Hawk Quest

XXIII

In the middle of an early June night as bright as day, Wayland left Iceland with Raul and Syth. Their pilot was a morose fellow called Gunnar, a martyr to disabling headaches. Also on board were the two monks. Father Saxo was fat with a head as bald as peeled garlic and took a relaxed view of human frailty. Father Hilbert was thin, with ears like a bat and an implacable belief in man’s innate wickedness. Neither had been out of Germany before, but they knew exactly what to expect of the Greenlanders.

‘They daren’t leave their houses in the wintertime,’ Father Saxo told Raul. ‘If they do, they’re burned by a cold so extreme that when they wipe their noses, the whole nose pulls off.’

Father Hilbert nodded. ‘And the nose having broken off, they throw it away.’

‘I’d better be careful how I piss then,’ said Raul.

The monks exchanged looks. Saxo leaned forward. ‘When did you last attend mass?’

‘Not long after Easter,’ Raul said with a straight face.

‘Did you confess your sins?’

Raul winked at Wayland. ‘I was in too much of a hurry.’

Hilbert pinned him with an earnest gaze. ‘Do you wish to make confession now?’

Raul looked out across the placid ocean. ‘How long have you got, Father?’

The passage went smoothly. Six days out of Reykjavik, Wayland saw his first icebergs — emaciated wrecks, all ribs and hollows. They rounded Cape Farewell on Greenland’s southern tip and in a diffused light drifted north with huge mountains to starboard. They didn’t land at the Eastern Settlement. To reach it they would have had to sail thirty miles up an ice-strewn fjord. Instead, they tacked and rowed only as far as the first farmstead. Here the monks took their leave. With them went the pilot, who declared that he was too ill to go any further, and two of the Icelandic crewmen. Replacing them wasn’t difficult. Ships were rare in Greenland and half a dozen settlers begged to accompany the foreigners on the searoad north. After two nights ashore, the company sailed on and reached the Western Settlement at night on the third day.

It lay at the head of a long fjord — just a few sod houses with hay-fields under a black-and-white backdrop of mountains. Shearwater landed at a farm in a bay on the north shore and the Greenlanders and remaining Icelanders disembarked to complete their journeys on foot. Wayland, Raul and Syth stood in the twilight silence, wondering why people would choose to settle in such a barren outpost.

They’d just sat down to breakfast next morning when a man stuck his grinning face above the gunwale.

‘Well met, far-farers.’

The dog advanced on him. The stranger whistled in admiration. ‘What a monster,’ he said, chucking it under the jaw. ‘The wolf Fenrir who devoured Odin couldn’t have been bigger. If he fathers a litter during your stay, I’ll pay a good price for a dog pup. I’ll call him Skoll after the wolf who chases the sun.’ Up he breezed — a powerfully built man followed by a sturdy boy. He gave Syth a formal bow. ‘Good morning, lovely daughter.’ Wayland and Raul had risen uncertainly. He shook each by the hand. ‘Orm the Greedy,’ he said. ‘This is my son, Glum. I hear you’re looking for a guide to take you to the northern hunting grounds. You’re in luck. I’ve trapped and hunted there most summers for thirty years.’ He sniffed appreciatively. ‘Hot wheaten scones with fresh butter. Don’t let them grow cold on my account.’

Wayland sank back on his seat. ‘Would you care to share our meal?’

‘By all means,’ said Orm. He plonked himself down on a thwart, helped himself to a scone and trowelled butter on it.

Wayland studied the Greenlander. His main impression was of grizzled red hair. A great shock of it on the man’s head, long ragged moustaches, bushy eyebrows that grew straight up, giving him an air of perpetual astonishment. Bright blue eyes nestled in wrinkles. His son was cast in the same stocky mould but was as hangdog as his father was outgoing. On his right temple was an indentation the size and shape of an egg.

‘You’re after falcons,’ Orm said. ‘I know where to find them.’

‘White ones?’

‘Pale as the winter moon.’ Orm arched his incredible eyebrows at Syth. ‘Can you spare a little more butter, lovely maid?’

Raul eyed him suspiciously. ‘What kind of arrangement are you proposing?’

Orm crammed another scone under his moustache. ‘A fair one. You need a guide and a crew. I need a ship.’

‘How many crew?’

‘Four friends as well as my son. We’ll be netting auks, killing whales and walrus, trapping foxes. We’ll be away six weeks.’

‘It seems to me that you have the better part of the deal.’

Orm jabbed with his knife. ‘The falcons are hard to find and harder to reach. How many are you after?’

