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  Until at last, one bright morning, they sailed round a bend in the river and then stopped, stricken with awe by the sight that met their eyes.

  Before them lay the waters of the Big Lake, so broad that it might have been a sea, for it was impossible to see to its furthermost shore. Waves rippled across the deep green waters, and great trees floated on it, like longships, here and there.

  Harald said, ‘I have travelled through Finnmark, and know the lakes there; but to this one, they are nothing but puddles left by the rain!’

  Grummoch asked Wawasha, ‘Are these waters indeed those of a lake, or those of the sea? I can scarcely believe that a lake could be so immense.’

  Wawasha said, ‘This is a lake, my friend. The Lake of the Gods. But it is not the end of our journey, for we must pass through this lake, and then into another, and yet another until we come to the greatest of them all – and then we shall reach the gathering-place of the tribes. That is the end of our journey.’

  20

  The Gathering-Place of the Tribes

  Now in the full summer when the eagle flung himself across the sky for the sheer fury of living, and the sun seemed to burn brighter with every day, the Beothuk and the Swamp Cree set up their buffalo-hide tepees, each one the height of three men standing on each other’s shoulders. These skin houses were painted with bright colours, and had their smoke-holes facing towards the east, for the wind which most commonly blew across the Plains came from the west.

  Along the shores of the greatest lake, and stretching inland beyond all woods and across the wide prairies, tribes had set up their tepees, until it seemed that all the red men in the world had gathered there to hunt the horned buffalo and to dig the red stone from the sacred quarries.

  Harald and the Vikings stood on the deck of Long Snake and looked outwards, at the multitude of tepees and the great clouds of dust and smoke that rose above the plain. They shut their eyes and listened to the myriad sounds of a great community – the shouting of men, the lowing of cattle, the squealing of children, the yelping of dogs, the singing of women, the sound of axe on wood, the drumming, the fluting, the pounding of feet …

  Grummoch said, ‘Never did I expect to see and hear such a vast multitude. In Caledonia, when the geese gather to fly away for the winter, we children used to think that nowhere in all the world could so many creatures mass together and move away. But if all the geese that have lived since the beginning of time could gather and fly, there would not be such a number as these red folk.’

  Harald said, dreamily, ‘If one could carry this great host back to the Northland, and set spears and real iron axes in their hands, what might one not do! The warlord who led such a host might conquer England, Frankland, Miklagard, Spain, oh, everywhere! Such a lord would be the greatest the world had ever known, brothers!’

  Knud Ulfson said, ‘My father once led a war-party of Irishmen and Danes and Icelanders on a foray against the Franks. But the result was that they cut each other’s throats, and my father was left in Frankland with a leaking boat and only the rusty sword he carried, to gain his fortune. It took him three years to walk back home. Nay, I for one would not wish to be the warlord of such a varied folk as these red men, who seem more apt at cutting throats than most folk I have met.’

  When the Vikings went to the great tepee of Gichita, they found that he was holding a council with the chieftains of the other red folk. He lay back in his litter, for his legs still troubled him so much that he could not stand on them for long at a time, surrounded by the stoutest of his warriors.

  The other chieftains passed a stone peace pipe round the fire, grunting and nodding, their black eyes expressionless, even when the white Vikings arrived and ranged themselves behind Gichita.

  Harald gazed round the great circle with astonishment. He had not thought that men could be so different, one from the other. In that crowd were small men, as yellow and flat-faced as the Innuit, and wearing bearskins with the hide outermost; tall brown men, who hardly wore anything at all, save a bead loincloth and copper armbands and a small sheaf of arrows slung before their chests; sturdy men with beaded waistcoats and moccasins, high headdresses of eagles’ feathers, and carrying feathered lances and fur-trimmed bucklers; men of all sorts, of all tribes. Gichita spoke to them in a simple language, helped out by signs of the hands and the head. They answered by nodding, or by making gestures with hand and arm.

