Meadowland by Tom Holt Page A

it; the stupid bastard’d think he was doing me a favour, coming along to keep me company You know, maybe that’s the very worst bit of all. He thinks I like him. I actually believe he likes me.
    God only knows how he does it, but I wouldn’t put anything past that bugger.
    So I made up my mind. I’d wait till the very last moment, make absolutely sure Kari wasn’t going, and then I’d join up. Or maybe Kari’d join, and that’d be even better, because that way I could stay home; at any rate, the sensible thing to do was not commit myself either way until Kari’d said what he was going to do. Meanwhile, I thanked our Heavenly Father (Leif was a Christian, so it seemed only polite) for putting it into Leif’s mind to buy Bjarni’s old ship and go exploring, and maybe just possibly give me my life back.
    Anyhow; Leif hadn’t quite finished yet. He said he was stopping at Herjolfsness one more night, and he’d be going back to Brattahlid next morning, just after milking. Anybody wanting to join him had till then to let him know, because after that he’d be going on to Stokkaness, and maybe the Western Settlement after that. Then he sat down, and Herjolf waved to the women to fetch round the beer.
    Clearly I didn’t have much time; I had to find out what Kari was going to do before sunup next day So I hopped up from my bench, making it look like I was going out for a piss. I actually went out the door and stood outside in the dark and the cold for a bit. Then I came back in, and on my way down along the benches I stopped next to where Kari was sitting.
    ‘Well,’ I said, shoving in next to him. ‘What d’you reckon?’
    He looked at me. ‘What, about going on this trip?’ he said. ‘No bloody chance. We were there, remember, we know what happened. It’d be just plain stupid - we’d have to be touched in the head.’
    I nodded. ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ I said.
    ‘Well, of course you were,’ he said, and the way he said it put my teeth on edge. ‘I mean, just look at the facts. Last time, we only fetched up there because of a fucking great storm, followed by days and days in the fog. Point being, we haven’t got a bloody clue where those islands are. No way in hell we’d ever find them again.’
    I looked at him thoughtfully Twice in one night I’d found myself thinking the same way as Kari. Bad sign. ‘Still,’ I said, more to myself than him, ‘we know the way back, don’t we? That strong north-easterly took us straight from the useless rocky place with the glaciers to here; so if we just set a course south-west, then follow the coast straight down once we get there-‘
    He shook his head, bloody annoying know-it-all. ‘It’s all right you saying south-west,’ he said. ‘But I don’t remember you or Bjarni or any of us taking the position of the stars or cutting a bearing-dial or anything like that at the time; we were too busy keeping our heads down in that gale, trying to keep the sheets from splitting. The last thing on our minds was making notes of how to get back there, we just wanted to get to Greenland.’ He sighed, drank some beer, spilt most of it down his beard. ‘South-west you said,’ he muttered. ‘You only got to be a tickle out either way, you could sail straight past an island, specially in the fog or if a big wind gets up, and then where’d we be? Lost in the middle of the sea counting ice floes. No, you take my tip, don’t you have anything to do with it. If this Leif wants to get himself drowned, I say let him get on with it. You and me are staying put.’
    Well, that was pretty definite, so I’d got what I wanted. Good. But as I went back to where I’d been sitting, it started preying on my mind. I hate it when Kari’s right. I hate it when the truth smells of him, if you get my meaning. But he was right, sure enough. A man’d have to be completely crazy to launch off into the open sea with nothing to go on but what we knew I was so frustrated I