The ransom stipulated four, but Wayland had always counted on taking more to make up for losses on the journey south. ‘Eight should be enough.’

‘That’s a lot of gaping beaks to feed. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they never go hungry. Do you have the stomach for heights?’

Wayland hesitated. ‘I once climbed a hundred-foot beech in a gale to free a hawk tangled by her jesses.’

‘It’s not trees you’ll be climbing. The falcons nest on crags in the clouds. I’ve been birding on cliffs since I could walk. Glum, too. That reminds me. I hear you have iron.’

Raul narrowed his eyes. ‘Suppose we have?’

‘You’ll need ice axes. I can get them forged by tomorrow evening and we can be off on the dawn tide. What do you say?’

Wayland looked at Raul. He looked at Glum standing with his face downcast. ‘He’s rather young, isn’t he?’

‘A boy can stand where a man will fall. Glum’s as agile as a goat.’

‘What happened to his head?’

‘A stone hit him when he was collecting auks’ eggs. He was only seven. Don’t worry, his wits are still the right way out. He’s always been tight-tongued.’

‘Syth will be coming with us,’ said Wayland.

Orm hesitated only for a fraction. ‘Excellent. I haven’t tasted scones as good as these since my mother died.’

‘Have the last one.’

‘Are you sure?’

Wayland stood. ‘You’ll supply all the necessary equipment.’

‘Everything.’

Wayland stuck out his hand. ‘It’s a deal.’

Orm sealed the contract with a crushing grip. Back on the jetty he paused. ‘Do you have beer?’

‘We drank it,’ said Raul. ‘We’ve still got barley and malt.’

‘Then we have everything we need. A hunter must have ale to toast his triumphs and console him in his failures.’

Off he went, whistling. Raul and Wayland pulled faces at each other.

All next day Orm and his friends loaded Shearwater with hunting paraphernalia. They had long horsehair ropes, scaling ladders, traps and nets of various kinds, harpoons, fishing lines and hooks, barrels of salt and fermented whey, tents. They stowed a skiff in the hold and lashed a whaler on deck alongside Shearwater’s boat. Since they wouldn’t find wood in the north, they carried fuel bricks made from straw and dried cow dung. The Greenlanders were in holiday mood, singing and joking as they worked.

A dozen or so of their relatives turned out to bless the enterprise and watch them set sail. They felt their way north in thick fog, borne along past icebergs wreathed in silence. Three days later the fog released them into a realm of permanent daylight and air so clear that they could sometimes see their next destination more than a day before they reached it. Icebergs as big as cathedrals drifted by in ponds of turquoise meltwater, the cold blue light of thousand-year-old winters entombed at their cores. They passed one of the glaciers that calved these monsters and watched cliffs of ice collapse thunderously into the sea, raising waves that sent Shearwater pitching wildly. The next day they sailed into an upwelling current the colour of hyacinths on which every kind of native creature that swam or flew had converged. An ominous cloud out to sea turned into a flock of auks a mile wide that whirred past in a sooty squall. Wherever Wayland looked, he could see whales breaching or sounding. The loud reports of their flukes smacking the water kept him awake almost as much as the sun shining at midnight.

That same sunlit night orcas switchbacked ahead of the ship, their backs glowing like polished manganese. One of them launched out of the ocean and pirouetted on its tail before crashing back. They disappeared and the sea settled into a silky calm. Syth was standing next to Wayland in the bow and he watched her stroke a strand of sun-bleached hair from her eyes. He noticed how her eyes took on the colours of the sea — amethyst, violet, cobalt. She had filled out and grown from girl to young woman. He gathered himself to speak, not knowing what he was going to say except that it would be irrevocable.

She noticed his attention and put her hands on her hips and gave a mock pout. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, meaning ‘everything’. ‘I’m glad your hair’s grown. It makes you look … pretty.’ He winced at the lame compliment.

She looked down, suddenly as shy as he was. ‘The day we met you said I reminded you of someone. You never said who.’

Wayland didn’t stop to think. ‘My sister.’

Syth’s smile tightened. ‘Oh.’

‘Only at first sight.’

Orm released Wayland from his torment by thumping him between the shoulderblades. ‘Not far now.’

Syth turned eagerly, a girl again. ‘Will we see snow bears?’

Orm laughed. ‘I doubt it, lovely daughter. In all my trips I’ve only seen three. They live further north.’ His brows waggled. ‘So much the better. They’re bigger than bulls and so strong that they can flip a seal clean over their shoulders. You won’t even see them coming. Do you know why?’

