Norseman Chief (32 page)

“And your son and his men, did they fall in among us last night?  They’ve had plenty of time to reach us.”  His worry grew, but to his credit he immediately channeled it to the task and moment at hand.

“They are not here, Chief Enkoodabooaoo.  What are you thinking?”

I cursed then and answered, “I am thinking that we may already be lost.  Our scouts will not return.  They are dead.  The Pohomoosh knew our runners were watching them from the beginning.  They let them come back to us the first time to make sure we took the bait and the trap was set.”

“Trap?  What trap?”

“The trap in which we sit!” I hissed.

“What?  How?”

“I sat on the beach all night bothered by something.  I now know what it is.  The damned birds across the channel that circled around Aoutjaduch – they avoided the area of the forest on the island across the narrowest point of the sea.  I cannot swear on it, but I think Mi’kmaq lie in wait for us on the island.  They’ll push their canoes and be on us just as we engage the twenty Pohomoosh on this side of the water.  We’ll be trapped between them, and likely, greatly outnumbered.”

“Chief Enkoodabooaoo, I think you worry too much.  For them to be lying in wait would mean they knew where we were going and when we would be there.”  I stared at him then, grave in my expression.  He thought it through and in no time made the same connections I had.  “Then we are betrayed,” Rowtag said in a halting whisper.

I tipped down my head to look into the man’s eyes while roughly shaking his shoulder, “And Taregan may already be dead.  But we are alive and will bring icy Hel to the Pohomoosh segonku.  I need options.”

Rowtag shook the initial alarm and moved to solve an unsolvable problem.  “We must send our picquets out further to make up for the loss of the scouts.”

“Good.  Make that happen then see me on the beach.  Find Torleik and bring him to me.”

By the time I lumbered back to the sand, Rowtag had sent word for our picquets to send out scouts themselves and returned dragging Torleik by a sleeve of his robe.  The priest’s white hair was disheveled from sleep, matted to one side of his head.  “Have you been told what is happening?”  I asked the confused priest who scratched at the sleep stuck in the corners of his eyes.

“He’ll know!  No, I expect a battle to come today, but you all seem overly agitated when I consider the odds.”

“The odds may have changed.”  I told him of my suspicions, making sure to prevent him from gawking across the water where dozens, or scores, or hundreds of Mi’kmaq eyes watched us.  I was not sure if keeping our knowledge a secret would gain us any advantage, but it is an eternal fact that the more intelligence you carry to war, the better your chances of victory.  But mostly, victory comes from spilling the other man’s blood onto the hard ground so that his tumbling body lands in it with a splash.

The blood ran from his face and he looked ashen.  I’ve seen the look before.  It happens when a man receives news of his rapidly-approaching death.  I do not know what causes it, the ashen look, I mean, but that does not prevent it from being so.  I glanced around with my hands on my hips, fingering the hilt of my sword as I searched my mind for a solution.  We could rapidly withdraw back to the village and gather what reinforcements we could.  Many of us would die as we fled.  An army pursued is an army exhausted when they finally turn to fight.  We could not hope to win after such a flight.  Then I questioned myself.  Perhaps I worried like an old woman and nothing would present itself today except for total victory over a surprised Pohomoosh force.  I had no answers.

Then a funny thought came to my mind.  All my years of reading the word of the One True God just reminded me of a particular passage, “Si manseritis in me et verba mea in vobis manserint quodcumque petieritis quod vis, et dabitur vobis.”  Clearly his words abided in me, because they came to me then, without aid and without a page of vellum before me.  I was not sure I always or ever abided in him, but I had someone with me who most likely had.

“Father,” I said, “Do you know what is happening around you today?”

Rowtag was growing justly frustrated at my lack of a plan and interrupted, “Chief, you just explained all that . . .”

“Shh!” I hissed.  “Torleik, do you know what is happening around you today?”

“He’ll know!” he answered confidently.  I slapped my knee then, smiling broadly.

