Norseman Chief (24 page)

CHAPTER 11

For a long while I did not know what ever happened between the Mi’kmaq and Kesegowaase’s peoples.  Was there a terrific battle with many scalps taken by one or both sides?  Did they skulk around each other, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, with neither side attacking?  Or, did Kesegowaase tire of searching for Etleloo and me and seep back into his territory.  I know now what happened, of course, but will wait to share it in the proper time.

I knew the general direction by which to orient my path in order to move toward the land of the Fish – north and west from the Pohomoosh village where Etleloo hung limp.  The journey would take many days on foot as the Fish tribe of the Mi’kmaq lived in the land called Kespe’keweq which, as I’ve said, means the “Last Land”.  I longed for a simple palfrey from Greenland to make the going more efficient.  I had asked the Algonkin about horses early on in my stay and they seemed fascinated by my description, but assured me that no such creature existed in or near Vinland.  So I walked.

I hugged the rugged coastline as I wound my way from one tribe’s territory to the next, the giant island of the Epekwitk off the coast to my right.  After several days of walking, by way of simple reckoning, I knew I was fairly close to where the abandoned village of Straumsfjord lay.  Was it fifteen years ago that it was emptied?  How much my own life had changed since those days when I served as a captain and interpreter for Thorfinn!  Little Snorri would nearly be old enough to wed, if he wasn’t already.  And in those days despite my own wishes to the contrary, we battled Ahanu’s people, killing many.  Now, after countless instances of steadfast service, I willingly walked away from my chief.  I had never witnessed anyone disobey the orders of a chief of the people.  Would I find myself at war with them once again?

I could not dwell on such thoughts of what might be or what could be.  I only knew what was – that I was the only man now capable of freeing Alsoomse and Makkito.

My pace was modest.  All the eagerness I felt to destroy the Fish was cordoned off into a portion of my heart.  I walked, led by my head, which told me to conserve energy and resources.  I was alone and it would do my daughter no good to have her aged father slip down a cliff and die an ignoble death with his skull splattered up against a humble rock.

By now all of the snow had melted and much of the water-logged ground began to dry out.  Typically I would have enjoyed frequent rains at this time of year, but they did not come.  I was fortunate – ha, I thought of fortuna, which is Latin for fate and decided I was blessed by the One God, and in no way blessed by fortuna.

While climbing a wooded hillside, I crossed a narrow, well-worn animal path that was obviously frequented by the local wildlife to snake their way down to the ravine behind me to lap at the trickling water it housed.  I halted my next step in mid-air.  My foot hovered while I concentrated on the drying mud directly beneath it.  There as a sign of the glory and faith of the One God in my path, was a tiny impression of Alsoomse’s foot.  Makkito’s tracks were there too!

I could see that they passed along the track some days earlier.  The tracks had hardened into the mud.  A deer and a raccoon had also traversed the path, leaving their marks interspersed overtop and among those of the humans.  The girls had followed behind their captors, likely tied as Luntook the Pohomoosh Mi’kmaq chief had said.  I could tell this because the girl’s tracks lay inside the depressions made by the larger footprints of the Fish.  Thus began my tracking.

Every man is given a set of gifts from the One God.  His word tells me thus.  So did Crevan, the Irish priest, as he taught me my letters.  Through my own hard-won experience, I have learned that mine is a gift for war.  Scores of men have fallen to a strike from my blade, a thrust of my saex, or a launch of my arrows.  I can also learn language faster than most men.  After those two, I am not certain what my other gifts might be – except for the ability to endure most of what the norns weave without a complete break from reality like the lunatics who inhabited the streets of Dyflin, their odd stares sending shivers down most men’s spines.

