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feuding, the Bans that let them live with relatively little fear and hatred.
LF: Can you tell us a little about those Bans?
Ilse: Of course. Warriors of the different clans still could fight one another, but they could no longer take one another’s land. And the clan borders were reset to the earlier markers. Also, while they could still burn strawstacks, to burn haystacks or buildings was outside the Bans. They could steal livestock, but they could not kill it and leave it lie. They could still kill in vengeance, but only for specified wrongs and within approved feuds.
All the clans agreed to this. But there was a Jytska chief who hated him for it, who struck him with a poisoned knife he’d hidden in his shirt, so that he died. And instead of making a burial mound, they put the youth in a canoe and set it on the Jöta Alv, which floated it down to the sea.
Only then, the legend says, did they realize that none of them knew his name, so they called him simply “the Yngling.” And the legend had it that in a time of great need he’d return, for the Northmen believe that after you die, you will be reborn.
Finally, as was certain to happen sooner or later, there came another time of great need. And when Nils appeared from exile—he’d been exiled for a killing—the things he did convinced them that he was the Yngling reborn to them. . . .
After what had happened, Ted Baver was surprised that the council didn’t adjourn at once. He could smell charred flesh, and surely the Northmen did too; they saw, heard, and smelled more acutely than he did. But instead of moving that they adjourn, Nils Järnhann stood beside the corpse and recited what seemed to be a formula for the soul after suicide. Baver hadn’t recovered
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sufficiently to follow it all in detail, although of course his recorder did.
When Nils had completed the formula, he announced he was resigning as lagman. And not only resigning as lagman; he was leaving the Northmen. There were questions then; the Northmen didn’t want him to go. He replied that they were depending too much on him, abdicating too much authority to him, and that the function of the Yngling was not to preside.
The announcement startled Baver out of his mental shock. It seemed to him that the death of Jäävklo must be the real reason for the lagman’s decision. Or could it be depression because his wife Use had left Earth on the jumpship Phaeacia? The important thing was that his seniors on the mission, Matthew and Nikko Kumalo, considered Nils Järnhann one of their two prime resources. Ten days previously, they’d flown pinnace Alpha to Germany and the Dane land, to interview members of their other prime resource, the Psi Alliance. They’d intended to be back for the All Tribes Ting—the big annual assembly of the Northmen. But three nights ago they’d called from Neustadt am Weser, to tell him they wouldn’t be back for at least another week.
Now Nils was planning to leave, and Baver had the impression that it would be soon. If it was before Matt and Nikko came back, they’d want to know where he was going, so they could maintain contact with him.
Meanwhile Isbjørn Hjeltessøn, the leader of the Council of All Chiefs, had solemnly asked the others for nominations for a new lagman. After half a dozen names had been called out, Hjeltessøn had dismissed the meeting and the chiefs, ana the crowd on the slope had begun moving toward their camps. Or in the case of some of the Norskar, their cabins, for the Ice Bear Clan was host to the ting this year.
The crowd was leaving now, and Baver followed Nils. He’d, had no personal contact with him before; had spent most of his time with the Salmon Clan of the Svear. Besides, the man was obviously very different from the
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rest of his people, and according to Nikko had a somewhat exterior viewpoint of them. To talk with him, at least at any length, Baver had told himself, might skew his data and prejudice his analyses.