Syth gave a quick shake of her head.

‘They spend all their lives on snow and they’re white all over — except for their black noses. So when they stalk prey, they cover their noses with their paws … ’ Orm suited action to word, ‘ … and creep up, closer and closer … ’ Orm lurched in a crude pantomime of bear strategy, ‘ … until they have you in their grasp and then — Grrr! No, be thankful you won’t see any bears.’

Syth giggled. ‘I don’t believe you. About bears covering their noses, I mean.’

‘Why do you think my eyebrows stand on end? It’s because of all the amazing things I’ve seen in the northland. Up here it’s like living in a daylight dream.’

A pleasant silence fell. Shearwater’s sail flapped and filled. The sun was dipping to the lowest point on its endless circle.

‘Where does Greenland end?’ Wayland asked.

‘In mist and ice, the evening of the world and its dawn, the abode of the dead and the realm of the first gods.’

Wayland nodded towards the west. ‘Do you know what lies over the sea?’

Orm stood shoulder to shoulder with him. ‘I do, for men have sailed there in my own lifetime. The West Land we call it, but it can’t be reached by chasing the sun. The sea’s too thick with ice. You have to follow the current north until you can’t go any further, then cross a strait to the west. First you reach Slabland and Flatland, where the snow never melts in summer. Travelling south you pass Markland and the Wonder Strands before reaching Wineland, where even the winters are snowless and the nights of the Yule festival are as long as the days. It’s so fertile that wheat ripens into loaves, and the dew is so sweet that cows only have to lick the grass to grow fat. In Wineland the trees reach halfway to heaven and the forests swarm with deer and sable and beavers. The seas are so thick with cod that a man can cross between islands by walking on the backs of them.’

Wayland smiled. ‘Greenland’s a harsh land. I’m surprised you don’t leave it to make new homes in such a paradise.’

‘They did. In my great-grandfather’s day more than a hundred of them settled in Wineland. As a boy, I met the last survivor of the colony. Bjarni Sigurdason was his name and he never stopped talking about the wonders of the West Land.’

‘Why did he come back?’

‘Why did Adam and Eve leave Eden? Jealousy over the women. Sickness. Above all, strife with the skraelings.’

‘Skraelings?’

‘Screechers. Uglies. God in his wisdom has given the West Land to savages who don’t even know his name. At first they were friendly and happy to trade. They were so unworldly that a settler could buy a bale of pelts with a scrap of woolcloth no broader than a finger. Soon, though, they became a menace. They stole the settlers’ livestock, not understanding that animals could be personal property, and they threatened hunters who went into the forests which they claimed as their own preserve. Blood was shed on both sides, but the skraelings were many and the settlers were few. After three winters the leader of the colonists decided that there would never be peace with the heathens and brought the survivors back.’

He lapsed into silence and Wayland assumed that he was thinking about the ill-fated colony. But when he spoke again, he pointed north.

‘I’ve seen a skraeling in Greenland — at the furthest end of the northern hunting grounds. I’d been hunting seals out on the pack ice. I returned in the evening and found footprints around my camp. I took my bow and followed them. I climbed over a snow ridge and there he was. At first I thought he was a blind bear because he was dressed head to toe in fur and had white discs where his eyes should be. He saw me at the same time and drew back his spear. I had my arrow aimed at his heart but I didn’t shoot. I don’t know why. He held up his hand and I raised mine and then he began to back away. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He jumped on a sledge and eight white wolves bore him away.’ Orm looked fiercely at Wayland. ‘God’s word. That was three years ago and ever since I’ve been wondering how he came to be in that place so far north, living with tame wolves where we Greenlanders can’t survive for more than three months of the year.’

‘Perhaps he came from the West Land.’

Orm stabbed his forefinger. ‘You’ve got it, boy! That’s what I tell my people, but they laugh and say how could skraelings who don’t have ships, who know nothing about iron, who live in houses made of twigs and leaves — how could such savages cross the icy sea to Greenland? You’ll see, I tell them. Where one has come, others will follow. Then where will we be?’

Glum gave an urgent cry on the other side of the ship. His father ran over and they both leaned over. ‘Come quick,’ Orm shouted.

The whole company gathered. Under the hull passed a school of fish or whales with pallid, mottled bodies and spiral lances sticking out of their heads.

‘Corpse whales,’ said Orm. ‘Some call them sea unicorns. Forget falcons. Catch one of those and you’ll be rich for life. I’ve heard that in Miklagard the value of a narwhal horn is measured by twice its weight in gold.’

‘How do you catch them?’

