He felt the broken necks of his darlings, his treasured speed beasts, and asked again, “How you do that?”
“I did not do that,” said Shef. “But you see, I have friends in these woods. Friends you cannot see, friends you do not want to meet. Have you heard of such things?”
Evidently the Finn had, for he was looking round nervously now as if at any moment some creature might appear behind him and put fingers round his neck. Shef reached over and tapped him with the butt of his lance.
“No more shooting,” he said. “No more tricks. We want fire, food. Give gold, silver. Go on to Jarnberaland. You know Jarnberaland?”
There was recognition in the man's eyes, as well as doubt. “I show you Jarnberaland,” he agreed. “First we drink together. Drink of…” he seemed to have trouble finding a word. “Drink seeing-drink together. You, me, Pehto.”
Not understanding, Shef nodded agreement.
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.”
“What causes that?”
“No-one knows. But it comes at the end of the spring, when people have been living on stored food for the longest. All leeches of Ithun know that if you give people fresh green stuff, cabbage or kale, they recover immediately. Garlic and onions are good too. Bread is useless.”
“We are not at the end of spring now, only the start of winter, and that early.”
“True. But for how long were we living on shipboard rations? And what did we eat on Hrafnsey? Much dried meat, dried fish. It is fresh stuff we must have, eaten raw. I think the raw meat, or the half-cooked meat we ate yesterday may have done good. We can try and get some more meat, till we reach the Wayman mines. They will have some store of cabbage or onions there, even if it is pickled.”
Shef nodded. There was something strange in this, as if food were something more than fuel you burnt, the only concern being to get enough of it. Yet he had never heard of cows or sheep or horses, or dogs or wolves come to that, sickening because they had only one thing to eat. He changed the subject.
“Do you know what it is we are to drink with the headman of the Finns tonight?”
“I will know when we see it, or sniff it or taste it. But if it is a seeing-drink, there are not so many things it could be. It might be a weak draught of the henbane that Ragnhild used on her husband, or of the deadly nightshade berry. But I doubt they grow up here in the waste. Most likely—well, we will see. One thing I will say, Shef.”
Hund turned and faced Shef with unusual gravity. “We have known each other a long time, and I know you well. You are a stiff man, who has grown stiffer. Let me tell you, you are in a strange country now, stranger than Hedeby, or Kaupang, or Hrafnsey. They may ask you to do things that you would find demeaning. They mean no harm. If the headman does it, you do it.”
“How about you?”
“I am a leech. It is my place to sit and observe, and see you come to no harm. Take another man to drink with you if that is what they expect. But do what they expect.”
Shef remembered a proverb from their shared youth, that Father Andreas had been accustomed to say. “If you're in Rome, do as the Romans do, you mean?”
“The other way to say it is, ‘if you are with the wolves you must learn to howl.’ ”
A short while later Shef, lance in hand, led Hund and Karli towards the Finn encampment a short quarter-mile from their own. He felt a certain release and anticipation, as if he were going to a drinking-party in Emneth in his youth, not to some strange ritual among people who had just tried to kill him. Examining his feelings, he realized why. It was freedom from the overpowering presence of Cuthred. Obviously there could be no question of taking him among strangers who might provoke him by accident. Karli seemed relieved as well. He stared at each of the Finns who occasionally swept by over the light snow on their skis.
“Some of them must be women,” he remarked finally.
Shef led them to the tent he had heard described, the tent of the sorcerer. The flap was open, a withered old man beckoned them in to where Piruusi the headman already sat. Piruusi seemed irritated at the sight of three men.
“Only two,” he said, holding up two fingers. “Not enough for more.”
