Thorbjorn’s attention was a fiery beacon lighting up Skarfr’s monotonous life in Orphir. When he stripped to his breeks in the training yard, he expected mockery but the warrior merely assessed his body as if he were a horse. Then his mercurial opponent faced him, in the unnerving stillness of the calm before the storm, before moving in to grapple. The dance was brief, arms around each other’s shoulders and circling sun-wise. Jittery with nerves, Skarfr hooked his leg around Thorbjorn’s, was pushed further off-balance and found himself on his back.
He had no more success when he waited for Thorbjorn to make the first move. The warrior employed what seemed to be exactly the same hook, his foot behind Skarfr’s calf, but might as well have been a stone cairn for all the response to Skarfr’s shove. Instead, Skarfr toppled once more.
Thorbjorn judged his moves with precision, wasting no energy, mastering without violence. His breathing gave the slightest hitch with the effort of a throw but was barely audible over Skarfr’s ragged gasps and snorts. Lightning-fast grappling and footwork landed Skarfr on his back on the grass. And then on his stomach, with no chance of wriggling out from the weight of his opponent, from the arms pinning him to the ground.
When Skarfr did grab an arm or calf, oiled muscles slipped through his fingers like fish. His own body glistened with sweat, acting as lubrication, the smell salty as seaweed, but his adversary’s hands caught him every time, sure as cormorants’ beaks.
Winded, panting, Skarfr stood doubled over, unable to speak, the happiest he’d been in his entire life. This was what it meant to be a man. As soon as he could, he raised his head, showed he was ready to begin again.
Thorbjorn grinned, shook his head. ‘Now you practise,’ he told Skarfr and he demonstrated one hold at a time, slowly.
‘When you hooked my leg, so.’ He imitated Skarfr’s first hold. ‘You were leaning backwards, so you were easy to push. Look how I was standing.’ He tilted his upper body towards Skarfr, maintaining a strong centre of balance while he whipped his foot around to destabilise his student.
He taught Skarfr how to roll out from under a man pinning him down, made Skarfr think up a defence and try it, learn from failures. Always with restraint.
‘We are just training but in a battle this could gain you enough time to save your life. Remember that the ground is your enemy. Your opponent’s friend is waiting to stamp on your head or swing an axe down. You must get up from the ground and fight again.’
Fight again. Skarfr thought of Botolf, who’d beaten him senseless but never won. He could do this. He didn’t want to stop though he ached to the bone from stretching, bending and falling. He’d never been so aware of his own body, a young mirror of his wrestling partner’s.
‘Enough for one session,’ decreed the warrior, stepping back, breaking the physical contact.
Skarfr stumbled, dizzy.
‘Enough for one session. When I come back, I expect to see you at the training-ground. I’ll leave word. And remember to keep moving.’ He rubbed a cloth over his face, then chest and back, dark hair curling over the muscles Skarfr could still feel as dents in his own skin.
Thorbjorn carelessly threw on his tunic and leather jerkin, fastened his belt. His thoughts were obviously elsewhere already, volatile as his moods.
‘Keep your visions to yourself,’ he warned. ‘They are meant for me. They tell me what I must do.’
Skarfr’s glow of well-being faded as he made his way back to the kitchen, wondering what fires his fabrications had sparked. Thorbjorn’s words echoed in his head while he served at table, clumsy enough to earn a clip across his head from Arn.
When I come back. Your visions tell me what I must do.
Thorbjorn was not in the hall but Hlif was. She studiously ignored him and he knew she had every right to feel peeved. He also knew she’d come around when she needed to talk to someone. But that wouldn’t put things right and the sense of foreboding grew.
For hours, tossing and turning on his thin pallet, he let himself dream of wrestling and weaponscraft, a warrior’s training, even sea-roving. Everything that Sweyn had thrown back in his face with laughter, Thorbjorn would give him. As long as he recounted his false visions.
But he could not let Thorbjorn leave on some gods-given mission. He could not enjoy his new status, the patronage of a lord, based on a lie. He could not steal Hlif’s gift. Something bad would come of all this.
‘Skarfr, wake up!’
Harald was shaking him and the sun showed way past dawn. Cursing, Skarfr threw on his clothes, brushed Harald aside and ran as much of the way to the beach as he could manage, trotting when he was out of breath.
He was in time.
Thorbjorn and forty of his men had removed the rollers from his dragon ship but had not yet run it down to the water.
‘Wait!’ yelled Skarfr, waving his arms as he ran. A capricious wind warped the words into whistles and squeaks. The men put their shoulders to the ship, strained, set it in slow motion down the sands towards the breakers.
There was still time. Skarfr would swim to the boat if he had to, serve ten years as an oarsman as his punishment, offer his loyalty to Thorbjorn as himself, not as a seer.
The ship began to glide across the sands as the men started to get some momentum going.
Skarfr yelled again and some of the men must have seen or heard him. Their faces turned towards him.
Then winged creatures rose black from the sea, blocked the sun as they flew over the ship towards Skarfr, cawing and clacking in dismay. All but one of the cormorants settled on the sand, waving their wings in the wide gesture they used for drying them or warning off attackers.
‘Crk, crk, crrrrruck!’ screeched Skarfr’s spirit cormorant. She flew straight at him as if she would peck out his eyes like crows did corpses’. He instinctively put his arm over his face and tripped in the sand, dropping to his knees as the whoosh of air from the cormorant’s flight brushed the top of his head.
She circled and returned to dive at him again but Skarfr had understood the message. He stayed on his knees in the sand, watching the ship reach water, the men jump in and the sail rise on the mast.
Tall and proud as a dragon figurehead, Thorbjorn waved at him from the deck. Pointed at the cormorants and to the chain on his neck, and waved again.
A good sign.
His cormorant had landed in front of Skarfr, was watching him from sea-green eyes with her head cocked to one side.
‘What have you done?’ Skarfr asked.
She cackled a reply, flapped her wings and stretched out her long neck, clacking her beak in accusation.
What have you done? she returned.