The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,139

one another’s rasping breath and the roar of the river as it galloped down the hillside. We were all straining to hear if the Danes were following us. We could hear them blundering about below us, but their voices did not seem to be getting closer.

Fannar whispered to Hinrik who in turn relayed the message to us. ‘He says he will go ahead to guide us. We must follow one after another, but keep close. Hold on to the person in front until he says it is safe to let go. If we fall off the track, we will fall a very long way down. Come.’

‘No, wait. I think someone is missing,’ Isabela whispered urgently.

In the darkness it was impossible to see who anyone was, but we each whispered our names and realized that it was Vítor who was not with us.

The Icelander muttered something that I’m sure was a curse or two.

‘You don’t think Vítor would tell the Danes …’ Isabela began, but trailed off.

Fannar whispered to Hinrik in a gruff voice.

‘He says he will go back to look for Vítor. Ari will guide us to the farm.’

Before any of us could stop him, Fannar was gone, sliding back into the darkness.

There was a pause, then we heard voices.

‘That’s Fannar talking! Have they caught him?’ Isabela asked.

I could hear the fear in her voice. I reached out and took her hand. It was as cold as marble. I chafed it gently to warm her, but she jerked it away as if I’d burned her.

Hinrik had crept a little way out of the overhang to listen. He came scuttling back on all fours, as silently as a spider. ‘He tells them the fire they saw was his fire. He was searching for lost sheep and got hungry so he cooked himself some supper.’

‘Do they believe him?’ I whispered.

‘If they do, they’ll ride on and Fannar can look for Vítor, if not …’ He did not need to finish the sentence.

With Ari leading we trailed up the mountain track. I was holding on to Isabela as we stumbled through the dark, edging round great lumps of rock on one side of the gut-churningly narrow path, with nothing but a yawning black abyss on the other. As we climbed the wind grew stronger, buffeting us as if it was trying to push us off the track. I pressed my free hand against every boulder I could feel on the side of the path, in the desperate but vain hope that I would be able to grab hold of something solid if I slipped.

Occasionally one of us would kick a stone and we’d hear it fall away in the darkness, rattling and bouncing down the steep hillside in a drop that seemed to go right down into hell itself. I asked myself a dozen times how on earth I had come to be wandering blindly along a path in the pitch dark, following a mountain goat of a boy I’d never met in my life before, when every step I took could see me plunging down to certain death. Was Ari even human? Maybe he was a demon or one of those trolls Hinrik talked about. How would I know? All I did know was that I had to be as mad as a mooncalf to be putting my life in his hands.

And yet, as I felt the warmth of Isabela’s back, the flexing of her muscles beneath the cloth, smelt that strange, sweet perfume of her hair, I found myself willing to be led anywhere.

Finally, to my immense relief, I felt the track beginning to descend, but I quickly discovered a new hazard, for it seemed to be far easier to slip walking down. In front of me Isabela was limping badly. If my knees were protesting at the slope, her weakened leg must have been giving her agony, but she didn’t so much as let out a squeak of pain or ask to rest. That girl had more spirit than a vat of brandy.

But soon we found ourselves walking on a flatter, smoother track. Every now and then the moon would peer round the curtains of cloud at us, like some inquisitive old lady determined to see who was passing along her street. Its silver light appeared just long enough to reveal that we were in a high valley, with the sharp ridges of mountains on either side, before darkness closed in again.

God alone knows how far we walked. Now that