Norseman Chief (35 page)

“But that is impossible. . .” I attempted to interrupt again.

Hurit, my woman, cut me off, holding her needle of bone to my cheek.  “Husband, the tale is better without your mutterings.  Allow it to be told.”  The large assemblage chuckled while I waived a hand for them to continue.

Once the half-breed traitor gave Alsoomse all she needed, the woman told Nandawaatoo to run to our warriors now waiting in the central lands and bring them to the lake.

Standing over the sputtering Chansomps, Rowtag asked, “What are the two of us to do now?”

“We go save our people.”

“And him?” Rowtag asked, pointing down at the writhing fool.

“We won’t drag him with us to be properly tortured in the village.  Just treat him as the enemy and add his scalp to your belt.”

Rowtag nodded.  “It is right to scalp him, but it should hang from your belt.”

And Rowtag did the work.  He had never taken such pleasure peeling away an enemy’s skin and hair as that day.  Chansomps fought and pled, he screamed and bled.  The whole scalping took a mere moment, but soon Rowtag held the bloody mess out to my daughter.  She snatched it, immediately tying it to her belt.  Bits of bloody flesh dangled down onto her leg which she ignored as if it were her own clothing brushing against her.

Then the two of them ran south to the lake, leaving Chansomps to slowly die in the dirt, whimpering with the knowledge that he would see neither our Glooskap nor the Mi’kmaq Great Spirit for a traitor, once found, dies in dishonor.

. . .

I sat there that cold winter day as if I myself were the One-eyed god, Odin.  No one told me anything about the condition of my eye beneath its bandage, but I suspected that it was forever gone.  I lived far longer than I ever suspected I would.  Why not heap injury upon injury in my waning days.  It would be fitting to at least die from or with horrific scars as evidence of a full life than in the safety and quiet of sleep with not a blemish upon my flesh.

The tale of battle continued.  It was a first for me because it was a battle in which I fought not.  It is the way for most leaders I suppose.  At some point every jarl, chief, or king must step aside from war in order to better direct his empire.  My third father Olaf never understood this fact.  He fought on like he was nothing more than a warlord even after becoming a king.  That trait made his men love him all the more.  It made them serve and willingly die for him, but ultimately led to his ruin.  I had led these, my new people, in a likewise manner, spilling the blood of our enemies long after I should have retired to the mamateek with a pipe and a warm woman.  Yet while the scouting, tracking, and killing raged in those days, when I was lugged back to the village, I did fight my own war so to speak.  I fought against my broken body’s desire to turn back to the earth.

Torleik had seen me brought on the litter back to the village where he gave up the direction of my care to Hassun with eager relief.  However, the stern warning by Alsoomse regarding his walnuts echoed in his mind and he stayed with me night and day while the shaman performed his work.  It was that warning and his sense of duty that saved my life.

After the four men who carried me had conveyed the news of our latest victory, energizing the community with pride, they struck back out to join their brethren to protect against the Mi’kmaq onslaught.  That left only a few dozen old men and boys behind should Luntook have been successful in surprising us at home.  As has been said thus far, though, Alsoomse, my Skjoldmo, saw to it that the Pohomoosh would require a generation to recover their ranks to a number sufficient to threaten us.

Achak, with regret, watched the four men run off.  “I’d like to be young enough to run with them,” he told Hassun who stood there watching the warriors melt away.

“There are things to accomplish in the village too,” answered Hassun.  “Not all glory comes from battle.  Not all leaders must carry an axe.”

“So says one who, like a woman, has been kept in the circle of homes most of his life.”

The truth stung Hassun as he angrily turned, ducking into the mamateek where I lay, Torleik at my side.  The arrow had come out only moments earlier.  Torleik had grown frustrated that Hassun seemed intent on delay so the priest took his steel eating knife, heated it in the fire, and used it to carefully slice away my flesh.  After he made an X-shaped cut in my skin he placed one palm on my belly so that his index finger and thumb straddled the projecting arrow.  Torleik firmly grasped the stem with his other hand and with surprising gentleness, worked the arrow slowly out the way it had gone in.  He says I incoherently grunted as a constipated babe as the arrow head emerged, stretching my skin.

Torleik looked up at Hassun entering the door.  “A weak draw or a weak bow or a weak warrior, I don’t know which.  The arrow was not that deep.  It came out easier than I thought.”

