It was then I saw they were afraid of Gunnar Raudi and learned later from Halldis, of course that Gunnar stayed at Bjornshafen because he had got both Bjarni and Gudleif back from a raid to Dyfflin that went badly wrong. Everyone thought them dead and then, two seasons later, in they sailed with a stolen ship, captured thralls and tales of Gunnars daring. They owed him their lives and a berth for as long as he breathed.
I stole it from Gudleif, I told my father, when it was clear he wanted me to die in the snow on the way to Freydiss hov.
He rubbed his beard and frowned, nodding. Aye, so Gunnar said when he sent word.
That had been the day Gunnar had cracked my world, a day that began with Gudleif sitting in his gifthrone with his ship prows on either side and himself swathed in furs, trying to be a great jarl and managing only to look like a bad-tempered cat.
Bjarni had died the previous year and Halldis the year before that. Now Gudleif complained of the cold and avoided going out much. He sat, hunched and glowering, with only old Caomh close to his elbow, the thrall who had come back as a slave from a Christ temple in Dyfflin.
Nearby, the equally old Helga shuttled a loom back and forth and grinned her two last teeth at me, while Gunnar Raudi, just visible in the smoking gloom, worked on a leather strap.
I am not up to the journey to the high pasture this year, Gudleif said to me. The herd needs to be brought down and some essentials taken to Freydis.
It was an early winter, the snow curling off Snaefel, the colour leached from the land by cold, so that there were only black tree skeletons on grey under a grey sky. Even the sea was slate.
It has already snowed, I reminded him. It may be too deep to drive horses down now. I refrained from reminding him that I had spoken of this weeks before, when it might have been easier to do.
There was no sound save for the clack-shuff of the loom and the sputter of a fire whose wood was too damp. Halldis would not have made it so.
Gudleif stirred and said to me, Perhaps. If so, you will over-winter there and bring them in spring. Freydis will have prepared.
It was not an attractive proposition. Freydis was a strange one and, truth to tell, most people thought her a volva, a witch. I had never seen her, in all my fifteen years, though her hov was no more than a good days walk up the lowest slopes. She tended Gudleifs best stallions and mares on the high pasture and was clever at it.
I thought of all this and the fact that, even if she had prepared well, there would not be enough fodder to keep the herd fed through the hard winter it promised to be. Or, perhaps, even the pair of us.
I said as much and Gudleif shrugged. I thought Gunnar Raudi was probably best to go and said that, too. Gudleif shrugged again and, when I looked at him, Gunnar Raudi was busy beside the hearthfire, too concerned with his strap of leather even to look up, it seemed to me.
So I prepared a pack and took the sturdiest of the ponies. I was considering what best to take Freydis when Gunnar Raudi came to the stable and there, in the warm, rustling twilight of it, tore everything apart with a simple phrase.
He has sent for his sons.
And there it was. Gudleif was dying. His sons, Bjorn and Steinkel, were coming back from their own fostering to claim their inheritance and I was expendable. Perhaps he hoped I would die and solve all his problems.
Gunnar Raudi saw all that chase itself like cat and dog across my face. He said nothing for a while, still as a block of grindstone in the fetid dark. A horse whuffed and stamped; straw rustled and all I could think to say was: So thats where the faering went. I wondered.
And Gunnar Raudi smiled a grim smile. No. He sent word by the next valley up. The faering is missing because I sent Krel and Big Nose to row it to Laugarsfel, there to send word to Rurik.
I glanced at him anxiously. Does Gudleif know?
He shook his head and shrugged. He knows nothing much these days. Even if he finds out what can he do? Perhaps he might even have done it himself if it had been mentioned to him. In the dim, his face was all shadowed planes, unreadable. But he went on: A trip through the snow isnt so bad. Better than here when Rurik arrives.
If you think so, you take the trip through the snow and I will stay here, I answered bitterly and expected his wry chuckle and a growl of a reply. Instead, to my surprise of both of us, it seemed to me after he laid a hand on my shoulder.
Best not, lad. What Rurik brings with him will be worse than a frozen nose.
That was chilling and I had to ask. His eyes gleamed in the dark.
Einar the Black and his crew, he replied and the way he said it told me all I needed to know.
I laughed, but even to my own ears it was forced. If he comes.
I looked him in the face and he looked right back and both of us knew the truth of it. I was like the white bear: someone elses property, unclaimed and in the way. My father might not get the news. Even if he did, he might not be bothered.