He raised his gaze to the horizon and tried to see if the ships were still there, waiting until after dark to land and look for him. But they were gone and then he remembered his father's words: "Yer mother made me promise not to let ye go to sea."
Still he stayed, seated on the magnificent black horse on the crest of the hill until the last lick of flame was quenched and the ship sunk. He wanted to and thought he should cry, but now the tears would not come. Perhaps in the few short days he had with his father, he had become a man after all.
*
"Ye brought us a Viking, Kannak, and now the horse be gone." In the darkness of the cottage, Jirvel stood in the doorway to her bedchamber, took a deep breath and tried to hold back her ire.
"He agreed to help us."
"And ye believed him? He be a Viking, Kannak."
She hung her head. "I am sorry, mother. I will walk to the village for what we need tomorrow." Kannak could not stand to hear the hurt in her mother's voice, sat down on her bed and took off her shoes. "I am too hungry to think. Is there nothing to eat?"
"Milk."
"I am sick o' milk and cheese. Be there nothing more?"
"Not unless we kill a chicken."
It was useless. The chickens only laid one egg a day as it was; killing one meant fewer eggs to eat by half and that would only make things worse. She stretched out on the bed, pulled her cover up and closed her eyes. "I will think o' a way out o' our troubles tomorrow."
*
By the time the horse took Stefan back to the cottage, the candle light had been extinguished and it was dark inside. He quietly dismounted and watched the horse wander off, then tried to find a place to sleep for the night. In the dim moonlight, he spotted a structure that was little more than a roof, a back wall and two posts holding up the front of the roof. He moved some baskets out of the way and sat down.
Yet with no cover to keep him warm and a thousand thoughts running through his mind, sleep avoided him. He remembered the pouch filled with coins, pulled it out from under his tunic and examined the contents. He removed two coins, dug a hole near one of the front posts and buried the pouch. Then there was nothing to do but wait for dawn, which would come early this far north, just as it did in Norway. Soon he would find it difficult to go to sleep in the daylight, but for now a short night would be a blessing. And while he waited for dawn, he realized that somewhere in the middle of the ocean, he turned fifteen.