  Wawasha whispered to Harald, ‘We are the last folk to arrive, and so must give an explanation of our journey. That is why Gichita, my father, is addressing them. It is the custom. The language he speaks is the “first language”, as we call it; it is the tongue the first red men brought with them when they came, a thousand men’s lives ago, over the northern ice with their packs on their backs, to settle here in woodland and forest, in desert and by seashore. All red men know this “first language” and use it when they speak together, at this time of the year. It is the language of peace and of brotherhood. Later, when we leave the red stone quarries and go back to our own cooking-places, we shall speak our own tongue, Beothuk and Algonkin and Oneida, not the “first language”.’

  Harald said, ‘Does that mean that when you all leave this place, you will kill each other again?’

  Wawasha nodded. ‘That is the old custom,’ he said. ‘We all move out from the quarries on the same day, when the first breath of winter begins to blow, and make our way homewards. It is the old law that for three days, no man may fight with another. After that, when the red folk are well away from the sacred place, they may please themselves.’

  Grummoch said, ‘This is not an unusual notion. The folk south of Miklagard who make their yearly journey to Jerusalem, where their sacred place is, do likewise; and so do the Franks and the Avars and the Saxons, when they go to Rome, I have heard. It is a convenient arrangement, and results in less shedding of blood than might be the case if there were no such law.’

  Wawasha smiled grimly and said, ‘Even so, there are those who drink the maize beer about their fires at night and forget the old law. Then they dance until they have forgotten what they are about, and their next idea is to raid the tepees of any tribe they hate.’

  Knud Ulfson said, ‘That I can understand, coming from a family of berserks myself. The joy of life lies not in sitting about a hearth-stone, listening to the tales of old women, but in swapping blows with other men, and laying one’s enemies at one’s feet. That is the true joy of life.’

  Harald Sigurdson looked at him sternly and said, ‘I have a wife and two sons, who live beside the fjord and wait for me to return one day. It is my intention to go back to them, and so I will have no more of this berserk talk, Knud Ulfson. What your family did is one thing; what I command you to do is another. So have the goodness to keep away from maize beer and dancing while we are with these red men. And keep your axe where it belongs, on the thong at your side. If ever I see you putting on that daft berserk look, I shall save the red men the trouble and will silence you myself. Remember that!’

  Knud Ulfson did not like those words; but he knew that Harald Sigurdson never spoke unless he meant what he said. Indeed, along the fjord there was a fire-saying which went:

  ‘Thunder threatens but may not strike;

  Rain threatens but may blow over;

  Wolf snarls but may not bite;

  When Harald snarls, your life is over.’

  So Knud bowed his head and turned away, anxious not to see the snarl appear on the face of Sigurdson.

  That night there was much singing and dancing, to the many talking-drums and the wood and bone flutes. In the firelight a long line of red men from the far south stood, mother-naked, whirling great bullroarers about their heads, until the purple dusk was alive with the whirring, thrumming, murmuring of these instruments. Beyond the firelight a group of red men from the western shores danced in a ring, their backs garnished with a circle of painted feathers to represent the sun. The sound of their feet beat out a rhythm which seemed to throb t
hrough the earth itself and then crept upwards into everyone’s bones.

  Harald, wandering among the many groups of red men, noticed Knud Ulfson drinking deep from a great earthen jar, held to his lips by a smiling red man whose face was decorated with bars of white ochre. Knud was shuddering as he drank, and Harald knew this to be a bad sign.

  Gently he took the jar from the berserk and handed it back politely to the red man, who stared up at him half dazed. Then Harald took Knud by the neck and led him to a high totem pole which was set firmly in the earth, and there he tied Knud Ulfson by the hands, to the pole, with thongs of wet deerhide, until the morning.

  When he came to set Knud free, he saw that the berserk had gnawed the painted wood like a savage dog. But when Knud looked into Harald’s eyes, he bent his head as though ashamed of himself.

  Harald said, ‘If I see you drinking maize beer again, I shall bring peace to you suddenly. Is that understood, berserk?’

