To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [186]
‘I wonder,’ Paúel Benecke said. ‘I might denounce you as an unlicensed pirate, and return to do as I please with my ship.’
‘The first half would be easy,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I am afraid that if you returned to the harbour without me, my master gunner would be seized with alarm. Do you want to come then, or not? Robin could take you back now if you wish. You have the use of only one arm.’
‘But I do not keep my brains in my arm. No, I shall come with you, Nikolás,’ said Paúel Benecke. ‘And disport myself in this fishy Paradise guarding the smouldering portals of Hell. I hear there have been horse carcasses found, and cattle-sheds fallen in splinters. I hope you have weapons, or spells.’
‘Of course,’ Nicholas said. He had weapons. He had no intention of arming Benecke. He saw no reason, indeed, to believe him.
That night, they slept in the cabin Sersanders had used. When, half awake, Nicholas heard the girls creep giggling in, he told them to go, without consulting Paúel. Robin appeared to be sleeping.
He used the remains of the night hours to think, as once he had used calculation to neutralise music. The aridity of one part of his life was not something he normally dwelled on. When not in the same house as Gelis, he found it possible to repress that particular hunger reasonably well, as he could train himself to drink water. There had been times when the need had disappeared, and others when he had been able, in his own interests, to harness it. This night on shore, although unplanned, had called for no particular effort; but the frank availability of the girls, and a sudden sense that there had been commerce here, stirred a current kept carefully stagnant.
He was forced to recognise it next day, when the soaking, stormy boat-trip was behind them and the hooves of their low, shaggy horses were tripping through uneven snow on the way north to Skálholt. The first climb up from the shore had been toilsome, with the Danziger and the horse-minder behind, and the menhir of Glímu-Sveinn himself in the lead, the spare ponies plodding between them. Then they left the roar of the river and entered silence and sunlight, with no sound but the jingle of harness, and the snuffling white breath of their mounts, and the occasional deep-chested bark of the dog Glímu-Sveinn had brought with him.
Strung over the snow, the piebald ponies glowed in the oil-yellow afternoon light, their manes erect, their shadows prancing beside them. They kept their even, hobby-horse gait over an invisible track which ran from one man-made cairn to the next; for under the snow on each side was a lava-field, and on top, sticky sepia and white, lay the boulders and blocks which had not been created or tossed there by man. And beyond that were the heights.
It was upon these that Nicholas rested his eyes as he rode: upon the swooning battlements and immaculate cones of a landscape moulded by chance, random as primaeval shapes under sand; rounded; melting; softly enamelled with snow.
The snow was not white. The snow was the yellow of cream, and the shadows on it were blue. The snow shone in the sun, and the breeze of their passing was fresh on their cheeks, but so light in itself that it hardly stirred heavy cloaks, or parted the pale, heavy fur of the dog. And so transparently clear was the air that the eastern glaciers lay, rank upon rank, as if iced on the blue of the sky for a feast, or a wedding.
In Edinburgh, there had been gales. In the lands that he knew, there was no terrain like this, nor such light. Nor such golden, golden light.
Behind Nicholas, the Icelander did not speak. Gradually Paúel Benecke also fell silent, and Glímu-Sveinn rode alone by the dog which looked up at him from time to time, its feathered tail waving. Once, a flock of ptarmigan rose, white on blue in the sparkling air, and once an eagle passed with its shadow, to