Viking's Sunset

by Henry Treece

  Wawasha climbed over the side of the longship and gazed down at the dead red man.

  ‘That is War Eagle,’ he said. ‘He was the greatest of all the Algonkin chieftains. Once he was my father’s young friend, until they quarrelled over a squaw. Then they swore to kill each other. But my father, Gichita, still loved him, and would be hurt to the heart to know that War Eagle had died on your ship, from which his spirit may not rise to the Last Hunting Grounds. We must not tell him, for he has troubles enough.’

  Then Wawasha bent and touched the Algonkin first on the right cheek, then on the left; then on the right breast, then on the left. And at last he knelt before the dead War Eagle and spoke softly to him, so that no one could hear, closing his proud eagle’s eyes with gentle fingers.

  And when he had done that, the Vikings stripped the Algonkin of his fine clothes and then tied a piece of iron to his feet. They heaved him over the side of Long Snake, away from the canoe of Gichita, so that the old man should not be further troubled in his mind.

  Later that day, they made a funeral pyre on the shore, beneath the heavy green boughs of the spruce trees, and so sent the dead Vikings to Valhalla. The red men put their dead into the branches of the trees, seeing that each man’s weapon lay across his lap, so that he should awake, ready for battle or hunting, when he came to the journey’s end.

  And that day, when the sun stood at its highest point in the blue sky, Gichita commanded that his son, Wawasha, should take Harald and Grummoch as his true blood-brothers.

  A slit was made in the arm of each man by the medicine man, who bore bison horns on his headdress for the occasion, and their blood was intermingled as it flowed, so that some of Wawasha’s seemed to enter the wounds of Harald and Grummoch. Then, holding hands, they were all three laid in a shallow trench, which the braves had dug in the soft ground above the shore; and then the turfs were lightly placed above them, so that they could not be seen.

  This was the sign that as brothers they must live, and as brothers go into the earth together at the last call.

  And when this was done, the Beothuk sang songs and danced, to the high wailing of the bone flute and the deep throbbing of the skin drum.

  Only Heome showed no gladness, but sat alone among the squaws and the children, pale-faced and glowering.

  19

  The Lakes of the Gods

  Then came a long season of labour. Sometimes, to avoid the rushing, buffeting river, the red men took little streams that ran slower and curled round among overhanging tree-boughs. Once a creature like a great cat leapt down into a canoe, upsetting the braves into the water. They swam around the cat and struck it with tomahawks until it no longer showed its teeth at them or at anyone. The squaws and children in the other boats clapped their hands and laughed at this, and each cried out for the great skin to wear as a robe.

  At other times they were faced by a wall of rock, down which the water thundered, white as ice; and then they had to pull ashore and carry their canoes on their shoulders up the slope and away from the waterfall. These were the hard times, for Long Snake was a mite too heavy to be hoisted upon shoulders and carried! It was then that the braves cut down tree trunks and made rollers to go under the longship, and so, tugging on hide ropes, all the men and women helped the Vikings to drag Long Snake up to the higher reaches of the river.

  ‘We have known such portages in Russia,’ said Harald. ‘There was one such when we came back from Miklagard in the ships of Haakon Baconfat.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Grummoch, shielding his eyes and gazing at the immensely high wall of rock down which the river-water gushed. ‘But it was not such a portage as this. There cannot be such another portage as this in all the world!’

  But they got to the top in the end, hands chafed raw, backs almost breaking, the blood singing in their heads. And at the top they made camp for that night, too tired to go any further up the great river.

  Once, when they were resting so, at the edge of a pine-wood, the women tapping quietly on small skin drums while the older children danced about the fires, Heome leaped up and began to wave his arms about, his pale face bitter with anger.

  ‘Why is it, my father,’ he asked old Gichita, ‘that these white strangers of the long wooden boat sit beside you and my brother Wawasha, at the fire, while I am given a place among the children? Have I not proved that I am a man, like the others?’

