CHAPTER TWELVE

 

THE CORPSE-PICKER

 

It was not long before Fjölvar was serving up steaming portions of fish stew from the cauldron over Atli's fire. The catch had been fair. The fish was sweet and tender, some barley meal and dried cod had gone into the pot to add substance, and Fjölvar had even managed to rescue enough of the onions to give flavour to the broth. And, most of all, it was hot. Atli had lapped it up hungrily, burning his mouth in the process, but unable, for the moment, to think of anything else. Magnus, meanwhile, had succeeded in spooning some of the hot liquid between Kjötvi's lips, and the stricken man was soon eating as hungrily as his fellows, miraculously returned to life by the brew. Eyvind's wound had been bound, and by great good fortune he had escaped permanent damage. He would be left-handed for a while, but it would heal, and he would still have the use of his fingers. Only Gunnar had had the nerve to grumble.

"Needs salt," he'd said.

Thorvald laughed and gestured to the surrounding sea. "Help yourself!"

Gunnar gazed out at the dark water that hid the rotting, drifting remains of their mysterious visitor, then back at his fish. He said nothing. Despite the welcome luxury of a hot meal, there were few among them who, while swallowing the white flesh, had not thought of the pallid corpse that, until recently, had shared the same domain as their dinner.

After that, the atmosphere remained subdued. The fog hung about them still, like a thick, blank shroud; a physical manifestation of the depressed mood. The ship heaved slowly on the swell as if rocked by an invisible hand. A fine rain fell for a while, and there was not a single one among them who did not yearn for dry land beneath his feet. Men exchanged short words now and then as necessity required, but otherwise kept their thoughts to themselves. No one spoke further of the thing in the sea.

Atli ran his fingers gently over the weals on his leg and thought over and over of the ghoulish nightmare that he now knew lay somewhere beneath them. Not far away, Bjólf sat hunched against the gunwale, a thick sheepskin around his shoulders, his head bowed in dark meditation. Atli wanted to go to his captain and tell him that he had seen it, that it had been real. But he did not have the nerve to penetrate the heavy silence that had descended. Instead, he concentrated on keeping his wood store dry, and feeding up the cheering, crackling flames.

His mind began to drift. Already drowsy from the meal and the glow of the fire, wrapped in a damp but warm woollen cape - another posthumous donation from Steinarr - he allowed his lids to droop and close. The minute he did so, exhaustion washed over him. He tried to fight it, forcing his eyes open, telling himself of his responsibility to ship and fire. But again his lids became heavy, sinking once, twice... The third time, he gave in to it. Just for a moment, he told himself. Just a few more seconds...

Immediately, fevered images began to swim through his tired brain - images of the thing in the water - lifeless but moving, suspended in icy darkness beneath the hull, grasping at him. In a world somewhere between nightmare and daydream, he imagined it clawing its way up the side of the ship, its sodden, ragged, wrecked form slithering and rattling over the gunwale and onto the deck, squirming in the wet like some ghastly newborn, then tottering unsteadily to its feet, staggering towards him while the crew slept on, oblivious.

Sounds came to him too. Somewhere between asleep and awake, beyond the lapping water and the creaking of the timbers, he thought he detected another sound. Like something scratching slowly, repeatedly against the hull. Like nails dragged against wood.

A sudden movement nearby shocked him awake. He looked around, dazed, unsure how long he had slept. The fog had thinned considerably. The fire was low, its light barely penetrating the gloom. He tucked some kindling into the embers and, as it began to catch, threw on a few more chunks of wood. As he did so, he heard a movement behind him. A strange kind of movement - the same, he now understood, as the one that had jolted him awake. It was a sort of shuffling, flapping sound, something at once utterly alien, and yet uncannily familiar. It sent chills through him. For a moment, he did not dare move. Then came a horrible exclamation, something between terror and disgust. He whirled around. A pale face hovered in the dark extremity of the prow. Near it, an unidentifiable black shape flopped and scratched. For a moment, Atli's eyes - fresh from the fire - struggled to adjust to the shadows.

Then he saw it.

