Hawk Quest

XXIV

He was back on his feet next day and the following morning he resumed the search for occupied eyries. In the days that followed, he explored the fjords on either side of Red Cape and found another four nests. None of them presented such a formidable challenge as the first one. He climbed to two of them from below and let Glum rope himself down to the others. All the eyases were still too young to take. Wayland explained that falcons removed from the nest before they were fully fledged never grew out of their rude infantile habits. The best time to catch them up was when they were hard-penned and ready to make their first flight. Even then, some of them grew crabby and grasping, screaming for food all day long and mantling on the fist in a graceless fashion. That’s why he preferred passage falcons trapped in their first autumn, when the winds of freedom had refined their immaturity. For sheer perfection of style, though, nothing could beat a haggard.

One of these paragons flew into his life as he was returning from the last eyrie. They were in the ship’s boat, rowing down the fjord north of Red Cape. Ahead of them the westering sun hung in a flattened orb, casting long shadows across a glacial amphitheatre on the starboard shore. Hardly a ripple on the ice-littered water. The peace was broken by a covey of ptarmigan that sprayed past the boat, fleeing for the opposite shore. When Wayland sighted the gyrfalcon she was a hundred yards behind the grouse, driving forward with wingstrokes that seemed almost leisurely until she passed in a white flash and he saw that she’d already cut the ptarmigans’ lead by half. She overtook them before they’d reached mid-fjord and plucked one of them out of the air. Her sails spread and she circled back with her prey tucked under her tail.

Wayland saw her take stand on a rocky tor on the seaward side of the glacier.

‘Put me ashore.’

Raul groaned. ‘Give it a miss. We’ve had a hard day and I’m hungry.’

‘I won’t be long.’

He landed and advanced until he had the falcon in clear view. She plucked and ate her kill and then she relaxed her feathers and dozed. He walked closer. She’d drawn one foot up and showed no fear at his approach. She’d probably never encountered a man before. He stopped when he could see the crisp outlines of her flight feathers. Her head and breast were immaculate and the few black markings on her wings only emphasised her whiteness. He moved closer and she lowered her foot and stood poised for flight with her wings held up like shields. Another step and she sprang off the rock and beat away across the snout of the glacier.

He climbed her lookout. Bones from many kills lay on the rock, together with castings. He picked up one of the falcon’s moulted primaries. The heavy black markings on it told him that she was a year old, not yet grown so wild as to be irreclaimable. He looked across the fjord. Terns hovered above the milky green meltwater trailing from the glacier. Ducks in chevrons winged down the channel. The cairn was both a lookout and a feeding station.

He tramped back to his companions and produced the feather. ‘I’m going to trap her.’

‘This is not a good place,’ said Glum. ‘There is nowhere safe to camp. Now it is quiet, but sometimes storms rush down the glacier with a force you cannot imagine.’

Wayland looked about. On the inland side of the glacier a waterfall wreathed in rainbows dropped to a sunny shelf.

‘It’s more sheltered over there. Let’s take a look.’

Raul grumbled at the diversion. He and Wayland had spent too long together and were beginning to grate on each other.

Syth and Glum followed Wayland onto the rocky beach. Warmth reflected back from the cliff. Fireweed, angelica and yellow poppies grew in the gravel, and the hollows between the boulders were thick with bilberry and dwarf willows. The waterfall dropped in drifting veils to a pool that spilled away in a bubbling stream. Under the cliff to one side of the cascade was a cave.

‘I’ll camp here.’

Glum voiced another objection. ‘If you bait a net with a bird, the foxes will get it.’

A fox in its ragged summer coat was skulking not far away as he spoke. Wayland had brought a cage containing six pigeons that he’d intended to use for hawk food. His gaze roamed over the foreshore and settled on a moraine hard by the glacier. ‘I’m not going to use a net.’

A short search revealed a natural hide formed by a slabby erratic that had come to rest across boulders, creating a den two feet high and long enough to accommodate him. He wriggled in feet first to check that he had a good view of the falcon’s lookout.

‘You’ll freeze in there,’ said Syth.

‘Waste of time,’ Raul complained. ‘You’ve already found all the falcons we need.’

Wayland dragged himself out. ‘None of the eyases will be ready to take for another week. We’ll give it three days.’

