Tindr could not know that red stags in rut roar, bellowing through the forest to call a ready hind. He had sometimes seen them stretch their necks, open-mouthed, but could not imagine the sound. Hunters would harken to the call and begin their tracking. On that third and foggy morning, no stag sounded. But Tindr saw one, moving with lifted head through the hazels on the far border of the glade. The antlers that crowned that head were massive, many-pronged and reaching. Tindr reached out and touched his uncle's arm. Rapp turned his head, saw the prize stag, a true hart, one of five or more years of age. Tindr tore his own eyes away from it long enough to look at Rapp's face. Ragnfast stood at his father's elbow, eyes wide as well at the mighty deer. Tindr allowed himself one small gesture, his hand to his own ear. Rapp wondered if an arrow pulled by that slight frame could bear power enough to kill the beast. But he could not deny him; Tindr had seen him first. He nodded.
Tindr set arrow to his bow and raised it. The hart had moved a few paces further off, lowered its head, again lifted it. It turned its chiselled head toward where Tindr stood with his uncle and cousin. The muscled neck, ruffed at the throat with a mane, turned in profile to him, the chest and barrel open to his arrow, as if the hart were his own drawing on his target boards come to life. Lady, give me him, Tindr prayed. He had held his breath as he drew back his elbow, and heard the low humming, a kind of soughing, in his ears, a sound he heard at still-times, falling to sleep, or standing in snow. Lady, give me him.
His draw-hand reached his cheek; he let fly the arrow. Tindr could not hear it whistle, nor the low thwack of impact as it pierced the chest just behind the front leg. He saw the upward jolt the hart made, the mighty rack of horn lift a final time, the front legs crumple.
He swung his bow on his back and ran to the hart. When Tindr shot a hare or squirrel he always ran to the downed beast, ready to pull his knife should the animal be still alive, and suffering. He did the same with this first stag he had downed. Luckily Rapp and Ragnfast were just behind him. It was on its side, hooves facing where Tindr approached, his arrow lodged deep in the chest and standing out at an angle. The rack of antler kept the hart's head from the ground; its eyes were open. Tindr made a move to draw his knife and go to it. But Rapp wrapped his arm about his nephew's shoulders, holding him back. Tindr turned and looked up at him. His uncle was shaking his head, then made the sign for Do not do: clenched fists, crossed at the wrist.
“Those legs can break a man's arm or jaw,” he said to Ragnfast. The hart had fallen atop a tangle of low shrubby growth, its leaves withered and worn brown; only at the very tips could any green be seen, that late foliage that soon would be killed by Winter's frost. Tindr stood there, gazing down upon the dying beast. This close to it, it was even larger than he had thought. Its smell filled his nostrils, the scent of greenwood and fur and male musk. Tindr had always wondered at the beauty of the red deer. Now, standing just before a great male, he felt he had scarce beheld such beauty. All stags in rut had a special lustre to their fur, but this close he saw a shimmer in the red coat that looked as if the coloured lights of Winter played upon it; subtle tints of gold, green, and blue that could be glimpsed along the neck, flank, and haunch.
The front legs kicked out, and Tindr, startled, saw the deep chest heave a final breath. The head lolled back, caught, face upwards, where one of the antler prongs rested in the vines. As Tindr watched he saw the colours of the coat begin to drain. The shimmering subsided, just as the golden specks in the sea were lost as the Sun rose higher. The coat was thick and reddish-brown now; nothing more.
Tindr gave a little yelp, not meant for his uncle or Ragnfast, but for the hart, for the loss of beauty, for the loss of its life. He looked to Rapp, who nodded at him, letting him know he might pull his arrow now. Tindr went to the beast's head, and dropped on his knees. He stretched forth both hands, and laid them upon the great neck. He felt the warmth there. His lids were lowered as he knelt there, palms flat upon the cooling beast.
I will remember you, Tindr was saying within his breast. It was for me, and by me, you run no more; Lady Freyja chose you for me. Now you will feed me, and Nenna and Da, and we will be part of you. He looked up at the interlacing of barren branches over his head. The mist was burning off, leaving the sky a soft and silvered grey. Lady, he said now, I thank you. Let him run again.
