One King’s Way. Chapter 24, 25
Chapter Twenty-four
It is an expensive business finding you shelter,” said Brand wearily.
Shef said nothing. He might have replied that it had sometimes been profitable too, but allowances had to be made for Brand’s state of mind. He was not sure how many days had gone by since the battle—in the high latitudes it was hard to tell. Everyone seemed to have been furiously at work for longer than they could bear, stopping only when they fell asleep. And yet—it was an ominous sign—dark was returning to the sky. Summer was past, winter coming on. It came on very fast in Halogaland.
However many days it had been, the settlement still looked barely survivable. All three of the ships in the harbor were sunk or unserviceable. By sheer bad luck Cwicca and his crew had found the range and managed to depress their machine just as the battle was won, and put a rock neatly through the base of the Crane’s mast. Driven by terror of the whales her crew had managed to pole her over and beach her, but she would never sail again. The Walrus still sat at the bottom of the harbor, her mast poking forlornly above the surface. The Seamew had caught fire and burnt. Though there were small craft of all kinds available, there was no ship big enough to sail south for Trondhjem, the nearest port, and return with provisions. In time, one would be made from the salvaged planks and timbers—for of course there was little large wood readily available on the barren coast or the wind-swept islands. For the same reason rebuilding the burnt huts would be hard, for all the local skill in using stone and turf. Much of the precious windfall of the grind had gone up in flame, and with it the storehouses and warehouses where Brand kept not only the furs and feathers and skins of the Finn-tax, which he traded, but also the meat and cheese and butter on which he lived.
And besides Shef’s train, and Guthmund’s crew, there were maybe seventy survivors off the Crane. They had been promised their lives, and no-one had suggested breaking the promise. But they all ate. There was no way everyone on the island could live through the coming winter, however hard they fished and sealed. Many of the Halogalanders had quietly slipped back to their homesteads, making it clear they wanted no part of Brand’s problem. They would live. It would be the strangers, and their hosts, if they were fool enough to share, who would die.
“At least we have gold and silver,” Brand went on. “That doesn’t burn. The best thing we can do is put a boat together, a makeshift, load it with every man we can squeeze in, and send it off south. If it hugs the shore it might get to somewhere with food to spare. Then turn Ragnhild’s Westfolders out, buy as much as we can, and head north again.”
Again Shef forbore to say anything. If Brand were not so tired he would have seen the faults in the scheme. The Westfolders would be many enough to overpower their guards, take the money, and leave the settlement as foodless as ever. As it was, guarding them was taking far too much of everyone’s resources. They would have to be sent off on their own. If they could be brought ever to venture out to sea again, with their new terror of the whales.
“I am sorry,” said Brand, shaking his massive head. “I have experienced too much to make any sensible plan. A marbendill for a cousin! I knew, but now everyone does. What will folk say?”
“They will say you are fortunate,” broke in Thorvin. “There is a priest of the Way in Sweden, whose special devotion is to the goddess Freyja. His craft is the breeding of animals, the way you must cross-breed or in-breed to get the best-yielding cows or the woolliest sheep. He has spoken to me often of mules, and the breeding of dog and wolf, and such things. As soon as he knows, he will come here. For it seems to me that we and the sea-men are more like dog and wolf than we are horse and donkey. For your grandfather Bjarni bred with one of their females, and she had a child, your father Barn. But Barn too had a child, and that was you, and your ancestry is plain if we see you together. If Barn had been a mule, a human mule, that could not have happened. So we and the marbendills are not so far apart. Maybe there is more marbendill blood in the race than we knew before.”