Hassun, still turning on Achak’s slight, scolded, “What do you know, priest?  His innards are probably pierced well enough so that even now his own shit devours him from the inside out.  But I wouldn’t expect you to understand this.”  Hassun moved quickly to where Torleik knelt.  “Now out of my way so that I may work.  I understand you mean to remain here to watch.  That is fine with me.  Just stay out of my way.”

Torleik did just that.  Initially, he says now, he wanted to claw the shaman’s eyes out for speaking to him in such a manner, but he deferred in the interest of my life.  It may have been better if he just followed his first instinct.

Hassun scrambled around his hut, occupied with the business of medicine making.  He gathered roots, dried herbs, seeds, leafs, and the like to make up the pharmaceutical blends he had learned from Nootau.  Torleik looked on stupidly, not knowing what to do or say.  “Yarrow,” Hassun huffed while compressing a bundle of dried herbs into a poultice.  “It stops the bleeding.  He’ll probably still die and be in the hillside in a few days, but we must do what we must.”

“I’ve seen you use yarrow for wounds before.  That looks different than what I recall.”

“What do you know?”

“He’ll know.  It looks different.  I know that much.”

“It is different you fool.  It’s a different variety.  Better for the belly.”  Torleik nodded, satisfied with the answer.

It went much the same way for several days.  Hassun applied more and more balm, oils, or medicine.  He performed the rituals handed down by whoever the first medicine man had been.  Torleik reports that his chant was piercing to the eardrums and went on constantly with only occasional breaks so the healer could relieve his bladder.  Torleik looked on and prayed to the One God that I be healed.  Hurit fretted.  She along with the other women of the village lugged water and stoked cooking fires with charcoal scratched across their faces.

None of their work helped.  My wound slowly bled me to death so that I was paler than my fair skin usually was following the long winter.  My heart raced.  I know I died, but as I’ve said and as you know I was resurrected.

CHAPTER 15

Alsoomse and Rowtag lay on their bellies watching the multitudes scattered about the northern rocky coast of the great Pitupok Lake.  I would have called the lake a massive fjord as it was a mix of fresh and salt waters that connected naturally to the great sea beyond by way of wide channels.  My new people and the Mi’kmaq both called it a lake, though the name Pitupok meant roughly “long salt water.”

Massive numbers of men – too many to count – sat about waiting for word to leap into their birch bark canoes and paddle to my village in order to settle the long-running dispute once and for all.  Alsoomse counted nearly one hundred canoes littering the coastline of the two-arm harbor, made all the safer by a low island only five hundred ells off shore.  I had looked on the spot before, for it lay in my territory, and thought about the massive fleet of men and longboats that could someday hide there should my first people ever choose to return.

One hundred canoes meant that there were perhaps three or four hundred warriors ready to begin a reign of terror to claim or reclaim – which I never asked – the land over which I ruled.  These were massive numbers of men for this world and merki beyond.  Four hundred was a small force if it attempted to carry out battle in the English countryside.  But here, according to legend, it may have approached the single largest force ever assembled.

My daughter and Rowtag had slipped past at least two sentries on their approach and so were deep within the potential clutches of the Mi’kmaq.  They said nothing to one another so as not to give away their position, which seemed unnoticed by the enemy.  Instead they watched in calm horror as Rowtag’s son, Taregan, the one-time, would-be suitor to Alsoomse was tortured there on the rocks of the shingle.

He was forced to kneel with his bare knees on those rocks.  Taregan’s hands were bound straight back to his ankles behind him while two Pohomoosh warriors held fistfuls of his shock of hair on his otherwise shaved head.  The two tormentors had stooped Taregan forward so all his weight was suspended between his knees and his hair.  As if that were not repulsive enough other Mi’kmaq warriors took turns striking his back and shoulders.  Each blow brought a resounding thud up to our spies’ ears.  Each blow made my daughter grind her teeth all the more in a fit of unleashed rage.  Rowtag, as I would have expected, looked on with the stoicism expected from the leaders of his people.

Like my friend Etleloo did years ago while being tortured by these very dogs, Taregan sang a song to his ancestors.  It was somber, but honorable.  His back was badly bruised.  Several ribs had to be broken.  Eventually, his words were interrupted with gushes of blood-filled coughing.  Taregan fully expected to die as one of his men had done sometime earlier.  That man’s lifeless body lay mottled, blue, and stiff at the lake’s edge, the peaceful waves lapping at his feet as if the mark of true evil did not occur right in its midst.

