Viking Terror. Tom Henighan

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      “You understand Norse?” Ari asked her, seemingly doubtful about what he had just heard. “Where are the other Skraeling hunters? We are from a nearby Norse settlement. This is a valley of ours — the spirits of our people are here — and we demand to be released.”

      The girl considered these words for a moment, then burst out laughing. Rigg noticed her striking dark eyes, the mobile features of her face. She had broad cheeks and a high forehead; her skin was olive-coloured, smooth, and healthy.

      “There are no other hunters,” she told them. “I captured you and you are my prisoners. And I will not release you, because if I do, I know you will kill me or do me harm.”

      Rigg could contain himself no longer. “You mean you’re the one who attacked us? ... It’s not possible!”

      The girl held up her club. “My brother used it for seals, why not I for men?” she said. Then she added something in Tornit, which Ari translated for Rigg.

      “She says we are a couple of blunderers,” he reported. “It’s amazing we can feed ourselves if we move so noisily among the hills. We must be shamans and depend on magic to keep us safe.”

      Rigg was furious; he writhed on the stone floor, struggled mightily with his bonds, but could not break free. The Tornit girl’s musical laughter added to his frustration. Finally, he got control of himself and asked her where she had learned to speak Norse.

      She explained that she was from the northern coast. There were many Viking hunters there. “Sometimes they are not very friendly,” she added. Some months ago, she explained, she had been with her brother and her cousin. The men were hunting seals and made a good kill. They were about to take them back to the local Tornit village, when two Norsemen attacked and killed her dear ones and stole their cargo. She had barely escaped with her life.

      “Although I had never visited your dwellings, I had been warned never to trust the Norse,” she said. “Now I understand why.”

      So she had come from the northern hunting grounds, the very place where his father’s hunting expedition had gone! If she could travel so far, why couldn’t Leif return safely? He had a good ship and companions, and this girl had come many miles on land, alone.

      Her account of Norse violence, though, dismayed him. Not for the first time, Rigg was ashamed of his own people. In Vinland he had seen Norse violence spoil the exchanges between Viking and Skraeling. Was it not possible to be a warrior and yet to avoid the folly of giving way to rage and anger, of using power to prey on the weak? Did a strong man always have to be a cruel and unreasonable man? He hung his head and thought, This girl suffered terrible violence; now she will kill us, and things will never heal.

      Ari, however, posed more questions. “But how and why did you come here? You can’t have travelled alone. No one could survive such a trip.”

      “My people helped me. There are some houses along the way, and the land and sea are known to us. The spirits helped me too. I had a dream that made everything clear. The Norse who injured me would also save me, the dream said. I would bring good things to my people. But first I must make my way south, so as to find a ship to take me back home. It would be a ship like none other, possibly a magic ship, my dream said. I was going to the place you call the Ostri Bygd, the Eastern Settlement, to ask help from the Norse, when you came stalking me.”

      Rigg cast a sharp glance at Ari, then said to the Tornit girl, “It was a wolf that we stalked, not a woman.”

      “That wolf I killed myself. The poor creature was hungry and tried to steal my food, so I had to kill it.”

      “You could not have killed it!” Rigg objected. “We saw it roaming this hillside not many hours ago.”

      “Perhaps you did not see my wolf,” she replied. “Perhaps you saw another.”

      “I think we also saw you, dressed in your brown skins,” Ari told her. “We thought you might be a werewolf.”

      The girl’s eyes sparkled but she did not reply to this.

      “If you release us and say nothing of what happened we will not kill you or harm you,” Rigg said. “I have sailed far to the west and met Skraelings and I did not harm them.”

      “We will take you to our settlement,” Ari added. “We will find you a ship going north. We are not like the Norse who killed your relatives.”

      For several long minutes the girl regarded them closely. She said not a word but looked first at Ari and then at Rigg, studying them so intensely she might have been reading their innermost thoughts and impulses.

      After this, she walked back and forth across the cavern, mumbling certain words under her breath.

      “I will consult the wolf spirit,” she told them, and slipped away into the semi-darkness of the outer cave.

      “I am not very hopeful,” Ari said. “Perhaps I have been hanging upside down too long.”

      But Rigg was so excited he could hardly speak. “Didn’t you see it — she walked with a limp! She favoured her left leg when she walked back and forth in front of us!”

      “And what do you make of that, my friend?”

      “Ari — before I was attacked, I took a shot at the wolf. My arrow struck the wolf’s left hind leg. And now it seems we might have been wrong about the shapeshifter — maybe it did not change from man to wolf. Is it possible this Tornit girl is a werewolf?”

       CHAPTER FIVE MYSTERIES AND SURPRISES

      “Awerewolf?” Ari groaned. “This is worse than a Skraeling hunting party. To my knowledge I have never met a werewolf. And she looks like an ordinary girl to me. A human being, surely, although maybe a remarkable one.”

      “But think of it, Ari! It’s hard to believe she could survive in the wilds by herself. And Tyrkir once told me that supernatural beings always tell plausible stories and appear convincingly human.”

      “If she releases us, then, we should kill her. But, Rigg, I don’t want to kill her.”

      “Nor I. The bravest thing is surely just to go along with her, not to fear what she might be. We must be wary, however.”

      “I will trust anyone who puts me right side up,” Ari moaned. “If this girl disappears in smoke or turns into a wolf on the way to Brattalid, at least I will deal with it standing on my own feet.”

      The two friends waited in silence for a few long minutes. The cave seemed empty and bleak. Rigg wished that the Skraeling (or whatever she was) might break out and sing a little. He was afraid of the decision that would come out of this gloomy silence.

      At last the Tornit girl slipped back into the cave. She said not a word but stood gazing at the two friends with her large dark eyes. Rigg could not read her mood and held his breath. In her right hand she held the formidable mallet that had knocked him and Ari unconscious. In her left hand she carried a large hunting knife.

      After fixing her gaze on them for some minutes, the Skraeling girl sank down on her knees, bent her head over until it touched the rocky floor. She remained for almost a minute in СКАЧАТЬ