  Gichita smiled sadly, his yellow face wrinkling in the firelight, and said gently, ‘Heome, my son, I cannot overthrow the customs of our people by asking for what I desire or for what you desire. All men of the tribe know that I love both my sons with an equal love, as a father should. I care not if one is big and strong, the other small and weak. Among the bear folk the great father plays with the crippled cub just as he plays with the strong ones, who may grow to overthrow him one day.’

  Heome said bitterly, in the firelight, ‘Might not the crippled one overthrow him, too, by tricks the old bear did not think of?’

  But Gichita, whose legs were troubling him, spoke on in some pain and said, ‘It is true that you brought back a wolf which you killed in the forests near our home-place; but since then, we have met the Algonkin and the Abnaki, and men have said that then you did not act like a warrior, like the son of a chieftain. They say that while they were fighting, you lay among the deerhides in the boat, covering your face with your blanket, as though you were not there. That is why you sit where you do, about the fire; and there is nothing I can do, Heome, until your chance comes again to prove yourself. Then, my son, you too shall sit beside me with the others; and you, too, shall take the oath of blood-brotherhood with the great white warriors here, and shall lie with them under the turf.’

  Heome gave a high shrill cry and said, ‘I would rather die, Gichita, than stoop to claim brotherhood with these strangers, who are white wolves and nothing more … white wolves who come with us for what they can get, not from any love of our people!’

  Harald and Grummoch sat silent at the fire, staring at Heome, who would not meet their eyes; but others of the Vikings were not so calm. Some said that they had lost good men, fighting a battle which was none of their business. Others said that if they had had their way, Long Snake would now be halfway home to the Northland.

  But in the end Wawasha quietened them all by getting up and performing the Eagle Dance, spreading his arms wide, making a wide and leaping circle, as though the bird he represented was hovering above the fire, and all the time calling out, ‘Ku-e-e-e!’

  The women about the far fires took up this call – ‘Ku-e-e-e! Ku-e-e-e!’ until the woodlands echoed and re-echoed with the sound.

  Then, as the drumsticks of green ash and hickory pattered out the delicate cross-beats of this dance, Wawasha stopped, poised high on his toes, raised his arms, quivering, as though they were truly wings, and let his fingertips touch lightly above his head.

  In the dead silence of the climax of this dance, Heome rose and spat into the fire, contemptuously.

  But no one regarded him, their eyes were fixed on the young warrior who would one day become their chieftain.

  Suddenly, when Wawasha was at his full height, the drums beat out a loud and concerted twang! as though a gigantic bowstring had been released.

  Then, in the silence which followed, Wawasha gave a high scream, ‘Ku-e-e-e-ok!’, fluttered wildly in a circle, always sinking lower and lower towards the ground as he moved round the fires, until at length he fell to the turf, one wing still beating in spasms.

  At last this arm sank, too, and the drumming became softer and softer, until it was little more than a whisper, dying away with the dying of the bird.

  The women’s eyes glistened with tears. The children crept closer to them, snuggling their heads within the buckskin blouses of their mothers. Only the braves still stared at the motionless figure of Wawasha, their copper faces blank and impassive, expressing their admiration by silence.

  Gichita bowed his old head and spoke a prayer to the Eagle
God:

  ‘Thunderbirdman! O Thunderbirdman!

  We worship you!

  We of the Beothuk look to you for aid!

  See that we journey well, O Thunderbirdman!

  See that we reach our cooking-place safely!

  That is all we ask, O Thunderbirdman!’

  Then Wawasha rose and went to his father, smiling.

  ‘Did the dance go well, Father Gichita?’ he asked.

  The old man nodded. ‘It went well, my son,’ he said. ‘I feel in my heart now that we shall live to see the Great Lakes and the sacred stone quarries!’

  But Harald whispered to Grummoch, ‘I should feel happier if that mad wolf, Heome, were tied up safely with a chain about his neck, so that we could always know what he was up to. Last night I dreamed that he was standing on the waters of the river, speaking with the Shield-maiden who once came to visit me out of the mist, after I left Havlock Ingolfson to drown on the rocky skerry in the mist. In my dream, it seemed that Heome and the Shield-maiden came to some agreement for they took each other by the hand, and smiled a great deal. The strange thing is that Heome’s crippled hand seemed to come alive again, to have movement in its fingers, as he reached forth to clasp the white hand of the Shield-maiden.’

