To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
‘That was the bell,’ the Bank said. ‘The As, the divine and Almáttri Æss, were all mine. The horse was a G.’ The ground suddenly staggered, and his horse slipped and recovered, rolling its eyes.
Kathi’s mount jibbed and she controlled it. Her back ached, and her thighs were chafed raw. Glímu-Sveinn said, ‘I do not think we should waste time at Skard. I think we should make straight for Selsund.’ He had a harsh voice.
Selsund, when they reached it, was deserted. Stiff with cold, aching from the difficult ride; filled with apprehension and unpleasant vapours, they dismounted with resolute badinage, built a fire, and found a pot in which to simmer a snow-broth. Kathi’s eyelids started to droop. Then the cauldron gave a loud rattle and she jerked awake once again, until the shaking petered out. Paúel Benecke said, ‘We are halfway to Hlídarendi. We could probably outride an eruption by now.’
‘And if Katla also breaks open?’ Kathi said.
‘People survive. They speak of wooden churches swimming whole out to sea. You will rejoin one of our ships. Come to Poland.’
‘I didn’t know you were necessarily returning to Poland?’ Kathi said.
‘You know of someone who could stop me? Your brothers are children.’
‘Brothers?’ said Kathi.
‘Your merchant friend thinks of you as his brother. Didn’t you know?’
She was so pleased that she felt herself flushing. Then she caught the Danziger’s expression and laughed aloud. ‘Sergios on horseback. It’s only an allusion.’
His annoyance visibly deepened. He said, ‘Then I have no rival? All the simpler. Come to Poland.’
‘You have no rival,’ she said, and showed him a smile of genuine and unaffected goodwill. ‘Paúel, you are not in the race.’
Chapter 29
IT WAS AN EFFORT, when they had eaten, to leave the shelter of Selsund and, laying sodden gloves on freezing harness, to face the white, ice-bounded wastes of the south.
The wind had dropped. The dark smoke behind and the white that rose far ahead now climbed straight into the air before spreading. Before they left, Nicholas had peeled off and slung down his jacket, and made Glímu-Sveinn point to the route he expected to follow. It was no more than a guess. On the gouged and rock-scoured area they were entering, there would be water everywhere. At the end, Kathi had said, ‘Where is Robin?’
Benecke, fastening his coat, had glanced at her sardonically, and she was sorry she had asked. But after only a moment, M. de Nicholas said, ‘He is still on the shore.’
‘And the ships?’ Benecke said. ‘Surely you can tell us what has become of the ships?’
M. de Fleury looked at him. ‘Only that the people I left are still there,’ he said.
‘And Hekla and Katla?’ the Danziger persisted. ‘If you can find water underground, can’t you tell what is rising?’
‘Maybe,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘But what good would it do if I did?’
He had turned then and mounted. It was a precise answer, whatever Benecke thought. He and the Banco di Niccolò were committed to the men on their ships, trapped there awaiting them. And it was too late for the Icelander and Kathi to break away on their own. The pendulum had been consulted, and had spoken, and she knew what it had said.
This time, by request of the Icelander, she rode in the front by his side, instead of behind. She forced herself to speak, gathering together her scraps of the language. ‘Glímu means wrestler, doesn’t it?’
He didn’t look at her, only at his pony, and the ground ahead.
‘Ja,’ he said. And after a while: ‘It is a good sport. It is what we do on the strand, when the weather is too bad for fishing. We wrestle, and race. There is plenty of daylight in the summer.’
‘And in the winter?’ Kathi said.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Then there is none at all, or very little. That is how the storytelling began. When darkness falls, we sit on our mattresses in the bed-hall and work and tell stories. I work my loom, and Hristin my wife riddles the straw from the eider feathers, and my sons cut up ox-hides for ropes, and my daughters sew.’
‘You read and write,’ Kathi said. ‘Great writings have come out of Iceland.’
‘Once,’ Glímu-Sveinn