The spies sidled back to a dense copse of trees and brush where they could form a plan unheard by scouts.  Rowtag, despite his son’s pending doom, proposed the logical course of action, “We must meet with our men coming south.  It is likely best that we should flee with them to evacuate the village.”

“You will go to the men,” answered Alsoomse, “and lead them to this place.”

“Alone?  What will you do?”

“I will rescue the prisoners so they are not killed in the early moments of our attack.”

“Alsoomse, you have led ably thus far.  But in this I cannot agree.  You have seen their numbers and you know our numbers.  We must protect our families back in the mamateeks.”

“Protect them to what end?  It is clear that Luntook is in league with Pajack.  Pajack will claim to be chief if my father dies.  He will claim an everlasting peace with the Mi’kmaq and our own council will likely agree for who wants to see their sons killed and women taken captive?  But such a peace will mean that we are under the foot of the Pohomoosh, the Fish, and all the other Mi’kmaq.  That is not the way of our people.”

Rowtag’s nostrils flared as his anger flashed at the truth she spoke.  He didn’t require much convincing.  “But you will alert them to our presence if you rescue the prisoners.  Surprise will be lost.”

“They will not know I came or left.  When I return to the ford in the Pitupok creek with our rescued men, we will turn back around and attack these women.”

He smiled, shaking his head.  “You use the word women like it is a curse, yet you are one.”

“Ha!  I lug my share of water, but won’t be under a man anytime soon.  Now go and bring our men to the ford.”

“With this ‘ha’ you sound like your father,” answered Rowtag as he stood to go.  “Fairer though,” he added.

“Such a predictable man, speaking flowery talk, when he should be halfway to our men.  Now go.”

With another smile, off he ran.

. . .

Night had fallen dark and crisp enough to make your hair stand erect.  Freyastjarna was bright in the sky at that time and her light along with a waxing moon was more than enough for Skjoldmo to work her rescue.

The Mi’kmaq were reckless in boldness.  They sat on my territory – the territory I had inherited from my stepson Kesegowaase – the territory he had inherited from his grandfather Ahanu.  But the oily segonku flaunted their trespassing by building several blazing fires on the shingle, dancing around them as they prepared for war.

Alsoomse slunk like a crafty fox to the very edge of cover so that she could hear the murmuring of the three guards unlucky enough to watch the prisoners still painfully bound in a manner like Taregan.  My daughter did not know if the son of Rowtag still breathed, but the other two Algonkin flexed and relaxed their fists occasionally to keep blood flowing.

Skjoldmo painstakingly unsheathed three arrows.  The first was sunk into the ground head first so that it stood at attention ready for her command.  The second shaft found itself clasped softly between her lips.  The third arrow was set across the belly of her bow with extreme caution so that its wood did not clang a warning to the guards.

“This Beiuthook woman, Pajack is a fool if he thinks Luntook will let him rule the peninsula once the stranger is killed,” mumbled one of the guards to no one in particular.

“You’re the woman, for talking out of turn about events you don’t understand,” said another.

The first responded, “I am man enough to know that none of us are invited to join in the council fires.  We are stuck standing watch over these stranded fish as they gasp for air on land.”  He kicked one of the captives who grunted out a curse.

A cheer rang from one of the fires and Alsoomse used the noise as cover to act.  In one motion, more fluid than water sluicing through a warn-smooth crevice on its way to the sea, she rose, leveling the drawn bow at the nearest guard.  Her head tipped sideways for the cord to clear the arrow in her mouth and the first missile was launched.  It had barely touched her first victim before the arrow from her lips smacked onto the bow, only to be released at the second guard.

The first guard’s body collapsed onto the prisoners with a slump just as the third guard shouted the words of alarm.  It was all too late, however.  The one or two words he managed to call out were swallowed up by the sounds of pre-war celebration when the puffery of men is at its greatest and sometimes their sense is at its least.  Alsoomse’s third arrow, the arrow she swiped from the earth, buried itself in the back of the man’s open mouth, silencing him forever.

Cautious haste was paramount.  Alsoomse strode confidently toward the blood and carnage so that if anyone looked from a distance they would not see the skulking of an enemy.  She was surprised and delighted to see the badly injured Taregan still breathing and conscious.  All three men were rapidly cut free, with the fourth left to his eternal rest on the on the rocks.

“Stand.  Up.  Up,” my daughter hissed at the men.  “Stop stretching like you just awoke.  Even in the darkness, a child could tell you are not a guard if you act in such a way.”

