The bird dealer stooped and picked up the half-eaten body of a mouse where it had fallen on the ground beside a perch block. He held it out towards one of the merlins. The fierce beak snapped the bloody morsel from his fingers. ‘Rolf’s too young. The trapper won’t trust valuable birds to a boy.’
‘How far away does this trapper live?’ I asked.
Gorm scratched his chin. ‘His name’s Ingvar and he’s probably still in the high country where he does his trapping. That’s a three-day ride from here.’
Gorm’s skinny son was shifting anxiously from foot to foot. I caught his eye, and saw how eager he was to prove himself.
‘If this Ingvar really does have a white gyrfalcon, I’m willing to accompany your son and fetch it,’ I said.
I must have sounded too keen because Redwald immediately put in, ‘You’ll have to lower the bird’s price if Sigwulf goes to such trouble.’
Fortunately, Gorm accepted Redwald’s argument and after only a small amount of haggling it was agreed that Gorm’s son and I would ride to seek out the elusive trapper and bring back any birds he had caught. Osric had come across to join me and, stepping aside for a moment to confer, we quickly came to the conclusion that it was best if he stayed aboard ship to safeguard our silver hoard while I was away. In the meantime Ohthere could take in Walo so the lad could tend the ice bears. That would leave Redwald free to get on with his business in the market.
‘The sooner we start out, the better,’ I called out, turning back to Gorm, and almost immediately regretted my enthusiasm when young Rolf went off at a run, and within minutes reappeared dragging our mounts by their rope bridles. They were two of the small shaggy breed that we had seen pulling a sledge up from the landing beach. There were no stirrups and once seated in the plain leather saddle, my dangling feet nearly touched the ground. I wondered if the diminutive animals were capable of carrying us far inland.
*
I had misjudged them. They set off at a scampering gait – half trot, half run – that was ideally suited to the difficult terrain. Rolf led the way confidently and I had only to let my little mount follow him at the same jolting pace as it dodged and weaved around the bushes and boulders along a trail no wider than a footpath. Our route was directly away from the sea and our progress was impressive, though at times I felt my spine was being rattled out of shape. For the first few miles the land was level, a mixture of sour bogland with stands of willow and alder, and tussocky rough pasture. We saw scarcely a dozen houses – basic cabins with log walls, a turf roof, a shed or two, and a small fenced enclosure for sheep or scrawny cattle. We spent our first night at the furthest of them where the landholder’s wife recognized Rolf. She gave us a place to sleep in the hay shed, and provided a meal of hard cheese, bread and milk, together with a satchel of the same provisions for our onward journey. Her husband was away at Kaupang market, she said.
The next morning the track veered more to the north-west and began to climb, gradually at first, then more and more steeply, winding its way up the ragged flank of a mountain range. Our ponies scrambled up the slopes with the agility of goats, their unshod hooves finding footing on the loose surface of stones and gravel. We left behind the bright sunshine of the coast and before long the grey of an overcast sky matched the sombre colours of the landscape. We were climbing into a wide, bleak landscape of rock and scree where stunted plants clung to tiny patches of thin soil. Ahead of us always loomed the mountains, the very highest peaks streaked with the last traces of the winter snow. Occasionally we crossed rivulets where ribbons of clear water trickled between the rounded stones, and we stopped and allowed our ponies to drink. I saw little wildlife apart from flocks of small, darting birds and several ravens, hovering like black rags in the breeze. Once, less than fifty paces away, I glimpsed a fox slinking away behind a boulder. Rolf spoke hardly at all, either from shyness or because he found my Saxon difficult to understand, even though it was close enough to his own tongue for us to agree on practical details. He never hesitated in our direction and appeared to know his way even when the last vestiges of a track petered out and we were riding across a rock-strewn wilderness.
We passed the second night of our ride in a lonely hut built entirely of stones ingeniously laid one upon the other in a single spiral course so that it made a cone shape and did not need a roof. The hut, if I understood Rolf correctly, belonged to the bird trapper we were seeking. It was empty except for some mouldering deerskins in one corner, a wooden stool with a broken leg, and the charred remains of a fire beneath the blackened smoke hole. Rolf had brought two small bags of oats for our horses and, once they had fed, staked them out on a rope long enough to let them pick and nibble at the mosses and tiny plants that grew among the rocks. Our own supper was the last of the cheese and bread.