Paths of the Norseman, page 21
part #2 of The Norseman Chronicles Series
“Friend, I am afraid you are ill. I’ll not use these weapons against you. Perhaps you have caught the spirit which has been with Ahanu,” said Nootau. Ahanu nodded his agreement, giving a bewildered glance to his companion. Nootau continued, “Do you have a powerful medicine man among your people? Whom should we retrieve?”
“I am sick, though not ill.”
This further mystified them, and so Nootau rose from his crouched position, taking a step to locate assistance, but I cut him off saying, “Nootau, you will halt. You must stay here and listen to what I have to say. I am not ill.” The force of my voice was enough to stop him for I was coming back to my senses, blinking away the blackness of my mind. “You must know; you both must know I am sick with knowledge and fear and even self-loathing.” I turned to look directly at Ahanu, his face betraying that his only concern was for my well-being. “Friend,” I began. “I was there the day Kitchi died.”
His friendly eyes fluttered a moment and his head tilted almost like a hound that is confused by his master’s order while he took in the news. Ahanu looked away to the ground, swallowed hard, then looked back to me, saying in a tone that was both stern and sad, “Why do you say this lie? You hurt me, because I know the monster who killed my son was slain by another member of our tribe. I will continue to hope this is your illness speaking.” He turned to Nootau and with a wave of his hand, dismissed him away for aid.
“Stop,” I forcefully shouted. “I am not ill. Ahanu, I was there that day. You will listen to what I have to say on the matter. Kitchi was a wise, peaceful, young man – considered handsome among your people, I am sure. After meeting you, I should have seen that it was your eyes I saw in him, but did not even think it possible. Though you must know I did not raise a hand to harm your son, you may say that I had something to do with his death, so please allow Nootau to stay here with my weapons. In this way, if you wish it, he can strike me down. I’ll not fight.”
Looking confused and hurt, Ahanu agreed, beckoning Nootau to stand next to him. Nootau obeyed, awkwardly standing with the two blades at his side, loosening and tightening his grip in an alternating manner. “Now talk,” Ahanu said with a level of seriousness I had never heard him speak. I spent the next several minutes, with the nagging cattle as background noise, explaining all the events of that terrible day from start to finish – from my late morning awakening, to my passing out, bleeding and left for dead, next to his own dead son.
When I finished Ahanu let out a heavy sigh, leaving nothing but silence in its wake. I spoke not, nor did Nootau. The air seemed thick with foreboding. I did not want to make eye contact with the men, so I stared at my feet upon the ground. We all stared at the ground. A large black carpenter ant poked his head around a bit of stray leaf stuck in the soil. At last I looked up through my wrinkled forehead to see that Ahanu rubbed his head, thinking. “Nootau, please return this man’s weapons to him. Then sit down next to me so that we may talk more.” When he finished speaking, Ahanu gave me a little smile. Still feeling guilty, my return smile was weak.
He continued, “Friend, I believe you have told me the things that are true. You describe my son perfectly as I remember him. You describe the other two dead men, good men, with the same exact detail, even the spear with the eagle feather. You also give a perfect description of the round, vain one you now call segonku, the only survivor of the encounter with the pale monster, which is how he described you. He said he killed you.” Ahanu paused here, shaking his head, mumbling under his breath. Yet he resumed, “This segonku is a man of some importance in our village. He is likely to be chief someday as his father is the current chief.”
Stunned I said, “I thought you were chief and that Kitchi was to be chief someday.”
He giggled, slowly returning to his normal ways, “Oh, no, I am old, but no chief. As far as Kitchi becoming chief, we do not need to be concerned with such things anymore. Nootau likes to speak of these things. I do not. My brother is chief and even older than I. He cannot make these trips because of weakness in his legs, so I come instead. The vain one is his son.”
“Then why does the segonku not come to trade with us?” I asked.
