Rigg shivered, wondering who might be chosen. He gazed into the sacred valley, reached down, and touched the amulet on his neckchain. This was a runic wheel, or insigil. Inscribed around the edges of the amulet was the rune Raidho, representing both the first letter of Rigg’s name and the wheel of life.
Beside him, Ari too had stopped in his tracks and was gazing far down the valley. He seemed to be bracing himself, looking warily around, and not thinking of the past, for he had never been in this place. Nor did he touch his amulet, which he wore only to please his mother and which was inscribed with some obscure alphabet from the Baltic lands that none of the Greenland Norse, not even Tyrkir, could decipher.
“The trail continues,” Ari murmured, bending over some scratchings in the snow. “Tracks here and over there.”
“They lead toward the grove,” Rigg observed.
“Perhaps the wolf has sacrificed itself to Odin and Freyr.”
“A bad time for such jokes,” Rigg cautioned.
They walked forward together, watching left and right for some ambush or surprise. But the valley seemed peaceful, almost asleep in the afternoon’s fresh sunlight, and the shadows beneath the cliffs were hardly threatening.
As they walked, an old rhyme came into Rigg’s mind, a rhyme he hadn’t thought of for many years. It had something to do with the nine years’ sacrifice and it seemed that he had first heard his mother recite it in this very valley, to calm him when he, as a mere child, had asked why a man must be killed with the other sacrificial animals. Now he dragged the words from his memory, speaking them aloud, and after a few seconds of verbal stumbling, he recalled the whole rhyme.
“Three pigs in a tree,
Three goats and a sheep.
Seven plus an old dog
Will make a man weep.
The man makes nine,
And his soul must go
To the gods who give life
And make the crops grow.”
Ari looked at him in amazement. “You didn’t just make that up? I’m the poet, remember.”
“It’s something my mother taught me — a long time ago.”
“Well, the grove stands there before us, and I see nothing but some well-tended birch trees, and quite a few of them at that.”
“Let’s go a little closer.”
They approached the starkly bare grove, where the trees formed an enclosure, trunk upon trunk, branch over branch, making a majestic tangle of shining birch wood. It was now evident that the trees had been planted or cultivated to make a series of rings, with the widest circle at the outside and each ring narrowing as you approached the centre. Trunks thicker than any Rigg had yet seen on the island formed an effective screening or barrier fence, and the sunlight playing across the twisted branches made curious patterns on earth and wood, snow and stone.
At the edge of the grove the two friends found a large stone, well worn by storm and sun, on which was carved the Berkana — the birch tree rune — associated with the old earth goddesses and the returning spring.
“Now what?” Ari demanded. “Look here! There are no more wolf tracks. They stop right here at the marker.”
“Perhaps the sun melted them,” Rigg ventured. But he felt a certain tingling at his scalp. Despite the sunlight and the quiet, there was something uncanny about this valley.
“Let’s make a prayer to Odin and Freyr and enter the grove,” Rigg suggested.
“Perhaps that’s the best way,” Ari agreed, and immediately bowed his head.
Rigg too bowed his head and prayed to the gods to forgive them for entering this sacred place.
After a few minutes they mustered their courage and walked forward among the trees.
CHAPTER THREE AMBUSH
They slipped around the sturdy birch trunks and made straight for the heart of the grove.
Rigg stepped carefully over fallen branches, tree limbs that had been cast down by winter storms and were mired now in mud and frosty leaves. He walked warily, blinking at the glitter of the ice on the white bark, sensitive to everything — to the branches gleaming in the sunshine, to the crunch of their footsteps, to distant birdsong, to the intermittent silence.
As they approached the inmost circle of the grove, he touched Ari’s arm and pointed. The nine birch trees that formed the central circle of the place had been trimmed of all but a few stout branches. These inter-locked in a kind of ring or hoop, and from this hung nine thick leather strands. Six of these displayed a ghastly array of skeletons, bits of dried, frozen carcasses, and what might have been the remains of very old garlands and flower offerings. From one of the six hung an assemblage of bones, parts of a large skeleton that eight or nine harsh winters had not obliterated. It was clearly human. Three of the hanging thong bindings had been stripped bare by time or scavengers.
The two young men stopped and contemplated the offerings. For a moment they were silent, a little overwhelmed by the solemn place.
“Avert the spectre, avert the walking dead, avert the sending, the ghost of every shape,” murmured Rigg, using the traditional words. He shuddered as he pronounced the formula, but after a few minutes he felt much more secure. The dead man’s ghost, he hoped, would not haunt them now.
The young men bowed their heads and offered their silent prayers for the long-dead victim.
“Our farmers will be happy to know that the human victim’s remains are still visible,” Ari murmured. “They’ll say our harvests have benefited because of it. Those pigs and goats — or whatever it was they hung up there — haven’t fared so well. But who was the victim, I wonder?”
Rigg looked blank and then responded, “Now I remember — your family came from Iceland after the sacrifice. Well, I once asked my mother about it. She told me he was a man who cheated Erik, a relative of the warrior Thrand who died in Vinland.”
“I don’t think I’ll be cheating Erik,” Ari declared. “Although I know the poor hanged man was honoured by being chosen for the sacrifice.”
Ari was quite serious, Rigg saw, and he started to comment, but before he could get the words out, a cry arose, a deep-voiced, mournful cry, repeated once, twice, three times, until the whole valley resounded with its sad, persistent wailing.
Ari turned to his friend, white-faced and staring. Rigg felt his fingers grow cold, the back of his neck tingle.
“Wolf?” Ari whispered.
“I hope it’s only that,” Rigg said, peering at the far cliffs through the tangle of birch boughs and trunks. “But I don’t see a thing as yet.”
The cry sounded again. It began as a low-pitched complaint, then climbed painfully upward, through a series of changes of pitch, only to climax in a long-drawn-out howl, in which all the misery of loneliness, all the sorrow of isolation, seemed to fill the valley.
Rigg recognized the cry of the solitary wolf seeking companionship and the strength of the pack. It was a cry sometimes heard on the edges of the settlements.
Ari called out suddenly: “Over there, on the cliffside!” He had bent down and was peering underneath the maze of tree branches, pointing and moving