“Good!  Now tell me, how will we win in battle this day?”

“He’ll know!  How should I?”

“You are right, Father.  You won’t know, but he will know.  I just hope you listen.  Here is what I want you to do.”  And I laid out my plan for victory to the two men.

. . .

Moments later a sweat-bathed runner came back to me reporting that the twenty Pohomoosh would soon be upon us.  There was no sign of our scouts from the night before.  I counted them as lost.  Their women would wail and our village would mourn.

“Good.  We attack them.  You,” I said to the runner who panted heavily with his hands resting on his knees, “Run to the other picquets and bring them here for battle.  We may need all of them.  And you,” I shouted to Torleik over my shoulder, “Do what I say!”

The priest nodded from his lonely position on the beach.  His face was filled with a certain determination that made me proud to know the man.  He knelt in the sand just at the intersection of the water and land so that his robes sopped up the moisture.  The water wicked up the old tattered fabric making it appear darker near the bottom.  As my warriors and I pushed into the brush, I heard him begin his prayers, loudly, in Latin for that was the language of God, I supposed.

By now all the men I led knew that we may find ourselves in a trap.  Or they knew that their chief had become worrisome and addled like a man his age often does.  Despite those thoughts swirling in their minds, my brave warriors stood ready to slaughter the dirty Pohomoosh.  Their grim faces told me this fact.  Their clenched fists, wrapped tightly around handles of clubs, axes, and spears told me this.  My experience with them in these woods against enemies bent on satisfying their thirst for our blood told me this.  Win or lose, they would fight for their chief and for their village.

I gave a terrible war cry which they answered in kind with weapons raised.  I led them through the forest over a rise in the direction of the Mi’kmaq dung.  Rowtag the Younger and I were the first to see the Mi’kmaq war leaders jerking at two more of our scouts’ hair.  They pulled savagely on it while slicing through hair, skin, and skull to claim their prize.  The Mi’kmaq finished retrieving the scalps without showing any concern that I led a force at least twice their size in howling, running madness directly toward their position.  One of them took his bloodied knife and wiped his hand along the flat body of the stone blade before visibly licking the blood from his hand.  He did this to show us he had no fear.  The warrior showed that he intended to devour us as he had our fallen scouts.

Behind me, from the beach I swore I began to hear more commotion as the Mi’kmaq who lay in hiding would drive their canoes across the channel to our rear.  They would be shouting and screaming.  Soon they would be past Torleik, complete with is dripping scalp tied to someone’s belt.  They would fall upon our backs, crushing us between this smaller force of Pohomoosh and whatever numbers they had.

I did not dwell on those thoughts.  Had I been a better chief and realized earlier that I was deceived, had I been more perceptive and known that Pajack and perhaps Chansomps made peace with the Mi’kmaq in exchange for some promise, I would have had time to plan.  I was not a better chief and I was not perceptive.  But I was the jarl of Vinland, by God, and I led these men into battle, and I would see many of the Pohomoosh bastards fall before me.  And if I lived, I would see that Pajack and those with him met a tortuous death.

The Pohomoosh warrior who had swallowed his victim’s blood moments earlier was the first to die.  Rowtag had thrown his spear with devastating force.  His aim was low, the spear came down into the man’s abdomen, reappearing with entrails and blood where the man’s shit would exit.  In fact, the man did shit himself then as the two sides crashed together.

I swung my massive sword downward and across using my left hand which I had continued strengthening through rigorous training.  I killed the first man easily as my blade with the symbols of the One God and Christ emblazoned along the blood gutter snapped his war axe handle in two.  The sharp edge of the sword entered his face at his right temple, splaying open a gash through his eye, bones, and mouth until it sprung free at his neck.

