Viking's Sunset Page 8

  The next day they started before dawn, and made their way along the shore, the braves in the canoes paddling slowly, in their accustomed manner, at a pace which they could keep up all day without resting, if they needed to do so.

  The longship sailed among them, an east wind in her great sail, like a mother goose among her many goslings, for in truth the canoes of the Beothuk floated as thick as seeds upon the broad waters.

  17

  Algonkin

  The new moon had come and gone when Long Snake and the many Beothuk canoes left the broad waters, and ran into the narrow mouth of the river. Now the voyagers could see the shore on either side, not more than three bowshots away.

  It was growing dusk when Wawasha first sniffed the air, like a questing hound, and then whispered, ‘I smell danger, friends.’

  The red men in the canoes were holding up their heads as Wawasha had done, and now among them passed a slight stirring, a shimmering of concern. The canoes seemed to bunch together, rubbing side by side, as though they were living creatures, deer perhaps, who had caught the sudden acrid whiff of wolf-scent.

  Harald whispered, ‘Are they Algonkin, Wawasha?’

  The Beothuk warrior nodded. ‘Algonkin and Abnaki, my nose tells me. I had not thought to smell Algonkin yet awhile; and most years the Abnaki folk move towards the coast, not inland. To smell them both together is bad. Abnaki alone mean little harm, but when they are with others they grow brave and dream that they are a great people once again.’

  Now Gichita’s canoe pulled alongside Long Snake, and the old chief whispered hoarsely to his son, ‘I have seen lights on both sides of the river, Wawasha. The men in the forests there are waiting for us, and care not if we see their fires. That means they are strong. What do you counsel, my son? are we to go forward, or to turn back and make the journey later in the year, when these tribes have moved away?’

  Wawasha said, ‘The Beothuk folk have never yet turned back from Algonkin, still less from Abnaki, who are eaters of squirrels and drinkers of muddy water! We have our white brothers with us now, and that should make us a match for such warriors as lie in wait for us tonight. I counsel you, father, to let the canoes containing the squaws and the young children draw behind Long Snake, and we will go forward like true warriors.’

  Heome sat in the prow of his father’s canoe, his hands shaking, his pale lips trembling.

  ‘Let us go back, father,’ he said, his voice thin and afraid. ‘My brother, Wawasha, thinks only of the glory he will gain, perhaps. But I think of our people. What will it profit us, even though Wawasha hangs ten scalps in his tent, if the pick of our warriors are left dead upon these shores?’

  Gichita did not turn to answer his younger son, but still gazed up into Wawasha’s face, as though waiting for his final word.

  Now the warriors swung their canoes alongside that of their chief, waiting tensely for the words which were to be spoken.

  Wawasha said, ‘Never in my life have I turned away from battle. Nor shall I turn away tonight. If you, my father, listen to Heome’s words and go back down the river, I shall still go forward with the white warriors in Long Snake, for this quarrel with the Algonkin must have an ending. If we run away from them now, never again shall we be allowed to pass on up the river to dig the sacred stone. All the folk of woodland and plains will speak of us with laughter and call us dogs and eaters of carrion. That is my answer!’

  Gichita bowed his head and said, ‘So be it, my son. That is the answer I expected you to make, and the answer I wanted to hear.’

  But Heome gave a low cry, like that of a woman who is suddenly afraid, and flung himself down in the canoe, covering his head with his buffalo robe.

  Gudbrod Gudbrodsson said quietly, ‘How can such a father have such a son? I am baffled by the ways of Odin Manmaker.’

  Thorfinn Thorfinnson said, ‘Odin Manmaker made thee and me; but he cannot be blamed for red men. They are the children of some other god.’

  Darkness had fallen and the moon stood like a silver sickle in the night sky, casting down little light. All about him, Harald Sigurdson heard the small sounds of men unwrapping arrows, or stringing bows, drawing knives from sheaths, feeling for war-axes. The canoes lay still upon the darkly gleaming waters for a while, the men in them as nervous as hounds before the hunt.