Kjötvi, his face as white as a ghost, his eyes wide as shield-bosses, was staring in horror at a big, black shape that was pulling at his leg. His bandages lay unravelled and strewn about the deck, and a great bird - black as soot and big as a cat - was holding a red, wet length of... something... in its beak, something that was still attached to Kjötvi's calf. It was the flap of flesh that the axe had failed to remove, far too great a prize for a meat-hungry raven to leave behind. It yanked at it repeatedly, each time eliciting a stronger cry of pain and revulsion from its victim, while Kjötvi swiped at the creature weakly, as if trying to swat a gigantic fly.

By now, Bjólf and several of the crew were on their feet, the growing flames of the fire illuminating the bizarre scene, shadows flickering and dancing like ghosts against the timbers of the bow. Fjölvar had strung his bow and already had an arrow upon it, the bird in his sights.

"No!" said Bjólf, shoving Fjölvar's arm roughly aside. The arrow loosed, hissing over Atli's head and disappearing far out into the foggy ocean. Fjölvar glared at Bjólf with a mixture of anger and shock - then suddenly understood. No one moved.

The raven hopped and loped and flapped about, clinging doggedly to the precious bit of meat, the blue-black sheen of its feathers reflecting the flickering light of the fire. Kjötvi, wide awake now, kicked at it desperately with his good leg, looking to his shipmates for aid, not understanding why it would not come.

"To oars!" whispered Bjólf, not once taking his eyes off the black, ravenous creature. "Quickly."

The bird momentarily lost its hold, then flapped and jumped as Kjötvi's foot tried to connect with it again, its hunched form croaking angrily at him. He flailed again and missed - then, seeing another opportunity, it darted back in. It snapped and pulled. Kjötvi cried out. Then again. The creature suddenly tottered backwards and flapped off, up onto the figurehead where it perched victoriously, teetering against the swell, a glistening red strip of Kjötvi's leg in its bloody beak.

The crew, meanwhile, had snapped into action, swiftly deploying the stacked oars. The tips of the port set, Atli now saw, were painted red, the starboard oars tipped with yellow, and each one - slightly different in length from its neighbour to compensate for the curve of the ship - carved with one of sixteen runes to indicate its position. Within seconds, the oars were out over the water, the crew ready.

Bjólf, surveying the scene with growing satisfaction, and turning back to the prow, ran suddenly at it, clapping his hands noisily. "Hyah! Hyah! Hyah!" The raven took off and swooped ahead and to port, while Bjólf leapt past Kjötvi, up into the ship's prow and pointed triumphantly after the flapping black shape. "Follow him!"

The ship lurched forward as Gunnar called the strokes, Thorvald at the helm guiding the ship along the raven's path. Bjólf noted with satisfaction the faint glow of dawn on the horizon, off the starboard bow.

"I didn't feel it,"gibbered Kjötvi, looking up at Bjólf. "I didn't feel it. I just woke up and it was there..."

"We're just glad to see you alive again," laughed Bjólf.

Kjötvi shuddered as Magnus set about binding his wound again. "It's not right, to still be alive and to have part of you pass through a raven!" He looked at his leg. "I'll never get that back!"

"Your sacrifice was not in vain, my friend," said Magnus.

"You saved us," said Bjólf, beaming. "Trust Kjötvi to find the way!"

The raven, much faster than its sea-going namesake, soon disappeared from sight. But such birds would not stray far from land, and now they had a bearing from the distant glimmer of the sun too. Nevertheless, a tense silence fell as Bjólf stared intently into the eerily glowing fog, trying to read shapes within it. For the space of about sixty strokes, nothing appeared. Then, quite suddenly, a half imagined band of dark, ragged forms emerged dead ahead. Rocks. Grey cliffs. A coastline.

The cliffs were precipitous and inaccessible, but, to port, were broken by a wide, sheer-sided inlet.

"There!" called Bjólf. The oars pulled in steady rhythm. Thorvald heaved on the creaking rudder.

Leaping down from his vantage point, Bjólf bounded past Atli, then snatched up a pail and hurled its contents over the fire, extinguishing it immediately. A hiss of steam shot up as the water hit hot metal. Atli stared at the sodden ruins in utter disbelief, the wreck of the fire that he had nursed through the night.

"Wh-why did you...?" he stammered, wide-eyed.

"We don't want to announce ourselves until we're ready," said Bjólf, weaving his way back towards the stern. "Don't look so downcast, little man," he called as he went. "The long night is over. And tonight we eat and sleep on land!"

As one, the men cheered, relieved that the worst of this ill-fated raiding trip - and the dark matter of the previous night - was at last safely behind them.