The Falcons of Fire and Ice (41 page)

Ricardo

Haute volerie –
‘the great flight’, when the quarry bird such as a kite, raven, crane or heron climbs high into the air and the falcon tries to fly above it to stoop down on it, resulting in a great aerial battle of life and death.

The world was suddenly plunged into darkness as Ari extinguished the fire. I couldn’t even work out which was up or down, but when I heard the horses’ hooves clattering over the stones, I wasn’t going to stop to find out. It sounded as if there was a whole army down there. I turned and fled in the opposite direction to the shouts below. Stones were kicked down as someone scrambled up the rocks ahead of me. It’s not often a fellow has reason to be grateful for dirt being kicked in his face, but at least it meant I could follow the trail. I just hoped they didn’t dislodge anything bigger.

A broad, heavy hand suddenly clamped down on my arm and hauled me into the shelter of some overhanging rocks, nearly dashing my brains out on the stone. I yelped, but another hand shot over my mouth to silence me. We huddled together, crouching in the darkness, listening to the sounds of one another’s rasping breath and the roar of the river as it galloped down the hillside. We were all straining to hear if the Danes were following us. We could hear them blundering about below us, but their voices did not seem to be getting closer.

Fannar whispered to Hinrik who in turn relayed the message to us. ‘He says he will go ahead to guide us. We must follow one after another, but keep close. Hold on to the person in front until he says it is safe to let go. If we fall off the track, we will fall a very long way down. Come.’

‘No, wait. I think someone is missing,’ Isabela whispered urgently.

In the darkness it was impossible to see who anyone was, but we each whispered our names and realized that it was Vítor who was not with us.

The Icelander muttered something that I’m sure was a curse or two.

‘You don’t think Vítor would tell the Danes …’ Isabela began, but trailed off.

Fannar whispered to Hinrik in a gruff voice.

‘He says he will go back to look for Vítor. Ari will guide us to the farm.’

Before any of us could stop him, Fannar was gone, sliding back into the darkness.

There was a pause, then we heard voices.

‘That’s Fannar talking! Have they caught him?’ Isabela asked.

I could hear the fear in her voice. I reached out and took her hand. It was as cold as marble. I chafed it gently to warm her, but she jerked it away as if I’d burned her.

Hinrik had crept a little way out of the overhang to listen. He came scuttling back on all fours, as silently as a spider. ‘He tells them the fire they saw was his fire. He was searching for lost sheep and got hungry so he cooked himself some supper.’

‘Do they believe him?’ I whispered.

‘If they do, they’ll ride on and Fannar can look for Vítor, if not …’ He did not need to finish the sentence.

With Ari leading we trailed up the mountain track. I was holding on to Isabela as we stumbled through the dark, edging round great lumps of rock on one side of the gut-churningly narrow path, with nothing but a yawning black abyss on the other. As we climbed the wind grew stronger, buffeting us as if it was trying to push us off the track. I pressed my free hand against every boulder I could feel on the side of the path, in the desperate but vain hope that I would be able to grab hold of something solid if I slipped.

Occasionally one of us would kick a stone and we’d hear it fall away in the darkness, rattling and bouncing down the steep hillside in a drop that seemed to go right down into hell itself. I asked myself a dozen times how on earth I had come to be wandering blindly along a path in the pitch dark, following a mountain goat of a boy I’d never met in my life before, when every step I took could see me plunging down to certain death. Was Ari even human? Maybe he was a demon or one of those trolls Hinrik talked about. How would I know? All I did know was that I had to be as mad as a mooncalf to be putting my life in his hands.

And yet, as I felt the warmth of Isabela’s back, the flexing of her muscles beneath the cloth, smelt that strange, sweet perfume of her hair, I found myself willing to be led anywhere.

Finally, to my immense relief, I felt the track beginning to descend, but I quickly discovered a new hazard, for it seemed to be far easier to slip walking down. In front of me Isabela was limping badly. If my knees were protesting at the slope, her weakened leg must have been giving her agony, but she didn’t so much as let out a squeak of pain or ask to rest. That girl had more spirit than a vat of brandy.