  Knud Ulfson said, ‘It is understood, shipmaster. I will abide by it – though I feel that such laws are unmanly and unreasonable.’

  Harald gave him a smack that almost laid him flat, and said, ‘While I am the master of Long Snake, I will not be told what I am to do by any seal-brained berserk from the fjords. Now get you gone and sleep off your madness.’

  Later in the day, Grummoch came to Harald and said, ‘It ill becomes a Viking to set great store by trifles – but today I have seen a strange sight.’

  Grummoch waited for Harald to ask him what the strange sight might be, for that was the manner of Northmen when they had interesting news to disclose. But Harald merely sat and smiled at him, until the giant could stand this scrutiny no longer and said, ‘There is danger brewing, Harald Sigurdson. Mark my words, and I do not speak lightly.’

  Then Harald said, ‘What is the danger, Little One? I am always anxious to hear of danger, for it gives spice to my meat.’

  Grummoch said with a frown, ‘This danger may not be to your taste, oath-brother. Heome has sworn a brotherhood with that fool, Knud Ulfson. He has caused Knud to forget his oath to you, in his battle-madness. Heome has said to him that Knud shall be his hands and his arms, and in return for what he is to do, Knud shall be named the greatest berserk of all the red men. I heard all this in the forest when I bent behind a bush to fasten up my shoestrings.’

  Harald was silent for a while, and then at length he asked, ‘And what does Heome wish daft Knud to do, then, oath-brother?’

  Grummoch answered, ‘He has asked him to destroy his own brother, Wawasha, and his old father, Gichita. That is all.’

  Harald said, ‘And that is quite enough. We must keep a steady eye on those two fools now, for such a pact could mean our own end, too.’

  ‘That is what I thought,’ said Grummoch, slyly, ‘but I did not like to suggest it, being but a simple giant, as you remind me so often, and you such a man of cleverness and great affairs.’

  Harald gave him a grim look, but said nothing.

  21

  Strange Partners

  Then followed a time of fishing, when the many red folk dragged nets through the shallow pools, or rode in their birchbark boats over the lake waters with their sharp fish-spears poised. Sometimes this happened at nightfall, when the fish little suspected their attackers; and then the rolling lake seemed like a place of magic, with the bobbing torches and the men in their white-clayed buffalo-robes, standing, ghostwise, in their boats, their many-pronged hardwood lances held at the ready.

  And after that, the buffalo hunting.

  In and out of the great shag-haired herds ran the lithest of the hunters, the wind in their impassive faces, their lances thrusting hither and thither among the heaving stupid beasts.

  Often, after such a raid, the plains were dotted thickly with immense brown bodies, just as though it were a battlefield of giants, and the giants had come off the worst of the encounter.

  Though sometimes the red men suffered, too, as when a woodland tribe, little accustomed to this hunting sport, allowed itself to be caught in a narrow sandstone gully, when the furious frightened herd crashed through in terror, pursued by other men and dogs. That day the Seminole, a simple swamp folk, who seldom made the long journey to the sacred quarries because of the distance, mourned their many crushed dead. Hardly one of them could be recognized, so harshly had the hooves treated them.

  Grummoch had great taste for this sport, being swift of foot and strong of the lance-thrust. During that time, he alone killed two score of the lumbering creatures, moving amongst them as he would do in a battle with men, striking to left and to right, then jumping clear of the wildly tossing heads, the fiercely threshing hooves, the agonized twisting of the great bodies which could crush a man.

  Among the many red men, Grummoch became known as ‘Bull Killer’, and at least four of the tribes sent deputations to him, asking him to hunt with them and to live in their lodges.

  Always Grummoch shook his own great shaggy head with courtesy and said, ‘I have lord and lodge already. It ill becomes a man to change his chieftain.’

  Harald was likewise held in great respect by the red folk, for in a shallow valley, darkened by overhanging thorn bushes, he had stumbled on a nest of poisonous snakes, and had trodden each one of them into the ground fearlessly, before they had had time to sink their fangs in his legs or feet.

