Norseman Chief (36 page)

Some of our men fell to terrific wounds, of course.  Some died on the spot, while others would have the unfortunate blessing to survive the battle, but then die an excruciating death over the ensuing weeks.  However, most of our men lived, doing the killing themselves.  Nandawaatoo killed and hacked until he was covered in the mashed bone and hair of his prey.  Taregan performed his duty like a killing hammer, blunt and deadly.  Gone for him was all hope of grace and fluidity of movement.  No, the stiffness from his injuries prevented that.  Instead the natural-born hatred he held for all Mi’kmaq was enhanced and honed when he watched his fellow Algonkin beaten to death over the previous days.  With whatever reservoir of strength he held in the muscles of his arms, he bludgeoned three, then four Pohomoosh before chasing after his father.

Rowtag saw the battle’s outcome within the first sixty heartbeats of the engagement.  Going in, he thought that was to be the last day any of our people fought in these lands for all eternity.  But he saw the surprise on the faces of the enemy.  He saw the horror that was Alsoomse.  He heard his people screaming their terrible cries and the unmistakable thuds of cracked ribs, skulls, or the weeping howls that accompany a spear piercing a man’s belly.

Pajack came running from where a mass of the enemy must have sat in council.  Over the flailing arms of those who came to meet her, Alsoomse saw that Luntook stood tall – for a stooped old man – perched on a rock awakening his unprepared men with an icy calmness that unnerved even my enraged daughter.  Her mind was brought back to the present when the contorted, angry red face of Pajack leapt into her field of vision, his own axe raised to chop her down.

With her axe firmly in her right hand, she swung the instrument upward.  The stone blade, which had been chipped and worked until it was nearly as sharp as steel, drove itself up into his groin.  His weight, coming down as it was to kill her, doubled the force and the head of her axe cleaved his pelvis, immediately lodging there.  Like I had instructed her so many times in make believe rounds of combat, she released it, spinning so her left shoulder moved back then around forward.  Pajack fell to his knees and as my daughter completed her spin, Alsoomse backhanded him with the heavy stone-capped club between his shoulder blades.  The first strike was enough to ensure his death, but I do not blame her for adding to his injury.  There is no punishment that is too extreme for traitors.

Luntook ran to the canoes then, leaping over the gunwales, and gathering the smooth wooden paddles.  Without delay, he and a handful of his men paddled a single great canoe out into the waters of the Pitupok.  Just as he began calling out to his brethren, “Run, my Mi’kmaq brothers.  We will meet these women another day,” Alsoomse grabbed Rowtag’s arm and led him to another canoe.  Rowtag looked behind him to call up Taregan, but did not see him.  It was just as well because Taregan would be no good at shoving a paddle into the water in his condition.  Rowtag laid eyes on Nandawaatoo and so called to him to join them in the canoe to pursue the enemy.

Then for a second time in as many days those same three hunted an enemy.  They did not care that behind them all sorts of canoes skipped into the water as the Mi’kmaq fled to cross the lake, portage their canoes for a short hike, then paddle to their homeland.  The strong backs of Luntook’s best men made the light canoe move like a fish through that water.  They moved so rapidly that soon the old chief was able to set his paddle across the gunwale to catch his breath.  Still they added to the distance between Alsoomse and themselves.

But the pilot of their craft who sat in the rear, made an unexpected decision.  Perhaps he was commanded by Luntook or perhaps he made one of those fateful choices in battle that make the odds tip in the opponents’ favor.  Instead of plunging straight southward toward a massive head of land, then turning southwest through the widest part of the lake toward the great sea and the Mi’kmaq territory, he guided their canoe toward the eastern end of the island that guarded the harbor.  Even then he could have turned south once he rounded the small island, but he continued his path eastward, soon turning northeastward to enter a narrow channel that led directly to the sea.

My three warriors, for Alsoomse was nothing now if not a warrior, used every bit of energy they had to pursue Luntook.  Rowtag could see that their quarry pulled away and suggested they return to the battlefield to take account of the living and dead.