‘They swim into the fjords to calve and we harpoon them in their breeding bays.’ Orm leaned out along the course taken by the narwhals. ‘It’s a good omen, lad. They’re heading for the fjords where the falcons nest.’ He pointed towards the coast. ‘Red Cape. We’re nearly at the hunting grounds.’

Wayland looked along the golden path laid by the midnight sun and saw that it ended at a colossal escarpment separating two ice-carved valleys.

On a dying wind the crew rowed towards the immense red prow. Hundreds of seals bobbed in the waves, watching them with limpid curiosity. Acres of eider drakes parted around the ship, only shifting when the bow was almost upon them. Giant auks as tall as geese with wings no bigger than a child’s hands waddled to the edge of a skerry and flopped in. Underwater they flew as gracefully as swallows. ‘God forgot to grant them wits the day he made those boobies,’ Orm said. ‘A man can stand in a flock of them and club them all day long.’

From the same islet ungainly leviathans with down-turned tusks and coarse moustaches humped forward on flippers and slid into the swell. ‘Walruses,’ said Orm, and stroked his own whiskers to make Syth laugh. From the cliffs above came a steady roar. Every ledge and gallery was packed with auks and gulls and God knows what other kinds of fowl. The cliffs loomed so high that the birds flocking around the upper heights looked no bigger than gnats.

‘Falcons nest in both fjords,’ Orm said. He indicated the precipices plunging into the southern sea-arm. ‘One of the eyries is up there.’

Wayland’s gaze panned up from the ice-littered channel to the summit crags, then back down again. The cliffs fell sheer to the sea or dropped to talus slopes pitched at sickening inclines. There was no coastal shelf, nowhere to put ashore.

Raul had a finger pressed thoughtfully to his lips. ‘We ain’t going to climb that.’

‘Not from below,’ Orm said. ‘There’s a path to the top on the other side of the cape. Glum will lead you up it. From the summit you can climb down to the nest. You won’t be able to see it from above. I’ll take the ship up the fjord to mark the spot. First we must make camp.’

They rowed on with the sun behind them, water falling like blood from their oarblades. Around the north side of the cape was a foreshore of tumbled boulders. The skeleton of a whale lay on the strand like the frame of a wrecked ship, each vertebra occupied by a cormorant holding out its tattered black wings in an unholy cross. Orm steered between bluffs enclosing an inlet and brought Shearwater to rest. Wayland jumped ashore into the stink of guano and the din of squabbling birds. A sea-eagle with wings the size of a table-top glided close to the tenements, chased by a mob of gulls. Beneath the rookeries, blue foxes sat waiting for the drizzle of eggs and nestlings that fell or were pushed from their nurseries.

Orm’s base camp was a shieling built with granite slabs. The roof had collapsed under winter snow and the company’s first task was to make it sound. Then they carried their equipment ashore and stowed it away. Orm proposed a meal and then rest, but Wayland knew that Greenland’s summer smiles were fleeting and insisted on climbing to the falcon’s nest straight away.

‘Syth and the dog had better stay with me,’ Orm told him. They sorted out the equipment. Glum slung two coiled ropes and an iron bar over his back. Raul carried another pair of ropes. Wayland strapped a wicker basket over his shoulders.

The sun had moved south and they climbed the boulder field in dusky blue shadow, jumping from one ankle-jarring stance to another. They laboured up a scree slope until they reached the foot of a diagonal rift in the escarpment. Between vertical crags fanged with icicles, an ice gully rose in a succession of steep chutes and steps.

Raul’s jaw dropped. ‘Orm said a path.’

‘Use your ice axes,’ Glum said. ‘In the steep places I will cut steps for you. There are some difficult parts where you must use a rope.’

‘Difficult parts,’ Raul repeated.

Glum set off at an easy pace, chopping toeholds with his axe. Wayland stepped on to the ice and realised how tenuous his grip was. He hadn’t climbed more than a few feet before he slipped. He would have fallen if he hadn’t managed to claw the point of his axe into the ice.

Raul struggled up beside him. ‘This is the stupidest thing I ever did in my life.’

Wayland looked up at Glum’s foreshortened outline. ‘Go back if you want.’

On he went, considering each step. Glum was approaching the top of the icestep by the time he reached its base. He surveyed the treacherous cascade. Looking down through his feet, he could see Raul’s head and shoulders and the slick couloir falling away to the bottom of the cliff. If he slipped now, he would carry Raul away with him. Splinters of ice skipped past. Glum hauled himself out of sight over the step.

Use the steps I cut.

