Norseman Chief (27 page)

Just ten years earlier I may have struck the man even though he was my chief.  I burned inside thinking of his words.  My daughter was the property of no one.  My daughter was to be independent and free.  Yet, I moved not a muscle, letting the internal fire extinguish itself by consuming all the fuel early.

“I see you have nothing to say!  Well, I do have much more to say!”  The chief’s voice climbed in volume enough that Rowtag had to softly suggest discretion in enemy territory.

“You are right, Rowtag.  I am letting this traitor get the best of me,” he said with more control.  “You have also seen to it that the ire of the Mi’kmaq at our back is again raised.  We have a band of their warriors tracking us this night.  It seems you’ve placed us both into the closing jaws of the Mi’kmaq!  The upper jaw is the Fish and the lower jaw is the Pohomoosh!”

“Did you meet them in battle?  In their territory, I mean,” I asked.

The chief sighed, crossing his arms while shaking his head back and forth.  “No.  We have spilled no blood.  The Pohomoosh came for us, but we outmaneuvered them so that I could enter their village and speak to their chief, Luntook.”

He let the information hang for a moment.  “I saw what they did to . . .” Kesegowaase looked at Makkito then with a jutting thumb indicated I should follow him.  Over his shoulder he said to Rowtag, “Find a place between here and where our scouts sit where we may do battle with these Fish.”  Without even acknowledging the command, Rowtag, moved off with a group of other men.  I was pleased to see Kesegowaase would not abandon us to the enemy.

“I saw what the Mi’kmaq did to Etleloo.  His body was barely recognizable, burnt, hanging between two trees with countless arrows poking from his skin.  But it was him; I saw part of his face and his tattoos.  Did you see this happen to him?”

“Yes and no.  He took an undeserved punishment so that I could continue on our quest to get our daughters.  I shot him with an arrow from my bow before the torture became too much to bear.  He would have been dead before the pyre was set.”

My chief considered this.  “You must have had no choice.  But Halldorr, I cannot allow this disobedience to go unpunished.  The chief of the Mi’kmaq tells me that you made a pact with him.  In my mind that is like trying to make a peace, something even you know is expressly forbidden.  If the council agrees with me upon our return, they will have no choice but to demand you be sacrificed to the spirits of the dead to atone for your evil.”  And then before I had a chance to speak, “Death in such a manner prevents you from reaching Glooskap, ever.”

At the time, I took his grave speech as a temporary victory, thinking that anything may happen between now and when the council decided my fate.  I may be killed in the coming battle or battles.  “It will be as you say, Kesegowaase.  And as every other time I have said those words, except for the most recent incident, I mean that it will be as you say.”

With sadness, my chief, my step-son nodded.  “I know it, old man.  I know you do what is best.  Now how do we beat our enemies this night?”

. . .

We sent two men with Makkito and Alsoomse down a winding river toward the sea.  The men floated or walked in the flowing water, still nearly freezing from the previous winter.  The girls sat on a simple raft made of two logs lashed together.  If we survived, we would meet the four of them at the mouth of the river in one day’s time.  If we did not survive what was to come, they were to make haste back to our people.

Parting from Alsoomse was nearly impossible for me.  I had just exhausted myself retrieving her and letting her go so quickly was difficult to accept.  Kesegowaase would have certainly allowed me the chance to go with my daughter.  I think he knew me to be honorable enough to return to our village for whatever punishment the council saw fit to demand.  Yet he never offered the choice and I never suggested it.  My place was on the field or in the forest of battle, where the thuds and cries make the rest of the world blur.

Alsoomse, my little Skjoldmo, hopped onto the log raft as if she went on an afternoon adventure in the safe confines of our village.  The girl showed no express concern, no worry, no sadness at leaving her father in the dark so that she could float away with only somewhat familiar young men.  I shook my head as I saw her large eyes in the dim moonlight.  The red hand print emblazoned across her face did nothing to reduce what I thought was a beautiful sight.  Her hair was tangled, a nest fit for a bird above the massive lump on her skull.  Beautiful.

It was Makkito who strangely had the most difficulty in parting company with me.  When she was told of the plan, the girl wrapped her arms tightly about my waist.  They were not long enough to go all the way around, and so she clutched my belt, her thumbs and fingers digging beneath the strap and into my skin.  She was wise enough not to scream or carry on with so many enemies skulking about, but she grunted and groaned when the two guides began tugging at her.  Soon her face was buried next to my belly and her feet were lifted right off the ground by the guides.  Understandably, one of them raised his arm to strike her.  A high, yet soft whine came from her then.

“Put her feet down lads.”  When they did so, I put my hand on her shoulder.  “Walk with me, Makkito.”

Kesegowaase, who was behind me, exasperated, said, “We don’t have time for chatting with silly girls.”

“There’s time,” I growled and he just waved me off.  He may have been right; time was likely short.

“I haven’t yet thanked you for being so strong and leading Alsoomse when you were captured,” I whispered lowly as we stepped away.

The girl’s throat caught and I heard her begin to suppress tears and perhaps a rapidly-building cry.  After just a few more paces, she answered, “I should thank her.  Your daughter acted more like a full grown man of sixteen or seventeen years old would have acted.  She was defiant when it was right.  She obeyed the Fish when it was right.  She comforted me after . . .”  The tears poured now.

I crouched down to talk with her face-to-face, waiting for a time to say something trite that would do no good, but was nonetheless expected in such a situation.  I was thankful when she continued, taking the burden of responding from me.  “Those men took turns entering my legs many of the nights.  Alsoomse was there afterward to hold my hand.”  I was shocked.  Not by the rape.  Rape happened all the time in war.  It was as common as blood and death, maybe it was because of those that the other happened.  But Makkito was just a girl.  Then for the first time, I noticed that her chest had become more full, her hips wider.  I had always thought of her as the young daughter of my friend and brother-in-arms.  No.  She was becoming a woman.  No.  Like it or not she became a woman when the Fish captured her and raped away her youth.

