Troll Blood (15 page)

Late one evening, Peer was standing in the bow, keeping ice watch. They’d passed a big iceberg at around sunset—a scary thing like a chunk of white mountain. Gunnar yelled at the helmsman not to pass too close—the high sides of the berg towered over
Water Snake
and would steal the wind from her
sail. Once safely behind, the berg remained in sight for an hour or more, the low sun turning it to warm amber and blue shadow, and finally to a dark tooth against the southeastern horizon.

It was a warning they couldn’t ignore. So Peer stood through the long twilight, straining his eyes for the telltale gleam of looming ice castles, and listening to the Nis bouncing about in the rigging. Now it was sitting in the crosstrees at the top of the mast, thin legs dangling, wispy hair blowing in the north wind—just visible against a patch of sky where a few stars burned.

Peer was hungry. He hoped that Hilde would bring him his evening meal—she sometimes did when he was on watch, and stayed to chat for a while—but this time he was surprised and rather disappointed to see Astrid. She handed over his food, and then didn’t go, but leaned back against the steep curve of the prow and looked up at the masthead.

“There it sits,” she said, and her fingers drummed on the planking. “There it sits, and it won’t speak to me.”

“The Nis?” Peer asked through a mouthful of crumbling oatcake. He’d forgotten that Astrid could see it. “Why should it speak to you? You’re lucky it hasn’t done something in revenge.”

“It wouldn’t dare,” said Astrid coolly, and it occurred to him that she was probably right. There was something about Astrid that would make even the Nis think twice. She moved closer to him. “It would talk to me if
you
asked it. Why don’t
you call it? Ask it to come down.”

“Why should I?” demanded Peer. He neither liked nor trusted Astrid, and saw no reason why he should do anything for her. “Besides, someone might hear.”

“They won’t hear,” said Astrid. “They’re all listening to Hilde telling about some of your adventures under Troll Fell.” She put a slim hand on his shoulder. “It’s a shame you’re up here by yourself, especially when it’s your story too.”

Peer couldn’t help secretly agreeing. With a pang of loneliness he imagined the gathering back there on the afterdeck, Hilde’s animated face, her hands gesturing as she described their adventures.

“Do ask the Nis to come down,” Astrid wheedled. “I’d like to make friends with it. And look! Here’s its little red cap. It’ll want that back.”

She opened her hand and showed him the tiny cap, dark in the darkness against her white fingers. It was true that the Nis would be glad to have that back. And where had she found
it?
Peer wondered. Probably inside her goatskin bag.

“All right,” he said gruffly, “I’ll try, but I don’t know if it’ll come.”

He chirruped gently, and saw the Nis’s humped outline go tall and thin as it sat up like an alarmed squirrel and looked around.

“It’s only me,” Peer called. “And Astrid,” he added, in case the Nis thought he was trying to deceive it. “She wants to say sorry to you. Come on down.”

He didn’t truly think the Nis would come. However, it skipped onto the forestay and came sliding cleverly down. Astrid jumped as though half afraid, then stretched out a coaxing hand.

The Nis grabbed the cap from her fingers and crammed it on its head. It made a rude noise with its lips, and jumped away to crouch on the iron fluke of the anchor, where it deliberately turned its back to her, fiddling with something it held in its skinny lap, and chanting some odd-sounding gibberish:

Peer leaned over. “Whatever are you doing?”

“Practicing knots,” squeaked the Nis. Its long nimble fingers flickered like spider legs. “Make a little hole,” it muttered to itself.”
Out
pops the rabbit,
around
the tree it goes, and
back
into the hole again.” It held up a piece of looped string in triumph. “See! Bowline.” It undid it busily and tried another. “Reef knot!” It held out the end. “The harder you pull, the tighter it gets,” it explained importantly. “Pull that, Peer Ulfsson.”

Peer pulled, and the knot slid apart. “That was a slipknot,” he said.

The Nis snatched the string back.
“Over
here and
under
there … No, it goes
around
here and over
there
… Pull!” Peer tweaked, and the knot came apart again. The Nis scrunched the string up. “I could do it before,” it said crossly.

Astrid laughed. “Why are you learning knots?” she asked.

The Nis wouldn’t answer, but Peer guessed. “They’re all knots that sailors use. The Nis is turning into a real seafarer!”

Astrid caught on fast. “Goodness, yes. Why, I’m terrible at knots. I’m nothing but a landlubber. However did you learn so quickly?”

