Stormriders Read online

She edged round the pit, Hairydog at her heels. Oddo followed, gagging ostentatiously and holding his nose.

  When he reached the other side, he eyed the boat.

  ‘What’s so great about this?’ He was still holding his nose. ‘Looks like a basket full of holes.’

  He glanced sideways at Dúngal, then prodded the frame with his foot. It trembled and one of the loose stringers rattled to the ground. Oddo saw the thrall clench his fists. Thora, shooting a furious glance at him, picked up the piece of ash, and tried to fit it to the boat.

  ‘Is this the right place?’ she asked.

  ‘A díbergaig brénanalaig!’ Dúngal snarled at Oddo. Scowling, he tied the stringer into place while Thora held it steady.

  ‘You really plan to sail to Ireland in this?’ demanded Oddo. The curach was tiny, smaller than The Cormorant that his father rowed to market. ‘You won’t fit three people in there.’

  ‘Yes we will,’ said Thora.

  But Dúngal looked up, his eyes wide. ‘Three?’ He pointed at Oddo. ‘You’ll not be coming!’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Oddo. ‘I didn’t want to come anyway. That thing’s going to sink the minute it hits the water. Thora, you can’t be serious about going in it. Come on, Hairydog, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Dúngal,’ he could hear Thora pleading as he turned away, ‘you don’t understand. We need Oddo. He’s magic. He can make the boat go where we want.’

  Wriggling into the tunnel, he listened for Dúngal’s answer. ‘Upp, I’m not needing magic,’ said the thrall stubbornly. ‘That’s a good boat I’ve made.’

  7

  Around the firepit

  ‘What are you going to tell your parents?’ asked Oddo. ‘They won’t want you to sail to Ireland in that silly curach.’

  Thora shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t worry them. They know I can look after myself. But I don’t think I’ll tell them, anyway. I’ll just say I’m going to Gyda’s to fetch the silver.’ Oddo was silent. ‘It’s not a lie. I will go to Gyda’s – on the way back.’

  ‘Not if the boat sinks, and you’re drowned.’

  ‘It won’t sink. Dúngal’s going to cover the leather with fat to make it waterproof.’

  ‘And where does he think he’s going to get all the fat from?’

  ‘I’ll get it. I’ll go round and ask all the farmers to save me their fat next time they kill a sheep. I’ll pretend I need it for my potions.’

  Oddo shook his head. ‘You’re mad, risking your life for that poophead.’

  But the next time Bolverk slaughtered a sheep, Oddo filled a bucket with blood-streaked lumps of yellowy fat and carried it through the wood to the house-over-the-hill. He found Thora in a cleared patch among the weeds, tending her herb garden.

  ‘Look how everything’s growing,’ she called excitedly. She showed him the little pea plants with their tiny curling shoots, the buds of baby cabbages, the scented rosemarin. ‘I could do with a bit of rain, though.’

  Then she noticed the bucket in his hand. ‘Oh! Is that for the boat? I can boil it right now.’

  ‘Can’t let you both drown,’ growled Oddo.

  The sound of raindrops followed them into the house.

  Inside, the room was thick with smoke. Oddo picked his way across a floor covered with mysterious lumps. He trod on something by mistake, and it squelched unpleasantly under his foot. Screeching figures leapt out of the gloom. Oddo dodged as Granny Hulda, followed by Astrid and Edith, danced round him, tossing objects in the air and singing a strange chant. Something landed on Oddo’s head and bounced onto the floor. It was a dead bird. Thora swooped on it eagerly.

  ‘That’ll do for supper,’ she said happily.

  Oddo felt a sticky cobweb trail across his face; and the herbs hanging from the rafters sprinkled dusty, scented leaves on his hair.

  They reached the firepit where little Ketil was rolling a lump of dough on the floor.

  ‘Cook it now!’ he said, holding it up. It was grey and covered with lumps of grit and feathers.

  Thora’s mother, Finnhilda, took it from him. But instead of setting it to cook on a griddle, she thrust her bare hand into the flames, and held it there, muttering a spell.

  Granny Hulda stopped prancing, and hovered, her beady eyes roving around the room, her thin fingers plucking the air. She looked like a small, curled-up beetle.

  ‘Is that the farmer’s boy,’ she asked, ‘the one who thinks he can do spellwork?’

  A lanky boy shot up in front of Oddo. ‘What runes do you know?’ Erik demanded.