Wayland waited for Raul to reach him. The German’s teeth were gritted in terror.

‘You’d better lower the rope,’ Wayland shouted.

Down it came. ‘You trust him?’ Raul gasped.

‘More than I trust myself.’

Up he went, his feet skidding on the cobbled ice. At the top he found Glum wedged behind rocks at the edge of the gully. Wayland’s gaze shot up past him, hoping to find that the ascent became easier. Instead, there was another cascade of ice even higher than the one he’d just scaled.

‘You should have told us how dangerous it was.’

Glum regarded him calmly. ‘If I had, would you have come?’

Wayland climbed most of the next pitch on the bare rocks at the side of the gully. One awkward manoeuvre involved shuffling around a pillar that had split away from the face and fractured into blocks. He was fully committed, gripping the stack with both hands, when he felt it begin to sway outwards. Somehow he got round without it toppling, but then he heard a scraping sound and saw as if in slow motion the cap of the pillar slide and fall. The rock was twice the size of a man’s head and it shot down the gully towards Raul. Wayland jammed his fist into his mouth, and that’s what saved the German. If he’d shouted a warning, Raul would have looked up and been struck full in the face. Instead, he was concentrating so hard on his next hold that he didn’t hear the rock coming until it crashed in front of him and bounded over his body. It flew over the icestep and Wayland heard it shatter on the walls and go clattering away into the depths. Shocked rigid, he waited for Raul to join him.

The German groaned and collapsed against the crag with his head lolling back and his eyes closed.

‘I won’t hold it against you if you go back,’ Wayland said.

‘Too late. It would be as dangerous to go down as to go on.’

He was right. A grim fatalism overtook Wayland as he climbed the next icestep. If he fell, he fell — a swoop of terror as he lost his footing, a smashing impact, then oblivion.

Above the third step the gully widened and the going became easier. Wayland was able to climb without the use of his hands. A blue skylight opened and he staggered on to the summit plateau. Raul thrashed up behind him and turned and pointed down the gully as if it were the throat into hell. ‘I’m not going back down there. You hear?’

Glum was coiling the rope over his shoulder. ‘Yes, you must. It is the only way.’

The climb had taken them most of the morning and the sky was beginning to skin over. From up here they could see the vast polar desert that covered Greenland’s interior. A cold wind from the icecap stung their faces as they plugged over the plateau, the ground curving away on all sides so that they could see nothing but snow and sky and their footprints dwindling behind them. The slope began to descend and the snow cover grew patchy, exposing fields of frost-shattered rock. Wayland saw the ice-ribboned clifftops on the far side of the fjord, and then the edge of the plateau came into sight — broken columns and buttresses connected to the face by knife-edged ridges. Glum made his way out on to one of the projections. Very vulnerable he looked on that lofty promontory.

He made a slow overarm gesture towards his left and they trudged on into the wind.

‘There!’ Wayland shouted, pointing at a blocky silhouette perched on an outcrop along the escarpment.

‘Yes, it is the falcon,’ Glum said. ‘The nest is close, I think.’

Wayland forgot the perils of the ascent and hurried forward. He’d got halfway to the outcrop when the falcon launched off and disappeared around its sentinel rock. It wasn’t as large as he’d been expecting. ‘That must be the male,’ he said. ‘The tiercel.’

‘Wait here please,’ Glum said, and walked nonchalantly on to another prow. He anchored himself with his pick and leaned over, then hissed and made a beckoning motion.

Wayland’s heart beat fast as he picked his way forward. A ferocious updraught lifted him back on his heels. Eyes watering, he peered over the edge. The world spun. He drew back dizzy and afraid.

‘Take my hand,’ Glum said. ‘See, my axe holds me very firmly.’

Wayland entrusted his life to the boy’s grip and leaned over. The wind blew his hair back. The ship below was no bigger than a speck. He heard a creaking wail and out from an overhang to his left sailed the gyrfalcon. Wayland looked straight down on her, taking in her size and whiteness, her massive shoulders, the broad bases of her wings. She rode the updraught without effort and glided along the cliff face on slightly downheld wings, passing close enough for Wayland to see the highlights in her eyes.

He turned to Raul. ‘Pure white! As big as an eagle!’

‘The nest is below the overhang,’ Glum said. ‘It will not be possible to go straight to it. I will look from the other side to see if that way is easier.’

The falcon floated away, making height. Wayland’s blood tingled at the thought of possessing her offspring before the day was out.

Glum came back shaking his head. ‘This side is not so difficult, I think. Now we must find a place to fix the ropes.’