  Then Gichita whispered, ‘Onward! May Thunder-voice bring us victory!’

  Grummoch muttered, ‘I’ll set my trust in axe Death Kiss! This Thunder-voice may not come when I call him – but I know where Death Kiss is!’

  Harald Sigurdson said, ‘I have sword Peacegiver in my right hand, so I am content. When the blow-trading begins, brother, see that we stand back to back, then we shall know that the odds are fair ones, even if these Algonkin come at us ten to one!’

  And all along the deck of Long Snake Vikings spoke so to their war-brothers, in the old manner, arranging how they would meet their enemies. Thorfinn stood with Gudbrod; Jamsgar stood with a tall youth from Jomsberg, named Knud Ulfson. This youth was fond of needlework, and wore his yellow hair in four thick plaits, bound round with copper wire.

  Yet no one in Long Snake thought it wise to offend him, for he came of a family of fifteen berserks, and had himself taken the heads of three Saxons before he was fourteen.

  Then Gichita hooted like a night-owl, and the canoes swept on.

  For a while nothing happened, and there were those on the dark water that night who began to think that this was a false alarm, when suddenly from either side of them in the thick woodlands, rose the war-yells of the Algonkin, like the yapping of foxes in wintertime; and then came the bear-grunts which were the battlecries of the Abnaki.

  For a moment or two the air seemed to murmur with arrows. Harald felt a shaft pass under his right arm, and then heard it slap against the oaken side of Long Snake.

  ‘That was a close call,’ he muttered to Grummoch, who was humming a little tune which always came to his lips when there was fighting to be had.

  ‘Aye,’ said the giant, shuffling his great shoulders, ‘and doubtless there will be others before this night is out!’

  Then from all about them, the Vikings heard the horrible death chant of the Algonkin:

  ‘Where is my enemy? Where is my enemy?

  Catch him quick!

  Where is my enemy? Where is my enemy?

  Catch him quick!

  Chop off his hands! Chop off his head!

  Where is my enemy? Where is my enemy?

  Catch him quick!’

  Thorfinn Thorfinnson said, ‘It ill becomes a stranger in these parts, like myself, to speak harshly of the local skalds, but I have it in my mind that this song of theirs would better become children at a hopping-game than grown men about the noble business of battle. When this affair is over and we have a little leisure to think of gentle things, I shall set my mind to making a decent battle song that we may use when such occasions arise.’

  But Thorfinn Thorfinnson never carried out his promise, for suddenly the Long Snake echoed with the swift passing of slippered feet and into every man’s nostrils came the smell of the rancid bear-fat with which the red men coated their bodies before an affray, so that their enemies might not gain a fast grip about them.

  Thorfinn was the first to fall, with a lance-point between his shoulder-blades. Yet even so he twisted and with his last strength took with him the Algonkin who had made the deadly thrust.

  After which, Gudbrod, his henchman, set his back against the mast and had enough to worry about thereafter.

  Harald and Grummoch, their eyes now grown used to the dusk, began their terrible battle-laugh. They were too big to escape the notice of the red men who swarmed upon the decks, and therefore they decided to go down into the red pit like the warriors they were.

  That laughter echoed over the churned waters of the river, and struck terror into many hearts that night.

  Harald struck out with Peacegiver.

  ‘One!’ he said, laughing.

>   Grummoch struck out with Death Kiss.

  ‘One,’ he said, laughing.

  A sly lithe shape twisted under Harald’s arm. The Viking shortened his weapon and drove it upwards as the tomahawk bit. He heard a deep and gurgling groan.

  ‘Two and a scratch,’ he said, changing his sword to his left hand.

  Grummoch swept Death Kiss in a wide scything motion about him, for the black shadows were thick on his side. Only he knew how many times that sharp edge took its meal; yet it was for every man to hear the cries which followed.

  ‘Three and no scratch!’ he said grimly, and began to laugh as though he owned the skies.

  Harald said, ‘Go slower. I cannot keep up with you, oath-brother! It is not fair!’