The Nis could not resist flattery. Flicking her a sideways glance, it said with shy pride, “I watches, and I listens, and I sees Magnus showing Floki. And I thinks to myself,
I am a ship Nis now, I must learn the things that sailors know.”

“How clever,” Astrid praised. The Nis swaggered its thin shoulders, spitting a tiny white speck over the side in uncanny imitation of Magnus. “I knows all the right words, too,” it bragged.
“Ahoy there! Haul, me boys! Lee side! Luff!”

“That’s wonderful,” said Peer in a shaking voice.

The Nis nodded complacently. “Now I must go up to the masthead, like I does every night, and keep lookout. Every evening I goes
aloft”
—it looked sharply to see if they had noticed the nautical term—“I goes aloft and I can see lots from up there, much more than you can see down here, and I keeps a good lookout for icebergs, Peer Ulfsson, so no need to worry. And I looks out for storms, too, and rocks, and sea serpentses and whales …” Its voice trailed off as it sprang for the forestay and scampered rapidly back up, hand over hand.

Struggling not to laugh, Peer and Astrid caught each other’s eye.

“Well, it’s forgiven me!” said Astrid.

“Maybe,” said Peer. “Just keep buttering it up.”

“You’re fond of it, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.” Peer discovered that he also felt very proud of the way the Nis was coping with its sudden uprooting from everything it had ever known. “I think it’s doing better than I am,” he added soberly.

“You’re a nice person, Peer,” said Astrid softly. “Why doesn’t Hilde notice?”

Peer stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do.” A gleam of mischief came into Astrid’s eyes. “I expect I could get her interested in you. Want me to help?”

“No!”

“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” she teased. “Why? A handsome boy like you shouldn’t be afraid of girls.”

Peer was blushing so hard, he was glad of the darkness. Astrid stepped closer. Before he knew what she was going to do, she slid one hand up over his neck and kissed his cheek. “There! Now you can say a girl’s kissed you.”

“Astrid!” Peer felt his whole skin scalding. “You’d better go,” he said furiously. “What if someone—”

“What if someone sees us?” Astrid made her eyes go big. “Oh, yes, Gunnar would kill you, wouldn’t he?” She laughed. “Don’t worry, Peer, you’re safe with me. I won’t frighten you anymore. I like you. I really do. And I can’t say that about many people.”

Her voice was half sad, half mocking. Peer remembered what Hilde had told him about the young man Astrid had
loved.
Erlend.
The name rose to his lips, but he bit it back. He looked at Astrid. She was staring up at the stars, her white skin luminous against the darkness of the vast sail. Did she know the story of Erlend’s curse? He pitied her.

“Hilde told me your secret,” he said gently.

“What secret?”

She rapped it out so sharply, Peer wished he had said nothing. “About … having to marry Gunnar, and then Harald killing Erlend,” he stammered.

“That!” To his amazement, she sounded relieved. After a moment she said, “Well, it was dreadful. But I’m married to Gunnar now. I don’t want to think about it anymore.” She was suddenly in a hurry, pulling her cloak around her. “I don’t want Gunnar to miss me. I’d better go.” And she whisked away, stumbling over the curved wooden ribs of the ship’s side.

Peer shook his head. His hand went to his cheek, and he rubbed the spot where she’d kissed him. Did she love Gunnar? Had she loved Erlend? He couldn’t make her out at all.

“Floki!” Magnus yelled the next morning as a line came apart in his hands. “I thought I’d shown you how to do a sheet bend.” He waved the loose end under Floki’s nose. “Call yourself a sailor? That slipknot came undone as soon as I pulled on it, you—you landsman, you!”

Floki examined the line, as though somehow it could tell him what had gone wrong. “I’m sure I did it right,” he grumbled.

“Never mind who did what. Pull that sail in!” bellowed
Gunnar. The corner of the sail had blown free and had to be recaptured. All day knots fastening the shrouds, stays, and sheets came mysteriously loose, or undone, or were found retied in the wrong way, until Gunnar was driven nearly crazy, cursing his crew for a nest of unhandy landlubbers. Tempers rose so high that Peer began to fear fights would break out again—but luckily, after a day or two of turmoil, the Nis finally got all the knots figured out, and peace was restored. Floki muttered that
Water Snake
was an unlucky ship. When Magnus heard, he threatened to throw Floki overboard.

