Luckily for Veles, the berserk wanted Vali as much as he did. Bjarki had vowed to take the prince to Forkbeard and that was an un-negotiable promise, so for the moment he found Veles useful. Bjarki was a brute but not a fool, and he knew the merchant’s brains would be useful in the hunt. After that, well, who knew who had been killed in the pirate attack?
Veles looked at the berserk. He was no mind reader but could guess what Bjarki was thinking. The merchant needed to make himself indispensable to him.
When Veles settled to thinking about a problem then, if there was an answer, he usually found it. At Haithabyr he had heard whispers that Haarik was using Vali’s farm girl to ransom his son. He had not told Vali this because he had very quickly seen that the prince wasn’t in a position to pay for the information, nor to offer any other sort of benefit. However, now he saw a happy meeting of needs between himself and Bodvar Bjarki. The girl had gone north. Haarik had gone north. The prevailing current would take Vali north if he wasn’t shipwrecked on the way. Veles would take his ship up the North Land coast, find Whale People and ask for information about the girl, Haarik and the prince. Find either of the first two and he would find the third, he thought.
There was another reason to go north. He had heard of an island where the Whale People made sacrifices to their stupid gods. There was a rumour of gold there. Bjarki was convinced it was defended by sorcery but Veles thought otherwise.
In truth, Veles had very little respect for magic or for any god. He had seen his children playing by the fire with the Whale People’s holy objects, hung embroideries of the Christ god on his walls for decoration, heard people all over the world singing the praises of Wuoton, Odin, Raedie, Svarog, Spenta Mainyu, Jesus and other gods. All seemed the same to him — pictures and carvings beautiful but empty.
He put more faith in himself, the swords of Hemming and the power of coin than he did in the supernatural. The sorcerer who had made his child’s mask hadn’t been protected by his magic from whoever took it from him; Jesus had been taken to the cross with no angelic defenders, no bolts of fire from the sky smiting his enemies. Veles had actually laughed when the missionary told him the story of the crucifixion. What had the mighty god done to avenge his son? Torn the curtain on the temple. Cross Hemming and you’d suffer more than a ripped wall hanging for your pains.
So, the prince was in the north and Haarik was in the north and even this girl who seemed so important was there. He suspected magical beliefs figured in her disappearance and a look around the Whale People’s holy sites might uncover her. The prince wouldn’t be far behind. Veles thought he’d give it a go. It was better than returning empty-handed to Hemming, and maybe there really was gold up there, though he doubted it.
The journey was excruciatingly slow, hampered by argument and indecision. The whole trip should have taken them a couple of weeks, even against the current. Instead it consumed months. The berserk wanted to go after Vali but didn’t seem to realise that they first had to find out where he had been. There was no point randomly hurtling around the coast, as Bjarki seemed to want to do. They needed to ask if there had been a shipwreck, if strangers had passed by, if anyone had taken captives.
The Whale People were simple and friendly folk. They started out hostile and threatening, waving spears and screaming but if you gave them a coin or two they thought you a very fine fellow indeed and no threat — otherwise, why would you have given them the coins? So they wanted to please. Yes, there had been a shipwreck. Yes, strangers had gone past. Yes, there were captives. In their little dwellings on the headlands behind beaches, in their tents and by their fires Veles listened to them tell their stories of great storms, men with burning eyes and princesses of southern kingdoms tied to reindeer sleds and taken north to marry water spirits. The most recent of the stories, he guessed, was around fifty years old.
He had been freezing on and off the boat for two months when they came to where there was no further land to the north and the coast turned east.
‘What now?’ said the berserk. It was cold, very cold.
‘We go on,’ said Veles.
‘To what end?’ said the berserk. ‘The prince is wrecked on the coast. We should turn round and look for him.’
‘Tell me, Bjarki,’ said Veles. ‘Is this near where you were wrecked with Haarik’s son?’
‘Half a day’s sail south,’ he said. ‘We never did get to the sorcerer’s gold.’
‘No. Perhaps we should just take a peek down the coast and see what we can see.’
Bjarki shook his head. ‘They enchanted me. I became weak.’
‘You’ll suffer fewer enchantments if you don’t drink their wine.’
‘It wasn’t wine.’
‘I dread to think what it was,’ said Veles. He knew very well — fermented milk, a drink he always found deeply unpleasant and one he’d had enough of in his travels.
‘It was enchantment,’ said Bodvar, ‘not the wine. Drums. They made me weak.’
Veles raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, I’ve been weak all my life, so I have no strength for these sorcerers to rob. Come on, just a peek. I think I can only guarantee a rock in the sea, but who knows? You might get enough to pay Forkbeard his compensation. You did vow to pay him, didn’t you? You should do something to show your mettle. You do have something of a history of failure.’
Veles was treading a fine line between goading the berserk to action and enraging him.
The berserk looked at him. ‘I saved you,’ he said.
‘And now I will save you. The prince, if he is alive, will be on the holy island. If not, then their holy men will have heard of him. And these are peaceful people — they lie down at the first threat. If there is no treasure then there will at least be fine furs to be taken.’
‘They are sorcerers.’
There was no point in appealing to reason any more. The best way was to agree that the Whale People were powerful sorcerers — in which case they were doing rather badly — and that their spells needed to be taken seriously.
‘I have thought of that,’ said Veles. ‘I have brought this mask with me. They use it in their ceremonies and it deflects their power away from you.’
‘Then the mask is mine,’ said Bodvar Bjarki.
‘As you wish,’ said Veles. ‘But if we are enchanted, I shall rely on you to come to my rescue.’
Bjarki nodded and took the wolf mask from Veles. He put it to his face. It was tiny against his massive skull and the ties at its back hardly reached around his head.
‘This will protect me?’
‘All of you, the crew included.’
‘Good. If you are lying, Libor, then I’ll cut off your head.’
Veles thought that if he was lying and the sorcery was real Bjarki might not be in a position to cut off anyone’s head. If the sorcery wasn’t real, well, he was sure the mask offered good protection against people clicking their fingers and banging their drums at you. The berserk didn’t really think things through, thought the merchant.
The boat travelled east down the north coast into the falling cold. The sea didn’t freeze but they began to see smears of white on the landscape. The little ballast fire did something to keep him warm but Veles couldn’t quite stop shivering. It was a sort of crafty chill that you could banish momentarily by the fire or by adding another fur but that always seemed to work a freezing finger in — a cold of the bones, dropping from iron skies.