West of the Moon (48 page)

“Yes, he was brave,” said Peer slowly. “But I'm afraid that's all he was.”

“H
OW DID YOU
guess the thing could be driven away by fire?” asked Tjørvi in admiration.

Astrid and Floki looked at each other. “We didn't,” said Astrid.

Floki shook his head. “Nah. We just thought, what's worse? Fighting with the rest of you, or hiding in the house waiting for it to come and get us?”

“And there weren't any weapons left,” Astrid added. “So the Nis said —”

“Aha – the Nis!” Tjørvi interrupted, glancing up. There were no secrets left. The Nis sat openly on a beam overhead, guzzling a bowlful of hot groute. “That was the Nis's idea, was it? I wish I'd known we had a Nis with us all this time.”

“Wait,” Ottar interrupted. “Let me tell the others all that.” He turned and began to translate.

Peer drew Hilde against him. She whispered, “It's a full house.”

It was. Sinumkw's warriors sat cross-legged on the floor by the fire, or sprawled on the sleeping benches. The firelight shone on their oiled black hair and brown faces, still smudged with war paint. Peer smiled as he looked around. Trades and swaps were happening already. Halfdan had a tuft of blue feathers in his hair. Tjørvi was sporting Kopit's beartooth necklace, and Kopit had slung Tjørvi's steel knife around his neck. Both looked very happy with their bargains.

“So the Nis suggested the torches?” Peer tipped his head back. “Well done!”

The Nis was licking its messy fingers, and a splash of groute dripped into Peer's hair. “I has lots of good ideas,” it boasted. “Has you heard how we threw the clothes at Harald?”

“Hilde's told me.” Peer wished he could have seen Harald struggling to fight a rain of socks and trousers.

“What name suits me best, Peer Ulfsson?” the Nis enquired. It upended the basin and stuck its entire face inside to lick out the bottom. “‘Nithing the Seafarer' – or ‘Nithing the Warrior'?”

“Oh well – erm…”

“It was brave of you and Floki to come out,” Hilde said to Astrid. “Weren't you afraid of hurting the baby, running like that?”

“It was time I did something to help.” Astrid pressed a hand to her stomach. “He's fine. I can feel him kicking.”

Sinumkw spoke to her across the fire, his dark eyes gleaming. Astrid raised her brows and turned to Ottar. “What does he say?”

“He says a brave mother makes a brave son,” said Ottar.

Astrid's eyes filled.

“Don't cry,” Hilde said softly.

“I'm not,” Astrid muttered, dashing a hand across her face. “Well, yes I am. I'm thinking of Gunnar. He'll never see his son now. If it is a boy, I mean.
A son like Harald
. And I promised I'd save him, and I harmed him instead.”

“You didn't harm him,” Hilde protested.

“Yes, I did. I was so angry when he slapped me. I wanted revenge. I could have warned Harald not to crush the egg, but I didn't. I'm not a nice person like you. It's true about troll blood, you see. It always comes out in the end. And my son will inherit it from me. He'll be the same.”

“How can you say that?” Hilde began, but there was an outburst of excitement in the roof. The Nis knocked its empty bowl off the beam, just missing Peer's head, and scrabbled in an angle of the rafters, scattering straw and dust.

“See, see?” It tossed something light into Astrid's lap. A tiny hollow egg.

“I finds it on the floor when I is tidying up,” the Nis chirped. “When Harald Silkenhair makes all that mess and leaves it for the Nis to clear away. And I thinks, a
thrush egg
! I keeps it, I puts it in my den to look pretty, in my nice nest up in the roof.” It looked down at Astrid with sharp eyes. “It's empty,” it added.

Astrid's hand closed around it. “Harald didn't smash it after all,” she breathed. “Then – it didn't matter…”

“Oh, Astrid,” said Hilde impatiently. “Gunnar died because of what
he
did – not because of what you did. Do stop going on about your troll blood. Take my advice. Don't tell your baby anything about it, and he'll grow up fine.”

Astrid looked at her with slowly dawning relief. “Do you think – if
I'd
never known…?” She took a deep breath. “I could forget about it. I could be just like anyone else…”

The Nis cracked its knuckles gleefully. “Always, always the Nis finds the answer. Maybe I should be ‘Nithing the Clever'…”

Troll blood
, Peer thought.
What does it mean to have troll blood?
He remembered, all those years ago, how his two bullying uncles had turned into trolls after drinking troll beer. But they'd been trolls on the inside all along. Perhaps being a troll was more to do with how you behaved than the blood you inherited. If you howled to the
jenu
, the
jenu
would howl back.