They offloaded equipment and provisions, then they dragged the boat ashore and tied it down with ropes anchored to rocks. They pitched two tents in the cave and ate outside while the sun slid south of Red Cape and the cliffs darkened to maroon.

Wayland was too keyed up to sleep. Before the shadows had lifted from the falcon’s lookout he shook Glum awake. Raul and Syth were still sleeping. The young Greenlander knuckled his eyes and stepped out of the shelter. Iron-grey clouds hid the top of the escarpment. A raw wind blowing straight down the glacier raised welts on the surface of the fjord.

‘This is not a day to catch falcons.’

‘Bad weather makes hawks keen,’ Wayland said. ‘She might come as soon as I show the bait.’

The wind buffeted them as they made their way to the hide. Wayland slithered into it cocooned in his sleeping bag and holding a live pigeon. He pulled a plaited willow screen across the entrance. ‘Keep out of sight,’ he told Glum. ‘Come back for me when the sun reaches the west.’

‘The sun will not show itself today. You will be stiff as stone by then.’

Glum was right. Wayland had hardly settled in the hide when the cold stored in the ground began to soak into his body. Sensation ebbed from the hand holding the pigeon. He pulled it inside and waited for the falcon to appear. The lookout remained empty and the sky darkened and the wind strengthened. By noon Wayland knew there was no chance of trapping the falcon. He was about to struggle out when a booming roar made his hair stand on end. A blast of freezing air came roaring down the glacier and surged past his hideout with a force strong enough to suck the breath out of his lungs. Sliding forwards, he saw that the surface of the fjord had been flattened into a mantle of flying spume. He grew alarmed. If waves couldn’t stand up to such a tempest, no man could keep his feet in it. Then it began to snow and Wayland grew really frightened. The blizzard tore past in a white torrent. Trapped, cold to the bone, he waited. Surely a storm of such ferocity couldn’t last long.

It lasted all day. He was sinking into the delusional sensation of warmth when the dog thrust its muzzle into his hide. Glum’s muffled face appeared, his eyebrows caked with snow. ‘You must come now!’

The pigeon had perished. Wayland was so stiff that Glum had to drag him out. The boy had roped himself to the dog and Wayland did the same. They crawled blind through the shrieking whiteout. Only the dog’s instinct brought them safe to the cave. Raul dragged them inside. Syth ran forward.

‘The dog knew you were in danger and began to howl.’

‘She made me follow it,’ Glum panted. ‘If I hadn’t, she would have gone herself.’ A fire burned outside the tent. Glum held out his hands to it. ‘Crazy,’ he said. ‘Crazy!’

Wayland’s jaw juddered. He reached towards the embers. Syth grabbed his hands and her eyes widened in alarm.

‘They’re blocks of ice.’

She pulled him into the tent and lifted up her layers of woollens and placed his hands on her bare stomach and then pressed her back against him. He lay against her, the snow still streaking past his inner eye. Glum and Raul squeezed up on his other side and they huddled together like a litter of animals while the wind yowled with the fury of a monster cheated of its prey.

The storm blew itself out with a hushed roar. Wayland woke to an eerie silence. Under his right hand he felt something soft and comforting and he realised he was cupping Syth’s breast. He shifted Glum’s arm off his back, sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. A warm light filtered through the weave of the tent. He went out into a golden midnight. More than a foot of snow blanketed the shore. Across the glacier the falcon sat on her pedestal like a carved image.

Glum crawled out and joined him. ‘Now it is time to leave.’

‘You and Raul go,’ Wayland said. ‘Return in three days. I’ll have caught the falcon by then.’

Glum left with misgivings, but Raul was happy to be getting back to the rough and ready company of the Greenlanders. Wayland and Syth watched them row away through the bergs. She put her arm around his waist and smiled up at him. For the first time since they’d met, they were alone together. When he turned, the falcon was still footed on her perch and he realised that she might be sharp-set after her storm-imposed fast.

‘Come to the hide with me,’ he told Syth. ‘If the falcon sees me enter alone, she’ll know it’s a trap.’

On the walk to the shelter Wayland spotted four or five foxes. They were a real pest.

He inserted himself into the chamber and looked up at Syth. ‘Don’t wander too far from the cave.’ He cradled the dog’s jaw. ‘Keep good care of her.’