  Then they both began to laugh as though they rode with the Valkyries across the darkened North sky under the stars.

  Behind them Jamsgar Havvarson felt his sword carried away from him when he had buried it deep, and now he fought on with bare hands, warding off blows with his forearms and then grappling and throttling. At his feet lay four braves of the Abnaki, before a shrewd thrust of the knife laid him low.

  He said with his last breath, ‘Knud Ulfson, I must be a little out of practice. If I do not wake from this sleep, go to my wife and daughters beside the fjord and give them my regards.’

  Then he died, and Knud Ulfson felt the great pulse begin to beat in his temple like a war-drum. This was a sign he knew, but always forgot, once it started. It was the berserk sign.

  While Grummoch smashed down with the back-point of his axe and called out, ‘Eight!’, and Harald, hardly able to stand now, replied with ‘Six!’, Knud Ulfson began the song which his family had always sung on occasions like this; for they were all berserks:

  ‘Alas, my friend has gone away!

  Away from the field and the fjord!

  He leaves kine and kin,

  Bread and board,

  He leaves his wine-cup empty upon the bench.

  Just it is only that I go

  To where he is, and visit him!

  But to get there I must pass

  Through a dark low doorway

  Guarded by trolls!

  No troll shall prevent Knud Ulfson

  From visiting his friend!

  So, go you, troll!

  Go you, troll!

  Go, troll!

  To death!’

  He marked the beat of his song with great blows, and at each blow a red man fell back, sometimes silent, sometimes howling, until at last none came near Knud Ulfson, for he had built about himself a barricade of Algonkin and Abnaki.

  Grummoch called out, ‘Twelve. But this axe-edge is not now what it was, and some blows have to be struck twice! I must sharpen it in the morning. This will never do!’

  Harald leaned hard against him, his chest and arms streaming with the hot red wine of war.

  ‘Nine,’ he said, and sank to the deck.

  Grummoch felt him go, and stepped back so that he straddled him, swinging Death Kiss.

  In the canoe below Long Snake, Wawasha straddled his old father in the same way. Heome lay huddled beneath a heap of blankets, hardly daring to breathe lest he be discovered.

  And so at last those who were left of the attackers scrambled for their lives over the side of the longship and fell into the water when they could not see their canoes, and paddled as quickly as their wounds would let them towards the wooded shores.

  No longer did they yap like winter foxes, or grunt like forest bears. All their breath was needed for the paddles.

  And when they had gone, Wawasha called up to the longship, ‘Let us follow them, now, my friends, and finish this affair as it should be finished, by burning their boats and their villages. They must have cause to remember us for ever!’

  But Grummoch, who did not know yet how badly his oath-brother was hurt, said back, ‘Go you, with your braves, and light the little fires yourselves. It would ill become a Northman to sail with his decks uncleared and we have much tidying up to do. But call for us if you are hard pressed and we will come then.’

  Wawasha said no more, but set off with all the warboats he could gather. And shortly the woodland shores on either side of the river glowed with flame.

  Wawasha lost no men in that village-burning, for the Algonkin and the Abnaki had vanished from the land as though they had never been.

  The only living creature Wawasha found was a small brown papoose, forgotten in the headlong escape, who lay propped against a war-drum, smiling and sucking its thumb.

  Wawasha took up this child, for like all his folk he regarded small ones as sacred and not to be harmed – unlike the early Vikings who made what they called ‘a clean sweep’ of any town they captured. And Wawasha carried the baby boy back with him in the prow of his warboat, fondling it with red hands, clucking and singing to it, to keep it from becoming afraid in the darkness.

  And this child he gave to a young squaw whose husband had fallen in the first of the fighting that night. She called the boy by a name which meant ‘Gift from the Gods’, and was always happy with him, and he with her.

  For a baby boy does not consider whether he is Algonkin or Beothuk; he sets store only by milk and mother-warmth. And gentle songs murmured in his ear when the fire glow dies at evening time.