“No!” Alsoomse called.  “Luntook’s scalp belongs on my father’s door.  I intend to get it for him.”  The three grit their teeth and dug into the water with even more force, pelting one another with the droplets of water that gleamed and flew from the wooden blades.

For a complete day, they chased Luntook, the world behind them forgotten.  They missed a mid-day meal; they missed an evening meal.  My warriors pissed in the canoe so that their urine intermixed with the water that sloshed around their knees.  Hunger didn’t capture them for my Alsoomse had whipped the others into such frenzy that they believed their sole purpose was to hunt and kill Luntook.

As the sun sank low behind them, all three shouted with delight when it seemed apparent they at last gained on the great canoe in front of them.  Their elation was quickly rinsed away when they felt the incoming tide begin to drive them back as it had Luntook’s craft ahead of them.  But they pressed on.

Soon they would be out in the open sea, fighting waves and wind.  My daughter began to silently question her actions.  What would be the point to chase a single canoe with another lone canoe into the wide expanse of the ocean?  Ahead they saw Luntook’s white hair dance upon his head as the first of the sea breezes slapped them in the face.  The canoe of their prey climbed a large, white-capped wave then disappeared on the other side as it slipped into the undulating world beyond.

Alsoomse chewed on her lip until it bled, so intense was her anger.  Luntook and his company appeared and reappeared several more times until their path strayed south into the sea.  Soon they disappeared entirely behind the rolling swells and a sharp cape jutting from my territory like an old man’s crooked finger.  Losing sight of whom she pursued for so long flattened my daughter’s vigor.  She tells me that she wanted to ease the canoe to the nearest bank and cry.  I remind her still that a warrior, especially a warrior without a stick between her legs does not cry – ever.

Little Skjoldmo resolved to get to the sea with her companions and at least watch the Pohomoosh chief flee so that she would have something to boast about when she returned to the village.  So they paddled.  But after they rose and fell several times in the mountains and valleys of the sea, none of them could lay eyes on Luntook.

“Where is he?” shouted Nandawaatoo.

“You tell me, tracker!” shouted back a frustrated Alsoomse as the deafening sound of the surf crashing into the steep cliffs made communication next to impossible.

“There?” questioned Rowtag, pointing out to a dark spot rising and falling in the sea.  But it was just a sea lion eagerly slicing through the waves on the evening hunt.

“Perhaps they’ve gone ashore,” guessed Nandawaatoo pointing to the only stretch of land where it would be possible to land a canoe.  He shouted again while pointing, “They’ve got to be as tired as we are.”

My Alsoomse looked at the spot.  “No!  They couldn’t possibly have the canoe up that hill yet and I don’t see it anywhere else.”

“Did they sink and drown?” asked an incredulous Rowtag.  Their own craft was being driven dangerously close toward the shore as all three did only the minimum paddling to keep them afloat.  Their arms felt limp like heavy, damp grass, though none would admit it freely.

“They’ve gone in there!” shouted Alsoomse pointing at a sheer rock cliff rising straight from the pounding surf.  Her companions were confused at first, but then simultaneously saw a black hole in the rock.  When the waves crashed into shore, the dark hole was no more than one ell in height, but when the surf pulled back, the height of blackness above the water was perhaps three ells.  “They’re hiding, waiting for us to pass.”

“So they’re trapped,” Rowtag said.  “Let’s go to shore and rest ourselves.  We can cut them down when they come out.”  In truth, I’ve always thought this was a sensible plan.  It was not the choice made by my daughter with her blood lust up.

“We go in the same way they did.  We cut them down then return to our people with the head of Luntook.”

“But we’ll be smashed against the rocks,” Nandawaatoo protested.

“Perhaps,” my daughter replied, already guiding the canoe headlong toward the sea cave.

. . .

When five ells separated them from the cliff wall, all three latched onto the gunwales and tipped the canoe over to the left.  They let the power of the sea and the call of the cave guide them in.