  ‘I . . . can’t do runes,’ said Oddo.

  ‘Huh.’ Erik tossed a stone that almost hit Oddo in the face.

  ‘Can you turn invisible? I can turn invisible.’ Ketil leapt up from the floor and ran to fetch his goatskin cloak.

  ‘What about flower spells? Can you do this?’ asked Edith. ‘Show him, Sissa.’ A tiny girl with wide eyes and wispy hair picked up a log from the woodpile. A moment later, leaves and flowers sprouted all over it. The child chuckled, and Oddo shook his head.

  ‘He can’t do anything,’ sneered Astrid. ‘It’s just Thora’s boasting.’

  ‘He can too!’ Oddo was startled by the fury in Thora’s voice. ‘Show them, Oddo.’

  Embarrassed, Oddo glanced at the chimney hole. Everyone was watching. He was about to call for a spot of rain, when a siskin darted across the space with a flutter of yellow feathers.

  ‘Hey,’ he called. ‘Come here.’

  The little bird turned in mid-flight, dived through the hole and alighted on his outstretched hand.

  ‘That’s not hard,’ said Astrid.

  Oddo bent his mouth close to the feathered head, and whispered.

  The next moment, the siskin swooped across the room, and grasped a strand of Astrid’s hair in its tiny beak.

  ‘Ow!’ squealed Astrid, and tried to pull free. But the bird kept tugging as if it was pulling on a juicy worm. ‘Ow! Make it let go!’

  ‘What a pity,’ said Oddo. ‘I’m not very good at spellwork. I don’t know how to make it stop.’

  He winked at Thora. Hastily she bent her head and tipped the lumps of fat into a cauldron.

  While Astrid ran around the room squealing and holding her head, Thora added water and hung the pot on the fire. Her other brothers and sisters chased after Astrid, shouting instructions. Oddo caught the siskin’s eye. It let go and flew away.

  Astrid came to a halt, panting, her face scarlet. ‘You . . . You . . .’

  ‘You asked for it, Astrid,’ chortled Harald, and skipped out of the way as she spun towards him.

  The fat in the cauldron began to bubble. Shrivelled grey cracklings and bits of blood and foam rose to the surface. ‘Like boats in a sea,’ said Harald, peering over the edge.

  Oddo stared at the crispy curls swirling among the bubbles.

  ‘Bet they float better than Dúngal’s curach,’ he muttered. He glanced at Thora.

  She ignored him, and used a wooden ladle to skim the surface. Harald snatched a piece of crackling and popped it in his mouth. Oddo stared as his teeth crunched it into flakes, and imagined a tiny boat, disintegrating . . .

  ‘Thora, you’re not really planning to go off in that joke of a boat, are you?’ he demanded.

  Thora pursed her lips, sat down and began to pluck the feathers off the dead bird.

  ‘Stir the pot for me, will you?’ she said.

  A whirlwind of floating feathers was added to the fumes of smoke and boiling fat.

  Oddo stared at his friend, and imagined her trying to sail all the way to Ireland in the curach. With only that blockhead for company.

  At last, Thora covered the opening of an empty keg with a piece of weaving, and asked Oddo to hold it while she tilted the cauldron. He turned his face away as the liquid fat poured out in a stinking, steaming stream – through the cloth and into the keg.

  ‘Now, I’ll leave that in the storehouse to cool,’ said Thora. ‘Tomorrow there’ll be a clean layer of white fat
sitting on the top, and that’s what Dúngal will use on his leather.’

  On the way home, clothes and hair reeking of fat, Oddo passed the bramble patch where Dúngal was building his boat. He halted, and looked around. There was nobody in sight, and no sound coming from the brambles. Furtively, he slid into the tunnel.

  On the other side, he scrambled to his feet and gazed at the curach. It was even smaller than he’d remembered. Compared to a wooden Viking ship, it looked as fragile as the skeleton of a bird. Could it really cross the sea to another land?

  8

  Oddo’s dilemma

  ‘Oddo, the milk’s going everywhere!’

  Oddo started guiltily. Milk was foaming over the edges of the vat onto the earth floor of the dairy.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ said his mother.

  Oddo didn’t answer. When he’d tilted the bucket, it hadn’t been milk he saw pouring downwards, but the sea swamping a little boat. These days, everything he saw and heard reminded him of waves and storms and flapping sails. He was haunted by visions of a tiny curach tossing in a stormy sea, and an image of Thora clinging to its side and wailing to him, ‘Oddo, stop the storm!’