But soon we found ourselves walking on a flatter, smoother track. Every now and then the moon would peer round the curtains of cloud at us, like some inquisitive old lady determined to see who was passing along her street. Its silver light appeared just long enough to reveal that we were in a high valley, with the sharp ridges of mountains on either side, before darkness closed in again.

God alone knows how far we walked. Now that we were no longer in single file, Isabela was walking at my side. Several times she stumbled, and in the end I put my arm around her to help her along, and though she resisted at first, eventually, limping and exhausted, she leaned into me. If she hadn’t been with us I’d have collapsed in the grass and refused to take another step, but I had to keep going for her sake. I could hardly let her think I was weaker than a woman. Besides, that little mountain goat, Ari, was still bounding along as if he’d just been taking a summer’s evening stroll around town. He might not have looked like a troll, but he certainly wasn’t human. No normal man could ever have that much energy. There are times when a fellow could really loathe the young.

Fannar and Vítor arrived at the farmstead not long after we did. Fannar’s wife, Unnur, had just served us with some kind of broth that tasted of nothing but smoke, when they stumbled in. Fannar was in high spirits. Apparently he had managed to convince the Danes that he was alone, and they had finally ridden off. Vítor who, so he claimed, had lost his bearings in the dark, had hidden nearby, emerging only when he heard the Danes ride away.

Fannar’s wife, a dumpy little woman, looked thoroughly alarmed when the story was recounted, clearly not believing even the Danes could be so foolish as to think a farmer would go looking for sheep at night without dog or lantern, but Fannar thought it was a huge joke.

‘Fannar says Unnur worries too much,’ Hinrik told us. ‘The Danes think Icelanders are so stupid that they believe nothing is too crazy for us to do. He could have told them he was fishing for whales in the stream, and they would have asked him how many he had caught.’

Hinrik and Fannar clearly thought this was hilarious, as did Fannar’s two daughters, Margrét and Lilja, but his wife bit her lip and went to the cooking pot to ladle out more broth, the frown deepening on her face.

I must have fallen asleep where I sat out of sheer exhaustion, for when I finally managed to prise my eyes open it was morning and the hall was almost deserted save for Unnur and Hinrik. Unnur seemed to have been waiting patiently for me to wake, for as soon as I stirred she thrust a bundle of unsavoury-looking rags at me. I prodded the cloth dubiously.

‘What is this for?’ I asked, pronouncing the words slowly and loudly. ‘Cleaning?’

I mimed polishing one of the wooden bowls, though nothing in the house looked as if it had ever been cleaned. Everything from the floor to the rafters, including Fannar’s wife, seemed to have been smoked to the same shade of grey-brown.

‘Unnur wants you to put them on,’ Hinrik explained. ‘If you are seen in your clothes, everyone will know at once you are a foreigner.’

Unnur said something, and Hinrik sniggered. ‘She says you look like an erupting volcano, with your white, black and red.’

That was some cheek coming from a woman who was dressed like a bog.

‘She asks how you can work with all that padding in your jacket and breeches.’

‘And can you give me one good reason why I should want to work?’ I said.

Hinrik translated this for Unnur and she stared at me in disbelief, as if I had asked her why I needed to breathe.

I sighed. I could tell it was pointless trying to explain that the voluminous slashed and padded clothes were intended as a proclamation to all the world that the wearer had no need to soil his hands with manual labour. But when I looked down at my doublet, even I was forced to concede that my clothes weren’t exactly shouting ‘man of substance’ any more. Several nights of sleeping rough, the fight with the Danes and then blundering across the hills and valleys in the dark to evade the horsemen, had covered my breeches, hose and doublet in thick, greenish mud. The fabric had been ripped in nearly a dozen places, so that half the padding was falling out, and most of the trimming and a part of one sleeve had been torn away. I hadn’t seen a mirror since I had left Portugal, and for once I was glad to be spared the sight of the ruin I had undoubtedly become.

Seeing that Unnur was consumed with curiosity about what garments I wore underneath my clothes – at least I hoped that was why she was watching me with a fascinated expression – I removed my outer clothes and pulled on the plain brown breeches and shirt she offered. They stank as if they’d been stuffed up a chimney for years, and the cloth was so rough that within minutes I was scratching and chafing, though it didn’t take me long to realize that it wasn’t just the coarseness of the cloth that was making me itch.

