Shef, always impatient with speculation which could not be settled one way or the other, shook the thought off. Concentrated on hustling everyone into action, even on the rest day Hund had decreed.
So, their dead buried, a supply of cooked meat in every pack, they mustered to travel onwards. Remembering what he had seen on his soul-flight, Shef led them confidently to the lake through the birches. It was where he thought, stretching away as far as the eye could see, long and narrow, a natural water-road. Still unfrozen—but not for long as the chill of autumn gave way to winter.
Yet they had no boats. Shef had had the idea of making light boats from bark, as Brand had said the Finns did. A little experiment proved that none of Shef’s party had the faintest idea how it was done. The Finns who sometimes skied by, keeping an eye on the visitors, shrugged uncomprehendingly if appealed to. Many in Shef’s party were skilled craftsmen, who could—given time—have built anything up to a complete ship from trunks and planks. By the time that was done, they would all have starved.
They plodded on on foot, keeping to the birches as long as they could, for shelter from the wind and the drifting snow. Another day’s travel and the wood came to an end with the lake, leaving only the immense level moor stretching out before them, now covered in snow. Nineteen pairs of eyes turned to Shef as he contemplated the prospect. All but Cuthred’s showed doubt and hesitation.
Silently Shef gave orders to camp again in the kindly woods, light fires and cook their already-dwindled supplies. He waved at the Finn who seemed never to be too far away, like the wolves, and said to him firmly, “Piruusi. Bring Piruusi.”
The headman skied eventually out of the dark, as untroubled by the snow and wind as if it had been a spring day in Hampshire, and settled down enjoyably to a long night of bargaining.
The real solution was to turn everyone in Shef’s party into expert skiers, make skis, and set off to the Way-College mining station which, if Piruusi could be trusted—and on this he probably could—was maybe sixty, maybe a hundred miles downstream. Again, they would all have starved long before that could be achieved. In the end, and after arguing himself hoarse, Shef settled for as many pairs of spare skis as the Finn camp could provide, together with four reindeer sleighs and their drivers to take the rest. It cost Shef his second gold arm-ring, another twenty silver pennies, and four good iron wood-axes. It might have cost more if not for an intervention from Cuthred.
“Make iron yourself?” Shef asked, as they haggled over axes.
Piruusi signed a vehement no.
“What you cut with before the Norse-folk come, then?” Shef went on.
“They cut with these,” said Cuthred from his place by the fire. From inside his jacket he produced a stone axe, a worked flint too big even for Cuthred’s powerful hands. An axe to be used by a giant, a gift, seemingly, from Echegorgun.
Fear showed in Piruusi’s eyes as he looked at it, and remembered the strange powers these pathetic foreigners were in league with. He ceased to haggle, came quickly to an agreement. The next morning, sleighs and skis arrived, and Shef began the still-laborious process of deciding who should do what, who was the strongest, the likeliest to learn. He was careful not to let only his weakest ride in the sleighs, for those carried his reserves of cash, gold and silver. He had been careful also never to let the Finns see how much he had. Drink-brother he might be to Piruusi, even piss-brother if there were such a term: none of that, he was sure, would shield Piruusi from giving in to temptation.
The early coming of winter had surprised but not particularly alarmed the Way-College’s mining station deep inside Swedish Finnmark. There were a dozen men there and half that number of women, four priests of the Way, apprentices and hired workers. They had good supplies and plenty to keep them occupied. During the summer they dug the ore, during the winter smelted it and made it into trade products, pigs of iron or such things as half-finished axe-heads, which could be threaded on bars and moved in bulk. They had built their work-station at a point where they had good communications at all times, by water down the river when it was unfrozen. After that they shipped metal down, by ski and sleigh over a plain road once the ice came. They were well-stocked for the winter in food and fuel. Indeed, they spent much of their time in winter burning charcoal in the birch and pine-woods that began to grow out of the moor as it sloped down towards the sea.