They explored the ground behind the eyrie. About fifteen feet back from the edge, Glum located a crack deep enough to sink the bar a foot deep.

Raul wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Who’s going down?’

Glum looked at Wayland. ‘I think it must be me. It is not so easy for you.’

Wayland almost let him have his way. The prospect of descending the precipice made his heart quail and turned his legs to water. But when he looked into the void and saw the falcon patrolling her territory, he knew that his triumph wouldn’t be complete unless he took the eyases himself.

‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Show me the route.’

Glum led him out on to the spur and pointed down the face. ‘First you must descend to that ledge and follow it until you reach the rock shaped like a giant’s nose.’

Wayland saw a neb of rock sticking out from the face on this side of the overhang. ‘How do I get round it?’

‘There is a place to put your foot. Do you see? Step on it with your left foot so that you can reach round the rock with your right hand. Once you are round, it is easy. You will see the nest above your head.’

Wayland nodded, too apprehensive to take it all in.

‘I will stay here and guide you. First we must tie the ropes.’

They scrambled back and Raul took Wayland aside. ‘Don’t do it. Let the kid risk his own neck.’

Nerves made Wayland tetchy. ‘You do your job and leave me to worry about mine.’

He stood like a child being dressed by its mother while Glum tied two ropes around his chest and slipped the basket over his shoulders. ‘I won’t be able to see you when you reach the nest, so you must signal by pulling with the rope. Tug two times if you want more rope. Tug three times to let me know you want to come up.’

‘What does one tug mean?’ Raul asked.

Glum’s smile came and went. ‘One tug means the rope has broken.’ He took one of the lines in both hands and drew it taut. ‘Do not hang all your weight on this. It is not so new.’

Raul studied Glum with one eye asquint. ‘How old are you, son?’

‘I am fourteen.’

Raul spat. ‘You ain’t going to make twenty.’

‘Perhaps you are right. There are few old bones in my family. Every day my life is interesting.’ Glum paid out the ropes, coiled them once around the bar, and handed the free ends to Raul. Then he escorted Wayland to the edge and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Do not think about the height. If the cliff was only fifty feet high, you would not be so nervous, but if you fell you would still die.’

Wayland tried to smile. ‘The difference is that I wouldn’t have so long to think about it.’

Glum slapped Wayland’s arm. ‘Go now. The weather will not be good for long.’

Wayland lined up with Raul and backed to the edge of the drop. His gut felt hollow. He stirred at empty space with his right foot.

‘Lean back,’ Glum ordered. ‘Further. Look at the sky.’

Wayland sucked in breath, tilted over and began to walk himself down the face. Grit and lichen dislodged by his feet flew up and scratched his eyes. Raul wasn’t paying out the rope smoothly and the descent was a succession of jarring drops.

‘Keep leaning back,’ Glum shouted. ‘You’re nearly there.’

Wayland descended the last few feet to the ledge with all the elegance of a sack. He balanced and craned up. Only Glum’s head and shoulders were visible. The boy raised a thumb. Craning the other way, Wayland saw the rock he had to negotiate about thirty feet away.

A furious kack, kack, kack drowned Glum’s instructions. Way land heard a rush of air as the falcon stooped past him. He turned to see her looking back at him as she completed her run-out. She swung round, stroked the air and closed up into a wedge. Her bunched yellow fists shot past two feet from his head. She banked and turned, rising like a ship riding a swell, and he saw her take deliberate aim and fold up before tearing past with all eight talons extended. Again and again she attacked, and though Wayland told himself she wouldn’t strike, every pass made him flinch. She kept him pinned there until his legs begin to quiver with the strain.

He sidled along the ledge. His eyes and nose were streaming. The falcon had sheered off and his confidence began to grow. He came to the end of the ledge and spotted the foothold. Glum had told him to lead with his left foot, but the supplest contortionist couldn’t have stretched that far. By fully extending his right foot, he could just paw the socket without getting proper purchase. He’d have to jump, but even if he footed himself, there were no handholds. Half a dozen times he rehearsed the move, as mindless as an insect. He turned his head towards Glum. The boy gestured with his left leg, his shouts whisked aloft.

Wayland felt his will and strength draining away. He had the awful sensation that the mountain was pushing him out and he pressed his clammy face to the wall and clung on. He glanced down into the great gulf and saw the slow, sickening crawl of the tide against the shore. Faint shouts reached him. Glum had descended to a perilous stance and was miming a skipping move that seemed to involve jumping on to the hold with his right foot and immediately following with his left foot while simultaneously slapping his right hand around the outcrop. Wayland tracked the ropes angling up the cliff. If the effort failed, at best he would crash more than thirty feet along the face. At worst the ropes would break and he would pulp himself with plenty of time to contemplate his end.