And tomorrow
, thought Peer,
we'll give Harald's sword to Sinumkw. Kiunik and Tia'm can take it with them on the Ghost Road, on their long journey to the Land of Souls.

He looked at Floki, who sat silently with lowered head. “Hey, Floki.” Floki looked up out of red-rimmed eyes. Peer leaned across. “It was great, the way you ran out with the torches. Magnus would be so proud.”

Floki didn't speak. But his rough, freckled hand came out to grip Peer's. He sniffed.

There was a shrill yap, a screech, and a roar of laughter. The Nis shot into the rafters, chittering hysterically. Hilde stifled giggles. “Did you see that? The Nis got the nerve to creep up behind Kwimu, and it got too near that pet fox of his.” She looked more closely. “It's not a fox, is it? What on earth…?”

Kwimu smiled across at them. For a second, Peer was sure the fox winked. But a moment later, Kwimu lifted it, and it was just a fur pouch, with the mask and paws and tail of a fox attached. He plunged his hand into it and pulled out a pipe. He lit it and handed it to his father.

The noise and chatter died. The Norsemen watched curiously.

“He's swallowing fire!”

“They'll never believe this at home.”

“It's a sign of friendship,” said Peer. “Isn't it, Ottar? If he gives the pipe to you, make sure you take it.”

Sinumkw blew out a thin flutter of smoke. He rose ceremoniously and passed the pipe to Peer. Peer drew down a mouthful of sweet smoke.

“Arne…” He held out the pipe. Arne looked at it without moving. Then he scratched his head. “A sign of friendship, eh? All right, I'll give it a go.” He took the pipe, sucked on it, and coughed. “Not bad!” he said with watering eyes, handing it on to Tjørvi. He added gruffly, “I'm glad you're not dead.”

“Thanks,” said Peer. They looked at each other with uncertain smiles.

With jokes and back-slapping, the pipe passed around the room. Up in the rafters, the Nis spluttered, pretending to be annoyed by the smoke. Considering it spent most of its time in the haze of woodsmoke floating about the rafters, that was rich, Peer thought. He stood on tiptoe and whispered, “Here's a good name. How about ‘Nithing the Wise Warrior'?” The Nis purred.

“What are you thinking?” Hilde asked Peer as he sat down.

He stretched. “Oh, lots of things. What to do next. How to spend the winter. When to go home. Whether Ottar will come with us. And who's going to decide it all? Now Gunnar's gone, who's going to lead us?”

“You, I should think,” said Hilde.

“Me?” He stared at her.

“Yes, you.” Hilde grinned at him. “Who else will do all the thinking?” She leaned against him and whispered into his ear, “So go on. What's going to happen to us?”

Peer dropped his arm around her shoulders. He thought of the months of cold ahead; the blizzards; the creatures like the
jenu
lurking in the woods. He thought of trying to cross the immense ocean dividing them from home, with no Gunnar to guide them, and only five men to sail the ship. He remembered the storms and icebergs of the voyage out. He looked down at Hilde, and saw his own fears in her eyes.

“The winter will pass,” he whispered back. “Perhaps we'll stay here in the house for the whole of it. Or, if they'll let us, we'll go back to the village with Kwimu and the People, and go hunting and trapping with them. Astrid's baby will be born there, and she'll have lots of women to help her, not just you by yourself. And then the spring will come. The ice will melt, and the buds will thicken on the trees. We'll take
Water Snake
out of her winter quarters and push her down into the sea. And we'll sail away.

“It'll take us a long time, weeks and weeks, but we'll sight Greenland and the Islands of Sheep. We'll follow the whales home. And one day, we'll see our own mountain again. Troll Fell.

“I wonder if it will be sunrise. Or sunset, or raining, or foggy even. Maybe we'll meet Bjørn in his faering, coming out to the fishing grounds. But anyway, we'll sail in to the jetty and walk up through Trollsvik. And we'll see the farmhouse, with the smoke rising from the roof. And Gudrun will dash out to meet us, and Ralf will come running from the field…”

Hilde was smiling, though her eyes were full of tears.

“And I'll say, ‘Here we are. We're back. And we want to get married.'”

“That will be such a happy ending,” Hilde sighed.

“There's never any ending,” said Peer softly. “Life goes on.”

Over a thousand years ago (and five hundred years before Columbus), in the year 985 or 986, a young man called Bjarni Herjolfsson who'd been trying to sail from Iceland to Greenland, was driven south and west in a gale that lasted several days. When he eventually sighted land, it wasn't the icy mountains of Greenland, but a strange wooded country with low hills.