Tindr rode back to his home flanked by Rapp and Ragnfast, leading a horse which bore the great hart he had taken. He watched his uncle tell of the hunt to his parents, and saw their pride at what he had done in their faces before they ever signed it to them. Dagr skinned the carcass and the pelt was Tindr’s to have upon his box bed. His father sawed the great antlers from the skull so that Tindr might keep them as well, and each time Tindr stroked the fur of the pelt or closed his hand about the spine of antler he knew a trace of the great animal’s life-force. They smoked the haunches for Winter use, but Gudfrid made pies of the organs and neck-meat, and they had slabs of meat fried, from the loin. The first time Tindr tasted of the deer he had killed, water welled in his eyes. He was in the deer, the deer was in him.
This was the first of many harts and stags that Tindr would bring to feed himself and his parents. Their flesh filled the cooking cauldron, and their hides warmed their beds and plank floors, and became Winter tunics, gloves and shoes. His Da showed Tindr how to make toggles to fasten clothing from the small joints of the bones, and how to carve spoons, pleasant to the mouth for their smoothness, from the antlers and larger bones. The stripped sinews made the strongest thread imaginable. Gudfrid even boiled down the hooves to a sticky liquid, good to adhere pieces of leather together to make thick soles for rocky ground. Every part of the deer went to good use; nothing was wasted.
His Da built a bigger smokehouse, and Tindr helped him set the oak planks tightly together to hold in the thick smoke that would issue from the little fired-clay oven set into the soil at its side. From the peaked roof of the tiny building Dagr fastened iron hooks to hold the haunches as they steeped in the drying smoke of the low apple-wood fire burning inside the oven. A handful of green apple-wood chips added each morning slowed the burning, sending billows of aromatic smoke into the small repository of Tindr’s forest gain. The meat they smoked there would last the whole Winter without spoilage, and bore the mellow richness of both orchard and forest.
In late Fall and Winter, when Dagr could not launch his boat for heavy winds and ice upon the Baltic, Tindr could yet be depended upon to bring fresh meat home. They had of course a ready store of salt fish, and those vegetables that could be buried in the cold ground: cabbages, parsnips, carrots, skirrets, turnips; but of fresh flesh there would be none without Tindr’s bow. Soon he would awaken knowing if this was a day he should hunt, or not. It was as if a voice spoke to him, not through his closed ears, but within his breast. He thought it a woman's voice, the Lady's, beckoning him to come, or bidding him stay.
Tindr began making small wooden deer. The first one found him, not long after this first kill. He was out walking the woods and in his path lay a twigged tree branch. Lying as it did it looked deer-like. A curved twig led to a small ascending piece for the head and neck. From the body dropped two straight twigs, like legs. He took it home, shaped it a bit more, peeled off the bark. With his knife tip he tipped in two eyes. It was smooth and white in his hand, and he held it a while. Then he took it back into the woods where he had found it, and left it resting against the roots of a tree.
After this he made a wooden deer after every kill. He used the ends of smoothed planks saved from the building of houses, boats, and furniture; the man up the hill had many such scraps he was glad to let Tindr have. Of an evening, by fire-side in Winter or by Summer’s long twilight, Tindr might be found carving the figure of a deer, no larger than his own hand. It was right that the hands that pulled the bow string should then pay tribute to the life thus reaped. Rannveig and Dagr watched him at his work, and though Tindr never signed to them what he was doing, saw him walk into
the woods with them. These he carried to the base of trees and left, as Offering.
Chapter the Tenth: The Trading Road
A merchant knorr had just landed at the wooden pier. It was late morning, with the brisk snap of Fall in the air, and the sky above the Baltic wore a paler shade of blue than it had in Summer’s heat. Folk were already gathering to meet it; a ship coming this late in the season was sure to hold the hides of seals, or even perhaps furs, things which needed time to have been dressed.
