He needed a minute to regain his calm. “Well,” he said. “We meant to seek counsel from the bishop at Gardar, and meanwhile keep still about the sight lest we stampede somebody into fool-ishness or worse. But then the tupilak came, and we-I never had the chance to go.” He caught the eyes of his guests. “Of course, I can’t swear those beings are your kin. But they are latecomers, so it seems reasonable, no? I doubt you could find the island by yourselves. The waters are vast between here and Markland. You’d at least have a long, perilous search, twice perilous because of the tupilak. I can steer by stars and sunstone and take you straight there. But. . . none from the Vestri Bygd can put to sea and live, unless the tupilak be destroyed.”
“Tell us,” Eyjan urged from the bottom of her throat.
Haakon sat back, tossed off his beer, signaled for more all
around, and spoke rapidly:
“Best I begin at the beginning. The beginning, when men first
found and settled Greenland. They went farther on in those days-
failed to abide in Vinland, good though that was said to be, but
for a long time afterward would voyage to Markland and fetch
timber for this nearly treeless country of ours. And each year ships
came from abroad to barter irQn and linen and such-like wares for
our skins, furs, eiderdown, whalebone, walrus ivory, narwhal
tusk-“
Tauno could not entirely quench a grin. He had seen that last sold in Europe as a unicorn’s horn.
Haakon frowned but continued: “We Greenlanders were never wealthy, but we flourished, our numbers waxed, until the land-hungry moved north and started this third of our settlements. But then the weather worsened, slowly at first, afterward ever faster-summer’s cold and autumn’s hail letting us garner scant harvest any more; storms, fogs, and icebergs at sea. Fewer and fewer ships arrived, because of the danger and because of upheavals at home. Now years may well go by between two cargoes from outside. Without that which we must have to live and work, and cannot win from our home-acres, we grow more poor, more back-ward, less able to cope. And. . . the Skraelings are moving in.”
“They’re peaceful, are they not?” Eyjan asked softly.
Haakon spat an oath, Jonas onto the floor. “They’re troll-sly,”
the older one growled. “By their witchcraft they can live where Christians cannot; but it brings God’s anger down on Greenland.”
“How can you speak well of a breed so hideous, a lovely girl like you?” Jonas added. He tried a smile in her direction.
Haakon’s palm chopped the air. “As for my house,” he said, “the tale is quickly told. For twenty-odd years, a Skraeling pack has camped, hunted, and fished a short ways north of the Bygd.
They would come to trade with us, and Norsemen would less
often visit them. I thought ill of this, but had no way to forbid
it, when they offered what we needed. Yet they were luring our
folk into sin-foremost our young men, for their women have no
shame, will spread legs for anybody with their husbands’ knowl-
edge and consent. . . and some youths also sought to learn Skrael-
ing tricks of the chase, Skraeling arts like making huts of snow
and training dogs to pull sleds-“
Pain sawed in his tone: “Four years ago, I married my daughter off to Sven Egilsson. He was a likely lad, and they-abode happily together, I suppose, though his holding was meager, out at the very edge of the Bygd, closer to Skraelings than to any but one or two Christian families. They had two children who lived, a boy and girl, and a carl to help with the work.
“Last summer, want smote us in earnest. Hay harvest failed, we must butcher most of our livestock, and nevertheless would have starved save for what we could draw from the sea. A frightful winter followed. Mter a blizzard which raged for days—no, for an ungues sable part of the nearly sunless night which is winter here-I could not but lead men north to see how Bengta fared.
We found Sven, my grandson Dag, and the carl dead, under