“Megedagik, you should know this segonku goes by the name Megedagik. His given name is Mukki, which means “child” and that is what he is still today, but after a hunt on which he killed several rabbits, I think it was, when he was much younger, he and his father came back proclaiming him to be Megedagik, which means “kills many.” Megedagik does not come to trade with you because he says we should have nothing to do with you and the evil you people bring. After all, you did kill our men hiding under the canoes right outside our village.”
They were from Kjalarnes. “That is true, it was my brother who led us on that fight. He is dead now, pierced by one of your arrows. I am truly sorry.”
Ahanu didn’t want to linger on those thoughts, “Yes, yes. See we have all lost family in these fights. My people like to think we are without blame in confrontations, but the hide-covered boats you found outside our village that day were stolen by warriors of our tribe from the fur-wearers who live toward the lights of the sky. We are all men, and men fight. We, the two of us, should help our peoples avoid clashes at all costs in the future, but I fear that will be difficult. You see, Megedagik complains to his father after each of our visits here. He says you will kill us, in fact, he says that is why you’ve come in your giant canoes. You intend to kill us and take our land.”
“Canoes?” I asked.
“Yes, boats, I mean.”
“Boats, I see. We come only to find empty spaces in which to live and partners with which to trade. Last year Thorfinn and I found a wonderful place many days journey from here where we plan to build a settlement. We saw no people our whole winter there. This place,” I said pointing to the homes around us, “will be a safe station for our people to stop and rest on the way.”
“Perhaps, if you come back with us, you can talk with our chief, my brother, and convince him of your good intentions. You make our talk very good already,” Ahanu suggested.
“I’d like that very much,” I said with sincerity. “However, I hate your nephew for what he did, and I am sure he hates me. Won’t that become a problem with him whispering in your brother’s ear?”
“Halldorr is right, Ahanu. Megedagik will just speak terrible words into the chief’s ear, ruining all chances of peace,” said Nootau.
“I fear you are both correct to be concerned,” admitted Ahanu after a pause. “So I will go back and ask for a private audience with my brother where I will prepare him for a surprise visit from you sometime soon. I can then send Nootau back to retrieve you while I can keep my eye on Megedagik – maybe encourage a hunting trip for him.” He said his nephew’s name with spite then added, “My distaste for my nephew was already intense because he took Kitchi’s dear widow as his wife, and as we sit here today, raises my grandson, Kitchi’s son, with bitterness. It is difficult for me to say this, but I now hate my own nephew.”
The cows and their bellowing grew louder – so much louder that the three of us simultaneously craned our heads in the direction of their calls. Men, Norse and skraeling alike, were already running in the direction of the commotion. Shouts, screams really, filled the air.
It was Snorri the Elder, I think, who caused all the problems that were happening at that moment. I’ll go to my grave swearing it so, though subsequently, over and again he claimed that it was all the fault of a blaring cow, frightened by some unseen event and then the over-reaction of Thorfinn’s youngest thrall. Maybe it was Snorri, maybe it was the cow, maybe it was the norns, by hell I cannot be expected to know all the reasons for what happens in this world. Even now as a man of ancient age, with pain in my joints holding this quill, my fist clenches with frustration at my inability to control any destiny, narrow or broad.
It was in the fading autumn grass of the pasture over Thorfinn’s hill, beyond my sight, where the trouble began. The three of us abruptly rose, I shoved my blades back into my belts, and then we ran toward the cries. Though the distance was short and we made excellent time, we were among the last to crest the hill at Thorfinn’s longhouse, but it was already too late.
About twenty skraelings were sprinting in our direction, some carrying weapons, some not. All of them looked frightened. Behind them were scores of our men chasing after the skraelings in a hastily assembled war party. Only some of our men were armed as well. Further behind still were at least four skraelings sprawled out on the now red-painted, brittle grass that lay bent and cracked beneath the bodies, their arms spread wide, their eyes opened wider in a permanently frozen look of pain. Scattered among those four bodies were two dead Norsemen, staring into the morning sky with no chance to ever again see its bright majesty.
