Edwin was aboard. Sineus was aboard. And although he grumbled, Red Ottar wasn’t displeased.
“When we reach Miklagard,” he told Edwin, “you’re the king’s messenger, but on board this boat, you and Sineus are oarsmen.”
“Half oarsmen,” Edwin said firmly.
“Vigot rowed opposite me, and that’s what you and the Slav will do. Alternate shifts.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Edwin.
“You will,” Red Ottar replied. Then he rounded on Mihran. “You knew about all this.”
The river pilot held up his hands in front of him as if he were weighing and balancing them.
“You rogue!” Red Ottar said, but as much with admiration as with disapproval.
Solveig and Edith were delighted to have Edwin and Sineus for company. And so was Odindisa. More than once, Solveig saw her and Sineus exchanging lingering smiles.
“Do you remember what Edwin called us?” Solveig asked Edith.
“Fine young women!” exclaimed Edith, smiling.
“And then Red Ottar said I was a half-baked girl on a half-baked journey and you were a slave woman.”
“Well, I am,” Edith replied.
“The first cataract . . .” Mihran told everyone that evening, and then he took a swig of ale and began again. “The first is the Gulper. Some pilots call it ‘Wake Up!’”
“On a journey like this,” Red Ottar said cheerfully, “every day’s a cataract! Difficulties, dangers, choices . . .”
The river pilot wagged his finger and shook his head. “Not difficult,” he warned Red Ottar in a dark voice, “very difficult. Not dangerous, very dangerous. Tomorrow.”
From the safety of the bank, Red Ottar and Solveig stared aghast at the cataract.
At their feet the milky water was slip-sliding fast between ugly rocks and making huge gulping noises, like a giant in a hurry to eat his breakfast. The rocks cut the river into ribbons, and beyond the rocks the water was rollicking and somehow cartwheeling back upstream.
It’s making me dizzy, Solveig thought. The rapids at the head of our fjord are nothing like as fierce as this.
“Why didn’t you warn us?” Red Ottar yelled.
“If I warn you,” Mihran called back, “you will all be afraid.”
Once the stern of the boat had been very firmly double roped to a stout oak tree, Mihran drew everyone around him and gave them instructions.
“That water,” he said, pointing midstream. “Terrible! But here . . .” The pilot pointed at the water swirling and surging at their feet and nodded confidently.
Then Mihran told the men to strip down to their drawers and the women to take off their woolen tunics and wear only their long sleeveless shifts.
“You mean . . .” said Odindisa, appalled.
“No brooches,” Mihran told them. “The water’s a thief; it will rip them away. No belts, no one. I know one Viking strangled by his belt.”
Then Mihran issued each of the crew with one of the pine poles he had brought aboard in Kiev. “We are twelve,” he said. “Two of us stand by the prow, two on each side of the waist, two by the stern. Four of us tie and untie the ropes. You all understand?”
Seeing the fear in everyone’s eyes, the river pilot gave them a flashing smile. “I do many times,” he reassured them. “You find your way with your poles, yes? And if you trip, if you cannot hold the boat . . .” Mihran paused to make sure everyone was listening. “. . . then float,” he said, bouncing his left hand up and down and away. “Float and paddle yourself to the bank. Never, never try to find your feet or hold on to a water root. The water will flatten you, and you cannot stand up again.”
“Come on, then,” said Red Ottar. “The sooner we start, the sooner it will be over. You, Torsten, you come to her bows with me.”
“No,” said Mihran. “Torsten on the bank. He knows ropes and knots.”
“I will,” said Solveig eagerly.
For a moment Red Ottar hesitated. “All right!” he said. “You, Solveig.”
Early June it was, but the water was bitingly cold. It churned and frothed around Solveig’s feet, and she wiggled her toes and tried to get used to it.
And then, ribbon by rock by root by rope, the companions slowly began to nudge their boat downstream. Once the boat was grazed by a rock, and once it slewed sideways, so that the bows were pointing at the bank and Bergdis and Edwin could do nothing as they were dragged behind the stern through deep water, thrashing their legs. There was no respite, and only when Red Ottar and his crew had cleared the first cataract, and the shadows were lengthening, did they realize their hands were blistered and their feet torn.
“You’re trembling, Edwin,” Solveig said.
“Like a newborn lamb,” he replied.
“Ale!” cried Mihran. “Food! Tomorrow, first the Island, then the Clanger.”
All that night, waking and sleeping, Solveig heard rushing in her ears. River voices rushing and splashing and singing and gulping.
As soon as they reached the second cataract, Solveig could see how it had gotten its name.
In the middle of the river, there was an inviting green island strewn with wildflowers, but on either side of it the water raced through dark channels.
I can’t run that fast, thought Solveig. No one could. Not even Thialfi when he raced against the giant.
“Come on, girl,” Red Ottar told Solveig, peeling off his clothes. “You and I, we’ll take her bows again.”
Solveig’s heart swelled. She knew this was almost a compliment.
This cataract was less hazardous than the first, and the crew worked their way around it quite quickly, but then they came to the Clanger.