“Where are our men?” one of our people asked.

“I am as much a man as you get.  If you don’t like it, I can return you to your prison.  Now stand still and look strong in the night while I do my work.”

Alsoomse hacked and pulled out her arrows from the dead bleeding men there on the beach.  With expert skill that comes from years of knotting and re-knotting the works of woman, she tied the dead guards in the same manner her people had been held.  She hastily smeared their faces with red ochre which she carried in her sack.  The last touch to complete her ruse was to bring a heavy rock down once or twice on the men’s faces.

“What are you doing?” mumbled Taregan who stood, wavering from one foot to the next as if he would fall at any moment.

“Giving them what they expect to see.”  Alsoomse rose and confidently walked the way she had come, waving for the others to follow her.  “Their eyes will see the dead men with their red faces.  The Mi’kmaq dogs will think the guards killed you three.  It only needs to work for a short time.”

. . .

Rowtag had embraced his son when they met at the stream’s ford.  The young man winced from the touch, but Rowtag ignored him, having thought only minutes before that his son’s death would have to be avenged.  A single nod to Alsoomse said more than a host of well-thought words could ever have meant.

Now the whole army of Algonkin, my second people, made great haste to the shores of Pitupok.  The four men who had carried me back to the village had rejoined the ranks.  My men in the field took heart at the litter-bearers’ report that I remained alive when they left me in Hassun’s care.  Two Mi’kmaq sentries were cut down attempting to warn Luntook of my warriors’ approach.  Their scalps were taken, by whom I do not know.

My daughter led a force of sixty men altogether, each of them except Taregan, fit and prepared for battle.  Despite his wounds and the pain he carried with him, young Taregan ran alongside his father and my daughter.  He did not have time to sulk at the creek or to run to the shaman for aid.  Instead he lifted a borrowed axe from his belt to strip away several handfuls of the bark of a black birch tree that grew along the line of their rapid march.  He had no time to soak the bark in hot water or to then sip at his weak brew to receive its analgesic power.  Taregan did have time to stuff two handfuls of the sweet bark between his cheeks and gums.  I had seen Hassun concoct the brew when the old men complained of joint pain, but did not know if sucking or eating the bark would have the same effect.  It worked well enough, I suppose, for its relief carried Taregan to battle that day.

It was going to be a sun-filled day, cool but with a sky of pale blue.  The Mi’kmaq would have already found the dead men scattered upon the rocks at the water’s edge.  My daughter did not know if they took the time to note that it was actually their own men with crushed faces and Pohomoosh tattoos.  Such information would have been handy to know in advance, but there was no way to get it.

If Luntook, the wily old chief of our adversaries, knew it was his men who bled on the beach, then he would be alerted that his enemy was near and Alsoomse’s hope of surprise was dashed.  Otherwise, he may think that some of his warriors or those of the Fish or even Skin Dressers had enough of my people bound on the rocks and struck them down.  Then the fear or guilt of the executioners would have gotten the best of them and they fled – improbable, but possible nonetheless.

I suppose it doesn’t matter.  My daughter fought much like my adopted father Erik would have fought – heavy on the headlong, light on the foresight.  She led her men into that fight with abandon, the last one hundred strides was the only planning or instruction my warriors received.  It amounted to her shrill war cries demanding that each Mi’kmaq traipsing on her father’s land be gutted on the spot.

I have talked to all of the participants who survived that great battle.  They say that Alsoomse surprised the lazy, slumbering Mi’kmaq.  Rowtag, running at my daughter’s left side says that at a full run, Alsoomse brought down three of the vile creatures with perfectly directed arrows.  When she was within five paces of the first scattered line of infected pus, Alsoomse discarded her bow, not suited for close quarters’ combat, in favor of an axe in one hand and a narrow wooden club capped with a heavy stone in the other.

Her long, strong legs pounded her broad feet into the ground, pulling her ahead of Rowtag and the others.  Confused Fish were killed or gravely wounded with split skulls as her pace quickened.  Taregan and Rowtag were inspired by her killing – they’ve told me this very thing – and cut down many men.

Without knowing a single verse of education from large military engagements my daughter led her smaller force perfectly against the shocked Mi’kmaq.  She started at one end of the shingle and like a shipwright uses a plane to scrape a thin section of wood from a plank, she moved her force southwest down the rock-strewn coast knocking men down in turn.  Had she attacked at the enemy center, their wings would have easily enveloped our men and crushed them until the shores were painted red with our blood.