Nogwinto used hand signals to show the knives being pounded into something he indicated by raising one upright hand toward the sky. Leif took this to be the Ice Wall. Nogwinto made hand over hand motions while pointing to a pair of knives he had set on the deck. Nogwinto said the next part in Beothuk when he saw the puzzled look on Leif’s face: “Nogwinto says twisted vines are passed through the eyes of the ice knives for climbers to follow the man in the lead.”
Leif needed a crewman who could climb and knew how to handle lines. He added that to the list in his head. Leif looked closely at the ice knife. At first glance, he thought it was obsidian like the tips of the Beothuk’s war arrows and spears. The closer look showed it to be one of the sacred stones that had been highly polished. The edge was sharper than any metal Leif had ever touched. Leif spit on the back of his hand. The blade lifted the fine hairs as it glided across the skin.
That left two more men to be chosen from the crew. Leif wasn’t sure what skills he was looking for. It was a matter of walking a long distance than scaling a cliff. He decided to bring two more men that shared the same skills as the first two men.
Leif finished with Draskawindit and Nogwinto. He waited for Ulf to finish ordering the braking down of the Greek fire throwing engine. He said, “I need four men from the crew. Two climbers who know how to handle lines and two strong men who can work hard for a long time?”
“Hmmm …” Ulf sighed. He stroked his beard for a few moments. “Is this for the journey to find the stones.”
Leif nodded.
“Jarl is the best man in the rigging. He could climb a hundred foot greased pole if he had to. Halvar is second to Jarl when it comes to climbing. His knot tying and line handling skills make up for this. As for the other men — that would be the two workhorses Eluf and Kanute. They are the strongest oarsmen on the boat. Eluf is the port side lead man. Kanute is the starboard side lead man.”
“I will need these men —” Leif trailed off.
“Aye, skipper,” Ulf nodded.
Leif was taking four of the best members of the crew off the ship. Leif knew that Ulf may not agree with what Leif said, but he would follow orders.
Next Leif approached Bjarte. He told him about the journey to the Ice Wall — who’d be going and why they would be going. When Leif finished Bjarte asked, “Apart from drawing maps and keeping records, what else would you have me do?”
“I will need you to think about this journey,” Leif nodded. “I want to know how much we should carry and what this amount weighs. I need to know what tools and weapons will be needed.”
“Consider it done, Captain Erikson,” Bjarte said. “I will ask the people involved. You should have your answer before two turns of the hourglass go by.”
“Very well,” Leif nodded. “I want to get started tomorrow morning.”
Twenty
The Talking Dead
ULF brought four crewmen before Leif on the deck of the pilot house. “These are the men,” he said. “Eluf and Kanute are the two lead men on the oars.” Ulf gestured to two broad shouldered and thick muscled Vikings. “This is Halvar and Jarl.” Two men, thin framed and wiry, stepped forward. “These two are the best men on the sailing crew.”
Leif stepped forward and said, “After talking to Ulf, I decided to choose you men to come with me on the journey into the inland.” Leif paused. He let that sink in. “Do you have any questions?” he asked. This was what Viking captains called the culling of men. You could tell a lot about how a man felt about something by asking him if he had any questions. Leif waited.
Kanute, the starboard side lead oarsmen, spoke up: “I’ve only heard what the crew are saying about this trip inland. What is the reason?”
Leif knew the answer he gave would determine if Kanute would agree to come. Leif needed a man like Kanute on this trip. He decided to tell the truth. Leif removed the sacred stone from the leather pouch sewn into a pocket on his light wool tunic. “I am leading you men to find more of these.” Leif waited while the crew got a good look at the stone.
“How much will our share be?” Kanute asked. The other members of the crew gave silent nods.
“Because you men are leads you’ll get your cut plus something I will throw into the pot,” Leif said. These men were traders, wise enough to know that they stood to make a lot of money if they brought back a cargo of gemstones.
