CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

A GRIM CATCH

 

By the time he was done ferrying his spoils to the fireside, Atli had fuel enough to last a night and a day at least, and plenty of work for his axe. Breaking up the wood proved an arduous task, but it was one that his mind and body welcomed; his limbs ached with it, but it was a good ache. He felt somehow connected. Focused. Useful. Before he realised where it had come from, a saying of his father's drifted into his head: "Good firewood heats you up twice - once when you chop it and again when you burn it!" Atli attacked the wood harder and tried to shake the memory from his head.

He had saved until last what he knew would be the most difficult - the tough, thick wood of the broken oar - and had only just begun the painstaking task of chopping it into usable lengths when a sudden movement nearby caught his eye. For nearly the whole time he had been working, Finn had been sitting practically motionless astride his sea-chest, chewing silently on a strip of dark, unidentifiable dried meat, the taut fishing line that stretched over the gunwale tied to the nearest of the three upright bird-perch-posts behind him. Some time ago, he had removed his right boot, and for the past hour had sat with his bare right foot propped up on the long chest, and the line between his toes, waiting, Atli supposed, for the twitch of a fish. Now, something had Finn's full attention. He was sitting bolt upright, his mouth stopped mid-chew. For a moment he remained utterly frozen, his gaze focused somewhere out there, where the line met the sea. Then, never once taking his eyes off the line, he eased his foot off the chest, stood up and carefully replaced his boot. Atli saw the line slacken for a moment, then suddenly tighten again. Finn gave it a gentle pull. It responded, pulling so tight, so fast, it reverberated like a bow-string.

"Something here..." he called, still chewing. Close by, two other men - Thorvald, and the one called Njáll Red-Hair - stood; a third - Eyvind - abandoned the tub of water in which he was meticulously washing his neck and shoulders and moved to join him.

"It's big," said Finn.

Eyvind tested the tension of the line. "Cod, maybe. Good eating. I've seen them as big as deer."

"Bigger," said Finn.

Eyvind laughed. "It's not a fishing contest, north-man!"

Finn's eyes remained fixed on the point where the line disappeared below the surface of the water, a frown creasing his heavy brow. Reaching down, he flipped open his sea-chest, dug out a pair of tough, reindeer skin gloves and pulled them on. "Not fish," he said.

Eyvind chuckled again. Thorvald and Njáll looked at each other in bemusement.

"Well, what else is it going to be out here?" asked Eyvind, spreading his arms wide and surveying the blank desolation that surrounded them. "Sea serpent?"

Finn said nothing.

"Whale?" muttered Thorvald, squinting at the slowly heaving sea, trying to penetrate the thick fog.

"Seal maybe?" ventured Njáll.

"Not seal. Or whale," said Finn. Then, after a pause, added: "Nothing I know."

Thorvald and Njáll exchanged anxious looks. "But there's nothing in the sea you don't know," said Thorvald.

"Something different here."

By now, the small knot of men had attracted Bjólf's attention. "If it takes four of you to haul it in," he said, approaching them, "I'd be more worried about it eating us." But the looks on the faces of Thorvald, Njáll and Finn immediately killed the humour in his voice. "What is it?"

"Something out there," said Finn, nodding towards the black waves.

Bjólf frowned deeply.

"Before you ask," said Njáll, "he doesn't know what." Bjólf looked uneasy at his words.

"Well, let's just wind it in and have a look," said Eyvind matter-of-factly. He picked up the winding frame, and, leaning forward, went to hook it into the line, but, at that moment, as if responding to his words, it fell slack at his feet. Eyvind tugged on it gingerly, and met no resistance. He pulled harder. It kept coming.

"So much for your prize cod!" said Eyvind. "That'll be more hooks lost." And, taking up the limp line he started swiftly reeling it in by hand, letting it fall in a wet heap at his feet. "Just got caught on something, that's all. Some old bit of flotsam or..."

Before he could finish the sentence, the line whipped through his hands with such speed it sent a mist of salt spray into the air. Eyvind howled in agony as the line sliced through the flesh of his palms. As it snapped taut, his body jerked violently forward and he collapsed to his knees, blood coursing from his right hand, the trembling arm stretched out awkwardly before him in a curious, twisted gesture. For a moment, the stunned onlookers struggled to make sense of what had just happened. Then it became clear. Without thinking, Eyvind had wound part of the line around his right hand; now, pulled tight, hauled seaward by whatever lay below the surface, it had him caught like a rabbit in a wire trap, suspended between post and gunwale, cutting him to the bone. If the line were to break now on the seaward side, he would be saved, but if it snapped behind him, he would either he dragged into the sea or have the flesh stripped from his hand. Finn was the first to act, flying past Eyvind, grabbing the line with his gloved hands and pulling with all his strength, his feet braced against the gunwale. The line slackened. Eyvind fell back. Thorvald and Njáll leapt forward in an effort to free him, desperately trying to untangle the line from the afflicted hand.