“Makkito,” I said, stalling for wisdom.  “Makkito, you will listen to me as you would listen to your father.”  She cried more.  “Makkito, you will cry for another thirty of your heartbeats, no more.  Those men, those Fish dogs are all dead.  You and I killed them as sure as if your own father cut them down.  Their blood feeds the earth so that new life may grow.  They offer nothing to fear.  Those Fish are not worth a moment of your thoughts.  They are as the ground on which you tread.  Gone.  Forgotten.  Our young men, honorable in every way, will take you to the mouth of this river.  You will be warm and safe.  You will have Alsoomse at your side.  Soon I will return and we all will be back in the mamateeks of our village, celebrating the death of a great warrior and the birth of a new woman.”

Unbelievably, by the time I finished my speech, the girl began to quietly sniff away the tears, standing a little taller.  I squeezed her shoulder.  “Now go.  We have some more Fish blood to spill this night.”  After giving Makkito a wink, her shadowed countenance improved, even beamed as only that of a young person can, quickly shifting from one emotion to the next.  She ran to the raft where she hopped aboard behind Alsoomse, hugging my little girl tightly.  Alsoomse reached her hands back up over her head and squeezed Makkito’s neck.  The guides nodded to those of us staying behind and pushed off down the river.

Kesegowaase wistfully watched them go.  “Two of my warriors gone as chaperones and we have yet to battle tonight.  All for two worthless girls.  All of this is for two girls as common as the needle on a pine.”

I chose to ignore him then, preferring to bring his mind back to the matter and battle that would soon be at hand.  “We still outnumber the Fish nearly two to one.  We have surprise.  None of them will make it home to their village.”

The first part was true, of course.  Simple counting told me that our thirty-three men outnumbered the eighteen or twenty Fish.  But it was not entirely true.  Kesegowaase’s scouts told him that nearly thirty Pohomoosh warriors hunted these very woods for us.  Should those two bands of Mi’kmaq cousins meet, we would be outnumbered deep into enemy territory.  Even if we miraculously fought first the Fish and then met the Pohomoosh, each and every loss from the first battle would be devastating.  Kesegowaase was correct.  The Mi’kmaq jaws were already beginning to pierce us with their sharp teeth as they rapidly closed around us.

And so even though Kesegowaase initially disagreed with my plan as being too dishonorable for his warriors because of its excessive use of trickery, he eventually acquiesced out of necessity.  Many of his warriors, Rowtag and Pajack included, gave an audible sigh of relief when the chief finally nodded his approval.

Every time, since I first drew my sword against another man with the intent to kill, I had always been at the sharpest end of the battle.  Not so, this night.  It shamed me, though no one else indicated that it should, but I was not yet recovered enough from my exertions to lead the initial leg of the attack.

No, it was the young brave son of Rowtag who led three other men out against the Pohomoosh.  It confused my mind to think that Rowtag was old enough to have a son who himself was now a man, having gone through the trials two years before.  I had supplied each member of the young man’s squad with several of the arrows I had lifted from the Fish scouts just hours earlier.  While it was true that each man had nuances to the way he made his arrows, it was even truer that within each clan or tribe, there were constants that anyone with just a season of experience could use to identify a Fish arrow from a Pohomoosh or from an Algonkin for that matter.  The basis of our plan lay in those identifiable differences.  We hoped that family resentment from generations past may resurface this very night and cause the Mi’kmaq defeat and our victory.

We waited in that narrow river valley as the night wore on.  Our skirmishing forces controlled the timing, which was everything.  I realized my thumb tapped nervously against the scarred wound on my left leg, anxious to be put to work.  My mind turned and turned while I wondered about the success or failure the young men had on their missions.  When Rowtag turned an eye to me, silently reprimanding my novice actions, I changed to alternatively gripping and releasing my fist, tightening and relaxing.

The night began to grow darker even though the morning could not be far off.  Clouds had begun to roll in, stifling out the distant moon and stars.  The dark would improve our chances of success, and so I thanked the One God.  I heard a man to my left whisper his thanks to Glooskap for the break.

Crashing, popping, cracking came then.  I heard rapid footfalls making a line directly toward us.  A single hoot told us not to cut them down when they fell into formation with us, crouching in the brush.  The panting young men smiled next to me.  Their leader looked past me and nodded to Kesegowaase, “The Fish have taken the bait.”

Kesegowaase nodded abruptly then looked expectantly across the river hoping to hear the same racket from Rowtag the Younger’s troops.  He was not pleased, because it did not come.

It was then that the entire forest fell silent.  Rarely is the forest silent.  There are some men in the towns of Europe who don’t know a true forest.  They believe that at the fall of the sun, all of the wood goes to sleep along with man, making the earth still as a corpse.  Not so.  Even at its quietest, some segonku is making trouble somewhere or an owl’s wings flutter, nearly noiselessly, but not precisely noiselessly, as it adjusts its flight to fall upon prey on the floor below.  There are always sounds.  There are always sounds, except for when men are about.

We knew they were there.  They would know we were here.  The forest was dead, quiet beyond nature.  The Fish were descending the slope, hoping to bring death to us.  I could not hear them, but they came.

It was then that Kesegowaase looked to me with uncertainty.  He had led his people valiantly in battle many times since becoming their chief.  The man had chosen wisely countless times when situations required his judgment around the council fire.  But that night, when the moments slipped through our fingers as we waited for our perfectly timed trap to snap, his heart was stabbed with uncertainty.  I do not fault him, but a chief should not exhibit such conduct, ever.  Rowtag noticed, but turned away, pretending not to see.