Far North - Michael Ridpath [7]
There had been trouble between Styr and his new servants, and the berserkers had ended up buried under the cairn of lava stone and moss, right where Hallgrímur was leaning.
Of course Hallgrímur had grown up knowing the story of the two berserkers, but his friend Benedikt had just started reading the Saga of the People of Eyri, and had come up with all sorts of new details, the best of which was that one of the berserkers had the same name as him, Halli. At eight, Benedikt was two years younger than Hallgrímur, but he was a brilliant reader for his age. Their favourite game had become to stalk the lava field pretending to be the berserkers. It worked quite well, Hallgrímur thought. Benedikt came up with the stories, but Hallgrímur was much better at going berserk. And that was, after all, the point.
‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Benedikt. It was more of a command for Benedikt to come up with another game than a question.
‘Any sign of your parents?’ Benedikt asked.
‘Father won’t be back for ages. He’s gone to look for a ewe on the fell. I’ll just check for Mother.’
The cairn was in a depression, out of sight of grown-ups, which made it such a good playing place. Hallgrímur climbed the ancient footpath between the two farms, which had been hewn out of the lava a millennium before by the berserkers themselves, and looked west towards Bjarnarhöfn. It was a prosperous farm, nestling beneath a waterfall which tumbled down the side of Bjarnarhöfn Fell. It was surrounded by a large home field, bright green against the brown of the surrounding heath. A tiny wooden church, little more than a black hut, lay between the farm and the grey flatness of Breidafjördur, the broad fjord dotted with low islands. Just up from the shoreline were wooden racks on which lines of salted fish hung out to dry. Hallgrímur could see no sign of life. His mother had said she was going to clean the church, something she did obsessively. This seemed a pointless activity to Hallgrímur, since the pastor only held services there once a month.
But there was no reasoning with his mother.
He was supposed to be in the room he shared with his brother, doing arithmetic problems. But he had sneaked out to play with Benedikt.
‘All right,’ said Benedikt. ‘I have heard that Arnkell’s men have stolen some of our horses. We must find them and free the horses. But we must take them by surprise.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Hallgrímur. He wasn’t entirely sure who Arnkell was, he was probably a chieftain from the saga. Benedikt would know the details.
They crept southwards through the lava field. It had spewed out of the big mountains to the south several thousand years ago, ending up in the fjord just between the two farms at a place called Hraunsvík, or Lava Bay. For several kilometres it flowed in a tumult of stone and moss, twenty or thirty metres above the surrounding plain. It was possible to crawl along the wrinkles of the lava, to slither through cracks, to lurk behind the extraordinary shapes that reared upwards. There was one spot where the lava seemed to form the silhouettes of two horses standing together, when viewed from a certain angle. That was where they were heading.
They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.
‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.
‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.
‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’
‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowed. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.
Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.
‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what