Our aggressive attack down the hill was having a brilliant effect and we pushed through their ranks.  Rowtag had retrieved his spear or someone else’s, I saw.  Like the practiced killing spirit he was, he used every bit of the device as a weapon.  The stone tip, of course was thrust into the belly of one Pohomoosh warrior.  The butt of the spear cracked a second Pohomoosh beast in the chest with two rapid bursts so that I had an opening for my sword to drive into the soon-to-be-dead man’s lung.  We killed them.  We harvested them like my Norseman father had brought in the barley.  They fell before us and yet they did not flee, further confirming that they expected their brethren to join their assault at any moment.

Soon we were tripping over one another as only eight Pohomoosh were left standing and we numbered at least forty, having lost only a handful of men.  One of the youngest Mi’kmaq warriors, his face almost surprised, sent a rock from a sling toward us.  Just as I stepped on the back of a moaning, fallen enemy, the stone met my eyebrow and eyeball with a dull splat.  I wobbled into one of my young men who immediately set me upright and threw his spear into the young Pohomoosh man’s shoulder.  I tried to blink away the pain, but the attempt only made the pain worse.  I felt the eye with my palm and knew that it was already closing up, swollen and misshapen.  My hand came away from the wound covered in thin, flowing blood.  I determined I would live so continued to lead my people.  I shouted to Rowtag to continue the fight, but if the cowards fled, not to pursue.  I gathered ten men by name and strode off toward the beach to blunt the assault which should have already hit us by now.

My men formed a fan around me as we moved.  I walked slowly to encourage caution, but also because I was winded, gasping for breath in my old age.  The eye was crusting over quickly with the watery contents still oozing into my beard, mixing with sweat.  I was not eager to discover what may await us at the beach.  You know I did not have any particular fear of death.  My long-dead, gambling friend Cnute would certainly have told me the odds were in death’s favor since I willingly presented my body to him in battle so often.  I did fear dying as an old man, however.  An old man who was too exhausted to pick up his own blade to defend himself was no way for a jarl to die.

We walked through our camp from the night before, heads darting.  I saw nothing to indicate that the Pohomoosh had come through or waited for us.  We moved down the slope toward the sand.  Very audibly I heard Torleik’s voice as clear and plain as ever praying with immense fervor.  He shouted.  He called.  His voice boomed many prayers taken directly from the words of the One God.  Torleik screamed spontaneous prayers I had never before heard.  His voice carried more strength and confidence that I had heard in it since he came to living among us.  The priest alternated his prayers between languages now.  I had told him I wanted only Latin used, but now he rumbled prayers to the God or against the Pohomoosh in Norse or even skraeling languages.

The warriors with me looked nervously at each other and then to me.  The Pohomoosh blood splattered across their tattoos showed me they were ready despite their current confusion.  I nodded as if this was all part of my plan, for in a way it was, which settled them as we cautiously peered through the brush to the beach.  My driftwood log was there.  Torleik was still on his knees exactly where I had left him, his arms were raised, his back to us.  The water was still in the channel, but now a lone canoe floated in its center.  It bobbed peacefully in the water.  A Mi’kmaq who appeared to be dead lay limp over the gunwale with one hand dangling in the quiet water, rivulets of blood spilling down, around his arm.  Three other bodies floated in the water nearby.  Each of them lay face-down bobbing like the boat, their feet and hands extending below the surface, perhaps even scraping along the shallow channel’s floor.  Pools of blood surrounded each man, growing wider and wider with every passing heartbeat.

I stepped onto the beach with my men, allowing my one eye to get a clearer view.  Five bodies lay all around Torleik; blood covered his robes and the sand beneath each dead warrior.  One of the slain men sat nearly upright, his back against the priest’s back, his chin slumped to his chest.  Another Pohomoosh body laid only two ells from where I stood, his head cracked open by a thick, heavy arrow painted in solid red with alternating stripes wrapping around the shaft from the head to the fletching.  My warriors began to smile and I did too, for it seemed we had won two battles while fighting only one.  Torleik continued his thunderous oration.