Viking Terror. Tom Henighan
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outlined for a moment against the dark rocks.
“Let’s go after him!” he cried.
The two young men scrambled out from underneath the branches, found a path through the birch grove, and after some dodging and sidestepping, emerged in the open valley.
There they stopped to listen, as once again the wolf cry filled the valley.
Ari smiled knowingly. “He can’t be far away. Perhaps we can get him now.”
They distanced themselves from the birch grove, advancing, rather warily, into the centre of the valley. There they found a shallow ditch, where they searched the ground for tracks, but among the partially melted patches of ice and snow, and the litter of lichen-covered rocks and stones, they found nothing.
Moving slowly, they crossed the level space separating them from the high cliffs opposite. The wolf cries had made them more sensitive to the silence, to the intermittent whispers of wind, to the tramp of their own boots on the spring earth. The sunlight blazed down steadily, and the morning’s flurry of snow was nearly forgotten.
They were still some twenty yards from the cliffs, watchful and a little tense, when they saw it.
Without a word, they stooped, kneeled, and slipped their longbows off their shoulders.
Something had moved on the cliff above them — not a white-coated wolf or bear this time, but something dark-skinned and agile — slipping from rock to rock and turning to stare at them with what might well have been a human face.
“Did you see it, Ari?” Rigg whispered. The plaintive howling, the mixed human and animal tracks, first a white creature and now suddenly a brown one. Could this be their werewolf?
But in his mind Rigg was still unsure. He remembered from his Vinland adventure how hard it was to look at the living world and read the truth there.
Ari stood transfixed, staring at the high cliffs. “That wasn’t any ordinary wolf,” he muttered. “Greenland wolves all have white coats, like the first creature we saw. And if it’s a werewolf our longbows are useless.”
Rigg nodded, and Ari continued, his voice both tense and eager: “Those tracks we found earlier, and now these two sightings — it seems that creature can turn in an instant from wolf into man! This is a powerful shape-shifter, or else something right out of our ken. I don’t know what to think. Maybe we should go back and talk to Tyrkir and the others.”
Rigg shook his head. “It’s too soon — we’ve learned nothing so far. You know that.”
“You’re right. But there’s another thing. That wolf cry — I recognized it, and you did too. It sounded like a very real wolf, didn’t it? Remember, years ago, Vikar the Hunter taught us to read that sound. It was the cry of a solitary wolf seeking the pack. Now just suppose the pack arrives. What then, Rigg — what do we do then?”
“Then we get out of here — if we can.”
Ari nodded thoughtfully. “Let’s search the cliffs first. If we find our killer wolf, we take home a trophy. If the arrows don’t harm it, or it turns into that brown creature, it must be a werewolf — and we run. In any case, we get out of this valley and back to the settlement before sunset, when the whole pack may arrive.”
“A good plan! I’ll work my way up that slope by the alder scrub; you take the terraced rock where those boulders are. Anything could be hiding in there! If either of us needs help, he can shout!”
Each of the young Vikings selected an arrow from the small bundle on his back, each held both the arrow and the longbow loosely but at the ready, in his left hand, and cautiously advanced in the agreed direction.
As Rigg tramped through the scrub bush, he breathed a short prayer to Odin, who had hung nine days on a tree to learn the secret of the runes. He asked the wise god to show them a safe path from this haunted valley.
Despite this prayer, and despite his trust in Ari, who was so sturdy and quick, Rigg wished now that they had also brought Tyrkir along. In the face of any mystery, the rune master would know exactly what to do. But Tyrkir had shown no interest in wolf-hunting. He was occupied enough in trying to make peace between Freydis, with her magic and her pagan ways, and Grandmother Thiodhild, who wanted to convert everyone to Christianity.
A few times Rigg had seen his grandmother make the Christian sign of the cross and he had often heard her talk about the Christ. So, just to be on the safe side, he crossed himself quickly and made a short prayer to the God from the east who had also hung on a tree. With both Odin and Christ on his side, it seemed that he could hardly fail.
Just then, however, the slope grew steeper, and Rigg had to pay attention to the path. The sun had already melted small patches of snow, and the earth underfoot was soft and treacherous. Loose boulders rimmed a ledge, and beyond that a rift in the rock face revealed some natural steps that Rigg was sure he could climb. By this time he had lost sight of Ari, but he knew that his friend was armed and capable, and that a mere signal could bring either of them to help the other.
Inch by inch at first, Rigg climbed up the natural rock chimney toward the higher ridge. Although all the ledges were covered with moss and lichen and were very slippery, he was an agile climber and, with his bow and arrows stowed away again, he made good progress. The blazing sun made him sweat, and his fingers inside his gloves seemed about to melt, but anything, he reminded himself, was better than a sudden Greenland blizzard.
Near the top, he stopped to catch his breath, then emerged on a narrow track that led toward a shelf of rock, a smooth platform of stone and moss that projected some distance out over the valley.
Rigg peered over the edge of the precipice at the land below. He could see the birch grove and the ditch they had stopped at. A stream must run there in summer. Gazing down the rock face, he was surprised at how high he had already climbed, and surprised too that he could hear nothing of Ari. He didn’t want to call out just then, lest his friend think he was in trouble. He would climb just a little higher and try to signal to him by hand.
Rigg retreated a few steps and found there was a path behind the boulders near the rock wall. The path sloped upward, concealed by some fallen rock and a few scrub alder and dwarf willow plants.
This would make the ascent to the higher ridge much easier. He was wary, however — a little edgy at losing contact with Ari — so he readied his bow and an arrow and made his way cautiously up the slippery incline.
He climbed up the smooth, narrow slope, a natural rock ramp leading to the top of the cliff. The path was so steep that Rigg almost felt as if he was ascending into the fierce blue sky. The dark rocks around him glittered, and sunlight painted the lichen, moss, and scrub plants a bright green.
Rigg was a good climber, but the steep path had slowed him down, and the sunlight dazzled, so that when the quarry suddenly flashed white on the clifftop some way above him, he reacted too slowly.
Rigg’s bow twanged and the arrow sped upward. The wolf had stopped for an instant in full flight and the arrow must have grazed one foot, for he spun around, yelped like a tortured demon for a few seconds, and then disappeared.
Rigg shouted and scrambled up the slippery rock path as fast as he was able. At the top, to his surprise, he found himself on another narrow ledge. The valley lay far below. There was no sign of the wolf.
Behind the ledge, however, was something unexpected: a cliffside broken and gouged by time, with hollow spaces in the rock itself and a large opening into the hillside, one that seemed to reveal a cave of sizable proportions.
Sweating and gasping from his exertion, Rigg stopped to fit his bow with another arrow. He walked hesitantly forward — he had no love of caves or caverns. No doubt the wolf was hiding in there. But where was Ari?
He thought of retracing his steps to find him — but that might mean losing the wolf track. Rigg stood in some doubt until his glance fixed on a smooth, dark patch of stone near the entrance to the large cave. He approached it and found that it was covered with runic writing.