  Grummoch said, ‘Dreams are not always to be trusted. I once dreamed I had a new sword and axe, studded with rubies from Miklagard. I tell you, those weapons were as clear to my mind as anything I have ever seen. Even in my dream, I felt that if I touched them on the edge, they would cut my hand. Yet, what happened? When I awoke and felt under my bench, where they were supposed to lie – they were not there! Nor have I ever been given them! Nay, Harald, dreams are not to be trusted. Think no more of Heome the Wolf. If he becomes too dangerous, I will suggest to Knud Ulfson, the berserk, that he takes friend Heome into the woods and shows him the path to Valhalla – with a little knife. No doubt, it would be a task which Knud would enjoy, for he thinks of little else but that sort of thing. We cannot get him to row or to pull on ropes! He should do something for his living!’

  Harald turned away without answering, for he felt that it would ill become a fighter like Knud Ulfson to kill the crippled son of Gichita, however venomous he became.

  However, Knud Ulfson was put to another task the next day, which was greatly to his taste, and which came as a complete surprise to him and to everyone else.

  He was out strolling through the woods alongside the river, when all others were rowing upstream, when a red man dropped out of a tree and struck at him with a war-club.

  Now Knud Ulfson was not a man to refuse battle to anyone, so he let the club sweep over his bent back, and then he kicked the red man’s feet from under him.

  What he did with his axe then, neither he nor anyone else recalled. The red man who lay at his feet never knew, anyway.

  And when Knud had sung a little song about his own skill as a warrior, he stripped the brave of his headdress and buckskin waistcoat embroidered with red and yellow beads, and then put them on, for he liked finery, having so long lived a pretty poor life on this long voyage.

  When at length he caught up with Long Snake, which was fighting against the swirling waters of the rapids, many of the Vikings cried out that here was a white-skinned red man – until they saw his long yellow plaits and recognized him.

  Wawasha smiled grimly and said, ‘You wear the clothes of a chieftain’s son. That is Oneida beadwork. It is very pretty.’

  Knud Ulfson preened himself and shook out his great feathered headdress, then answered, ‘The man who wore them did not deserve them. Who wears such finery should fight with more skill.’

  Nor would he say more than that. But Wawasha said to Harald, ‘If your man has killed a son of the Oneida, then we had best move swiftly, for they are a revengeful people, and will not sit by their fires singing peace songs when once they know what has happened.’

  After that Long Snake and all the canoes went forward, by day and by night, until they thought they were out of Oneida territory.

  Once, however, they were forced to rest the night, in a little basin, overhung by spruce trees, for Gichita’s right leg had swollen badly and was red and inflamed. An old woman of the Beothuk, who had great art in dressing wounds, said that the swelling would not go down unless Gichita lay the whole of one night with the skin of the green snake wrapped about his leg.

  Though the old man shook his head and said that he did not wish to hold up the journey, especially in such a perilous place, the young braves refused for once to obey him and laid down their paddles. Some of them went off into the woods and after much searching came back with three little green snakes, which were skinned that night and the skins bound round the wound while they still held their moisture.

  That night a party of red men wearing heavy bearskin robes came down to the basin and sat beside the canoes, their war-axes ready on their knees, their faces flat and motionless, their dark eyes like slits in a deerhide.

  And when Wawasha awoke and looked around for the guards he had placed about the camp, the leader of the men in bearskins said, ‘Do not blame your guards, friend. We crept upon them and tied them to trees. They are not harmed, nor will you be harmed, if you are men of sense.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Wawasha. ‘I do not know your language, yet I understand a word here and there.’

  The other said, ‘We are Swamp Cree, my friend, and have lost our tracks through this woodland. To us, every tree seems like its fellow. We are not used to wandering through forests.’

  Wawasha nodded. ‘What do you want, men of the Swamp Cree?’