Kanute looked to the other crewmen. It was obvious that he’d been chosen to be the voice of the group. “Any more question?” Leif asked. When he saw nothing pass between Kanute, Eluf, Halvar, and Jarl, Leif said, “If this thing works out, I will go before King Olaf and buy our freedom back.”
■ ■ ■ ■
The next morning four adothes being carried on the deck of the Ormr in langi were lowered into the water. Bjarte kept a close watch as packs filled with dried and salted fish, cured animal bladders filled with freshwater, a change of clothes, and bedding were lowered into the adothes.
Five adothes would make the first part of the journey: a smaller craft, not packed with supplies, would carry Nogwinto. He would remain in the lead and would be able to scout the area that lay ahead. Leif and Draskawindit came second. Behind them, Bjarte and Halvar sat in the third adothe. Bjarte insisted upon this. Halvar was the only member of the crew that had shown a genuine interest in the teachings of the Gospel. Jarl and Eluf manned the third adothe. It was decided that Kanute and Eluf would switch off piloting the final adothe.
The Ormr in langi fell behind as the adothes cut wakes into the mirror-like surface of the wetlands.
By early evening the Nogwinto’s adothe in the lead ran aground. He stabbed the tip of his paddle into the mud and tied off. “This is the end of the water passable by adothe,” Draskawindit said. The following adothes, laden with supplies, dug into the bottom.
“What do we do now?” Leif asked.
“Nogwinto says to pass the Moon in the adothes. In the morning we will begin the walk to higher ground.”
“Ask Nogwinto, ‘How long until we reach the high ground’?”
“One Sun.”
That night, scatterings of stars shone through heavy cloud cover as darkness closed in. Leif twisted in the stern of the adothe, trying to find a good position. Time passed. He couldn’t sleep. “Draskawindit,” he whispered. “Are you sleeping?”
“Sleep doesn’t come easy like this.”
“What was done to Unkwadayatt and his warriors?”
“The spirits of the dead men were brought to what is called in the Norse tongue door.”
“Door to what?” Leif asked, all he saw was butchery and flesh eating.
“When the Beothuk die, their spirit lives on. The dead are stripped cut into small pieces and stripped of flesh. The meat is thrown into the water. The bones are burnt —”
“I saw all that.” Leif cut in. “I want to know why it is done?”
“If the spirt of a dead Beothuk finds it’s body it will become one with it. The dead will roam the earth.”
“What do they do?” He’d heard ghost stories before. He’d never seen one. Because of this reason he chose not to believe in them.
“The way a Beothuk dies tells the spirit what to do in life after death. If a Beothuk dies from sickness or old age the body remains still and rots. The spirit rots with it. If a Beothuk dies from a force outside of their body, like death from the elements or death in battle, the Beothuk becomes a Whisperer.”
Leif, drawn in, asked, “What is a Whisperer?”
“Whisperers, because they were strong in life, are strong in death. If a Beothuk is struck by great sparks thrown from the father of the sky, that Beothuk voice will float on the wind, whispering into the night about storms and floods yet to come.”
“That could be helpful,” Leif said. He wished he had a Whisperer guiding him through the unpredictable Great Ocean. “And the others?”
“Beothuk who die in battle or are killed by the hand of another Beothuk, are the strongest of the spiri
ts,” Draskawindit said. “They are called Talkers. The bodies rise and the talking dead roam the land, searching for the Beothuk that killed them. Talkers hide nearby. They chant in a loud voice only the Beothuk that killed them can hear. They tell this Beothuk to take their own life.”
“And you believe this?”
Draskawindit replied, “I am telling you why the dead were treated in this way at Unkwadayatt’s village.”
Leif let it go at that. The night was dark and they had a long way to go across wetlands in the morning. He carefully placed one leg over the bundle of supplies in front then the other. Stiffness in his back and numbness in his legs eased up. He drifted in and out of light sleep for the rest of the night.
Twenty-one
Burial Ground
IN the morning the party stood in the shallow water. Kanute and Eluf hoisted and secured their packs with leather straps. Halvar and Jarl tied the four adothes together. A line from the lead adothe was tied to harnesses placed on their upper bodies. Nogwinto, taking up the lead, dragged his adothe behind. Leif, Draskawindit, and Bjarte followed Nogwinto. Kanute and Eluf came next. Halvar and Jarl took up the rear.