"Cut the line!" called Bjólf. Thorvald pulled his knife, but before he could act the line whipped through Finn's gloved grasp, sending the smell of salt and burning hide into the air as it snapped taut again and sent Thorvald's blade flying. Eyvind fell forward once more, screaming with the pain like a trapped animal, desperately trying to pull with his free hand as Finn fought to get a grip and, baring his white teeth like an animal, tried to bite through the line.

"Cut it!" bellowed Bjólf, searching urgently for a blade, any blade. The commotion had caught the attention of the entire crew now.

Atli, stunned and horrified by what had occurred in the past few seconds, stood helpless. Only when Bjólf called out for the second time did he realise that he alone, of all those within reach, had within his grasp the means of Eyvind's salvation. The axe hung idly in his hand. With everything seeming to slow as if in a dream, he stepped forward, and raised his axe.

Without warning, as if a spell were suddenly broken, Eyvind and Finn fell back with a crash onto the blood-soaked deck. The loosed line whipped backwards over the gunwale, and something - still attached to its end - flew from the water, arced high in the air with a trail of salt spray, and landed with a wet thud on the deck next to them.

Atli glanced at the axe - still in his raised right hand - then, in the moment of stunned silence that followed, at the dumfounded faces of the crew. Bjólf stared at the thing on the deck, a look of disbelief on his face. Behind him, Gunnar looked on, his characteristically stern features now fixed in an expression of horror. Njáll took a step back. On the deck, Eyvind, nursing his hand, shuddered, and scrabbled to get away from it.

Atli looked. At first, he struggled to make sense of the weird, white shape in the gloom. It was like no fish he had ever seen, and certainly did not seem large enough to have put up such a struggle. Then his reeling brain saw it for what it was. The hand and forearm of a man - or what had once been a man - its grey flesh bloodless and nibbled by fish, its skin bleached by the sea and barely covering the extent of bone and wasted muscle beneath, its elbow ragged with gristle and tendon as if freshly wrenched from its joint. Wrapped around its length was the remainder of the tangled, hooked fishing line.

The first wave of recognition was followed by another, but of a worse kind. With all that had happened, Atli had had little trouble consigning the ghoulish apparition in the water to a place somewhere in his imagination, a place of safety. But now, he knew for certain it was real. It was out in the world - here, on the ship, amongst them.

Bjólf pushed past Thorvald and Njáll and knelt over it. "Give me the axe, boy."

Atli passed the weapon haft-first over their grisly catch, never once taking his eyes off it, then hopped back again, putting as much distance between him and it as honour would allow. Bjólf prodded the skeletal limb, turning it over slowly. A length of limp, green weed entwined its white, bony fingers, now curled skyward like the legs of an upturned crab. A putrid smell rose from it. Around its wrist, Bjólf now noticed, was a twisted bracelet, tarnished green at the ends, its plaited strands coloured black and red.

"Gunnar?" called Bjólf. The big man stepped forward. Bjólf looked at the axe for a moment, turning it around in his hand. "The former owner of this... he left something else behind. What did you do with it?"

"Over the side. Back in the estuary."

"Could this be it?" Bjólf prodded the forearm again.

Gunnar shook his head. "It is... different. This one, there's more of it. And anyway, this has been in the water longer."

Bjólf nodded. "A drowned sailor then? The rest of him down there somewhere?"

"Must be."

"A drowned sailor who pulls," growled a voice. It was Finn. "I felt that line. The dead do not fight back." A few of the men muttered, unsettled at his words.

"This is bad," said Úlf, shaking his head. "The raid. That madman at the village. Steinarr. Hallgeir. Kjötvi... And now this."

"Enough!" Snapped Bjólf, rising to his feet. "We've all seen dead flesh before. Enough to know we should thank our lucky stars we're better off than this wretch." He gave the limb a kick. "He's half eaten by fish. That's what pulled at your line."

Several among the crew nodded or exclaimed in agreement as he spoke, some nudging the more superstitious among them. But, in the very next moment, a gasp came from all their throats. Expressions fell in horror.

Bjólf followed their gaze, and recoiled. The thing on the deck was moving.

Its fingers twitched, writhed, then slowly curled into the palm, its forefinger last to join its fellows, as if beckoning to all those who beheld it. Atli backed away involuntarily, suddenly aware, once again, of the angry scratches upon his calf.

Bjólf raised the axe and brought it down hard, cutting the line. Without a word, he picked up the limb and hurled it out to sea.

"Haul in all the lines," he said, his face and voice grim. "Let's eat."