my dearie!” Ingrid cried. “We’ve thought of it. But we can’t. He’s your uncle. He’s got a right to you, and we haven’t.”
“No,” said Peer bitterly. “Of course not.”
Ingrid tried to put an arm around his shoulders. “Give your uncles a chance,” she pleaded. “Don’t you think your father would want you to try?”
“Maybe…” Peer shut his eyes on a sudden glimpse of his father, turning over a piece of oak and saying as he often did, “You’ve got to make the best of the wood you’re given, Peer. And that’s true of life, too!” He could almost smell the sweet sawdust clinging to his father’s clothes.
Loki sprang to his feet barking. The door opened and Uncle Baldur thrust his head and shoulders in. “Boy!” he squealed. “Are those chickens in the yard yours? Catch them and put them in the cart. We’re leaving. Run!”
A fine row blew up indoors as his uncle accused Ingrid of trying to steal the chickens. Peer fled outside and began stalking a fat speckled hen. Loki joined in. He dashed at the hens, which scattered, cackling. “Bad dog!” cried Peer, but Loki had lost his head and was hurtling around the yard with a mouthful of brown tail feathers.
Uncle Baldur burst out of the house. He bent down, heaved up the heavy stone doorstop and hurled it at Loki. There were two shrieks, one from Peer and the other from Loki who lay down suddenly and licked his flank, whimpering.
“You could have killed him!” Peer yelled. His uncle turned on him. “If he ever chases my chickens again, I will. Now catch them and tie them up with this.” He threw Peer a hank of twine. “Be quick!”
As Peer captured the last of the hens, Uncle Baldur tied a string around Loki’s neck. “Fasten ’im to the tail of the cart. He can run behind.”
“Can’t he ride?” Peer asked. “He’s limping...” But his voice died under Uncle Baldur’s unwinking stare, and miserably he did as he was told. Then he clambered into the cart himself.
Ingrid came out to see him off, mopping first her hands and then her eyes on her apron. “Poor lamb,” she wailed. “And Brand’s down at the shipyard and can’t even say goodbye. Whatever will he say when he hears?”
The cart creaked as Uncle Baldur climbed aboard. He took a new piece of twine from his pocket and tied one end around the rail of the cart. Then he tied the other end around Peer’s right wrist. Peer’s mouth fell open. He tried to pull away and got his ears slapped.
“What are you doing to the boy?” Ingrid shrieked.
Uncle Baldur looked round in surprise. “Got to fasten up the livestock,” he explained. “Chickens or boys – can’t have ’em escaping, running around loose.”
Ingrid opened her mouth – and shut it. Peer looked at her. See? he told her silently.
“Gee! Hoick!” Uncle Baldur cracked his whip over the oxen. The cart lurched. Peer stared resolutely ahead. He did not wave goodbye.
The steep road twisted up into low woods of birch and spruce, then into high meadows, and then stony and boggy moorland. “Garn! Grr! Hoick, hoick!” The oxen snorted, straining. The cart tilted like the deck of a ship and the chickens slid about, flapping.
“Shall I get out and walk?” Peer suggested.
His uncle ignored him. Peer muttered a bad word. He sat on a pile of sacks, his arm awkwardly tethered above his head. Over the end of the cart he could see Loki trotting along with his head and tail low. He looked miserable, but the limp had gone – he’d been faking it, Peer decided.
They came to a bend in the road. Peer looked, then pulled himself up, staring. In front, dwarfing Uncle Baldur’s bulky shoulders, the land swooped upwards. Crag above crag, upland beyond upland, in murky shouldering ridges, clotted with trees and tumbling with rockfalls, the flanks of Troll Fell rose before him. At the summit he glimpsed a savage crown of rocks, but even as he gazed, the clouds came lower. The top of Troll Fell wrapped itself in mist.
A fine cold rain began to fall, soaking through Peer’s clothes. He dragged out a sack and draped it across his shoulders. Uncle Baldur pulled up the hood of his thick cloak.
Shadowy boulders loomed out of the drizzle on both sides of the track. They seemed to stare at Peer as he huddled in the bottom of the cart. One looked like a giant’s head with shallow, scooped-out eyes. Something bolted out from underneath it as the cart passed, kicking itself up the hillside with powerful leaps. Peer sat up. What was that? Too big for a hare – and he thought he’d seen elbows…
A wind sprang up. Mud sprayed from the great wooden cartwheels. Peer clutched the sodden sack under his chin and sat jolting and shivering.
At last he realised that they were over the saddle of the hill and beginning to descend. Leaning out, he looked down into a great shadowy basin. A few faint lights freckled the valley. That must be the village of Trollsvik. He thought longingly of dry clothes, hot food and a fire. He had hardly spoken to his uncle all the way, but now he called out as politely as he could, “Uncle? How far is the mill?”
Uncle Baldur pointed. “Down among the trees yonder. A matter of half a mile. Beside the brook.” He sounded quite civil for once, and Peer was encouraged.
“Home!” his uncle added, in his shrill toad’s croak. “Lived there all me life, and me father before him, and his father before him. Millers all.”
“That’s nice,” Peer agreed between chattering teeth.
“Needs a new wheel, and the dam repaired,” complained his uncle. “If I had the money – if I had my rights –”
You’ve got my money now, Peer thought bitterly.
“– I’d be the most important man in the place,” his uncle went on. “I’m the miller. I deserve to be rich. I will be rich. Hark!”
He hauled on the reins. The track plunged between steep banks, and the cart slewed, blocking the road. Uncle Baldur twisted around, straining his thick neck and raising one hand.
“Hear that?” he muttered. “Someone’s coming…”
Who? What had Uncle Baldur heard on this wild, lonely road? What was that long burbling cry, drifting on the wind?
“You hear it?” Uncle Baldur hissed eagerly. “Could be friends of mine, boy. I’ve got some funny friends. People you’d be surprised to meet!” He giggled.
Stones clattered on the track close behind. Loki shot under the tail of the cart and Peer could hear him growling. He braced himself, skin crawling, ready to face anything – monsters or trolls.
A small, wet pony emerged from the drizzle, picking its way downhill, carrying a rider and a packsaddle. On seeing the cart, it stopped with a snort.
“Hello!” shouted the rider. “Move the cart, will you? I can’t get past.”
With a deep breath of fury, Uncle Baldur flung down the reins. He surged to his feet, teetering on the cart’s narrow step.
“Ralf Eiriksson!” he screamed. “You cheating