At high tide, as the sea was when they entered the cave, the ceiling was too close to go paddling in.  Even if their aim was true and they shot into the cave’s center, the canoe and their bodies would be decapitated by the hard face of the cave’s entrance.  So they capsized the fine canoe, letting their paddles scatter as they would.

With their heads brought into the tiny pocket of air under the canoe, they felt and heard the flattish bottom of the canoe scrape and bounce off the cave’s hard ceiling.  Sea caves littered the coast of my territory and I know that Alsoomse had been in many of them as a child.  She had not played in this one though and so had no idea of its shape or depth.  She also did not know if she led Rowtag and Nandawaatoo to their certain deaths in a blind cave where the force of the current would pin them to a back wall until they drowned.

The current moved them swiftly into the cave.  Then they suddenly felt the canoe begin to slide backward as the last wave was sucked back to the sea.  They clutched tightly for survival just as the next wave sent them further into the dark recesses.  The canoe smashed apart when it slammed into the ceiling, climbing as it had from the trough to the wave’s peak.

Alsoomse was left holding bits of gunwale in her balled fists.  She thought, like I had many times in battle, that her time had come.  And like my thinking during those times, fast-approaching death did not frighten or even anger her.  My Skjoldmo resigned herself to the inevitable, with confident knowledge that she had just led her people to the single greatest military victory in their history.

Then her legs scraped against rock and she found herself sitting in a dark room.  She was surprised to see a flame moving toward her.  My daughter’s wits were slow then as she coughed and sputtered out water, but Rowtag’s hand emerged from the abyss in time to clutch the Mi’kmaq’s ankle.  When the man fell onto Alsoomse’s lap, she recovered her senses and snatched the small knife from her belt, driving it deeply into the man’s spine.

A battle ensued.  The combatants spent much of the time knee deep in coursing salt water grappling by the light of a single torch which the Mi’kmaq had been able to strike.  Footing was awful in the close quarters with sharp stones piercing the tough leather strapped to their feet.  Another Mi’kmaq fell to Rowtag.  Then Nandawaatoo had his face smashed with a rock held by the hand of a Pohomoosh.  Two more Mi’kmaq died.

And then it was only Luntook backed against a wall facing Alsoomse and Rowtag in the darkness.  The dancing torchlight now from my daughter’s hand was just enough so that the old chief’s face was illuminated.  The shadowed light showed his age and wrinkles more than the sunshine ever had.  He was weak and old, exhausted by the flight.

“You picked the wrong Beiuthook to befriend, Luntook,” screamed Alsoomse over the deafening roar of the ocean echoing off the cave walls.  “I, a woman, a daughter to the chief, killed Pajack myself.”

The Pohomoosh leader sank to his haunches, his thin hands dangling in front of his bent knees.  He exhaled loudly.  “And yet I have won this battle.  The Enkoodabooaoo must have met an untimely demise.”  Luntook chuckled.  “For if he lived, he would never have a woman, his own bitch of a daughter leading these other women on the field of battle.”  Then the chief shook his head.  “These must be desperate times around the fires of the Beiuthook to have you as warrior.  Desperate times, indeed.”

The chief closed his eyes then, secure that he had at least achieved a partial victory over me, his longtime rival.  He calmed himself to receive the death blow from one of them.  “My father, Chief Enkoodabooaoo, son of Olef, born in the wood in the land of Rogaland, lives.  Your treachery could no more kill him than you could make a Mi’kmaq woman pregnant with your shriveled seed.”

The old chief’s eyes slowly opened again, not so confident of victory.  They quickly narrowed.  “And yet he does not fight.  I did not see him on the shore this morning.  He is not one to fight from the rear.  So he must have stumbled, perhaps across from Aoutjaduch?”  Then the old man cackled wickedly.

Alsoomse spat on him.  “We discovered your ambush and crushed it.”  Then thinking that telling the man the truth before his scalp was peeled from his head would do no harm, Alsoomse added, “The other traitor, the bastard Chansomps managed to slip an arrow past my father’s armor.  He is injured but even now is under the care of our best shaman.”