  For this he was named ‘Snake Destroyer’, and given snakeskin armbands by the troop of Ojibwe who had watched this strange encounter.

  And always, when the Vikings gained fame in this manner, Wawasha and his father Gichita called the Beothuk together about the fires and ordered dancing and drumming. The drums of all shapes and colours were seldom silent in that encampment.

  And always, when such feastings took place, Heome Nohands went away to the lakeside and wept, beyond the power of man to soothe, praying bitterly to his private gods that the strangers who had belittled him, by being so strong themselves, should suffer. Yet now he had learned to smile when he spoke to his brother, and Harald, and Grummoch, so covering the bitter heart-thoughts that he held against them. And in his dreams, he saw the three of them drowning in the lake, or crushed under a fall of rocks in the quarries, or trampled down by the wild buffalo on the plains. Always he saw them dead and out of the way, so that he alone could gain the love of his tribe, and of his father, Gichita, without having to kill him …

  Then, at last, when the moon was at her full, the great medicine man of all the red folk sent round the chopping-axe of staghorn among the multitude of tepees, as a sign that the sacred red pipestone was ready to be quarried, and each tribe made its own plans to go to the quarries, unarmed, save with staghorn picks, and to dig what they needed in the coming year, for the making of pipes and beads and images, armbands for the young squaws and earrings for the young braves. This was an order which had never been disobeyed since the red folk came across the far northern ice with their bundles on their backs, thousands of lifetimes ago.

  Before dawn the following day, the men of Gichita’s tribe, together with the Swamp Cree and the Vikings, rose silently and broke their fast, but carried neither food nor water with them; for it was the law that the diggers of the sacred stone should neither eat nor drink until they had returned to their lodges in the evening.

  Grummoch tore at a great hunk of buffalo-meat, saying, ‘Well, if I may not eat until sunset, I will make good use of my teeth now!’

  Wawasha smiled and slapped him on the back. ‘We have a saying,’ he said, ‘that big eaters make small diggers. See that your pick sinks deeper than any other man’s today, for you have eaten more than anyone else of the tribe!’

  Grummoch pretended to look offended and answered, ‘If that is how you feel, then I will carry a buffalo with me, on my shoulder, to nibble on the way! A fellow must keep his strength up, my friend!’

  The sacred stone quarries lay two leagues away from the lake, and Wawasha was anxious that his folk should get there to find a good digging-spot before all
the other red folk took the best places. He hurried them along as much as he dared, seeing that every man had his staghorn pick and a buckskin bag into which he would put his diggings.

  Between the tepees he met Harald and said, ‘I have been searching for my brother, Heome, but cannot find him. He is not in his tent. That is strange, for every year he has gone with the others, and, though he cannot dig, he has spoken the prayers of our people as his part of the ceremony.’

  Harald said, just as solemnly, ‘My man, Knud Ulfson, is nowhere to be found, either. That, too, is strange; for always he has been at my back, since we left the Northlands. Do you think they may have gone together to the quarries, unwilling to wait for us?’

  Wawasha thought for a while, his chin in his copper-coloured hand, and then he said, ‘They may indeed have gone together, and mean to wait for us. But, if so, they have gone alone, for none of our tribe is missing, and two lone dogs like that will drag down few deer, it seems to me.’

  Then the two men said no more, but began the long run towards the stone quarries before the other tribes should wake.

  For some time they saw no one since they had set off at such an early hour, and at last their way ran beside a swampy stream, in a little gully, where the grass grew rank and stinking from the brackish water and the dead creatures which had gone there with arrows in their sides, or sinking from some disease, such as that fever which comes of eating the Juraba plant.

  It was not a pleasant place to find oneself in, as all the vikings agreed. Here trolls might lurk, they said to each other. As for the Beothuk, they blew down their nostrils frequently, so that the spirit of the place might not enter their hearts and poison them.

  But the Swamp Cree were accustomed to such places, and they trotted on, smiling, as though there was nothing in the tangled roots and slithering creatures to trouble a man.