“The wind has swept the snow off,” Shef whispered to Karli. “We won’t stand out against the white.”
“But why isn’t the ice white too?” Karli replied.
Both men knelt and looked closely at the ice-cover in front of them. It seemed black and forbidding, yet still thick as cathedral walls. There was no give in it, clearly frozen still all the way down to the mud at the bottom. Shef stepped out cautiously, jumped up and down in his leather-soled boots. Both men had tied rawhide round their footwear for better grip and less noise.
“It’s solid. We can do it. And if the ice is black, better for us.”
Cautiously, both stepped out and began to walk gingerly across the ice to the center of the island before them. Both crouched, as if that would make them harder to see. At each step they planted their feet carefully and delicately, as if the ice might shatter beneath them at a sudden shock. Every now and then one or the other would tense, thinking he felt the first shiver that would mean thin ice. Then they plodded on again. Shef had his spear in one hand, the point carefully beaten and filed out once again to needle-sharpness. Karli had taken the wooden sword-scabbard from his belt, frightened to trip over it, and now held sword and scabbard together in both hands, as if it were a balance-pole.
As the island drew nearer both men began to breathe more freely. At the same time the sense of exposure grew on them. The trees ahead were a dark menace, they themselves out on the flat without a vestige of cover. Sense told them that the black night and low clouds covered them, that there was no light in the sky to pick them out. Nevertheless, if they could see the island, surely the island could see them. As they came up to the shore, they both accelerated their pace, darted instantly into the shadow of the trees.
They sat for a while, hearts thumping, waiting for noise of movement or challenge. Nothing came. Only the steady hiss of the wind in the trees.
Shef turned to Karli, muttered, “We’ll go round the edge of this island, keeping to the ice by the shore. When we see the next bridge ahead of us we’ll decide what to do about it.”
For some minutes they shuffled warily round the edge of the island. Once they caught a whiff of wood-smoke and stood stock-still. But the trees remained unbroken, not even a cottager’s landing-stage jutting out into the water. They shuffled on.
The bridge to the next island almost caught them by surprise. They shuffled round a small spit of land, and saw it in front of them, not twenty yards off, and plain to see, two tall men leaning on their javelins. Could even hear their muttered conversation. Quickly the two intruders pulled back into shelter.
“What we ought to do,” whispered Shef, “is make a detour out to sea, to keep well away from them.”
“Don’t fancy that,” muttered Karli. “I want to keep where the ice is thick.”
“If the ice wasn’t thick enough, she wouldn’t have told us to take it.”
“Women are funny. And she could be wrong. Anyway she’s not out here with fifty feet of cold water under her.”
Shef reflected for a moment. “Let’s try this, then. We’ll start from here, and go parallel with the bridge, where the water’s shallowest and the ice thickest. But we won’t walk, we’ll crawl. Keep right down, there’s not so much for them to see. Anyway, they’re watching the path, not the ice.”
As they set out, crawling awkwardly in their heavy clothing, beards skimming the ice, Karli began to wonder. If the ice is so thick, why are these Norwegians only guarding the bridges? Why are they guarded at all? Are these people just stupid? Or does the queen…?
His friend was yards in front of him and moving like an angry adder. No time for debate. And the ice seemed thick as ever. Karli crawled quickly behind, trying not to eye the seeming safety of the log-bridge twenty yards off.