  When he left the dairy, he saw the real Thora hurrying across the paddock.

  ‘Hey,’ he called, ‘I’m over here.’

  To his annoyance, she didn’t stop.

  ‘Can’t talk now,’ she flung over her shoulder. ‘Taking this to Dúngal.’ She waggled a strand of fresh green nettle rope.

  The boy on the other side of the fence straightened from his hoeing and waved. Oddo watched, fuming, as Thora joined him.

  ‘You’ve always got time to talk to Dúngal,’ he muttered.

  He turned his back and stomped towards the river, but as he dipped his bucket in the water, he saw the little boat again. This time it was filling slowly with seawater and Thora, instead of wailing for him, was clinging to Dúngal. Angrily, he thrust the bucket deep. He let go and watched it sink down, the ripples closing over it. Then he grabbed the handle and hauled it out. He slammed it so hard on the bank, water sloshed all over his breeches.

  ‘Barley’s come up beautifully again,’ said Bolverk at supper. ‘You’re turning into a real farmer.’

  Oddo knew those words should make him glow with pride, but he just stared down at his plate, prodding the crumbs with his finger.

  ‘Could the crop manage without rain for a couple of days?’ he asked. ‘If I . . . go away for a bit?’

  ‘Away? Where?’

  ‘I . . .’ Oddo frowned. He’d worked so hard to earn his father’s trust and respect. What would happen if he found out Oddo was planning to help a slave escape, and sail to Ireland in a boat made of twigs and bits of animal skin?

  ‘Thora asked me to go with her to Gyda’s,’ he mumbled. ‘Down the river.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Thora for weeks,’ said Sigrid. ‘She must be very busy.’

  ‘Huh,’ grunted Oddo.

  ‘Such a sweet girl. Remember that summer you were sick, Husband, and she helped me? Just like a daughter.’

  ‘Well,’ Bolverk brushed the crumbs from his beard, ‘you’d have to walk there. I need The Cormorant for fishing.’

  ‘But . . . would the seedlings be all right?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Just give them a good soaking before you leave.’

  ‘It’s a long way to Gyda’s,’ said Sigrid anxiously.

  Bolverk slapped the table.

  ‘Have you forgotten, woman, that your son walked all the way home from the Gula Thing? He can manage an easy stroll to Gyda’s and back.’

  Oddo gulped.

  ‘I wish it was just that,’ he thought.

  The next day, he waylaid Thora as she struggled through the wood with a heavy bundle.

  ‘What’s that?’ He pointed at the heap of woollen cloth.

  ‘Nothing to interest you. It’s the sail for the curach.’ Thora stuck out her chin. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’

  There was a silence. Oddo took a deep breath. ‘Well, what do you want me to bring?’

  Thora stared. Then she dropped the bundle and flung her arms around him. Oddo felt as if a weight that had been pressing on him for days was suddenly lifted. He hugged her back, and breathed the smell of her sun-warmed hair against his cheek.

  That night, Oddo was too excited to swallow his supper.

  ‘Remember to wake me before it’s light,’ he told his mother. ‘We want to start really early.’

  ‘Off to bed now, then,’ said Sigrid.

  But when Oddo lay on the sleeping bench, he felt as if someone had poked a stick in his belly and was churning it round and round. In the glow of the dying fire, he gazed around the room; at the twig broom leaning in a corner, the pots neatly stacked on the shelves, the wisps of smoke curling from the snuffed oil lamps, the tall shape of his mother’s loom and the clay weights on the threads clinking softly.

  ‘If that boat sinks, I’ll never see these again,’ he thought.

  When Sigrid shook his shoulder, it seemed as if he hadn’t slept at all. He watched her ladling out his porridge and tried to fix the picture in his mind: Bolverk, a dark, sleeping shape in the background, his snores reverberating through the room, and Sigrid, her round pink cheeks glowing in the firelight.

  He sat at the table to eat, but he couldn’t stop shivering, and he had to force the porridge down his throat. When Sigrid pinned the cloak around his shoulders, he reached out to give her a clumsy hug. As he passed the bed, he touched his father’s hair gently with the tips of his fingers.