Or he could give up. His calves were fluttering and his fingers had lost sensation. He gathered one of the ropes in his hand and prepared to give the signal. He took a last look at the outcrop and paused. Glum’s right, he thought. If that rock was only six feet above the ground, you wouldn’t think twice about it — launch off with your right foot, into the pocket, balance, follow with the left, a brief moment of weightlessness before pushing hard and slapping your hand around the edge of the rib.

Glum had stopped shouting. Wayland wiped his nose, filled his lungs, gathered himself at the end of the ledge, bent his left knee and jumped. A quick two-step and then a lunge for the steep edge of the rock. He hung mainly by friction, and when he knew he wasn’t going to fall, he brought his right leg round and groped for a foothold on the other side of the outcrop. Nothing at first, then he contacted a small projection. He didn’t pause to think. He put all his weight on the hold and shimmied around the rock.

He was only a step away from a good footing. Above him, fissured blocks whitewashed with droppings led like a ladder to the nest shelf. He pulled himself up, crooked his elbows over the ledge and hauled himself into the eyrie.

Three hissing eyases flung themselves on their sides and thrust out their talons. They were ugly, toad-like infants with feathers budding through dirty grey down. Their mother was still patrolling, unable to mount an attack because of the overhang. A freshly killed gull lay in the eyrie, fragments of its dark red flesh stuck to the eyases’ waxy ceres. The remains of other kills littered the eyrie and the ledges were plastered with feathers. Wayland sat on the midden as if it were a throne, enjoying his God’s eye view. He found himself noticing the golden lichen on the rocks, the silvery veins in the granite, a small pink flower quaking in the wind.

He came out of his reverie to find that he was very cold. He thought he heard voices and sensed that they had been calling for some time. The eyases were still rolled on their sides, warding him off with their talons. He shivered. The sky had clouded over and the surface of the fjord had darkened to slate. Time to go. He took hold of the ropes and pulled three times.

This time he traversed the rocky nose without hesitation. Not a moment too soon. Cloud had rolled in from the sea and fingers of mist were groping up the cliffs. As soon as he gained the ledge, the falcon resumed her attacks. He ignored her and moved quickly until he reached what he thought was the line of ascent. He rested a moment then threw his head back to check the position of the ropes.

Something hit his forehead with stunning impact. He didn’t even know he’d been knocked off the ledge until he found himself hanging with the ropes biting into his chest. The pain was excruciating, as though someone had taken a blunt saw to his skull. Through pulsing red waves he realised that he’d been twisted round and was dangling with his back to the cliff. Sticky warmth flooded down his face, half blinding him and filling his mouth with salt sweetness. He wiped the blood from his eyes and raised his hand to find out what damage the blow had done. His skull was still in one piece but a pair of lips seemed to have sprouted on his brow.

The pain subsided to a sickening ache. Blood wormed down his neck. He paddled at the rock, trying to spin himself around. Somehow the ropes had worked around his back, leaving him leaning out from the cliff, unable to exert any leverage. To make his position worse, the basket was holding him away from the face. He felt for the straps and found that one of them had snapped. He struggled out of the other and dropped the basket into space. Blood was still running into his eyes. He reached for the ropes and that’s when he discovered that one of them had broken.

His blood-slicked hands couldn’t get a grip on the remaining line. He wiped his palms on his thighs and was about to try again when the rope jerked around his ribs and he felt himself scrape a foot or so up the face. Raul was trying to drag him up. Another violent heave and he heard the rope sawing against rock.

‘No!’

The movement stopped. He wiped his hands again and made another attempt to pull himself up. He had to reach behind him. The angle was all wrong. He tried a dozen times before giving up. He was weakening. His neck ached from the effort of trying to keep his head from slumping forward. Freezing fog streamed up past him. The cold had helped staunch his wound and his face was setting into a mask. The rope around his chest gripped so tight that he could breathe only in shallow gasps.

‘Don’t struggle. I’m coming down.’

It was Glum, not far above him.

‘Wayland, I’m on the ledge. You’re about ten feet below me. I’m going to drop another rope. Do you think you can hold onto it?’

Wayland half raised a hand.

‘Here it comes.’

The rope fell hissing over his shoulder. He snagged it at the second attempt. His fingers were too numb to tie a secure knot. He made two coils around his right wrist.