“Hear that?” Torsten asked Solveig.
“A battle sound,” said Solveig, swallowing and closing her eyes. Father! Father, I wish you were with me now.
As the river water charged at one of the rocks midstream, it kept clanging—not a mellow boom but the flat of an ax ringing against a shield.
At their feet, however, the water was only yapping and stabbing, and for a third time Red Ottar and Solveig picked their way downstream, prodding with their poles, and led everyone to safety.
That evening, though, the crew was far from comfortable. Their clothes were still sopping, and the air hung so heavy that they were unable to dry them. Biting flies smelled the damp crooks of their elbows and backs of their knees and hollows of their necks and drank their blood.
“Very fair-minded, flies are,” Edwin said, trying to keep up everyone’s flagging spirits.
“They like men as much as women and Vikings as much as Englanders. They even like children.”
“They like me most,” Brita wailed.
“I don’t mind enemies I can see,” growled Red Ottar, “but I keep thinking we’re being watched.”
Everyone stiffened, and Solveig felt Brita jam herself firmly against her.
The river pilot cupped his ears and closed his eyes. “Is possible,” he said at length.
“Bears?” asked Red Ottar.
Mihran shook his head.
“Pechenegs!” several voices exclaimed.
“But King Yaroslav said they’re massing upstream,” Red Ottar said.
“They are,” Mihran replied. “But Pechenegs are everywhere.” He looked around the crew. “You are safe,” he said. “You are safe in the dark.”
“Safe . . . in the dark,” Bruni repeated slowly.
“Pechenegs are archers, and in the dark they cannot see.”
Then Mihran told a story.
“When Prince Svyatoslav reached these cataracts,” the pilot said, “the Pechenegs were waiting. They stickled him with arrows. Like a hedgehog. All over his body. The Pechenegs cut off Prince Svyatoslav’s head. With their sharp knives they shaved his beard and all his hair.”
Brita wedged herself even more firmly against Solveig. She was trembling.
“And then,” said Mihran, his voice lowering in disgust, “the Pechenegs, they are beasts, they make a drinking cup out of the prince’s skull.”
“No!” cried Brita.
“I know a story like that,” said Bruni. “About the smith to the gods . . .”
“Not now, Bruni,” Slothi told him.
“Tonight we are safe,” Mihran told them again. “Tomorrow is tomorrow.”
“Brita,” said Odindisa, “Bard, both of you go down into the hold.”
“We are so early,” Mihran said, “maybe the first boat in this summer. I thought we reached here before the Pechenegs . . .” He sighed and shrugged, as if the archers were simply another discomfort like drenched clothes and bloodsucking flies. “Tomorrow,” he said, “is the fourth cataract. The most dangerous.”
“And what’s this one called?” asked Bruni.
“Ah! Several names. Ever-Fierce and Ever-Raucous. Impassable.”
“If it’s impassable . . .” said Bruni, but Mihran cut him short.
“We portage,” he said. “Same as before.”
The crew was already very anxious; now they were dispirited too. Bergdis sucked a withered parsnip, and Slothi’s back teeth were aching, and down in the hold Brita picked a fight with Bard and Odindisa snapped at them both.
Solveig remained steadfast, intent on reaching Miklagard. But all the same, she was afraid they would never come through the cataracts or survive the Pechenegs.
“Same as before,” Mihran reassured everyone. “Rollers. Men to help us. Yous see.”
Solveig thought the portagers at Impassable looked like woodwoses—men who had lived so long in the wild that they were more like two-legged beasts than human beings. Long hair, long beards, even long eyebrows. They wore filthy rags, some so torn that Solveig blushed and looked away.
Nonetheless, the wild men were just as obliging as Truvor and his gang. They told Mihran that they had seen no Pechenegs yet that year, but for all that, Solveig saw that while some of the men inspected the grazed keel and hull, others were keeping a sharp watch on the dark woods around them.
As Red Ottar’s crew and the portagers edged the boat along the riverbank, Solveig looked down through the trees at the rapids, hurling and lashing.
“What’s that?” she cried. “Down there.”
“Where?” squealed Brita.
“Where I’m pointing. On that rock.”
“Oh! That bird, you mean?”
“Brita!” screeched Odindisa. “You’re portaging. Watch your footing.”
Slothi looked angrily at his daughter. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he scolded her. “Only fools fail to learn from them. You don’t want to go under again, do you?”
Before long, though, the wild men called a halt, and everyone was able to look. Sitting on the rocks were two huge white birds with long hooked bills, and hanging from their bills they had enormous pouches.
“For all the fishes they catch,” Mihran explained.
“They look,” said Bard, “well, I can’t explain it.” Then he began to laugh.
“Like laughter makers,” Mihran told him with a smile.
The river showed its teeth, grim and gray. It clashed its cymbals and thrashed and foamed beneath them, but the wild men were sure-footed and strong-shouldered.
Step by step Red Ottar and his companions rolled their boat along the portaging track, and slowly their spirits caught up with them again. Before daylight failed, they had passed Impassable.
