The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,1

about the value of the coins inside.

‘He has the chicks, both of them,’ Jóhann said wearily. ‘They’re alive … and strong enough to survive the sea voyage back to Portugal.’

‘But to kill the white falcons … the last white falcons on this mountain … Don’t you understand what you’ve done? Anyone who kills that bird is cursed until the day they die. You promised me, Jóhann, you promised that no harm would come to the adult falcons … You took an oath on the life of our unborn child.’

Elísabet touched her rounded belly where only the night before her husband had laid his own warm hand, as he’d sworn to her he would not hurt the birds.

‘The foreigner will pay good money for the chicks,’ he had told her. ‘The falcons will have more young next year and I’ll see to it that nothing disturbs them, even if I have to guard their nest day and night. But I must do this. I have to pay back the money I borrowed for the cattle, and with the baby coming, this is the only way we can survive. What else would you have me do?’

He meant the dead cattle, which had all perished the same summer he’d bought them when the cloud of gas from the volcano had poisoned the grass. Four years of misery and hunger for man and falcons alike, when the grass had withered and the ptarmigan, the prey of the white falcons, did not venture into the high valley. Before the poison cloud swept over them, a dozen white falcons had circled in the skies above the river of blue ice. But they had starved to death or flown away to the north, and the single pair that still soared over the frozen river had not laid eggs for three years.

‘Don’t you see, it’s a good omen,’ Jóhann had told her. ‘The falcons have bred once more, that means they know the ptarmigan are returning and the grass is sweet again. With the money I’ll get for the chicks we’ll be able to buy more cattle. The foreigners will give a heavy purse for the white falcons they sell to the royal houses of Europe.’ He laughed. ‘They say that kings will pay more for a single white falcon than for a whole palace.’

Elísabet stared down at her husband’s bloodied head. Last night Jóhann had been so sure that their luck was changing. Now look at him – was this the change of fortune he’d promised her?

‘But you swore to me, Jóhann, on our child’s life … Why … why have you done this to us? What possessed you to call down such evil on us … on your own family?’

Jóhann opened his eyes, but he didn’t look at his wife. He gazed fixedly into the flames of the cooking fire as a despairing man stares down at the sea before he drowns himself. Finally, and in a voice that barely rose above a whisper, he answered her.

‘We waited until the adults had gone hunting. I’ve never climbed so high up the cliff face before. It was a long, slow climb. Then, just as I was within a man’s length of the nest, the adult falcons returned. They began diving at me, slashing me with their talons, screaming at me till I was so deafened I couldn’t think. My arms were stinging from the gashes and my fingers were so slippery with my blood that a dozen times I nearly fell from the rock face. I realized I’d plunge to my death if I tried to carry on, so I climbed back down.

‘The foreigner was yelling at me. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I didn’t need words to understand he was furious. The Icelander who had brought him to me told me that if I didn’t go back up and get the chicks, they would tell our Danish masters that they’d caught me trying to raid the nest. He said the Danes would hang me on the spot.’

Jóhann looked up at his wife, his tired blue eyes pleading for understanding. ‘I didn’t want to do it, Elísabet, but … if I was to have any chance of capturing the chicks and getting back down safely, I had to drive the adults off. I thought if I shot an arrow at one of them, the other would fly away. I aimed for the male, which was flying low. I only meant to clip his wing