They Came On Viking Ships Read Free Page A

voice was so beautiful, even the seals came to shore to hear it. This was the first time Hekja had sung since he died.
‘Wind on the river,
Wind on the sea,
There the wind rests,
and my love rests with me.’
    Her ma smiled as she ground the barley in the quern for the night’s barley cake. Then suddenly Snarf lifted up his nose.
    ‘Hooooooooowwwwwwwl!!!!!’
    Hekja’s ma laughed. ‘He’s saying, “No, this is how you sing properly!”’
    Hekja looked down at the pup. He was so small, and so earnest. She bent down to rub her nose on his. But by now the pup was nearly asleep.
    Bran brought meat every few days after that. Hekja knew he must spend all his nights up on the great mountain, setting his snares for her, as well as going fishing with the men each day. But he just handed the bloody lumps to her through the door, as though the gift was nothing, and mumbled something, then was gone. One day there was hare and then a squirrel, and sometimes a puffin or a cod head or even scraps of venison from the chief’s table.
    Snarf grew stronger day by day. He ate barley cake now too, with cheese and sour butter and smoked fish, the same food that Hekja and her mother ate.
    Before long he was well enough to limp after Hekja as she collected shellfish or seaweed, his fat belly almost dragging on the ground; nosing at the fish guts by the barrels that were dug into the pebbly shore and used tosmoke the fish; bouncing at the waves; or digging in the village compost heap, stinking of rotten kale stems and dung.
    When Hekja and her ma scratched the stony soil with their driftwood plough Snarf barked to keep the birds from the barley seed, or bounded round them while they dug the peat and spread it out to dry so it would burn.
    And day by day Snarf’s leg got better, so he hardly limped at all, except when he was tired.
    Sometimes Hekja felt the chief’s eyes upon her, as she threw driftwood for Snarf to chase on the stony shore. Snarf might limp, and his face was scarred, but he was still a valuable dog, worth three sacks of barley at least, or a cow.
    But Snarf was Hekja’s now.
    The days grew longer. The men went after gulls’ eggs, and this time no one fell from the cliffs as Hekja’s father had, to lie crippled till he died. There were eggs enough for everyone, even for the hut on the shore. For weeks the whole village smelt of egg farts, and Snarf’s belly looked round as an egg itself.
    And then it was summer, the longer days eating up the night, the midges biting every bit of skin they could find. Above the village the great mountain turned from white to brown and then to green.
    It was time to take the cattle up to pasture.

Chapter 5
UP THE GREAT MOUNTAIN
    Taking the cattle to pasture was a task for the girls of the village. The men and boys fished or hunted, or mended the fishing nets, and cut the turf for burning. The women dried the fish in long flapping lines outside the round, stone huts, or smoked them; they planted the barley and the kale in the rocky soil, then ground the grain to flour for the barley cakes, made the barley beer 6 and collected shellfish and driftwood along the shore.
    Every summer the village girls took the shaggy high-horned cattle up the mountain to get fat on fresh new grass. The girls milked the cows and made the butter and the cheese, while the bull calves got fat enough to be butchered at the end of summer, so their meat could be salted to eat through winter. The cows had calved two moons before and been put to the bull again, so they would calve next year too, but the bull stayed in the chief’s enclosure, so it was just the cows and calves who were to climb the great mountain.
    Twice each moon the women made the journey upthe mountain to bring the girls fish and barley cakes and check the goings on, and to collect the soft new cheese and carry it back down to the village to press it, and bury the butter in the cold, wet soil by the stream, so it would still be fresh to eat in