over. Kwimu bites his nails in agony. Stop doing that, they’ll see you!
The chief gives another order. Whatever it is, the child on the roof understands: he flattens himself again, and the men troop back to the houses and begin emptying them. Everything is carried out. They stagger down to the river under bundles of furs, and heave them into the belly of the second Horned Serpent, the big one with the eagle’s beak. They bring out gear, pots, sacks, weapons. Shouting, they load up with timber: logs and planks from a pile on the other side of the houses. The creature—vessel: it must be some kind of vessel—sways this way and that as they adjust the cargo till it’s riding level, a lot lower in the water.
“They’re leaving!” Kwimu says with a gasp of relief. “They’re going away!”
Sinumkw makes a brushing movement with his hand: quiet. He watches the scene below with a hunter’s intensity.
At last, all is ready. A small, fat canoe collects the burly chieftain and his golden son—they don’t have to wade through the freezing water. The chieftain hoists himself aboard the big Serpent, but his son is ferried to the smaller vessel, and nimbly leaps aboard. Kwimu shades his eyes. The boy strides up and down, pouring something out of a big pot. He upends the pot, shakes out the last drops, and tosses it overboard. With an arm twined around the Horned Serpent’s painted neck, he leans out and catches a rope that uncoils through the air from the bigger vessel. He knots it at the base of the neck, and jumps down into the waiting canoe. In moments, he’s back with his father.
The men lift out long, thin paddles: it’s as if the Serpent is putting out legs like a beetle. Slowly it turns away from the shore, swinging with the current till it’s pointing out to sea.
Kwimu has never seen paddling like this before, with all the men facing the wrong way. How can they see where to go? But it seems to work. The red and black jipijka’m is crawling away out of the river, loaded with furs and timber, and towing its companion behind it—the red Serpent of the Dead.
So they’re going, and they haven’t found the child. Does he know he’s safe? Kwimu glances down at the roof.
The child is sitting up, staring.
Get down, get down—they might still see you…
But the child gets slowly to his feet. He stands in full view of the river, conspicuous on the rooftop. He lifts his arm, both arms, and starts to wave and scream. He’s dancing on the roof, yelling in a shrill voice.
“He mocks his enemies!” says Sinumkw in deep appreciation.
But Kwimu isn’t so sure. He’s got a cold feeling that if he could understand, the child might be screaming, “Come back, come back! Don’t leave me!”
For a second, the crawling motion falters as some of the men lift their arms to point. Then it picks up again. They’re not stopping; they’re not turning. They’re leaving the river now, heading into the bay. There’s still a lot of haze on the water; you can’t see the horizon.
They’re doing something else now: casting off the rope. A feather of fire flies through the air, curving into the red Serpent. A moment later, flames splutter fiercely up.
“Oil.” Sinumkw nods. “They poured in oil to make it burn.”
Kwimu can actually hear it, crackling like a hundred spits. Black smoke pours up in a tall column. The neck and proud horned head show clearly, but the long serpent body seems writhing in flames.
Down below, the child is scrambling off the roof. He drops the last few feet and goes racing down over the ravaged grasslands towards the beach.
“Let’s get him!” Kwimu turns to Sinumkw. “Please, Nujj…”
His father shakes his head. “No.”
“Oh, please, Nujj. He’s only little, and he’s brave…”
“A bear cub is little and brave,” says Sinumkw grimly, “and if you take one for a pet, it will grow up into a big bear and claw your arm off.”
Kwimu swallows. “I know, but…can we leave him to die?”
“They have.” Sinumkw nods towards the bay. “He’s not one of the People, Kwimu. Not one of us.”
“You like him, though,” says Kwimu desperately. “You laughed at the way he tricked the warriors. See—Fox approves!” Fox twists his head and licks Kwimu’s hand suddenly, as though to encourage him. Kwimu hardly dares to go on, but the words come anyway, forcing their way up from deep inside him, like a spring of water that has to bubble out. “He might become your son, Nujj. My brother.”
Sinumkw looks at him. His chest rises and falls in a sigh. “Well, we can try. Perhaps the cub is young enough to tame. Don’t be surprised if he bites you.”
They turn, for the slope ahead is too steep to descend, and it will be necessary to go back into the woods and find another way down. Kwimu casts a backward glance at the burning vessel, and is in time to see it tip up and slide neatly backwards under the water. The snarling serpent head vanishes last, and then it’s as though it has never existed, except for the smoke drifting higher and higher, a fading stain against the sky.
The other jipijka’m is already out of the bay and turning up the gulf towards the open sea; and from this distance it looks more like a serpent than ever—a living serpent, swimming quietly away through the haze.
Down on the shingle, nine-year-old Ottar, young son of Thorolf the Seafarer, stands knee-deep in the cold waves. Tears pour down his cheeks. He’s alone, orphaned, desperate, stranded in this horrible place on the wrong side of the world. He hears a shout from the beach behind him. He turns, his heart leaping in wild, unbelieving hope. Somehow it’s going to be all right—it’s been a bad dream or an even worse joke—and he won’t even be angry. He’s going to run to whoever it is, and cling to them, and sob until the sobbing turns into laughter.
And then he sees. His mouth goes dry. Coming towards him on the rising ground between him and the houses are two terrible figures. Their long hair is as black as pitch, and tied with coloured strings. Their clothes are daubed with magic signs. Furs dangle from their belts. They are both carrying bows. But the frightening thing—the really frightening thing about them—is that you can’t see their expressions at all. Half of their faces are covered in black paint, the other half in red. Their eyes glitter white and black.
“Skraelings!” Ottar whispers. “Dirty Skraelings!”
He prepares to die.
The green sea wrapped itself round Peer Ulfsson’s waist, and rose to his chest with a slopping sound. “Yow!” he yelled. As the wave plunged past he sucked in his breath, and bent quickly to look through the water.
There! In the heaving, brown-green glimmer he saw it: the hammer he’d dropped, lying on the stones. He groped with his arm, his fingers closed on the handle, and the next wave swept past his ears and knocked him over. There was a dizzy moment of being rolled backwards in a freezing froth of bubbles and sand. He struggled up, spluttering but brandishing the hammer in triumph.
