Heroes of the Valley Read Online Free PDF Page A

season. To protect the flock a shepherd must be quick-witted and nimble, brave and enterprising . . . But you rejoice in such qualities, do you not?' Arnkel smiled thinly at his son. 'Who knows? Perhaps you will at last see a Trow.'
    Halli hesitated, then shrugged as if the matter were of no consequence. 'Shall I be back for the Gathering?'
    'I will send someone for you in good time. Not another word! You may go.'
    The high pasture was little more than an hour's walk from Svein's House if a certain winding track were used to scale the ridge, but its location felt considerably more remote. It was a place of boulders, clefts and deep blue shadow, where the only sounds were the breeze and birdsong. The sheep wandered near and far, growing fat on grass and sedge. Halli found a ruined stone hut on a grass spur in the centre of the pasture; he camped there, eating cloudberries, drinking goat's milk and taking water from a spring. Every few days a boy brought up cheese, bread, fruits and meat. Otherwise he was alone.
    Not for anything would Halli have admitted to his father any nervousness at the prospect of his solitude, but that nervousness existed, for the line of cairns loomed close upon the skyline.
    Across the top end of the pasture a stone wall had been built, straddling the contour of the hill. It was there to prevent the sheep straying close to the summit of the ridge, where the cairns were. It was there to prevent people straying too. Halli stood at the wall often, gazing up towards the tooth-shaped stacks of stone that were just visible on the hump of the hill. Some were tall and thin, some broad, others sloughed or crooked. Each one hid the body of an ancestor; all were there to help Svein guard the boundary against the wicked Trows. Even in full sunlight they remained dark, a sombre, watchful presence; on grey days their proximity cast a pall on Halli's mood. In late afternoons, he was careful lest their long low shadows should touch him and he was Trow-stricken.
    Each night he lay in the hut's black silence, nostrils filled with the smell of earth and the sour wool of his blanket, and imagined the Trows shuffling on the moors above, straining against the boundary, hungry for his flesh . . . At such times the boundary seemed scant protection. He whispered thanks to the ancestors for their vigilance and hid his head until sleep came.
    If Halli's nights were troublesome, the days were pleasant and eased the frustrations of his heart. For the first time that he could remember he was free to do as he saw fit. No one gave him orders; no one beat him. His parents' disapproving eyes were far away. He was not required to carry out dull jobs in House or field.
    Instead, he lay in the grass and dreamed great deeds – those that Svein had accomplished in the distant past, and those that he one day intended to perform.
    While the sheep grazed peaceably, Halli would survey the scene below, following the brown-green slabs of Svein's fields as they fell towards the valley's central fold, where he had never been. Here, he knew, the great road ran beside the river, away east to the cataracts and beyond. On the opposite side of the river, the wooded slopes rose steeply. These belonged to Rurik's House. He could see smoke from its chimneys sometimes, hanging over distant trees. Rurik's ridge, like Svein's, was topped with cairns; beyond hung the grey slopes and white crests of the mountains, part of the great unbroken wall that swung round north, west and south, hemming in the valley.
    Long ago, great Svein had explored all this. Sword in hand, he had journeyed up and down the valley from High Stones to the sea, fighting Trows, killing outlaws, gaining renown . . . Each morning Halli would gaze towards the rising sun, to the jagged silhouette of the Snag, the granite spur that hid the lower valley. One day he too would go that way – below the Snag, down through the gorge, in search of adventure – just as Svein had done.
    In the