Syth retreated. The falcon sat with her head sunk into her shoulders. He agitated his left hand to make the pigeon flutter. The falcon paid no attention. A fox trotted past with a lemming in its jaws and stopped to stare at the pigeon. Wayland hissed and it bounded away. Despite the extra fleeces he’d brought, he grew torpid with cold. Sunlight glaring off the glacier made his forehead throb.

His attention wandered. He was daydreaming about Syth’s breasts and her pliant waist when a spot floated across his vision. He blinked to dislodge it. The spot grew larger and he realised it was the falcon, gliding towards him on half-closed wings. Her velocity was deceptive. From fifty yards away he could hear the air whining through her pinions. Fifteen yards from the hide she feathered her wings, rowed back and landed on the snow. She was nervous. She kept staring at the pigeon and then glancing away. She’d never seen one before and couldn’t understand why it didn’t fly. At last she decided it was prey and ran towards it at a bandy-legged trot. She stopped again and now she was so close that Wayland could see the scales on her crocus yellow feet. He was easing the mitt off his right hand with his teeth when she bobbed her head at something behind the trap. She bobbed again and flung herself into the air with a harsh cry. Her wingtips whisked the snow and she was gone. Wayland groaned and sank his head on to his forearm. He was sure that the falcon hadn’t seen him. A fox must have spooked her.

Rock clunked on rock. Wayland’s neck prickled. Foxes were too light of foot to make a noise as loud as that. Syth must have grown worried and come to make sure he was all right. He forced back his irritation and waited for her to declare herself.

No call and no footfalls. Some instinct honed during his years living wild warned him not to make a sound. He waited. A sharp report made him jump. Only the glacier fracturing. The silence stretched. He lay listening with his mouth open and his eyes cocked upwards. The glacier groaned. The ice was always contracting and expanding, producing unsettling noises. The knocking sound he’d heard was probably just a stone released from the melting snow. But why had the falcon cried out in alarm? Lying in his cold pit, he remembered Orm’s campfire tales of polar giants with bodies of stone and ice patched with the flayed skins of humans.

Something snorted. Wayland’s scalp crawled. He listened unbreathing, his throat tight. The pigeon was terrified and lay splayed on the snow as if dead. He snatched it inside and felt inside his sleeping bag for his knife. His belt had twisted beneath him and he couldn’t locate the sheath. He heaved himself up and ran his hand around his waist until his fingers contacted the knife. Before he could draw it, he heard snow creak. He choked back a gasp as a shadow fell across the entrance.

He brought the knife up. His bow lay beside him, useless. Another snuffle from outside — the sound of a predator homing in on prey. He knew what it was, had known almost from the start without daring to acknowledge it.

Two giant white legs dropped across the entrance, almost blocking out the light. The bear was on top of the hide. Two more legs appeared as it climbed down. The bear turned to face the hide. He could see only its huge shaggy legs clothed with yellowish fur that looked translucent against the sun. Its paws were as wide as trenchers and armed with black claws as long and thick as his thumbs.

Its head appeared, weaving from side to side. Shock made Wayland jerk back and crack his skull against the roof. The bear rammed its head into the entrance and blew a gust of foul fishy breath into his face. It snarled, exposing yellow fangs and black gums. He’d crammed himself back in his shelter and the bear’s jaws were less than a foot from his face. It shoved forward, gaining another few inches. He gave a throat-lacerating scream and the bear grunted and pulled its head out.

He lay gasping. Moments later it was back, feeling with one paw. Claws scraped across rock and hooked into the top of his sleeping bag. It began to pull the bag out with him inside it. He braced against the walls. The bear increased its pressure and the bag ripped open. Eider down floated out into the sunlight. The bear reached in again.

‘Here!’ Wayland shouted, throwing the pigeon forward.

A pathetic flutter, a strike too fast to see, and the pigeon had gone. Wayland heard its bones being crunched like eggshells. He knew he had very little time before the bear resumed its attack and he used it to struggle out of his sleeping bag. He drew his knees up almost to his chin and struggled back into a foetal position. The paw reached in again. Cramped against the back of the hide, Wayland watched the armoured mitt feel this way and that. It took all of his strength to maintain his contorted posture and he knew that eventually he’d have to relax his limbs and then the bear would have him.