“Impossible, Impassable, and I’m impatient!” exclaimed Red Ottar. “Let’s press on at first light and have done with these cataracts.”
“Cataracts and Pechenegs,” said Bruni, looking all around as he had done so many times that day.
“She’ll leak unless we take up,” Torsten warned him.
“As much as comes in, we’ll throw back out,” Red Ottar replied. “We only need one pair at the oars. The rest of us can bail.”
The helmsman’s eyebrows beetled. “A boat is a being,” he said. “She needs to slake her thirst.”
“What!” said Red Ottar. “While we sit on our hands and get picked off?”
To begin with, the boat fairly bounced downstream. Slothi and Sineus sang a praise song together, the water streamed and chortled under the keel, and Red Ottar and his crew skipped their way around the next rapids.
“A pair,” Mihran had told them. “Together they are White Wave. Then there’s a water bubble . . .”
“What’s that?” asked Solveig.
“A lake,” said the river pilot. “And then is another pair. The Seether . . . some travelers say the Boiler or the Laugher.”
By the time the boat had been tied up, she was heavy with water, as Torsten had predicted. So while Bard and Brita ranged around, gathering pads of dry leaves and firewood, and Bergdis and Edith lit a fire on the riverbank, all the others had to bail, and down in the hold, the water came up to their hips.
“I know,” Red Ottar told his exhausted companions. “Tonight I’m thankless. But tomorrow night you’ll thank me. Tomorrow night we’ll be cleared of these hellish cataracts . . . and the stalkers. The stalkers we can’t even see.”
“And then Sineus will sing you a praise poem,” Edwin told him.
Red Ottar gave the Englishman a knowing look. “As a gift, I hope,” he said.
“The last cataract is Strok,” Mihran told them.
He picked up a stick and scraped several lines on the ground as if he were keeping a tally.
“It looks like combed hair,” said Brita. “After it’s untangled.”
“And before it’s braided,” added Odindisa.
“That’s what Strok’s like,” Mihran said. “Each of the streams is very thin, very deep, very fast.”
The pilot looked around at everyone as if he were telling them the most terrible story. To begin with, Solveig couldn’t take her eyes off him, but then she pretended that she too had a mustache. She pulled at both ends, then she began to curl it. “Yous see!” she announced, mimicking Mihran’s voice, and several of the crew guffawed.
The rocky banks on either side of the river rose into sheer walls and then into high granite cliffs. The river narrowed and darkened and raced as if its very life depended on it.
Ripping, thought Solveig. Tearing. Sluicing. I can sometimes feel my blood sluicing around my own body.
Higher soared the cliffs, and when she stared up at the strip of sky, Solveig saw how bright and white it was. As if all the color has been squeezed out of it, she thought. The cliffs are getting higher and higher, and over there they’re even hanging over themselves. Down here, it’s like a gloomy, echoing passage.
Then Torsten swung the boat around upstream. Mihran jumped onto a rocky ledge, and Sineus followed him. Quickly they roped the boat to a granite stack, and the pilot told the crew to be very careful as they lowered themselves into the water.
“Just enough water,” he said. “Shallows between bank and deep stream.”
“One more time!” Odindisa cried. “Seven’s the most powerful number. Seven and nine.”
Red Ottar stripped and stood in the bows brandishing his pole as if for battle.
“Come on, Solveig!” he bawled. “River maiden!”
Solveig gave him a slow smile, cautious and then trusting.
“Golden girl!” Red Ottar pronounced.
Solveig looked at him, quite astonished.
Then Red Ottar swung himself over the bows and lowered himself into the clutching water.
“Hurry up!” he told Solveig. “We started this together, and now we’ll finish it.”
Solveig pulled her grubby woolen tunic over her head and then, throwing modesty aside, untied her sleeveless shift, rolled it up, and pulled that off as well. She followed Red Ottar into the water and took her place on the opposite side of the bows from him, nearer to the rocky ledge and the cliff.
Solveig stared out across the racing deep streams. She stared at the gloomy cliffs. Then she threw back her head. She squinted.
And up on the high, bright skyline, she saw what she saw: men and horses.
“Look!” she gasped, jabbing her pole upward.
At once a whistling arrow spit into the water just in front of the bows. Then another stabbed into the mast and stuck there, quivering.
Sineus yelped. A third arrow had passed through his left foot and pinioned it to a crevice on the rock ledge. The Slav just gaped at it, wild-eyed.
Torsten yelled and kept yelling, frantically waving to everyone to take cover.
Red Ottar raised his eyes and he roared. He roared at the Pechenegs. Then he called on Thor to save him and his companions.
The arrow went straight in through his open mouth. It pierced his windpipe, and Solveig could see the point sticking out at the top of his spine.
Red Ottar’s grip on the bows loosened. He turned toward Solveig and tried to say something, but all he could do was to blow a bubble of poppy-bright blood. Choking, he slipped into the water, and the quick, cold current shipped him downstream.