Norseman Chief (20 page)

. . .

The women returned from their search empty handed around the time of the evening meal.  Night fell and still the girls, led by a three year old Skjoldmo, did not return.  I wanted to cry with her mother held tightly in my arms whenever I thought of the girl’s tiny, high-pitched voice which she belted out with much enthusiasm.  Hurit cried.  I did not.  I could not.

Instead I fed myself while sitting next to a fire, hardening myself to what would begin shortly.  Right Ear gave a series of low groans as he lay next to me, hoping for a scrap or two.  His moaning only made Hurit’s sadness and weeping grow so the woman buried her face into her hands as she sat next to me.  Torleik, at my direction, had sought refuge elsewhere so we could talk in peace without his prying ears.

“I leave tonight,” I whispered, afraid that any stray passerby may overhear.

Through her grief at the missing child she began to nod, still looking down at the earth.  “I knew you would,” she said with a wavering voice.

Hurit was right.  I would not allow anyone to show such disdain, dishonor to my house.  Kesegowaase was young with many chances to make more daughters or sons.  As chief, he thought as a leader of a people and could not bring war to all for the loss of children.  I lost all of my brood in one morning.  I did not want to bring war to my people, but I thought for my house, my family.  My seed would not be raised by the stiff-necked Mi’kmaq dogs and their women.

I rested a hand on Hurit’s strong leg.  “I may die, but it will be as it must.”  It sounded like the noble thing to say.

Hurit sniffled and looked up at me with red, swollen eyes.  “Husband, you may die, but we will both know you died with honor.”  She was doing her best to put on the face of certainty.  “I will wear the charcoal proudly if you do not return.  I shall never marry another.  You have been the most honorable man I know.”

“Hmmph,” I answered.  “We’ll see what past honor does to salvage my reputation when the people find out I’ve left.  Your people, my people, it doesn’t matter.  We’re all too fickle to hold someone in high esteem when a new story about them is told, an unfavorable story, I mean.”

“They’ll not know,” Hurit tried.  “I will tell them that you hunt.”

“Hmmph,” I said again.  “A good enough lie, I suppose.  But the village would think Etleloo and I are mad to go away in this sloppy weather for a glorious hunt.  No one will believe it.”

“What should I tell them?”

I thought.  There was nothing else to offer.  “Tell them that lie.  Sometimes people choose to keep their eyes closed to the truth, preferring to believe obvious lies when it suits them.  Who knows?  This lie might suit them.”

“Psst!”  Etleloo ducked his head into our mamateek, waving me out.

Right Ear moved his good ear a smidge at the sound, but decided it was not worth the effort and set it back down.  Hurit caught my arm when I stirred and studied my face as if she didn’t want to forget what I looked like.  I leaned in and kissed my woman, tasting the salty tears that covered her cheeks, then gathered my pack and left without taking another look back.

. . .

Etleloo was the only one I could burden with this trip.  Nearly every member of the Algonkin was counted among my friends, some more than others.  But this man, with his fire tempered by age, his raw strength still frightening, and his devotion to me and mine beyond question was the single choice for a companion.

The man’s famous anger was sparked by the insult of his daughter being taken by the lowly Mi’kmaq.  He shouted and carried on for a long time in the center of the village when the search party returned without the three missing girls.  “No one can dishonor my blood this way!” he screamed.

A council was called and the wise old men with their vigorous young counterparts all agreed with the chief that we would not send a war party out against the invaders.  Some minor grumbles arose from the younger men who never had a chance to raise their spear against the enemy, but Kesegowaase was chief.  Rowtag and other men known to be wise agreed with the leader’s decision and it became law.

Etleloo still seethed when I came to him after the council.  He could hardly speak, he boiled so.  The man’s jaw was clenched, jutting out from beneath tightly pursed lips.  Etleloo paced silently between two closely-placed mamateeks with his hands gripping his hips as if he could tear the bones right out from beneath the flesh.  I could trust him so I proposed my plan without hesitation.  He listened, but continued in his pacing.  My talk was short, certain.  We both understood that our path was rolled out before us long ago.  It was only now that we saw it clearly.  So with full comprehension of the consequences we agreed to disobey the chief, the Great Sachem, and take the path of war ourselves.

We marched under the cover of drizzling darkness to the lonely maple grove.  The buckets rattled with occasional drops falling from the branches above.  The sap running into them would mix with the water which would simply boil off when the sap was added to the clay cauldron back in the village center.

I led Etleloo to the area from which I had last heard Skjoldmo’s voice calling.  We had a single sputtering torch so visualizing the full scene was difficult.  The wet conditions further complicated the start of our path.  However, it was the plodding footsteps of all the women from their fruitless search earlier in the day that caused us the most grief.  Carefully, intensely we crouched scanning the ground for any sign of what transpired.  For a brief instant I thought back to when we hunted Haakon after our battle in the Fjord of Agdenes.  I said a silent prayer that this pursuit would be equally as rapid.

Etleloo’s elbow rapped me from my wanderings.  He pointed to the obvious imprint of Skjoldmo’s small makizined foot in the soft earth.  The man moved the torch over a wider area around that spot.  Each of us called upon our years of hunting, tracking, and killing to discover any bit of intelligence that would confirm or deny our suspicions of Mi’kmaq involvement.

Nothing.  The night wore on, the drizzle slowed and eventually stopped.  Our methodical circle widened around its center at Skjoldmo’s footprint only to collapse again when we found no more evidence.  We must have repeated our search three long, agonizing times, before on the fourth trip I clutched Etleloo’s arm to bring the torch back over something we had already passed.  Somehow this time the shadows from his light and from the clearing sky with its stars and waxing moon allowed me to see the terrain differently.