The day wore on. Even though the sun was at the midway point of morning, the water became colder with every step. Nogwinto stopped and waited ahead. He spoke to Draskawindit. Draskawindit passed the message onto Leif. “Nogwinto says we must move faster. We need to get off the land of grass and water before this Sun ends.”
Lief understood. All he could think of was sitting on dry ground and warming his feet by a roaring fire. He decided to talk to the party. He turned, raising one hand he said, “Our guide tells me we have to move faster if we want to get off this flat before nightfall.”
“The heavy packs cause our feet to sink further into the mud. It takes time to lift each foot out to take the next step,” Kanute, the voice of the crew, said. He eased the weight of the straps off his shoulders with his thumbs.
“This I know,” Leif nodded. “I have seen one thing as we move through these flats, there are stands of trees rising out of the marsh, if we had to we could make camp in one of these.”
Leif returned to the lead. “We are going to do the best we can. If we don’t make it out of here by sundown we’ll have to stop at one of those small islands I’ve been seeing.”
“This can be done, Skipper Leif …” Draskawindit trailed off.
Leif sensed something was wrong. He knew Draskawindit well enough to know when she didn’t agree. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.
“It is against Beothuk custom.”
“Why is that, Draskawindit?”
“The land of grass and water is where the Talking Dead come when their bodies have rotted. You could say they come here to die again.”
“Have you ever seen one of these dead who live?”
“No.”
“What about Nogwinto?”
“He says no.”
Leif made up his mind. In all his years as a trader on the open sea he’d never seen a sea-serpent or heard a mermaid’s voice. Why would this Beothuk tale be any different? “If we don’t get out of here in time we stop.”
“Very well, Skipper Leif,” Draskawindit nodded.
■ ■ ■ ■
The sun sank low in the sky. The party would not make it off the flats before darkness fell.
“We’ll make camp here,” Leif said as they stepped out of the icy water and set foot on a mound of earth supporting a grove of trees. Leif ordered Kanute, Eluf, and Halvar to hack out a clearing with their short axes. Jarl climbed a nearby tree. He cut branches and let them fall to the ground. On the ground, Halvar cut the limbs and branches into smaller pieces. He piled the limbs and thick branches in the center of the clearing.
They removed some dried kindling from their packs. It took four matches to get the kindling burning. It just turned dark as the kindling set the fresh cut green wood ablaze. Soon, the party sat around a fire. Steam drifted off their wet clothes. The ground around the fire dried. Heat spread from the base of the fire and worked its way into the sand.
It was warm and dry. Leif’s eyes grew heavy. Muscles ached from a long day of trudging across the flats. He had hot food in his belly. He fell asleep.
Leif woke some time during the night. He threw some limbs on the dwindling fire. He heard a noise. He looked around. Draskawindit lay sleeping nearby. Bjarte was next to her. He could see the faces of the four crewmen through the flickering flames on the other side of the clearing. Nogwinto was nowhere in sight. The noise continued. Leif grabbed a torch, set the tip in the flames, and walked toward the sound.
The ground became damp and cold under his bare feet. A chill filled the night air. Leif felt some thing tapping his shoulder. He turned. Draskawindit was standing there. “I’m looking for Nogwinto,” Leif said. His beating heart slowed down.
“He is there,” Draskawindit answered. She pointed to some bushes near the edge of the mound.
Nogwinto stood up. In the torch light Leif saw a body. At first glance it seemed as if the body had been skinned. As Leif looked closer he saw this could not be right. The body had no guts and there was no blood. Just a lattice of muscles covering a skeleton.
“This is what I spoke of … a Talking Dead tribesman dying for the last time,” Draskawindit said.
The skeleton sat up. It spoke in the Beothuk tongue. Moments later the muscle tissue covering the bones bubbled. Vapor swirled off the thing and drifted past the torch light. It smelled like blood and molten metal.
