Meadowland by Tom Holt Page B

quarter, and pretty soon we were out in the open again, nothing to see except a blurry line where the sky smudged into the sea. Two days we sailed, with that good wind behind us. Some of us were getting a little edgy, because the nights were cloudy and we couldn’t see squat. But at dawn on the third day, just when I was waking up and shaking the water out of the folds of my cloak, someone up front starts yelling, ‘Land!’ and this time everybody hops up to look, hoping they’ll see that old blue glacier.
    No such thing. We went in close to take a look, just in case we could make out the Blueshirt, but it was as flat as a blanket. Trees, now: you never saw woods like it, crowding right down to the beach like they were looking at us, the way the young bullocks do when you climb the hurdles into the fold. Very pretty it looked too, and such a difference from home, where there’s one little scraggly tree per farm if you’re lucky. I remember old Eyvind saying he was sure there’d be deer in those woods, and maybe bear and pigs too, and if that wasn’t a good beach for fishing, he didn’t know one when he saw it. Now usually you wouldn’t take Eyvind’s word about hunting any more than you’d take mine, but over the last two days a lot of us’d been thinking that maybe old Einar had had a point, even if he’d had his rib busted for him by the captain, and at the very least it’d do no harm to lay up there just for a day or two; give the ship a looking-over for one thing, check the caulking and the ropes. So we all started looking meaningfully at Bjarni. But soon as he’d made sure there wasn’t a big blue glacier anywhere to be seen, he kind of shook himself like a wet dog, and there wasn’t any need for him to say a word: we knew we weren’t going to land.
    And maybe that’d have been a good thing, only our Heavenly Father took a hand, or maybe it was old Thor meaning to play games with us; because before we could up sail the wind died away, the sails hung there empty as an old woman’s tits, and obviously we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.
    ‘No offence,’ someone said, ‘but we might as well launch the boat.’
    Bjarni looked round to see who’d spoken, then said, ‘No.’
    ‘Just to fetch in some water and some kindling,’ the man said. Don’t ask me who, I couldn’t see from where I was.
    ‘No’ Bjari said again. ‘We don’t need it. Stay put, and soon as the wind gets up, we’re leaving.’
    Well, nobody was in a hurry to get his ribs caved in, so that was that. We all sat there like kids when their parents are fighting, because Bjarni was being plain stubborn and contrary, but we knew we couldn’t change his mind when he was in that kind of mood. But when it got dark, I found I’d got the fidgets.
    Now that’s a terrible ailment for a man on board a ship, when you’re becalmed, no place to go, nothing to do. I tried sitting still, shutting my eyes, trying to think of nothing at all, but it wasn’t any good. It was like when you get the toothache, and try as you might you can’t get it out of your mind. I knew I just had to get up off the deck and go somewhere or do something, or else I was going to burst.
    So I stood up, nice and slow, making sure that nobody was watching me; then I tiptoed best I could past where people were asleep on the deck. Not easy in the dark, and just when I thought I’d made it, I felt something soft under my foot and knew I’d just stood on someone’s hand.
    ‘Here,’ said a very pissed-off voice, and I recognised that it was Eyvind. ‘Mind where you’re going.’
    Now you’ve met Eyvind, you think you know him; but who you actually know is Eyvind in his old age, with the burrs ground down and the edges knocked off; like a helmet you’ve worn for five years, so you’ve had a chance to pad the places where the rivets chafe, and you’ve got the lining just nice. When Eyvind was a young man, he wasn’t quite so comfortable as he is now In