We were soon enveloped by the running skraelings. Two of them decided to team up and tackled me to the ground, beating me with their balled fists. With surprising spryness, Ahanu kicked both men off me, screaming at them. They looked at the old man in anger before climbing upright and continuing their run toward the boats in the fjord.
With scratches on my face and blood draining from my lip, I rose to my elbows and saw that my Norse brothers were nearly to us. “Run,” I yelled to Nootau and Ahanu in the Vinland language. They hesitated only a moment before nodding their agreement and swiftly moving to the boats. As they ran, my friend Ahanu, continued wrestling with the arm ring, sliding it back up in place after it slid down. Eventually he pulled it down his arm and over his hand, tucking it in a small pocket on his loin cloth, never breaking stride.
By the time I walked to the shores of the fjord, my friends were paddling to safety in their canoes. We did not pursue and I was glad of it, though Snorri the Elder complained unceasingly. Just one of our ships half-filled with men would have poured death down upon those skraelings, laying a blood slick upon the waters and sending them forever to the bottom of the sea.
. . .
It was a busy two weeks with many disagreements among the men and women of the village. Each day brought the fear that we would be attacked by the skraelings in retribution for their dead. Many men wanted to put an end to the waiting and attack them ourselves to avenge our own dead. Other men wanted to fortify our current surroundings for the inevitable attack from the fjord. I was the only male voice saying that we should send a mission of peace to their village, offering them gifts and apologies for the misunderstandings and death. I argued that we could end the killings right here. Gudrid was the lone female voice supporting my idea, but in the end, we were both washed away by the calls for revenge. More blood would spill.
At an impromptu Thing held along the slopes of Thorfinn’s pasture where the six men lay dead not so long ago, it was decided that we would strengthen Thorfinn’s home as our collective fortress. His pasture fence would be reinforced to become a wall. We would become a lone, but impenetrable, stronghold bristling with armed Norse men.
So I was forced to cast aside my woodsman axe, to set down my fisherman nets in favor of my beautiful sword with the sagas of the One God emblazoned along its length and my strong, simple saex. Thorfinn, the de facto leader in the men’s eyes, was wise enough to ask me to prepare us for battle because he had never seen the sweat and death of combat. For two weeks I drilled the men, teaching them fearlessness in the shield wall, but it was not enough time. They were good men, but they were here to farm, to trade, and to lay claim to new lands. These men were not the hardened men I had with me aboard Charging Boar or Dragon Skull on our countless strandhoggs along the coasts of Scotland and Wales. These men bragged like good warriors should, but that was where the similarities ended.
“We might as well float ourselves into their village with our eyes closed if this is how you expect to fight them,” I cried after one full day of a particularly pathetic effort by the men. Snorri the Elder took great pleasure in shirking any and all of my commands, even encouraging other men to do the same. Two of them were snickering back and forth to one another so without warning I raised my leg to kick the nearest man’s heavy wooden shield which he held lazily in front of his chest. The force of the blow drove the iron rim hard into his mouth, causing his head to snap back, leading his instantly limp body to the ground. He lay there, unconscious and still, with four of his teeth scattered about his ears in the dust. A winding snake of blood trickled its way out of one corner of his mouth.
Snorri opened his hole to protest, but I cut him off by swinging my sword down at his head. I am truly thankful that he was fast enough to raise his shield to protect himself, because I would have killed him if he had failed to do so. I was angry and I let it take over. I was angry, not only at their performance and my inability to prepare them for war, but I was furious that I would be forced to fight good people, Ahanu’s people. For the first time in my life, I had a thought that perhaps skraelings were a real people worth living and trading with. I was even outraged that I now had these thoughts. Life was simpler, decisions uncomplicated when I could kill without question. Here was the enigmatic Halldorr obscuring my own path.