Nogwinto held a short axe in his hand. He waited until all the muscle had dissolved off the bones of the Talker then chopped the skeleton in small pieces. Draskawindit said something to Nogwinto. He handed her a blanket. She wrapped the bones in the blanket. Nogwinto left the skull whole. He wrapped it in another blanket. Draskawindit carried the rest of the bones back and tossed them in the fire.
None of the others had woken during all this. This pleased Leif. He did’t want the others to know about the bizarre Beothuk burial that had taken place near the camp. It had been his decision to stop and make camp at the grove. Leif didn’t want his men to lose confidence in him at this point.
Twenty-two
White Bear
IN the morning, the party broke camp and set out across the flat. The water grew shallower as they pressed on. By mid-morning the flooded flatland had receded. Water no longer seeped up around their footprints. It was on this higher ground that the adothes were shoved up into the limbs of trees.
Nogwinto spoke to Draskawindit. “He says that the way to the Ice Wall will be dry. He can move ahead and search for food.”
Leif thought about it. After the meeting with the creature last night he was looking at Nogwinto in a new light. On the other hand, fresh meat would be good.
“Tell Nogwinto to go on ahead,” Leif said.
Draskawindit passed it on. Nogwinto, armed with a long bow, spear, and knife, slung the leather bag that held the skull over his shoulder. He set off at a quick pace until disappearing in the distance.
Hours passed, when the sun was beyond its highest mark Leif saw smoke rising to the sky. Nogwinto stood by a fire, fanning the flames with a blanket. He spoke when he saw the party approaching. They set their packs down. Nogwinto spoke to Draskawindit. “Nogwinto says this will be a good place to make camp.”
Leif looked around. A pool of water stood at the center of a grove of trees giving way to a perimeter of bushes. “Is that water potable?” Bjarte asked.
“These pools are fed from ice melting on the wall. It drains down into the caverns under the ground and rises to the ground in springs.”
Leif walked to the edge of the pool. The water was clear as the finest glass. The sides of the spring tapered down hundreds of stikas (39 inches) to a dark hole. Up welling clouds of fine sand swirled off the bottom.
“It looks like the Maelstrom,” Halvar said when he looked into the pool.
Leif laughed to himself. The Ma
elstrom, the great whirlpool that swallowed ships, fell under the same shadow as swimming dragons and fish women.
Schools of fish moved around the shaft of the pool. Dark objects shot out of depths and tore through the schools.
“Poroshawn,” Nogwinto said.
“What is poroshawn?” Leif asked Draskawindit.
“The big fish that live in the pool,” she answered.
Nogwinto lowered a small hook baited with a tiny brine shrimp he’d found in the weeds on the shore. A polished egg-shaped stone, tied about half a stika behind the hook, carried the bait under the surface. Nogwinto held the thin twisted vine taut. The line bent. Nogwinto raised his hand then pulled the line to the surface. He set the light rig to the side. He used the small fish to bait a larger hook attached to a heavier line. The silvery bait fish squirmed against the hook then swam. He lowered the heavy rig into the pool.
A long, shadowy figure darted out from an overhanging ledge. Line peeled out through Nogwinto’s hands then snapped tight as it lifted into the air. The end of the heavy line had been tied to a high tree limb. The front of the line cut a wake on the surface as the fish circled the pool, fighting the pressure of the hook as it tried to swim to deep water.
The line slowed. The circles became smaller. Nogwinto reached up. He grabbed the line and began pulling it back towards shore. Kanute and Eluf joined in. When Nogwinto saw this he released his hold on the line. He picked up his long bow and knocked an arrow. He loosed just as a head broke the surface. The fish thrashed once more than went limp. Kanute and Eluf hauled it to shore.
Nogwinto lifted the fish by the tail. It hung from his shoulders past his knees. The broad tail led to a long, thick body that ended in a narrow head tapering into a mouth packed with razor sharp teeth.
Leif Erikson and the Frost Giant Page 7