He raised his knife, waited for the paw to complete a sweep, and drove the blade into the meat of the paw. The bear squealed and pulled its paw away before Wayland could withdraw the knife. It spun out of his grasp and bounced into the snow beyond the entrance.

A long silence. Had the bear gone? The knife lay just out of reach. To retrieve it he’d have to expose his head and shoulders. He remembered how fast the bear had struck at the pigeon. Wait a little longer. His joints burned. Soon he wouldn’t be able to move. He straightened out his legs with his hands and hissed with the pain of returning circulation. He flexed his knees. Still no sign of the bear. He’d given it a sore thrust. It must have gone. He eyed the blade lying on the snow. If the bear had turned tail, he didn’t need the weapon, but unarmed he felt so defenceless.

The bear had gone. He was sure of it. Slowly he slid forward. He was about to extend his hand when he heard a crunching sound directly above. He shrank back and rolled on his side and looked up. The bear was on the roof scraping away the snow. Its claws gouged across rock and he knew that it was trying to dig him out. Impossible, he told himself. The roof was a one-foot-thick slab more than seven feet long, welded to its foundations by ice.

He remembered what Orm had said about bears flipping seals over their shoulders as if they were herrings. Something else Orm had told him. Sometimes a white bear would overturn a boulder the size of a hut just to get at a nest of mice. Wayland moaned with dread.

A paw groped down and hooked under the lip of the roof. It heaved up and with that single move the ice cracked along the foundations. The bear strained again and the roof lifted and slid a few inches sideways before crashing back. Wayland could see part of the bear’s flank through the gap. One more effort and he’d be exposed like some helpless larva. He grasped his bow and howled with cries such as men must have given before they’d discovered speech. The roof swung further askew and he felt a draught on his lower legs and knew they were exposed. The bear didn’t have to pull him out. It would start eating him alive from his feet up. He didn’t stop to think. Still screaming, he scurried out on his elbows.

He stumbled to his feet, lost his balance and skittered over the snow on knuckles and toes. He jumped up and spun, jabbing with his bow. The bear was only feet away, staring in the opposite direction, swinging its head in slow puzzlement. It was the dog. It came tearing over the broken ground giving tongue with a frantic two-tone baying. Wayland backed away and the bear turned and peered at him. He froze. For a long moment it studied him, then it swung its head back to face the dog. Wayland retreated and fumbled an arrow from his quiver. He dropped it.

The dog skidded to a stop in front of the bear. Still barking, it made furious rushes and retreats. The bear roared and galloped towards it. The dog danced off, playing the decoy. Wayland had drawn another arrow and was trying to string it when he saw Syth running towards him.

‘Get back!’

She paid no attention.

The dog darted behind the bear and nipped one of its hams. The bear whirled and lashed out and the dog sprang to one side with a hair’s-breadth to spare. The bear reared up on its hind legs and only when Wayland saw it towering over his giant dog did he appreciate its awesome size. The dog dodged and feinted and the bear dropped back on to all fours and loped towards Syth.

‘Run!’ Wayland shouted. He drew his bow and aimed, aware that the chances of killing the bear with a single arrow were remote.

The dog sprinted to cut off the bear and crouched with its head between its elbows. Syth stood only a few yards behind it. She reached down and scooped up a handful of snow and threw it. The pathetic missile didn’t even carry as far as the dog.

Wayland sighted behind the bear’s shoulder and released. In the same moment the bear veered off and the arrow skimmed its rump. The bear made for the fjord at a hump-backed lope, harassed all the way by the dog. It reached the shoreline and plunged in, cutting a V in the water. Wayland propped himself on his grounded bow and slid to his haunches. After a while he raised his eyes. Syth was still standing where he’d last seen her. He had to use his bow as a staff to climb to his feet. Very slowly he and Syth moved towards each other, as if each doubted the existence of the other.

‘Thank God you came,’ Wayland said. ‘Another moment … ’ He filled his lungs and stared blindly at the sky.

‘It wasn’t me. I was looking for firewood and the dog was with me, then its fur stood up and it rushed off.’

Wayland bent over, wheezing.

Syth put her arms around him. ‘Don’t cry. The bear’s gone now.’

Wayland waved one arm and went on making strange mewing sounds. ‘I’m not crying.’

Syth crouched so that she could see his face. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘You,’ he sobbed. ‘Throwing snowballs at the bear.’