Whether that were true or not, over the centuries the True Folk had become the Hidden People, keeping to the inaccessible mountains, developing the skills of hiding themselves away. It was not so difficult, Echegorgun said. There were more True Folk around than most of the Thin Ones realized. They did not inhabit the same ranges, or even the same times. The Norse in Halogaland, Echegorgun said, being specific, were almost entirely coastal. They went up and down the sea road, the North Way from which the country got its name, they built their huts in the fjords, they pastured their animals in the bits of summer grazing they could reach. Rarely did one find any of them more than a few miles inland. Especially as those who did penetrate inland, exploring or hunting, were not at all likely to return.
The Finns were more of a nuisance, for they roamed widely with their reindeer herds, their sledges and bows and traps. Yet their roaming was mostly in the summer and in the day. In the winter they kept to their tents and their cabins and their regular trap rounds, all easy to avoid. The snow and the ice, the dark and the high places, Echegorgun said, they belong to us. We are the People of the Dark.
And what about the dead men you hang in your smokehouse, Shef asked him on the afternoon of their first meeting. Echegorgun took the question seriously. It was the seal-skerries that caused the trouble, he said. The Thin Ones had to be kept off them, or at least off those of them he regarded as his own. Shef slowly realized that Echegorgun, like the rest of his people, was as near amphibious as a polar bear, which are often found swimming contentedly well out of sight of land. His pelt kept the cold out, and was as waterproof as a seal’s. Any of the adults would think little of swimming a couple of miles in the freezing water to a skerry, there to club seals or harpoon walruses. Sea-mammals were a great part of their diet. They did not like the Thin Ones to go there, and discouraged them by ambush. The stories about gray arms turning boats over were true. As for smoking and eating their prey—Echegorgun shrugged. He could see no harm in eating your kill. The Thin Ones might not eat the Hidden People, but they would kill them for any reason or for none, not because the Hidden People ate their food. So which was worse?
In any case, there was no real need for ambushes and killings, if everyone kept to their side of known lines. Trouble might arise in times of famine. If the grain crop failed—Echegorgun thought it was bound to fail three years in ten—then the Thin Ones started to come out and hunt the skerries in desperation. Don’t eat grain, that was the answer, don’t breed so fast you have to rely on chancy foods. But real northerners, the real northerners among the humans, Echegorgun said, emphasizing this distinction, they did not let things get so far. They knew their place, and they knew his. The humans he killed, they were always visitors who did not respect the slowly-evolved boundaries.
“Like the man who left this?” said Shef, holding up the spear he had taken.
Echegorgun took it, felt it, snuffed at the metal in a considering way with his great flaring nostrils. “Yes,” he said. “I remember him. A jarl of the Tronds, from Trondhjem. Foolish people. Always want to take over the Finn-tax and the Finn-trade, take it from Brand and his family. He came up here in a longship. I followed it till they camped on an island, he and two others went to hunt birds’ eggs. After he had gone—he and some more—the rest lost heart and went home.”
“How did you know he was a jarl?” asked Shef.
“The Huldu-folk know a lot. They are told some things. They see many more, in the dark, in the quiet.”
Echegorgun would say no more at that point, but Shef was confident that he and Brand’s family had ways of getting in touch with each other—sign left on a skerry maybe, rocks left a certain way till there was need of communication, and then altered to bring out an envoy. The Hidden Folk might have been an advantage to the Halogalanders, in getting rid of unwanted rivals from the south. Brand and his family in return kept pressure off certain fixed areas.