From the trading road two young men, brothers, Ketil and Botair, rose from opposing work benches to join the others. They were in the rope and line business, ever a good one for a sea-faring people. They wove stout hempen rope from the hackled woody stems of plants they grew themselves, and those grown by others who sold to them; and when they could, cut leathern line from the massive hides of walrus. Such line was the most highly prized of any, for walrus skin had greater strength than any other hide. A skillful hand could begin at the outer edge of the prepared hide and trace a spiral with his shears, heading ever inwards, to end with one perfect length of line many ells long. A walrus hide line so made and conditioned was worth many times that of even the finest rope of hemp, and on the rare occasions when Ketil and Botair had made one, they had pocketed a handsome profit from ship owners.
The knorr was broad-beamed, not large, and from the look of the few chests and casks lashed upon the deck, was on its way home, with perhaps not much to offer to the Gotlanders. A barrel-chested man of middle years was tying up the steering oar, and three younger men, likely his sons as they all shared a brighter version of the older man’s reddish hair, were making all fast. The weapon-smith, whose forge sat a distance off the trading road, but who had happened to be returning from Rannveig’s with a small wain so that he could carry away several crocks of ale for his new son’s birthing-party, called out in greeting to the steersman. It was returned readily enough; the knorr was, as several had assumed, of the Svear, and now headed back home after trading around the southern Baltic rim.
“And have you iron, either good ore or bars?” asked Berse, the worker of metal.
“I have no iron,” answered the Svear, finishing with his tying up.
“Then fair sailing home-ward to you,” returned Berse, turning back to his ale and his wain.
“Furs?” called out another man, who had caught the thrown line one of the red-haired sons had tossed him.
But the Svear shook his head, as if in real regret. “Sold. All gone to the Prus.”
The line-catcher shrugged his shoulders. The Prus were a tribe of traders on the southern coast of the sea; they would be closing their Baltic trading posts now and heading to their homes in advance of Winter and its deep snows.
A group of boys had now seen the knorr, and the men who gathered before it, and came clattering across the wooden planks of the pier. One of them was Botair’s younger son, Ring; his brother Runulv had grown too old for boys’ games. He was joined by Tindr and two round-headed boys that Botair remembered seeing but whose names he did not know; he recalled hearing the family were recently arrived from Svear-land and had already made trouble. Botair’s son spotted his father but did not approach him; when he found him with a strange trader he knew he must be left in peace.
“What then do you carry?” posed a third man. This was Botair. He hoped one day to have a ship himself, and had been looking at this Svear and his crew and imagining a day when he and his sons had the same.
“Treasure,” answered the Svear. He seemed a dour sort, for he spoke this word without a note of triumph.
The men were silent, but all pressed a little closer to the knorr’s side. The Svear scanned their faces.
“Have you a gold-worker?” he asked them, letting his eyes lift uncertainly to the few buildings lining the trading road.
“I, Tume, work in silver,” answered one man, “and Holmgeir here works in amber.” The Svear captain looked at the two men, both of his age, and both prosperous-looking, as befits workers in precious goods.
“My treasure is greater than gold,” returned the Svear. He did not keep the crowd waiting longer, but bent over and unlashed a small chest from near the keel. He lifted it into the arms of one of his sons, who moved to the ship rail so all might see. The Svear lifted the domed lid of the chest. Those nearest got a glimpse of whiteness.
“Walrus tusks,” he explained. He reached in and held up one each in his hands. “Six of them.”
It was some of the best ivory that the Gotlanders had seen in years, free of cracks, smoothly tapering, the warm white of thickened cream. The Svear took all six out, four of which were nearly as long as a man’s fore-arm, and the third pair only a bit shorter. Only those who dealt in costly goods could hope to buy them, and only the most skilled of carvers would be entrusted in their cutting.
The boys pushed forward with the rest of them to eye the tusks, and one gave a little yelp of astonishment as the gleaming wealth was held up before them. Tindr knew the tusks of boar, but had never seen any as long and thick as these; boar they could not be. He tapped his temple to ask Ring, What? Ring touched his own teeth in answer, but could not describe a walrus, which he had never seen himself. Tindr was left to goggle at the notion of any beast with teeth as great as this. A troll, perhaps.