Bjarni wasn't interested in going ashore. He didn't want to discover new lands; he wanted to get where he'd been going, so he and his men sailed northwards, hopping up the coast, and finally across what is now known as the Davis Strait to Greenland.

Fifteen years later, Leif Eiriksson of Greenland bought Bjarni's ship (possibly on the principle that it had been there once and could find the way again) and set out to retrace Bjarni's voyage in the opposite direction. He did so with spectacular success, naming three lands on his way south: Helluland, which means “Slab land”, a stony, glaciated landscape; Markland, or “Forest land”, a flat woody country; and finally a grassy, wooded peninsular where he and his men built houses and overwintered, naming the country Vinland for the grapes they said they found there. Later, more voyages were made by Leif 's brother Thorvald, his sister Freydis, and his relative Thorfinn Karlsefni.

No one doubts now that Helluland, Markland and Vinland were parts of the north-eastern coast of America. The most likely candidates are Baffin Island, Labrador and Newfoundland respectively. Traces of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland may actually be the place where Leif built his houses.

Two sagas,
The Greenland Saga
and
Eirik the Red's Saga
tell how Leif, Freydis and Thorfinn met “Skraelings”, a scornful and dismissive term used indiscriminately by the Norsemen for all the Native Americans they met, including the northern Inuit. Though some trading took place, relations were pretty unstable. Both sagas tell of battles between the Norse and the Skraelings. Partly these were due to misunderstandings, but some were triggered by murders. When Leif 's brother Thorvald came across nine Skraelings asleep under their canoes, he and his men promptly killed eight of them. He paid the price for his aggressive behaviour. The ninth Skraeling escaped to raise the alarm. A fleet of canoes attacked, and Thorvald died from an arrow wound. Incidents like this go a long way towards explaining why the Norse never formed permanent settlements in Vinland. Their iron and steel weapons, such as swords, axes and spears might have given them an edge – literally – over the flint-tipped weapons of the indigenous peoples, but not that much of an edge. And there were far more Native Americans than there were Norsemen.

So who were these “Skraelings”? The Native American people of Newfoundland were named the Beothuk. It's known that they painted their clothes and bodies with red ochre, because they thought of red as a sacred colour. (Their neighbours called them the Red People. Europeans would call them Red Indians.) The Beothuk saw off the Vikings, but not the later arrival of the French and the British, whose diseases and guns drove them to extinction. In 1829, the last of the Beothuk, a woman named Shaw-na-dith-it, died of tuberculosis in captivity. And with her died the last chance of learning the Beothuk's language, beliefs and customs. Only a few scraps of information remain – nothing like enough to build a book upon.

So, since the Norsemen would certainly have explored beyond Newfoundland, I chose to base my account of Kwimu and his People not on the Beothuk, but on the Mi'kmaq people of New Brunswick – only a step further south – who still live in the land of their ancestors, and many of whose beliefs, customs and stories have either been documented or are a matter of living and proud tradition. To them I owe a debt of admiration – and my apologies for errors.

For those interested in geography, I've imagined that Gunnar and Thorolf built their houses somewhere along the north shore of the Baie des Chaleurs, on the Gaspé Peninsula, between New Brunswick and Quebec. But I've not been too precise. And though most of the Native American references are to Mi'kmaq customs and lore, I have occasionally borrowed from their neighbours, the Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, Montaignais and other Algonquian peoples. After all, the story is set at a time 500 years earlier than the French missionaries who, even as they set about trying to change them, wrote accounts of the manners, customs and beliefs of the Mi'kmaq people. I hope I will be forgiven a certain amount of imaginative licence.

I didn't invent any of the magical creatures in
Troll Blood.
From the Nis to the
jenu
, they are my interpretations of creatures which have all been believed in by real people at some point in history. I wanted to write about the world in which such beliefs were possible – a world in which ordinary men and women co-existed with spirits and ghosts, both helpful and harmful. I've tried my best to imagine how the Norsemen and Kwimu's People lived and thought. I did lots of research; I even had the tremendous fun of spending a week learning how to sail a reconstruction of a real Viking ship on a Danish fjord. But, at the end of the day,
Troll Blood
is fantasy, not history.

Six hundred years ago, the London printer William Caxton published Sir Thomas Malory's story of King Arthur;
Le Morte d'Arthur
. I feel I can't do better than to pass on Caxton's warning to his readers:

“And for to pass the time, this book shall be pleasant to read in. But for to give faith and believe that all is true that is set herein, ye be at your liberty.”