skimpy cairns, for the earth was frozen too hard to dig a grave
in. Bengta and little Hallfrid were gone. The place was bare of
fuel. Traces-sled tracks, dog droppings-bespoke a Skraeling
who had come and taken them. ,
“Mad with grief and wrath, I led my men to the stone huts where those creatures den in winter. We found most were away, hunting, gadding about, I know not what. Bengta too. Those who were left said she had come of her free will, bringing her live child-come with a male of theirs, come to his vile couch, though he already had a mate- We slaughtered them. We spared a single crone to pass word that in spring we’d hunt down the rest like the vermin they are, did they not return our stolen girls.”
Shadows closed in as the fife waned. Dank chill gnawed and gnawed. Eyjan asked mutedly, into Haakon’s labored breathing:
“Did you never think they might have spoken truth? There were no marks of violence on the bodies, were there? I’d say hunger and cold, when supplies gave out, were the murderers, or else an illness such as your sort brings on itself by living in filth. Then Minik-the Inuk, the man-he went yonder, anxious about her, and she took refuge with him. I daresay they’d long been friends.”
“Aye,” Haakon confessed. “She was ever much taken by the Skraelings, prattled words of theirs as early as she did Norse, hearkened to their tales when they came here, the dear, trusting lass. . . . Well, he could have brought her to me, couldn’t he? I’d have rewarded him. No, he must have borne her off by might.
Later-what you heard in the boat is proof-that damned old
witch-man cast a spell on her. God have mercy! She’s as lost and
enwebbed as any traveler lured into an elthill-lost from her kin,
lost from her salvation, she and my granddaughter both-unless
we can regain them-“
“What happened next?” Tauno asked in a while.
“They abandoned that ground, of course, and shifted to some-
where else in the wilderness. Early this spring, hunters of ours came on one of theirs and fetched him bound to me. I hung him over a slow fife to make him tell where they were, but he would not. So I let him go free-save for an eye, to prove I meant what I said-and bade him tell them that unless they sent me my daugh-ter and granddaughter, and for my justice the nithings who defiled her, no man in the Bygd will rest until every last troll of them is slain; for all of us have women to ward.
“A few days afterward, the tupilak came.”
“And what is that?” Tauno wondered. His spine prickled.
Haakon grimaced. “When she was a child, Bengta passed on
to me a story about a tupilak that she had from the Skraelings.
I thought it was a mere bogy tale that might give her nightmares.
Then she consoled me and promised not. Oh, she was the most
loving daughter a man could have, until-
“Well. A tupilak is a sea monster made by witchcraft. The warlock builds a frame, stretches a walrus hide across, stuffs the whole with hay and sews it up, adds fangs and claws and-and sings over it. Then it moves, seeks the water, preys on his enemies. This tupilak attacks white men. It staves in a skiff, or capsizes it, or crawls over the side. Spears, arrows, axes, nothing avails against a thing that has no blood, that is not really alive. It eats the crew. . . . What few escaped bear witness.
“This whole summer, we’ve been forbidden the sea. We cannot fish, seal, fowl and gather eggs on the rookery islands; we cannot send word to the Ostri Bygd for help. Men set out overland. We’ve heard naught. Maybe the Skraelings got them, though like as not, they simply lost their way and starved in that gashed and frozen desert. The southerners are used to not hearing from us for long at a time; in any case, they have troubles of their own; and if they did send a boat or two, the tupilak waylaid those.