A tiny, single totem was pressed into the side wall of a large footprint.  I reached into the muck and retrieved it.  It was carved from bone, intricate in detail.  It had a hole bored into one terminus with the remnants of a sinew cord with frayed ends running through it.  Perversely, Etleloo and I smiled at one another for although we found the proof for which we sought, it meant the Mi’kmaq had indeed returned and taken our daughters.

The totem was not of our people – I found myself calling the Algonkin “my” or “our” people more and more frequently.  It was a carving of one of the Mi’kmaq animal spirits representing a specific clan within their people, the Fish who were part of the Kespe’keweq – or Last Landers.  It was a clan that was far from us, well beyond the Pohomoosh, mostly foreign to our people.  We had not even fought them in the last war so their blood had never colored our weapons, or our blood theirs.

But we had our proof and now would follow the long path to its end.

. . .

The remainder of that night passed with only the intermittent drip of water onto the basin of leaves and needles on the forest floor to keep us in time while we marched.  As the morning came, a great, thick fog enveloped the landscape, but would not hinder our progress.  We marched in silence using our ears and even noses like the wolf of the woods to alert us of any dangers.  There were none.

We made excellent time moving south and west, further from the village toward the extent of what had been Ahanu’s and was now Kesegowaase’s territory.  Even at such a rapid pace, it would be some days until we passed onto Mi’kmaq lands.

Etleloo had scoured this land since his mother first freshened with her new fiery pup.  The fog did nothing to dampen his familiarity of every rock, ravine, or long fallen tree.  In my more than ten years living with the Algonkin I had come to know the landscape too, but could never hope to have the intimate knowledge and extra sense of the place.  As such, Etleloo led our band of two angry warriors.  Warriors who should have been back in the village acting more like the elders we were expected to be, supporting our chief’s wishes and plowing our wives.

When I first decided to take the path of war for my Skjoldmo, I thought nothing of what lay before me.  The rolling anger was enough to compel my thoughts and then, of course, actions, just as it had been in my youth when someone would offer an offence, intended or not.  But now, trudging through the damp forest on this mission, I began to feel my aged fifty-five years.  I was still very fit, however now it was necessary to qualify that statement with, “for an old man.”  My limbs, shoulders, and chest were strong, but the wind left my chest more quickly than ever before.  I had lost some of the great muscular weight I carried in my youth.  Some of that loss was age and also perhaps the diet I kept since moving to the people.  My body, though always larger than theirs, was beginning to morph into the sinewy nature that defined the Beiuthook.

Etleloo, certainly not a speckled fawn, was the first to suggest a pause in our journey.  I think it was his bladder that forced him to stop, but I gathered silent pride from the fact that it was the younger man who cried for a break.  It was already late in the first day of travel and even though we could not see the sun, we knew from our progress that it was well past mid day.  After taking turns to piss in the woods, we sat down together to eat some of the little provisions we packed.  You should not think that we deprived ourselves too much.  Our portions were small, but I still smack my gums and teeth as I write this account when I think of what we ate.

I’ve told you we gathered sap from the maples and boiled it down to sweet syrup.  In years when the sap flowed freely we would have excess and would boil some of it down to a dry maple sugar.  Most families used the concentrated maple sugar within just a few months as they were unable to control their yearning for its taste.  Some, however, kept back small pots full for the bleak days of winter and some showed more strength and built veritable stores of the stuff for some unknown, future need.

Before leaving the night before, I bribed two of the youngest children in the village with the chance to hold my sword if they would pilfer from their parents’ sugar pots.  They did and Etleloo was pleased when he saw me pour some of the fragrant brown powder chunks into my wooden bowl.  I mixed in a little water and mashed it into a paste with the handle of my eating knife.  We shared the bounty together, both of us eating a little too rapidly to truly savor it.

We walked the rest of the day, not caring whether or not we followed the exact trail of the Fish clan.  Peering at the soggy ground or into a brush hoping to find one more sign would have slowed us down.  The journey was to be long enough and they already led us by a day’s path of the sun.  The trail to their particular village would be easy to find once we reached their territory.

By the time night came, the fog still had not lifted.  I was soaked through my clothing, through my skin, and to the bone.  My hair was wet, my clothes were wet, my beard dripped with every step.  I decided that walking through such fog must be what it would be like if I could walk through the clouds above, at least those that gave us rain.  My chain mail, worn, tattered in places and needing several days worth of scrubbing, was rolled tightly into my pack so it remained dry, perhaps the only item on my person not soaking.  I carried an unstrung bow in one hand, the other free to catch the swinging branches Etleloo thought it funny to occasionally send my way as he led.

We slept that night under the trunk and branches of a recently fallen pine which lay on a slight incline up from a bog.  The ground beneath it was only marginally drier than the surrounding earth and in the middle of the night I awoke from a sore spot in my back as I heard the water creaking and groaning its way out of the hillside.  The fog, at least, had cleared while we slept and the small light from the stars allowed me to watch a miniature stream slip downhill to my companion.  It carried with it a pine cone that bumped and turned as it careened off the exceptionally narrow creek’s sides.  Eventually it rested against Etleloo’s huddled form.  Etleloo didn’t care.  Rather, he only snored occasionally, currently at peace that his actions were and would be just.  Eventually, I fell back into an uncomfortable sleep.

Our travels seemed easier the next day even though we increased our care and vigilance as we approached the land of our foes from the recent war.  Soon we would be among the trees their fathers called their own, with each rock numbered by their Great Spirit rather than our Glooskap.