  Outside, Hairydog bounded ahead, yapping with excitement. It was barely light when Oddo wriggled through the tunnel, but Dúngal and Thora were there already. As soon as he appeared, they leapt to their feet. Thora grabbed the oars.

  ‘Right, let’s go. Hurry!’

  Oddo and Dúngal picked up the boat, and as Oddo felt the lightness of it in his hand, his heart plummeted. They could never cross an ocean in this.

  They turned towards the tunnel.

  ‘Uh, how are we going to get it out?’ asked Oddo.

  They all stared at the opening, too narrow even for this tiny boat to fit through. Oddo felt a wave of relief. ‘We won’t be able to go!’ he thought. But then he saw the disappointment on the others’ faces.

  ‘Make the hole bigger!’ cried Dúngal. He dropped his end of the boat and began tearing at the thorny brambles with his bare hands. ‘Help me!’

  ‘Wait, I’ll get an axe!’ said Oddo resignedly. ‘Hairydog, you dig the ground.’

  Hairydog’s paws churned up the soil as Oddo raced for home.

  Back again, the axe in his hand, he yelled at the others to stand back. He slashed at the dense, spiky wall of trees and bushes. Thorny twigs and leaves flew around him, scratching his face and catching in his hair.

  ‘Try now,’ he gasped.

  He doubled over, trying to catch his breath, as the little curach slid through the gap. He saw Thora glance at the axe in his hand, then into his face. Why was she looking so worried? And then it hit him. Like a punch in the belly. Thora had warned him how to chop a tree. She’d told him to ask the tree’s forgiveness first, because of his magic powers. If he didn’t . . . Something awful would happen to him. He dropped the axe to the ground, and wiped his hands nervously on his tunic. But it was too late now.

  With a feeling of doom, he hoisted up his end of the boat and followed Dúngal down to the river.

  9

  Which way?

  ‘Hurry!’ Dúngal urged. ‘It’s late. Grimmr will wake and see I’m gone. Uch!’ He stumbled over a tree root and the curach slipped from his grasp. He clutched his tunic in exasperation, then bent to lift the boat again. ‘Wait. Turn it over. Lift it over your head.’

  ‘How’m I supposed to see where I’m going?’ Oddo’s voice echoed inside the hollow body of the boat.

  ‘Look down.’

  Dúngal watched his feet flash over the ground. In a moment, he glimpsed the water
.

  ‘Stop, we’re there.’

  As he lowered the boat, he heard shouts and running footsteps. Before he could dive for cover, two figures came crashing through the trees. They were boys, long and lanky like Oddo. The taller one raced in front, holding something above his head, while the younger tried to reach it, calling angrily. The sounds faded as they sped into the wood.

  Dúngal sprang into action, flipping the curach the right way up.

  ‘Oddo, do you think they saw you?’ he hissed.

  ‘Me?’ Oddo looked bewildered.

  ‘They were your brothers, weren’t they?’

  ‘No. They were Thora’s brothers.’

  ‘Oh. They looked like you.’

  ‘Stop babbling,’ said Thora. ‘Who cares what they look like? Let’s get this boat in the water and get out of here.’ She turned and reached into the bush. ‘Here’s the sail,’ she called, her voice muffled. ‘Now, where’s the mast?’

  She crawled backwards, dragging the heap of cloth. Oddo was still on one knee, staring into the wood. Dúngal found the end of the mast.

  ‘Oddo, aren’t you going to help?’ he snapped. He laid the mast along the bank, and bound the yard to the top of it. ‘Here, hold this up.’ Oddo staggered to his feet, the long ends of the yard sticking out either side of him.

  ‘I’ll tie on the sail,’ said Thora.

  In a few minutes, they were ready to raise the mast. Thora knelt in the curach to guide the foot into position. Dúngal gripped the forestay and began to haul. His mouth was dry. If the mast didn’t fit in the wooden step . . .

  ‘It’s in!’ yelled Thora as it thudded into place. Dúngal gulped with relief.

  But when the long pole was raised, the curach wobbled alarmingly. Oddo grabbed the side to stop it toppling over.

  ‘I told you this was hopeless,’ he yelled.

  ‘Just get it in the water!’ said Dúngal crossly.

  But as he pushed it down the bank, he felt the sour taste of bile in his throat. Maybe Oddo was right. Maybe it wouldn’t float.

  The curach slid into the river and Dúngal threw himself aboard. The tall mast tilted, the boat heeled, and water slopped over the side.