One King’s Way. Chapter 26, 27, 28
Chapter Twenty-six
On the evening of the next day, Piruusi took to Pehto the traditional offerings: the block of salt, the sack of strong-smelling half-rancid butter made from reindeer milk, the blood sausage stuffed with lumps of thick fat, the chewed and dressed reindeer hide. As the traditional extra gift he added a pair of soft boots with red thread to draw the tops tight. Pehto inspected the gifts with the expected lack of interest, and refused them twice. The third time he swept them to the side of his tent and called to his aged crone of a wife, more than forty years old already, to come and take them.
“For how many?” he asked.
“For myself and for you. For the stranger with the one eye, and for his companion.”
Pehto considered. It was a brief moment for him, not of power—for there could be no question of refusal—but at least of attention. He decided not to make the most of it. The gifts Piruusi had brought were in fact generous—so generous Pehto knew something must have made him so.
“Come when the sky is dark,” said the shaman.
Piruusi left without further ceremony. What he knew, and what the shaman did not, for all his claims of being able to look far afield and see what was hidden, was that the one-eye, when Piruusi had claimed compensation for his slaughtered reindeer, had stripped a gold ring from his arm and handed it over without further ado. It was true he had taken the reindeer, but he had returned the valuable hides again without argument. Piruusi had hardly ever seen gold before, the yellow iron as his tribe called it, but he was well aware of the value placed on it by the Norse-folk with whom he sometimes traded. For a ring of that weight he could buy everything the tribe owned, except for their reindeer herds.
Yet the stranger was not completely insane. When Piruusi had demanded further compensation for the two men killed by crossbow bolts, the stranger had waved at his own dead and said no more. Piruusi had noticed, too, the savage glare on the face of the very big man with the spiked shield and sword. Wiser not to provoke such, touched by the spirits. In any case, there was the matter of the dead reindeer. Piruusi had decided, tentatively, that the stranger was a mighty shaman of the Norsemen, of a kind he had not met before. He must be able to send himself out in a different shape, and that shape, probably a bear, had killed the reindeer while the man-shape stood in front of him.
They would know more after the seeing-drink. Eagerly, Piruusi went to his tent, called in the youngest of his wives, prepared to pass the time as well as possible till dark.
Shef was making a tour of their makeshift camp, with Hund. The two dead reindeer had vanished within a few hours as the starving men and women first built a fire, then eagerly began to toast strips of the fresh meat over it. Then they recovered themselves enough to heat stones, place them in their wooden pans and start more of the meat stewing its way towards tenderness. In the beginning they had been devouring the meat all but raw. Shef remembered the first rush of intoxication, almost like the effect of the winter wine, as he gulped down the first slice of fresh liver. But then, he reflected, not only had he been dreaming of thick bread and butter the day before, he had begun to wonder why he had not taken the chance of rotten shark while it was on offer.
“How do you think the people are?” asked Shef.
“It is surprising how quickly they recover,” Hund said. “A day and a half ago I was afraid for Udd. He has little strength. I thought we might lose him the way we lost Godsibb, just too weak for a cold night. Now, with three heavy meals inside him, and a night spent by a good fire, he is fit for another few days’ travel. One thing I worry about, though. Some of the men are showing old cuts that are opening again—cuts that had healed years before.”