The Eagle's Lady by Miriam Newman

Author:Miriam Newman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DCL Publications

Chapter Fourteen

By the third day out, the charm of the sea had palled for Ari. He was cold and wet despite his sealskin suit. Though it mainly shielded him from spray and rain, he often needed to pull back the hood to navigate and his hair was soaked and salty. It was impossible to shave and would have made him a laughingstock, not that his insistence on remaining beardless at his mother’s prompting didn’t often subject him to ridicule anyway. On board the knarr, he could look and become the essential Estman his father’s blood bequeathed to him. Though those in Britain and Eire might refer to them as Norsemen, raiders from the north, among themselves the men referred to their people as Estmen. No one ever seemed sure what lay to the east to give them such a name, but it bound them together.

It had not given him hunting luck, though. In decreasing daylight that made it difficult to sight prey, neither he nor the others spotted any stragglers, as if the more temperate southern seas had already claimed the whales and their kin. All they saw for food were seals, clustered on shores and shoals where they would winter, not much concerned with the passage of men. That would be a mistake, later, when the crew was returning to Freya’s Ford. But, for the moment, the seals were safe.

They could not take time to ice fish and the places they might have done so were not yet frozen to a safe degree. Plunging through a hole and being swept away by the treacherous current below the surface was a sure recipe for death and no one would risk it. Instead, they prowled the coast like starving orcas. Like the orcas, they were threatened by the specter of hunger that might eventually reduce them to chasing seals across ice floes. This, too, he could lay at his brother’s feet.

* * * *

Despite everything, there was an unmistakable air of merriment at Freya’s Ford as people prepared for the marriage of Soren and Mariel. The negotiations between families having been concluded with almost indecent haste because of the looming threat of winter, a substantial party arrived from Mariel’s home. This time it was in earnest, with a large group of her married and unmarried female relatives chattering up the longhouse.

“This takes us from our work,” Birgitta complained mildly, sweeping up after a day of weaving and preparing for a night of festivities. The wedding, like all weddings, would take place on Frigga’s Day, two days hence. Mariel’s people had brought a fair number of supplies with them, as a concession to the need at her new home. Her father would not leave her or her new family to starve and it gave Soren’s people hope.

“I did not think he had it in him,” Maeve admitted, “but Soren has found a way to supply us, as well.”

“Yes, one which did not cause him too much work,” Nohra sniped, and Birgitta just smiled.

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