‘Unnur says you can go outside,’ Hinrik said. ‘But do not go far from the house, and if we hear the dogs barking, we must run inside and hide. She will show us where.’

Unnur led Hinrik and me out of the hall into a passageway so narrow that we could only walk down it in single file. She opened another low door.

‘This is the store chamber. If anyone approaches the farm we must hide in this place until one of them comes to tell us it is safe to come out,’ Hinrik told me.

The only light in the room filtered in through the open door from the passage. A few barrels, a loom and several small chests stood in the centre away from the damp earth walls. The cold air rolled up from the muddy floor. I shivered. I hoped none of Fannar’s neighbours would decide to come calling for dinner. I didn’t fancy spending even a few minutes in there, never mind several hours.

‘Does she think the Danes will come here?’ I asked Hinrik.

‘She says if they suspect Fannar was not telling the truth, they will. She does not think they are as easy to fool as her husband believes.’ Hinrik darted an anxious glance up at me. ‘I think she is right.’

I had no sooner ducked out of the low doorway into the blessed fresh air than Vítor grabbed my arm without so much as a by-your-leave. ‘I need to talk to you. Come with me.’

He strode around the side of the turf building, where we couldn’t be overheard, dragging me with him. I was sorely tempted to shove him off and walk away, but curiosity got the better of me.

‘Isabela,’ he announced, ‘is still alive.’

‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ I asked him, startled by the oddness of the statement. Then I looked round in alarm. ‘Has something happened to her?’

‘No, but that, my friend, is precisely my point. We both know something
should
have happened to her by now, but it hasn’t, has it?’

I shook off the grip he still had on my arm. ‘Vítor, I thought you were a tedious little turd the first moment I clapped eyes on you, but now I’m convinced you are not merely tedious, you have the brains of a senile goat. I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, and I rather fear,
my friend
, that you haven’t either.’

‘Then let me make it plain for you. The girl you were sent here to kill still lives.’

Suddenly the breath seemed to have been sucked out of my lungs.

‘Kill … I … I beg your pardon,’ I stammered, trying to regain control. ‘Do I look like a murderer?’

‘No,’ Vítor said, with chilling calmness. ‘You don’t look like a murderer, which is exactly why you were chosen, but you
are
a murderer, aren’t you? Silvia. I believe that was her name.’

The ground seemed to be buckling under my feet. I must have looked as if I was about to pass out for Vítor grabbed my arm again, but this time as if he was trying to hold me up. I swallowed the acid that was rising in my throat and took a deep breath.

‘I am very much afraid, Senhor Vítor, that you have me confused with someone else. I don’t know who you think I am, but –’

‘I
know
the name by which you were christened in the Holy Church was Cruz. I
know
that you were arrested for attempted fraud, and taken to the tower of Belém. And I
know
that you were advised by two of my most respected brothers to embark on a sea journey for the good of your health, or in your case one might say for the good of your life, for if you’d refused their generous offer, you would by now have joined your lover in her sepulchral embrace.’

I gaped at him. How the hell did he know all this? I tried to laugh as if this must be a joke, but only succeeded in producing a squeaky giggle which might have been emitted by a nervous maiden aunt.

‘I regret to say I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, Vítor. I thought our companion was the biggest liar in our little band, but you make him sound as truthful as a nun in confession. First you told us you were collecting sea monsters. Then you were a Lutheran pastor. What was it after that – oh yes, I remember, you were supposed to be mapping mountains. And now – just who are you claiming to be this time, a prison guard?’

‘A Jesuit,’ he said softly. ‘Like my two brothers who visited you in the tower of Belém. My sole purpose in coming here was to ensure that you carried out your part of the bargain you made with them. Come now, Cruz, there’s no need to look so shocked. You didn’t really believe that we would simply take your word for it that the girl was dead, did you?’

Vítor gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘You were, after all, arrested for fraud, and it wouldn’t be the first time in your illustrious career that you have spun, shall we say, a web of untruths. You might have allowed the girl simply to run off, as she so nearly did that night in France. Then you could have returned to Portugal to claim your reward, swearing that you’d disposed of her, and leaving us with the potential embarrassment of her somehow finding her way back to Lisbon.’