Ingvar gave a whoop of satisfaction and sprang to his feet. ‘We must secure the falcon before it hurts itself,’ he said. The captive was thrashing and tumbling inside the net, frenziedly struggling to escape.
I tried to rise but had lost all feeling in my legs. I threw out a hand to help myself and, in my clumsiness, grabbed Ingvar by the back of his jerkin. My tug threw him off balance just as he was about to leave our hiding place and he fell across me. He swore at me, fearing to lose his prize. In that same moment, there was a second rush of wind and, from nowhere, another bird of prey came flashing down, striking deep into the swirling turmoil of the net. It was a second gyrfalcon, as white as the first.
The second bird’s headlong attack was its undoing. Its talons struck through the net into the pigeon’s carcass, closed, then caught in the mesh. The second gyrfalcon also became a tangle of fury, jerking and twisting to get free.
Ingvar had regained his balance. He burst out of our hiding place, slipping off his jerkin. Racing up to the second falcon, he threw the garment over it, trapping it in its folds.
‘Quick! There’s a spare net in the cave,’ he called to me.
I ran back, found the net, brought it to him and together we managed to wrap the furious gyrfalcon in its mesh.
Ingvar worked with calm efficiency, not losing a moment. Deftly he disentangled the second falcon’s claws from the mesh of the spring trap and handed me the bird, still wrapped. The dark brown eyes circled with bright yellow skin glared at me in fury as I clutched the struggling creature to my chest, determined not to let it escape. Meanwhile, Ingvar had pulled a length of cloth from his pocket. Gently he eased back the hoop of the trap. Slipping an arm under it, he dropped the cloth over the bird, smothered its thrashing wings, then enveloped its head. As soon as the bird’s head was covered, it became less agitated.
Ingvar gathered up the falcon and rose to his feet. ‘Bring your bird, we must seal them quickly.’
We hurried back to the cave where Ingvar produced a fine needle and thread, and with infinite care – though it made my stomach clench – ran stitches through the eyelids of the first falcon, then drew them together.
‘It doesn’t hurt them,’ he said, seeing my squeamishness. ‘And once the eyes are sealed, they are less likely to hurt themselves.’
It was true. Both birds stopped their frantic attempts to get free as soon as their lids were sealed, and we were able to set them down, to stand quietly on the floor of the cave.
Finally, Ingvar relaxed. ‘That’s the first time it has happened to me in twenty years of trapping,’ he confessed.
‘Two birds at a single time?’
‘The second falcon must have decided it could snatch away the dead pigeon.’
‘Are they the same birds you hoped to trap?’ I asked.
‘One of them is. It’s the male from the nesting pair I’ve been watching.’
‘And the other?’
‘Had it been the female, I would have released it so that it could feed the chicks.’
‘So you don’t recognize it?’
‘Never seen it before. It’s a different female. She must have been on passage, and just happened upon us. That’s what is so difficult to explain . . .’ The words died on his lips as he stared into my eyes, his expression wondering. ‘Unless the spirits had been asked to help.’
I knew what he was thinking: I had used seidrmann’s powers to summon the second bird from afar.
The look on Ingvar’s face was unsettling. I had an uneasy feeling that my journey to Kaupang was slipping out of my control.
*
At Ingvar’s hut that evening the trapper wrung the necks of all but three of his remaining stock of pigeons. The survivors would later be fed to our captive birds. He let the little ‘shrieker’ go free.
‘It served me well,’ said Ingvar as we watched the bird fly away, flitting over the boulder-strewn landscape. ‘I can trap another one next year.’
Rolf was given the task of plucking the dead pigeons for our supper, and we sat beside the cooking fire, adding dry sticks from the woodpile to produce a good roasting blaze.
‘Tomorrow we set out for Kaupang. You and I each carry a gyrfalcon, and Rolf carries the eagle,’ Ingvar said.
He selected a crooked branch, cut off a short section with his hunting knife, and began to scrape off the bark. ‘Rolf will need a travel perch for the eagle. That’s a heavy animal. If he places one end of this on his saddle tree, it will take the eagle’s weight.’
I watched the shavings curl up from the knife blade as the stubby perch took shape, and it occurred to me that Ingvar, a hunter living in the wilds, might know something about the mysterious unicorn. I was still smarting at the memory of being laughed at, so I raised the subject cautiously. ‘I read in a book that no bird can match the eagle for its courage.’