‘Put your weight on it. Then you will be able to turn and everything will be easier.’

Wayland gripped with both hands and strained. As his weight transferred from the rope pinned to his back, the pressure on his chest relaxed and air flooded into his lungs.

‘Turn to face the cliff.’

Wayland gave himself more breathing space before kicking off with his feet. He spun and smacked chest first into the cliff. He blinked up through a bloody veil and glimpsed Glum peering down from the ledge.

‘You are not strong enough to climb, I think. You must let Raul pull you up to me.’

Glum signalled by tugging on his own rope. Wayland felt himself borne upwards. Glum leaned down, gripped him by his tunic and hauled him onto the ledge.

‘That was good. Rest now until you have the strength to reach the top.’

The formal phrasing from a boy who hadn’t started shaving made Wayland laugh. It wasn’t normal laughter. He balanced on the ledge until his breathing steadied and he looked up through the dank updraught.

‘I’m ready.’

Raul dragged him up like he was a slab of meat. He crawled over the lip of the cliff and saw the German braced behind the anchor bar. As soon as Wayland stood on safe ground, Raul ran forward and caught him. He lowered him to the ground and took his face in both hands.

‘What happened? Did a rock hit you?’

‘It was the falcon. I don’t think she meant to strike me. I leaned back at the wrong moment and … ’ Nausea swept him.

Raul dropped to his knees and examined the wound.

‘We have to get you back.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Put it this way, you ain’t going to be as pretty as you were.’ Raul realised that Wayland didn’t have his basket. ‘The falcons. Did you lose them?’

Wayland swung his head.

‘Don’t tell me the nest was empty.’

Wayland stuck up three frozen fingers. ‘Too young. Not ready.’ His bones seemed to melt and he sagged into Raul’s arms.

Glum was coiling up the ropes. He examined the one that had broken and frowned.

‘You were right about that line being weak,’ said Raul.

Glum clicked his tongue. ‘No, it was the new one that broke.’

Syth burst into tears when they brought Wayland down. The Greenlanders placed him in a tent and crowded at the entrance. Syth shooed everyone away except Raul. She heated water and bathed Wayland’s face. The wound began to bleed again.

‘Bring me a mirror.’

Syth returned with a disc of polished bronze. Wayland held it up and examined his face. The falcon’s hind talon had torn a gaping slash across the middle of his forehead. He felt for the bag that held his falconry furniture and fumbled out a bone needle and a thread he used to seel the eyes of newly caught hawks.

‘You going to stitch it?’ said Raul.

‘It won’t mend cleanly by itself.’ Hands shaking, he tried to thread the needle. He gave up and passed the implements to Syth.

She passed the thread through the eye and gave it to him, then squatted back biting the tip of her forefinger. He tried to hand the needle back. ‘You do it. It’s not difficult. I stitched up the dog when he was young and got too close to a stag I’d wounded.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You want me to have a go?’ Raul said.

Wayland closed his eyes. He opened them and held out his hand. ‘Give it to me. You hold the mirror.’

Wayland positioned himself and brought the point of the needle to one end of the gash. The flesh was swollen and discoloured and it was hard to manipulate the needle accurately. It took several attempts just to position the point. He pushed the needle through the lower lip of the wound. He flinched from the pain and ended up with a misaligned stitch. Blood ran into his eyes. Syth swabbed him with a cloth.

‘It’s no good. I can’t see properly.’ He held out the needle to Syth. ‘Please,’ he said. He lay back. ‘Raul, hold my head.’

Syth’s face leaned close and he shut his eyes. The first few stitches were excruciating, but then he seemed to float away from his body and though he could still feel each puncture, the pain seemed to be being inflicted on someone else.

He drifted back to find Syth gazing down on him. He brought up his hand and brushed at his brow. ‘All done?’

‘Yes. You were very brave.’

‘Show me.’

She held the mirror. His forehead resembled a bulging thundercloud but the wound was stitched as neatly as a hem.

‘I knew you’d do a good job.’

She was trying not to cry. ‘You’d better have something to eat.’

He rolled his head. The thought of food made him want to throw up.

‘Sleep then.’ She began to withdraw.

He spoke without knowing what he was going to say. ‘Syth, I love you.’

She stopped. ‘Like a sister?’

‘Like a woman.’

She slid down beside him and planted soft kisses on his cheeks.

He held her, his head cradled against her shoulder. ‘What will we do?’

‘Oh, Wayland, you say the silliest things. We’ll do what all lovers do.’ She laid a finger to his lips. ‘When you’re ready.’