Tracking was not one of my gifts.  Do not misunderstand me.  I was proficient enough to follow the track of a deer or moose to bring it to my table for the winter meal.  Signs of a man’s or animal’s passage were not completely lost to me.  But the art of tracking was, at its heart, filled with tedium.  The whole of a scene before your eyes had to be viewed and analyzed.  Smudges, imprints, cracks – these were the signs for a tracker.  And when your prey lurked nearby, the ears were more important for they could reach out beyond the line of sight.  Did the base-line song of the black-capped chickadee change enough to indicate that some disturbance or danger was near?  The tone and rapidity of a squirrel’s chatter could presage the appearance of an approaching menace.  These details, while known in my head, planted there from the instruction of others, were beyond my abilities.

So my pace slowed even further while I took in the markers left in the wake of my quarry.  The Fish men dragging their prisoners seemed to be in no particular hurry, being comfortable crossing the lands of their other Mi’kmaq cousins.  Whenever there was a choice of paths to take to move from one hill to the next, they invariably chose the easiest, not the quickest.  I allowed this tidbit of information to settle my mind into mellow comfort.  This was one area, at least, in which the captives’ lives were made easy.

Each night they took the time to camp around a small fire.  I found the remains of several along my hike, spaced about a day’s walk apart.  Though it was difficult to tell, at one of the campsites I found signs that the girls were huddled together for warmth in the cold night air some distance from the fire.  The Fish lounged next to the fire.  It riled me, but admittedly it is how I would have treated any captive so my anger was far from righteous.

And so it was on the old day of Thor, after my mid-day meal of roots and water, I came upon the remains of one of their campfires.  Imagine my surprise when I found that it was still warm just a hand’s distance above the coals.  They had slept in this very spot only the night before!  I was gaining ground on them despite my slow pace.  I could only think that the short-legged Skjoldmo frustrated their speed.  They probably whipped the girl to make her move more quickly, but my Skjoldmo, she was stubborn like her father and like her mother.  I could picture her little face staring up at her captors in defiance.  Her eyes would have narrowed.  Her nose would wrinkle upwards.  Her frown would have said more than if she used words.  Her miniature teeth would have been shown like a growling bear.  In the end unless they carried her, they would have to move at the rate she set.  The tiny footprints I followed told me she won that battle.

One half day was all I had to make up.  New strength crawled into my legs from the ground around those coals.  A new purpose and goal sprang into my mind.  I now thought it possible that I could fall upon the Fish before they lounged in their village.  They could be cut down and buried without an entire war party on my heels as I fled with Alsoomse and Makkito.

I had never been this far into these lands before so each pebble or leaf was new.  But I guessed that those I pursued were getting ever-so-close to the Fish permanent camp so I jogged.  My gear was tightly wrapped but still dully knocked my back and sides with my bouncing movement.  The day was unseasonably warm and it was not long before I was bathed in a drenching sweat, beard and hair stuck to my face.

I hoped against hope to make up the additional time then fall upon the villains in the middle of the night or first thing the next morning after a brief rest.  I would stretch my mail over my frame, restring my bow, and enter the fray prepared to kill and rescue.  But Providence saw fit to prove that it was his plans in collusion with the norns and the wily Malsum that were paramount.  My plans, as any man’s dreams, meant little.

I was running down a steep incline covered in dense green pines with the forest floor naturally bare from the needles which littered the area.  Soon, the sound of a rushing river tumbled into my ears, but no other sounds distinguished that I was about to find myself face-to-face with my prey.

Great rocks became more frequent as I descended the slope.  They appeared as if they were thrust up through the earth’s crust by a giant living in a cave beneath the ground.  I hopped over the first few, but the rocks grew ever larger the closer to the river and its noise I came.  As I scampered to the top of one, I saw from the afternoon sky that the view would soon open up to the river.  With both feet I landed heavily on the needle bed and simultaneously heard a startled screech from a hidden crevice in the rock now behind me.

My hand drew my sword before I had even spun around.  When I did, I saw that I was locking eyes with a shitting Mi’kmaq of the Fish people.  Despite his surprise, he prepared himself for combat quickly.  The cloth covering his groin and backside were down in a single heartbeat and his axe was up.