  The man said, ‘We want to go to the pipestone quarries beside the Big Lake, but we do not know the way. Our way lies further north and we have lost it. Let us travel with you, and all will be well.’

  Wawasha said, ‘It is not wise to speak threateningly to us Beothuk, my friend. We have gods travelling with us in their great ship of wood. If they woke and heard you speak too proudly, they might decide to lessen you in height by the length of a head, or in number by a few dozen.’

  The Swamp Cree gazed back at Wawasha, their lips drawn down in a smile of disbelief. Wawasha whistled three times then, and Grummoch, who was a light sleeper, leaped on shore and strode to where the Swamp Cree squatted, their axes across their knees.

  He stood the height of a man and half a man, and was as broad as three men. He wore an iron helmet, at the sides of which sprouted out the black horns of a bull. About his body he wore a rusty iron hauberk. His axe was so heavy that few men could swing it.

  And when Grummoch strode among them, the Swamp Cree drew back, gasping, though too brave to show fear.

  Grummoch said, ‘What! Have the bears come to break their fast with us, or on us, Wawasha, my brother?’

  Wawasha said, for all to hear, ‘It is for them to decide. If they choose the first, there is deer-meat for them; if they choose the second, there is death.’

  Grummoch nodded lazily, and began to swing his great axe, Death Kiss, in the pale dawn air, as though this were a matter of little importance. The axe made a whistling sound as it swung and the Swamp Cree watched with admiration.

  At last their chief said, smiling wryly, ‘This fellow is not one I would care to offend, unless I had my ten brothers with me!’

  Grummoch stopped swinging his axe and said, ‘I beg you, go and fetch your ten brothers. I will sit here on this stone until they come. I do not run away from a challenge.’

  But the Swamp Cree shook his grizzled head and answered, ‘In the north, we are a great folk, and are respected by all, even by the Big Innuit. We wish to remain so, which might not be if we had the ill luck to let your axe fall on our necks too often. Look you, white god, let us travel with you, and we will fight with you if the need arises. Is that a bargain?’

  Wawasha nodded, so Grummoch agreed, too, for in truth he had not wanted to fight so early in the morning, before he had eaten his breakfast.

  Then Harald and the other Vikings came a
nd sat down with the Beothuk and the Swamp Cree, about a great fire, while Gichita watched, smiling, for his swelling had now gone down and his leg had lost its redness, just as the old woman had promised.

  Then the chief of the Swamp Cree took from his inner tunic a long hollow rod of black wood, to the end of which he fitted a carved red stone bowl. And into this bowl he sifted grains and shreds of a dried herb. And when this was done, he set fire to the herb and sucked at the black rod of wood. Smoke came out of his mouth.

  Knud Ulfson said, ‘By Thor, but this is strange magic! Never have I seen smoke in a man’s mouth before. Does it not burn his inner cheeks, Wawasha?’

  Wawasha said, ‘No man has been burned by it yet. Though it is not a custom my folk are given to. Yet they blow the smoke out of their mouths when they are required to do so by other tribes who use the pipe; for it is a sign of peace.’

  Then the chief of the Swamp Cree passed the smoking pipe to Grummoch and signed that he should do as he had already done.

  The giant gave a great suck at the hollow rod, and then began to cough as though he would die, for he had forgotten to blow out the smoke and had swallowed it, as he would have done a draught of mead.

  Now all the red men laughed, and one of the Swamp Cree even dared to go forward and slap Grummoch on the back. Though he made a wry face as he did so, for Grummoch’s back in its iron coat was as hard as a barn door made of solid oak.

  So, among laughter, the pipe was passed back and forth among the leaders. Knud Ulfson took it and blew out the longest stream of all.

  ‘This is child’s play,’ he shouted. ‘Why, I dare eat the pipe, fire and all!’

  But Harald stopped him with a black look, for the berserk was liable to do anything he said he would, regardless of the wisdom or foolishness of his promise.

  At last the pipe went back into the robe of the leader of the Swamp Cree, whose name was Lanook; and so the two parties of red men travelled as one from that time, the Beothuk and the Swamp Cree.