Snorri thought he saw an opportunity to strike at me with his sword so he took the chance, stabbing from beneath his tilted shield with his right hand. In one fluid motion I threw my shield at his, letting it go, then grabbed his extended wrist with my now free hand. I jerked his arm while letting out a wild howl. I felt his shoulder dislocate which caused him to topple to his knees. With the flat side of my sword I then whipped him on his rear like he was an unruly child, something his father most assuredly should have done. Snorri whimpered after I hit him ten times, still pulling his arm in what had to be a most painful position. The other men had shut their mouths, staring at the scene, in frozen obedience.
“By God, Halldorr, can you not go one month without abusing that man?” shouted Thorfinn from behind. He was walking up during a break in the men’s work on the fences. “Leave him be!”
He was right so I dropped the arm so that the now free Snorri rolled to his left side moaning like an expectant mother undergoing a bout of pre-birth pain. “We’ll die here! Gudrid will die here and little Snorri will die here!” I growled.
“That’s why you’re training the men,” yelled Thorfinn, not backing down from my anger. “You’re the best, most experienced fighting man we’ve got. You’ll train them well enough to beat some naked skraelings!”
“They’re not just naked savages! Their stone is sharp enough to pierce even the fattest belly and drain a man of his blood! Those men could be our friends, our allies in this wild, desolate country! Ahanu is a good man, he doesn’t want death.” I was pleading, begging someone to show sense.
“We’ll just see what a good man he is and how much death he does not want,” Thorfinn said with sarcasm. “If they do not attack us, then they do not want death. In any case, you must agree that we must be ready.”
“No, what I agree with is your intelligent wife who thinks we should send men and offer good will to these, our neighbors.” He opened his mouth to respond, but I held up my hand to silence him. “But I know that no one else will support me in these ideas, so I am resigned to perform my part in this mess. So we will be ready, but this plan as it stands will not work,” I finished, extending my empty hand and sword to the men and fence around us.
Two women had finally come to take Snorri the Elder away to tend to his wounds. I gave a nod to Arnkell to follow and use his strength to put the arm back into the socket as Thorfinn continued, “Well, if you think you’ve got a better idea that does not involve paddling into their village, offering ourselves up on an altar to be killed, please tell us, military genius.”
I did not have a better idea, but just then another plan to save my people exploded into my mind. “You’re right Thorfinn! We should offer ourselves up to be killed! And by doing so, we will kill them!” It was a plan of trickery, but it would be decisive enough to maximize our chances of victory and minimize our losses. My mind galloped like a charger hammering across a battlefield, its thundering footfalls spurring earth haphazardly in all directions. I put my friend Ahanu and his dead son, Kitchi, out of my mind and thought only of triumph.
I gathered the confused men around me and sketched my plan out in the dust.
. . .
A harsh wind cut into my face while I peered out to the fjord from my hiding place in the trees. I wore my bear skin, the gift given to me by King Olaf, to keep me warm, but also because today I was a Berserker once again, prepared to kill indiscriminately. The men had come to agree with the plan I laid out in the dirt, and that was fortuitous since already today it would play itself out. I watched the beginning of the action, but would soon return to my position to guide our battle against these people I had no reason to kill.
But I would kill them. And do not think of me as some vicious monster. What else could I do? My people were the Norse people and the One Mighty God had made me into a warrior. It must have been God or maybe it was the old god Thor, after all my name, Halldorr, means Thor’s Rock in my native tongue. In either case, events in my life shaped me, chiseled me into this fighter, willing to kill when he did not want to in order to fulfill the goals or commands of others. My thoughts were beside the point. I thought not of Ahanu. I did not think of Nootau. Push them away, I did.
So I crouched there, watching. My bow resting next to my ear against the tree awaited the commands from my muscles to do its work. Boats, or canoes, as the skraelings called them, clogged the fjord, rocking amidst the waves. At least fifty birch-bark canoes ballooned with men with a single man standing in each bow, one foot resting on the short gunwale, wearing leather shoes they called makizins, waving the wooden poles as they had at each visit before. This time, however, they spun them in the opposite direction or counter-sunwise. I could not hear the familiar whooshing because the wind blew the sound away from me.