Ketil and Botair looked at each other. If the Svear had tusks, he might have the hides that bore those tusks. But they would bide their time, let Tume the silver-smith bargain for the two tusks he could afford, and then, knowing the Svear had fattened his purse already, ask after that they sought.
Several in the crowd, content at the glimpse of such richness, began to drift back to their waiting work benches or homes. The boys, satisfied, wandered further down the pier. Tume himself walked, with hastened step, to his silver-working stall, and after unlocking a series of chests locked within chests, returned to the waiting Svear with a fat purse bulging with silver ingots.
“It is a poor time, when Gotlanders, the richest men in all the Baltic, can buy only two tusks,” complained the Svear to the brothers. The captain was still on board his knorr, and his sons had returned the treasure chest to its keel-side holding. They had all turned to watch the back of the departing Tume, holding his prizes clutched to his breast.
“We are but a small trading town,” apologized Ketil. A few Gotlanders were still with them, waiting, as Ketil and Botair were, to find out what more the ship might offer. Ketil glanced around and saw his nephew Ring at the very end of the pier, with Tindr.
“If you have tusks, perhaps you have hides,” suggested Botair.
The Svear trader looked at the brothers in turn, as if doubting their ability to buy. They had none of the usual signs of prosperity about them. Still, the wealth of the Gotlanders was well known. He should not be hasty to judge whether these two could provide a home for the second portion of the goods he still sailed with.
“Come aboard,” invited the Svear, and the brothers climbed over the rail, one of the sons helping.
By the stern, and again lashed near the keel, lay a lumpy bundle shrouded in an oiled tarpaulin. Two of the red haired men untied it, and then unrolled it before Ketil and Botair.
They looked at what lay before them, and then lifted their eyes to the other. Two walrus hides stretched upon the deck, of so great a diameter to nearly span the breadth of the ship. Ketil knelt down before them. The hides were thick, yet so supple in the hand that they turned gracefully over his rotated wrist. With the aid of one of the sons, he lifted each and reversed them upon the deck, needing to slow his breath to hide his growing interest. They had been expertly scraped, not with a steel blade nor flint, but with the gentler, sharpened bone-scraper used by the folk of the far North. The inside surface was kid-smooth and free of gouges, scraped little by little to free it from the thick and precious fat the walrus grew to shield it from the icy waters. The women of the Skridfinn, the Striding Finns or Sámi, scraped thus.
“They
are the best I could find of the Sámi,” the Svear was telling them. “I went myself, as soon as the ice had cleared, in early Summer. The third hide I sold also to the Prus.”
All Gotlanders knew of the Sámi, but few had gone to their lands. They ranged far north of the eastern shores of the Svear, where the Baltic froze over hard in the deep bay. They wore only skins, had their own Gods, and it was said they owned deer which they had trained to harness.
“You yourself went?” asked Ketil, looking up at the Svear. The older man nodded. “Já, and my sons with me.” Ketil looked with new respect to the red-haired men.
Here Botair cleared his throat. Ketil arose and squared his shoulders. They had between them about nine marks of silver, most buried under the floorboards of their respective houses. They could not hope to buy both, but Ketil folded half of the larger over, and then pointed to it.
“This one,” he asked, “how much silver for this one.”
The Svear stroked his upper lip. “Silver I have plenty of,” he answered.
Again Ketil and Botair looked at each other. They had not a scrap of gold, if that was what the red-haired Svear sought.
But it was not. “You Gotlanders, it is said, have the finest sheep of any land. I want sheep-hides, twenty of your best; and shorn and washed wool. Also a small cask of wool-wax, of which yours is agreed to be more than of passing quality.”
Botair let out his held breath. Ketil nodded, and tried to keep the smile from his lips. One of the men still upon the pier whistled softly. Good sheepskins and wool were as common amongst them as trees. The wool-wax boiled from out of that wool, once cleaned and strained through linen, became a valued liniment for rough or burnt skin. The brothers should have little trouble fulfilling this Svear's demands.
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