A few days later, just after daybreak, Peer heard an excited shout from Halfdan in the bow: “Land ahead! There’s old Blueshirt! Greenland, me boys!”

Everyone who was free rushed forward. Peer was holding the starboard brace and couldn’t join them, but by shading his eyes and leaning out over the side, he caught a glimpse of it: a jag of bluish white on the iron horizon.

With a satisfied grunt Gunnar ordered Magnus, on the tiller, to alter course south of west. It was a freezing cold morning, with the wind gusting almost dead north. As those white, unfriendly mountains drew a little nearer, snow began to scud down the wind. Moments later, a snarling squall enveloped the ship. The horizon in all directions vanished. Great gray snowflakes plastered themselves against the sail and whirled away again. The bow disappeared as if into an
unseen future, and the ship reared and rolled like a frightened horse.

“Reef!” Gunnar screamed. Peer could hardly hear him over the noise of the wind.

They shortened sail. Peer sat jammed against the starboard side, hanging on to the sheet and the braces, holding his breath each time the ship rose among the shouldering waves. Like gray monsters they rolled down on
Water Snake
, foam spilling greedily down their fronts. They threw her up and snapped at her sides. Spray came overboard in white arcs.

For a second the snowstorm cleared. He could see forward, under the sail, the dark line of the dragonhead with seas bursting around it. Then hail rattled across the deck boards, bouncing and rolling, knocking against his skull like elfin hammers and numbing his face and hands.

Someone shook his shoulder. It was Arnë, shouting into his ear.
What? Something—the steering oar?
“Broken,” Arnë bawled. Half crawling, Peer clawed himself along to the stern, where Magnus was clutching his wrist and waving a splintered peg leg of wood—the remains of the tiller. A wave had wrenched the whole thing out of his grasp, twisting the steering oar upward and snapping the tiller like a stick of firewood. Peer clung to the side and looked over at the steering oar, which was lifting and falling uselessly in the waves. “It’s not broken,” he yelled. “The withy’s snapped.”

The withy—the rope that pinned the steering oar against the ship—had gone. Only a broad leather strap kept the oar
from floating away as the ship tossed and dropped at the mercy of wind and waves.

Gunnar appeared out of the gale. He put his face close to Peer’s. “Can—you—fix—it?” He bellowed each word separately.

“Not in this weather,” Peer shouted back. He was afraid Gunnar would argue, but Gunnar nodded as though this was what he’d expected, and disappeared again.

“Let’s get it in,” Peer yelled. “Get me a line.” Magnus brought a length of cord, which Peer knotted tightly around the top of the steering oar. He lashed the other end to one of the crossbeams so that the oar couldn’t wash away when he loosed the leather strap. “When it comes free, haul!”

Magnus nodded. At Peer’s other side, Harald leaned over the gunwale. The steering oar was a heavy blade of oak, as long as a man, scything about in the strong waves, capable of breaking an arm or crushing a hand between it and the ship.

“Now!”

They grabbed for the oar. Magnus heaved on the line. Peer caught the middle of the oar and was nearly tugged over the side by the deadweight as the ship rolled and the water sucked away below. For a second he stared into boiling froth, then the water rose to engulf him. But the oar rose with it, and together Harald and he dragged it over the side and fell to the deck boards with the oar on top of them. Magnus lifted it clear.

Soaked and breathless, arms nearly torn from their sockets, Peer and Harald exchanged glances. Harald was gasping,
his hair plastered to his face in rattails. He bared his teeth in a savage smile of triumph, and Peer found himself grinning back. Harald got up. He pulled Peer to his feet, and clapped him on the arm.

It wouldn’t last. But for a moment, Peer almost liked him. He was ruthless, selfish, dangerous—but enjoying the danger, twice as alive as most people, with a glow to him that you wanted to be part of.
And he knows it, and he uses it.

They moved apart, the bond already breaking. Already Harald’s eyes turned indifferently away. You couldn’t be friends with him. There was no warmth to his brightness. He was in love with action, and with himself.

“Peer!” Magnus yelled. Gunnar was gesticulating angrily. “Port side—get over to port!” Peer flung himself across to help balance the ship.

“Got to keep her straight,” Magnus shouted in his ear. “Got to run before the wind. Or else—” He didn’t finish. Peer nodded. If the ship turned broadside to the waves, they would be overwhelmed—sucked down without a trace.