  18

  Dawn and Brother-Trench

  When the morning light came again, so that the red men and the white men could see about them, they knew that they had paid well for that night’s victory. Ten canoes had been sunk, and each one had held four braves. True, some of the braves were still there, but not in such wise as they might go hunting again, or singing again, or eating again.

  The Algonkin were masters of axe and scalping-knife.

  Gichita mourned, his robe over his head, while Wawasha, his forearms tied up with strips of cloth, tried to console him. The chief’s legs had been cut across by a single blow of the war-axe and he could not rise; though the old squaw who attended him, putting herbs and mosses over the wounds, said that all would be well before the moon came to its full again.

  Heome, once more despised because of his fear, sat alone, staring across the river waters, deep in his own despair, speaking to no one.

  On Long Snake Harald and Grummoch took stock of their losses. Harald had a lump on the side of his head almost as big as a man’s fist.

  The giant said good-humouredly, ‘Praise be to Odin, he gave thee a good hard Northern skull, oath-brother!’

  Harald nodded, but did not speak. Instead, he pointed to Jamsgar Havvarson and Thorfinn Thorfinnson, who lay with their faces to the heavens, as though in a white sleep.

  Grummoch said, ‘Gudbrod Gudbrodsson will be lonely now. There were not such a pair this side of Valhalla while they lived. But look at the red men who lie beside them. They did not waste their time, those two.’

  Then they saw the warrior Gudbrod, standing by the mast, the bodies of Algonkin and Abnaki heaped about him, and at first they thought he was sorrowing for the death of his friends, his head sunk on his breast.

  But it was not sorrow which dragged his head down so, nor was he thinking of his dead friends, or of anything at all. Two Algonkin arrows held him upright to the mast, so that he did not fall with the rest.

  Knud Ulfson sat by the shield-gunwales, binding his arm-wounds with rags and singing, his eyes wild still:

  ‘When the young bucks go from the herd,

  Old stag fights on; he knows

  No rest from conflict. He

  Now runs across the hills,

  Sharp-horned and fiery-eyed,

  Seeking the killers, his chest

  Flecked with the froth of his anger.

  The stag, Knud Ulfson, says

  That now the young bucks have gone

  From the herd, he will run to the end

  Of the world, seeking the killers!’

  Harald went over and patted him gently on the scarred shoulder.

  ‘The killers have been paid, berse
rk,’ he said. ‘Their villages have been destroyed as though they had never been.’

  But Knud Ulfson only looked up at him with empty eyes and half-open mouth, as though he did not understand the words his war-leader was speaking. Then he went back to his chanting, seeming to forget the very existence of Harald.

  Grummoch said, ‘There is little profit in talking to him yet. These berserks live in a closed world of conflict and brotherhood. It will be long before Knud Ulfson’s ears will be open to the voices of men, for he is in the battle-trance yet, and I doubt whether he could see his hand before his face. That is the way of berserks.’

  Harald said sadly, ‘And look, we have lost four others. This is a dear price to pay for crushing the Algonkin and Abnaki on behalf of our red friends, the Beothuk.’

  Grummoch said, pointing to a great man who hung half over the longship’s prow, ‘The enemy have paid dearly too, it seems.’

  The two friends dragged the giant red man back into the ship and looked down at him.

  From head to foot, he was garbed as only the greatest of chieftains could be. He wore an immense war bonnet of eagles’ feathers, their tips dyed brown and garnished with red strands of hair, their bases fluffed out with the white down from the breast of the goose. About his throat was a necklace of a hundred bears’ claws, each one set in silver and hanging from a thin hide string. His arms above the elbow were heavy with bands of copper, beaten and embossed with the sign of the great-winged thunderbird. His apron and breechclouts were smothered so with beads of red, and blue and yellow, that it would have been hard to get a lance-point between them. The shoes upon his feet bore the pattern of the rising sun, worked in thin strands of gold wire, against a sky of azure beads as small as an ant’s head.

  His face, caked with yellow clay, was still proud, even in the fearful sort of death the Northern axe had brought to him. He still held his feathered tomahawk in his right hand, as though prepared for anything on the long dark journey that lay before him.