire.
Drogo barged out of the dark dragging Caitlin’s maid, Asa. ‘Show him.’
The girl held out her hands to Hero, whimpering with pain. He saw why when he unwrapped the bandages. The skin on her palms was peeling off like a glove. He held her wrists. ‘Are your mistress’s hands that bad?’
Asa nodded tearfully.
Vallon hadn’t even looked up. He continued shoving food into his mouth. ‘I warned her it wouldn’t be a bed of roses.’
‘There’s no need to push us so hard,’ said Drogo. ‘They won’t chase us, not with Gleb dead. They haven’t even got boats.’
Vallon cocked a fire-reddened eye. ‘They can find boats in Smolensk. We have three days’ lead at most, and we’re at least twelve days from Kiev.’
‘I know that if you drive us at the same pace, by this time tomorrow you’ll be left with nothing but cripples.’
Hero intervened. ‘I’ll treat your hands with salve,’ he told Asa.
The girl couldn’t have been older than twelve. He dressed her palms with an ointment of lanolin and seaweed. When she’d left, he looked at Vallon. ‘Drogo’s right. Richard can’t sleep for pain.’ He showed his own raw palms. ‘I can hardly hold a cup, let alone an oar.’
Vallon stirred the fire. ‘You think I’m not suffering?’
‘That makes it worse. Your wound could open.’
‘We have to press on. My nightmare is that the Russians will slip past us during the night. Imagine coming round a bend to find them waiting.’
‘They won’t. Not with Wayland watching the river. I’m serious, sir. Another day like today and we’ll be fit for nothing.’
When Vallon didn’t answer, Hero rose and stretched, bunching his fists into the small of his back. He hiked up his shoulders against the chill and set off into the dark.
‘Will you treat Caitlin’s hands?’ Vallon said.
‘I’m on my way now.’
‘Thank you. You’ll make a good physician if you live.’
Fog was streaming off the hills when they gathered at the river next morning. The light diffused through the forest, casting no shadows, softening all outlines. The water had a leaden sheen. A fish eagle’s wild scream hung on the silence.
Most of the company were eyeing their boats with dull loathing when the Vikings jumped laughing and joshing into their own craft.
‘Wulfstan,’ Vallon called. ‘Today we’ll travel in two boats. Divide your men between them.’
Wulfstan eyed his men and gave an order. The Vikings trooped reluctantly from their boat and took up their berths.
They pushed off. Vallon told Richard to put down his oar and rest. He raised his eyebrows at Hero. ‘Happier?’
Hero grinned. ‘Much.’
The river ran slow, its current no faster than a geriatric walk. Even so, the boats must have covered fifty miles between dawn and dark. Their course led due south and after four days the river began to widen, in places stretching for two miles between shores, the surface like sheet metal under the great arc of sky. Hero drifted in a relaxed daze, only plying his oar to correct their course.
They meandered through a labyrinth of islands and sandbars and began to encounter fishermen and loggers poling rafts of timber. They paused in passing only long enough to find out how far they had to go before they reached Kiev. Villages began to appear every few miles. Sometimes they passed them in the dark, the only clues to their presence a bell tolling from a church, a rushlight shining through a door, a mother’s voice calling her children to supper. The voyagers always camped in the woods, choosing islands for preference.
Now that he had more leisure, Wayland began manning the falcons. Each day he fed them on his fist, and since the task was time-consuming, he enlisted Syth’s help, showing her how to balance the falcon with the jesses and food held between thumb and forefinger. Only Wayland handled the white haggard. His other favourite was a blocky tiercel with plumage that gleamed pewter and silver and steel all at once. Though tame, this bird wasn’t as well-mannered as the haggard. She ate with the poise of a queen, always
one eye on Wayland, her stare as quick and wild as the day he’d caught her.
Every second morning, weather permitting, he blocked them out by the river so that they could bathe. They rarely did, but spent the time bating against their jesses. The white haggard seemed to know she couldn’t break her tethers and yet she yearned for freedom and would crouch, fanning half-furled wings before springing up into thwarted flight in a way that made Wayland wince.
He and Syth spent part of each day hunting game from the skiff and rarely returned empty-handed. At every bend and inlet waterfowl spluttered across the water or sprang quacking into flight. He made Syth a light bow from a bough of seasoned yew he’d bought in Novgorod, planing the wood with a spokeshave that had belonged to Raul. When finished, the bow was D-shaped in cross-section, pale sapwood at the front for tension, golden heartwood at the back to resist compression. Shaping it made him think of Raul – his cunning hand at work while he told improbable war stories and outlined even less plausible plans for the future. And Raul’s death made him think of the dog and his gaze would wander over the forest as though its ghost still ran through these woods. Not even Syth knew how deeply he grieved for it. When she’d wept at the news of its death, he’d assumed an offhand manner. Only a dog he’d told her, until she drummed her fists against his chest and ran away to bawl her eyes out in private.
Only a dog. Its loss made him feel like a part of him had been torn out. Sometimes he spoke to it before realising with a clutch of his heart that it was gone. Once, a distant barking made him jump up in the delusion that somehow the dog had survived and had tracked hundreds of miles through the forest to find him.
One night a doleful howling woke him from sleep and he rose and followed the sound until he saw the silhouette of a wolf standing on a knoll above the river. It was howling at a full moon fretted with clouds. There were no clouds elsewhere in the sky and when he looked again he saw that the pattern was formed by wisps of geese crossing the moon like a mesh of black lace. He began to weep and he couldn’t say for whom he shed his tears. For the dog and for Raul, but also for the solitary wolf and for the geese on their pilgrimage south and for some pain too deep to fathom.
In the morning he nocked the ends of the bow with horn and strung it with gut. He measured Syth’s arm and shortened some of his arrows to fit her draw. He cut a target from cloth, pinned it to a tree and led Syth thirty yards away. He showed her how to stand with her weight balanced on both feet. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Don’t grip the bow with your fingers. Use hand pressure and keep your arm straight. You’re too tense. Push with your whole arm as if you were reaching for the target. Cock your elbow sideways otherwise the bowstring will hit it. Grip the string with the first joint of your fingers. Draw and aim at the same time. See the target in your mind’s eye rather than concentrating on it. Relax your arm and shoulder muscles. Let your back muscles do most of the work.’
Syth stamped her foot. ‘I can’t remember all that. Let me do it my own way.’
Wayland stepped back. ‘We’ll break it down later.’
Syth brought the bow up, drew and loosed. The arrow struck a foot above the target. She grinned at Wayland. Beginner’s luck, he thought. ‘You’ve got a sweet action,’ he said, and handed her another arrow. This time she hit below the target, but not by much. Frowning, he passed her a third arrow. It lodged quivering almost in the middle of the target.