As a young or middle-aged warrior I would have already run my sword through him, but he was much younger and much faster.  He sprang out of the stinking hole, a howl of warning to his nearby comrades erupting from his angry, tattooed face.  I stepped to the side, swinging low while he swung high.  He missed.  I barely caught the side of his leg, cutting through the hide leggings and much of his skin as I did so.  His momentum took him down the hill so that I now held the high ground.  I expected to maintain it, dispatch him, and then move before the rest of his party had their way with me.

I had no shield so I pulled out my birth father’s ancient saex to hold in my left hand.  For just a moment I waited for him to move up toward me.  In that time voices called and grew closer as I heard men splashing through the river.  My opponent called to them, “Here!”  Then he held his ground.

He was experienced, this one.  He did not intend to give up his coming advantage of numbers against a single old warrior wielding sharp steel.  The others would come and then I would be killed or captured, tortured, then killed.

That could not happen.  Holding my saex up like a shield and my sword low like and un-sprung trap, I stepped forward.  The man gave a nonsensical shout to frighten me, but it did not work since I had been fighting among their kind for many years.  He took a step back down the hill.  “By Thor!” I cursed.  The warrior was not going to make this easy.

So like an impetuous youth, eager to plow with an equally young woman, I lunged forward.  He caught, first my saex, then my sword with masterful strokes with his axe.  Then before I had the time to serve him another stroke, the Fish brought a war club out of his belt.  He swung it backhand in a horizontal motion.  I ducked down and back to avoid the crushing blow, but the needles beneath my feet could not hold up to the force I placed on them.  I slipped, landing on my back.  My feet slid directly down the hill into his so that he toppled face-forward onto me.  His backhand stroke had opened his chest marvelously and so that same chest crashed directly onto my awaiting saex.  His blood warmed my hand and chest.  His urine, released from his bladder at that moment, warmed my legs.

The Mi’kmaq was still in his death throws when I heaved him off of me and scattered myself to hide.  Anyone, no matter what his gifts from the One God, would be able to track me from that spot.  I was not about to run away and turn into the hunted.  I was not about to delay retrieving my daughter.  I was committed to this battle on this day at this moment, like it or not.

As fast as my sinewy legs would carry me, I ran a circuitous path to the river, avoiding the three men I glimpsed as they labored up the slope to their gasping friend.  In a matter of heartbeats I parked myself in the shade at the edge of the pine forest, between a grey boulder and a hobblebush.  I cursed under my breath when a grouse went scattering away noisily, a host of its feathers dislodging as its wings beat violently.  I could, at last, see the river.  It was narrow here, tumbling over rocks jutting up from its floor, turning an arcing curve before falling over a pitch.  The current was swift, but it was a decent place to cross with plenty of dry places to drop a foot.

“Follow the trail!” I heard one of them shout.

After hearing only a dozen or so quick steps, another man yelled, “It looks like there is only one man.  The trail goes toward the river.”

“Moose dung!” shouted the first voice.  “You stay on the trail.  We’ll back track the way we came.”  Excellent, they were splitting themselves into two groups.  That might be the only thing that keeps me alive, I thought.  I waited.

The two who cascaded down the slope in a more direct path came to me first.  Without any hesitation, I swung out at one of their legs.  My swing was stunted because of the hobblebush and so the sword only cut halfway through the man’s shin.  Like an axe that is wedged in a large, tilting tree, my sword became lodged as the man twisted forward, falling onto his face.  I did not have time to struggle with the blade, so I abandoned it completely while his surprised comrade spun to face me.

I drove my left foot into the earth, propelling my body and the saex up to the man’s belly.  He deflected the blow downward with his axe, but my momentum pushed my chest into his.  He was young, but ready to fight.  His nostrils flared.  I shouted, my hot breath and spittle splattering his face.  The warrior’s left arm wrapped around my back and he tugged me closer while his right arm raised high so he could bury the axe into my spine.  With my left hand I caught his elbow before he could succeed in causing me any injury.  My right arm was lodged between us across my body, its hand still gripping my father’s saex.  I wriggled it back out, slicing across both of the man’s thighs as I went.  I felt the satisfying scrap of bone on both legs as the blade dashed out.