Free Meadowland by Tom Holt Page B

were and that’s all there was to it.
    But I didn’t waste much time thinking that kind of stuff, because as soon as we made landfall I was so bloody overjoyed to be off the ship that it passed clean out of my head. Didn’t care where the hell I was, so long as I didn’t have to sleep another night in wet clothes with the wind freezing my bollocks off.
    Now here’s a remarkable thing, and I’ve often wondered about it since. We hadn’t just found Greenland. When we drew the ship up we could see a farm away yonder, tucked in under the mountain. Bjari dashes off to find out where we are, and who’s the first man he meets when he walks in the door but Herjolf, his old man.
    ‘Dad?’ he says.
    ‘Hello, son,’ Herjolf replies. ‘What’re you doing here?’
    ‘Come to spend winter, same as usual,’ Bjari says, cool as you like. At least, that’s what he told us; but Fat Thorhalla who worked in the dairy told us later that she was watching from just inside the door, and the next moment they’re both in floods of tears and hugging each other like a pair of wrestlers.

CHAPTER
    THREE
    ‘So what did he tell you, then?’ Eyvind asked.
    It was Kari’s turn to go on watch. Eyvind had come back inside the tomb, wringing wet and miserable as a cheap funeral. He’d heard voices, he said; or rather, he’d heard Kari’s voice bleating endlessly on and on. He hoped the old fool hadn’t bored me to the point where gangrene set in.
    ‘Hang on,’ I objected. ‘I thought you and he were old friends.’
    An extraordinary expression came over Eyvind’s face. It was as if God, creating Man, hadn’t been able to make up His mind whether His ultimate creation should look amused, outraged, disgusted or depressed; so He’d emptied all four jars into the mix and waited to see what’d happen.
    ‘He told you that?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Figures.’ Eyvind was quiet for a moment, as though he was trying to digest a medium-sized brick. ‘Well, it’s true that we’ve known each other ever since we were kids. We’ve done everything together, been everywhere together, hardly-‘ (He took a deep breath.) ‘Hardly been out of one another’s sight these sixty-whatever years. That doesn’t mean we’re friends,’ he added, quiet and savage. ‘Any more than the mule is friends with the treadmill, if you see what I mean. Truth is, I’ve been chained to that bastard my whole life, and every bloody thing that ever went wrong with me is his damn fault.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said.
    He nodded vigorously (That’s a Varangian thing that used to bother me a lot until I figured out what it meant. They aren’t like us. They don’t lower their heads for yes and lift their heads for no like civilised people do; they waggle their heads up and down for yes and side to side for no, and obviously that takes some getting used to. First time I saw one of them do it, I couldn’t make it out. I thought he was saying no-yes-no-yes-no, like he was changing his mind several times in the space of a heartbeat. The side-to-side thing was even worse; I assumed he was being buzzed by a wasp.) ‘Every damn thing,’ Eyvind repeated. ‘Like, I only went to sea in the first place to get away from the farm, because I couldn’t stick having Kari around all the time. So what happens? Kari joins up too. So, instead of being cooped up with Kari on one of the largest farms in south-west Iceland, I’m cooped up with Kari on a fifty-foot ship. We reach Norway, winter comes round, and I’m cooped up with Kari in some stranger’s house for the whole of the snowy season. And so it goes on. Finally, when I can’t take any more, I leave the North and come to Micklegarth to join the Guard. Guess what happens.’ He sighed down to the nails in his boot-soles. ‘Now it looks like I’m stuck with him till the day I die. Which is why,’ he added sadly, ‘I gave up believing in Christ and our Heavenly Father some time ago. I heard the bishop, see, in the big round church