In the Company of Stones

Chapter 2: The Upturned Ship, part 2.2

“RAAAN-ULF!! Raaaaan-ulf!!” A flash of dark blue skirts shot past the gap between two houses. Sigrun’s feet thundered down the board-walk, the noise growing fainter as she headed toward the piers that thrust out into the river.

Halfdan wondered why the speed of his sister-in-law’s passage didn’t suck the thatch off the rooftops. He’d just seen the boy sneaking free of his chores with a guilty look on his face. The town was small and so new that the thatch on its houses still gleamed golden. There were only so many places his nephew could disappear. Halfdan shook his head, and leaned against the breast-bar on the top of his auger. With luck, he could finish his wife’s new headboard before the week was out.

As Halfdan pressed downward, he cranked the auger’s crossbars until the bit turned, digging into the wood below. Curls of wood coiled out from the plank, falling to the ground. A hole grew, becoming the space between the lower jaw and the neck of a dragon’s head.

“Rannulf, my little pokker, when I find you, I’m going to tan your hide for a pair of BOOTS.” Sigrun shot past Halfdan.

A thin thread of unease wormed its way into his belly. “Try the ram-root field,” Halfdan shouted after Sigrun’s retreating back. He’d used to hide under those big leaves when he was a lad. She flapped her hand at him in acknowledgement and turned toward the fields.

Halfdan’s folk all kept a watchful eye on the younglings, it was what they did, living cheek by jowl in a small town. But there was nothing wilier than a lad set on causing trouble. If anyone understood that, it was Halfdan.

The bit popped through the back of the plank. Halfdan pulled the auger out, checked the bits cutting edge. It was still sharp. He straightened up from his workbench, and dusted the wood shavings from his breeks.

Sigrun returned. Wisps of pale hair floated free of her kerchief, waving about her face like wasp’s antenna, her blond brows appearing nearly white against flushed skin.

“No luck, I take it?” The worm in his belly began to gnaw harder. Halfdan braced himself against the bench.

Almost out of breath, Sigrun replied in gasps, the pitch rising and falling like a ship in a storm.

“Tostig saw Rannulf earlier. Poking sticks into the fish weir. Closer to midday, Thora fed him. Along with the rest of our little wolf-pack.” Sigrun wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow with her sleeve.

“I just saw him, too. He dropped his bucket outside the byre. Then hared off, west toward the fields.” Halfdan replied.

“I’ve already walked the fields, twice. And checked the paddocks. Where else could he be?”

She stamped her foot, then looked up at him, expectant. As if being Gothi of Hedeby meant Halfdan had the answer to every mystery tattooed on his eyelids, and if she only stared at him long enough, she’d find her answer.

Halfdan shook his head, his heart sinking.  

Despite the watch he’d kept, the word he’d put out to his men – had one of his boys gone missing?  How had Tostig put it – “Viberg, then Veijle, and that arrow points here, to Hedeby.” Halfdan’s lips tightened, and he massaged the back of his neck with fingers grown stiff from carving.

“Your son might not be just playing games,” he admitted. “It seems Ribe’s lost four of their boys. Other towns a handful more. All taken, right out from under their mother’s noses. And no one knows how.”

“When?”

“Last week.  The reason Tostig came down was to ask if I’d seen them, if the boys had traveled down-country. I hadn’t.” Nor had Halfdan seen any signs of ill-fate or child thieves.

“You held this back from us?” The white brows arched.

“Sigurd wanted it kept quiet. So the trail Tostig followed would stay warm. So he could find Ribe’s boys.”

He’d prayed that Ribe’s fate did not touch Hedeby. Hoped that loss would not be visited upon them as well. He’d stay silent, and quietly ordered his men to keep tight watch. Then sat on a bench outside his work-house, carving a new headboard for their bed. From there, he could watch everything that moved.

Sigrun wrapped her arms around herself, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “What did Snake-eyes do about his missing boys?”

Halfdan crossed his arms, and looked away. “Dragged the creek for bodies,” he replied, the words bitter to the taste.  His uncle Sigurd was a hard man. With a hard response for even tender tragedies.  “Had his men run up and down the roads with dogs, searching for miles. Turned over every rock and sheaf of straw, poked through every merchant’s bag with a sword. They found nothing.”

His wife stepped out of the long-hall, closing the iron-bound door behind her. Thora’s broaches flashed in the sun, her gold wool skirts flaring around her ankles as she strode over to his work-house, her mouth set in a grim line.

“Halfdan,” she said.                 

He didn’t like the sound he heard in Thora’s voice. Shock. Chagrin. Fear.

They had two bairns of their own, a third on the way. He’d not mentioned Sigurd’s news to Thora, either. Halfdan had not wanted her to fret.

He reached for his wife, tucking Thora under his arm, curving it to rest his hand on her firmly rounded belly. “Tell me,” he said. Halfdan pulled her toward him until she leaned against him, her head resting on his chest.

“Aki just told me he thought he saw a boy with gold hair on that southern ship,” she blurted. “A pale-haired boy amidst dark-haired men.”

Had he missed seeing the boy’s escape? How?

“That southern ship left before the midday meal. He can’t have gotten on it,” Halfdan said.

Halfdan had strolled over to the pier, down to the wide, flat-bottomed knarr as the crew prepared to hoist its square-rigged sail. Had an easy chat with their ship’s master, Dake, joking as men do.  Hauled a strangely cheerful Ragenard out of confinement, and made sure he left with Dake’s ship.

Had the trade been good for them, Halfdan had asked. Ahh. dried fish – will you be needing more? Amber? Or would it be more furs like these, next time? Yes, there will be more walrus ivory. Hedeby always welcomed trade from Frisia. A story nearly as good as coin, here.

Halfdan had taken a sharp look at the bales of cargo as they spoke. He’d checked every barrel, probed every bale as it was loaded. The crew waited patiently, looking bored. Even so, it had been an easy conversation, the dark-haired trader half lifting his hand in farewell once all were properly settled. They’d shipped out slowly, the sailors chanting as they hoisted sail. They settled into the pace, unhurried, unconcerned.

“I told you I saw him,” Thora replied, “now I’m not sure. But how could I have missed Rannulf at midday meal? I thought they were all there! So many of them – but even so, how could I miss my own nephew?”  She grabbed Sigrun’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll tell you how,” Sigrun grumbled. “Not much difference between eleven boys and twelve when that grubby lot are rolling in the ashes, throwing things, growling and biting each other, that’s how. Freya knows how hard it is to keep them out of the stew pot and the pease in, never mind counting noses.” She reached for Thora’s hand, and gave it a squeeze.

“Was Aki certain?” Halfdan asked. Unlike his mother, Rannulf was a slight boy. It was a simple matter to see the flash of sun reflecting from the sea as a boy’s bright hair.

Thora looked up at him, worry stamped large upon her features. “No, Aki said there was room for doubt.”

He stared off, down the long silvery snake of the Slie, out toward the sea. The tide had turned, and the wind changed, growing crisp and cool as the sun angled toward the horizon.

Which was worse, Halfdan thought.  A boy swept up by magic and taken by the Norns, or a boy stolen by foreigners, on a ship now gone too far to follow?