The Snow on the Cross by Brian Fitts

pasture where a rock fence had been piled in a straight line
for an endless expanse, I could see shaggy cattle grazing mindlessly on the
short grass.  I estimated about twenty beasts, and I noted they looked quite
different from our cattle in France .  These
animals had thick fur that hung in tangles over their bodies, unlike any type
of beast I had ever seen.  Some of them looked at me with their watery black
eyes then returned to their grazing.  Bjarni and Broin had dropped me,
unceremoniously, next to the fence and began walking beside it toward the
south, winding their way around the fence rather than climbing over it.  I
watched them go.  I peered over the stone fence, which was waist high to me and
must have taken many men to build, and saw the house on the other side of the
fields.
    By now Bjarni and Broin were specks
in the distance, but they knew I would eventually follow them to the house of
Eirik the Red.  It was my only choice other than beginning the tedious walk
back to where I had come from, and I wasn’t even sure if I could find my way
back on my own.
    Brattahild.  It was the best
pastureland in Greenland and so, of course, Eirik had claimed
it for himself.  The twenty heads of cattle grazing were seemingly oblivious to
the cold.  I, on the other hand, despite my new fur around my shoulders, was
shaking.  It was spring in Greenland , and I
had heard it was one of the warmest seasons the men here could remember.  I
shuddered at the thought of winter’s approach.  If it was this cold now, I saw
winter coming with a white fury.  The dead would not be as cold as I would be
when winter eventually set in.
    I heard faint voices wafting over the
grass, and I saw that Bjarni and Broin had circled the edge of the fence and
were now approaching Eirik’s house.  Another speck emerged from the house to
greet them, and even from my distance, I could hear the power in the voice that
shouted to his companions.  It was Eirik the Red, and I had finally reached his
home.  One of the cattle looked at me and lowed gently.  I looked into its eyes
at its calmness before the slaughter.  I knew how it felt.  I forced my aching
legs to move, and I began the trudge around the fence to meet my destiny.

Chapter Four
    Blood on the Ice
     
    I walked with heavy steps around the
stone fence.  As I walked, I let my hand trail over the roughness of the rock
to my left.  What kind of endurance did it take for a man to dig up these
large, flat rocks, haul them over these hills, and stack them so methodically
as a fence around this field?  It had to be high enough so the cattle could not
step over them and roam free.  If a man could do this, what else could such a
man accomplish?  Could such a man lead other men down the Seine River and
butcher helpless monks?  Such a man could lead other men as far west as their
ships would allow and settle them in a frozen land.  I looked at that man
standing near his doorway.  He stood a full head taller than either Bjarni or
Broin, and they were not short by any standard.  His eyes cut through me as
easily as the axe he gripped.  I felt small in his presence, and the closer I
walked, the smaller I felt until I seemed truly dwarfed.
    Eirik the Red was his name, and he
looked much like he did the first time I saw him standing on the beach.  His
hair and beard were blazing red, and his eyes held the look of one who would
easily anger.  I could see Eirik lifting his axe, his face as red as his hair,
and cleaving his enemies with it.  I began to wonder how much blood he had
spilled against the ice in his travels.
    Bjarni was talking to Eirik, but I
couldn’t hear what he was saying.  I took another hesitant step through the
fence opening, and I was standing on Brattahild.  I wondered if Eirik would
invite me into his home.  My eye caught a glimpse of another building, smaller,
off to the right and behind the house.  It was the church he had built for
Thordhild, a fact that