Hawk Quest (42 page)
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.’
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.
