To this end, he delayed construction of permanent buildings in favor of building a pine palisade around the crest of the hill. A square palisade with guard towers would allow a small force, armed with rifles, to hold off a much larger force, at least for a time. A sufficiently large and determined force of Indians might take the camp eventually, but the losses they would undoubtedly suffer would act as a powerful deterrent. The men who were not filling oil barrels split their time between building the palisade and hunting for game.
Work was slow going because they soon exhausted the small stand of older pines near the island and had to drag logs nearly a mile overland and then floated across a hundred yards of swamp to the island. O’Brien wanted the palisade to be at least sixty feet on a side, to allow enough room for small guard towers at each corner, as well as—at minimum—a garrison for the men. As the men were in greater danger from attack in the woods than at camp, O’Brien kept the crew together as much as possible, rather than have some men begin building while others gathered lumber. Thus, three weeks later, the only thing they had to show for their efforts was a stack of several hundred pine logs—less than half of what they needed.
O’Brien was overseeing the lumber operation, wondering if he’d been overly ambitious in his plans, when Lamochattee and another Indian, named Yaholo, walked out of the woods toward him. Lamochattee indicated it was urgent that O’Brien come with him. O’Brien shouted to Chegaoo, who was across the clearing, chopping at the base of a pine tree with an axe. O’Brien left Fritjof in charge, and he and Chegaoo followed the two Indians back to their village.
At the village, Chief Chiggilli explained to O’Brien, through Chegaoo, that the Capinobi had allied with a nearby tribe against a third tribe, who lived farther north. The northerners had been raiding the villages belonging to the Capinobis’ allies, and Chiggilli was convinced that if the tribes did not cooperate against the threat, the northerners would grow bolder and attack the other tribes as well. Chiggilli wanted O’Brien’s men to join the alliance and partake in a raiding party against the northerners.
O’Brien explained that he understood the threat, but he did not believe his few men would make much difference in the conflict. Chiggilli insisted that the northerners would flee before men with rifles and suggested that the spoils gained from a defeat of the aggressing tribe would make it worthwhile to join the alliance. The northerners had been stockpiling food, he told them—food that could keep O’Brien’s men from starving. O’Brien told the chief he would discuss the matter with his men and get back to Chiggilli with an answer by the next day. He and Chegaoo returned to the camp.
That night, O’Brien called a meeting with Fritjof, Dorian and Chegaoo aboard Sjávarbotn, with Asger and Bjorn providing security. Privacy was not a problem, as most of the men spent their evenings at the camp these days. O’Brien related Chiggilli’s offer to the three men, who were dubious.
“How do we know what Chiggilli told you is accurate?” Dorian asked. “As far as we know, Chiggilli and his allies are the aggressors.”
“Chiggilli has treated us fairly,” Fritjof said.
“It has been in his interest to treat us fairly,” Chegaoo said. “For a little worthless land and some corn flour, his people have received twenty hatchets with steel heads, and much other wealth.”
O’Brien nodded. “We can’t infer much from our own relations with the Capinobi,” he said. “Maybe they’re the good guys, maybe they’re not. I suspect it’s more complicated than Chiggilli lets on, but even if it’s simple now, these things tend to get complicated pretty quick. We join a war party, defeat the northerners, take their spoils. Then what? A month later they launch a counterattack, maybe with new allies of their own.”
“Could also be a trap,” Dorian said. “Lure us away from the well and Sjávarbotn with a ruse and take everything we have.”
“Chiggilli is right about the food, though,” Fritjof said. “We’ve only got enough to hold out for a few more weeks.”
“If we ration, we have enough to get the fort built and return to Höfn with the majority of our men,” O’Brien said. “That’s our priority. Getting the oil to Svartalfheim and letting Reyes know we’ve succeeded. If we show up at Höfn with 400 barrels of oil, she won’t hesitate to send more supplies.”
“It’s going to be tight,” Fritjof said.
“It will be even tighter if we waste a week on a raiding party and end up with nothing to show for it,” O’Brien said. “Also, there’s the possibility of casualties. We have, at most, eight men to leave here to defend the fort while Sjávarbotn returns to Höfn. If we lose two or three men in the raid, we’re going to have to cede the land to the natives. If the well is still here when we return, we’ll have to fight for it.”
“It doesn’t sound like we have much choice,” Dorian said.
“It’s not ideal either way,” O’Brien said. “If we turn Chiggilli down, we’re burning bridges. That means no more corn flour, at the very least. We’ll be on our own.”
“But we just don’t have the manpower to get pulled into intertribal conflicts,” Fritjof said. “Our only chance is to try to stay out of the fight until we’re strong enough to engage on our terms.”
“I agree,” Chegaoo said. “It is too soon to choose our allies in this land.”
Dorian nodded. “We need to stay focused. Get the fort done and get back to Höfn.”
“All right,” O’Brien said. “Chegaoo and I will go to Chiggilli tomorrow and tell him we’re respectfully declining to participate in the raid.”
Chapter Twenty-four
As Osric stood, puzzling over the torch, he heard a distant shout from his left. Hoping whoever placed the torch wouldn’t mind, he wrested it free from the cleft and began to walk in the direction of the shout, holding the torch before him. After about two hundred paces, he found he could discern the outline of a structure set against the rock wall. As he approached, he saw that it was a small house constructed of turf. A bearded man stood in the doorway, holding aside an animal hide flap, beckoning to him. Having no other option other than dying in the cold, Osric walked to the doorway.
“Get inside,” said a gruff voice, and a leathery hand grabbed the torch out of Osric’s hand. Seeing that the man was holding the door flap open for him, Osric ducked inside. He found himself in a tiny cave-like dwelling with three rounded turf walls that backed up against the bare stone of the cliff wall. Red coals smoldered in a stone pit in the center of the house. An iron pot hung from a wooden tripod over the coals. To the left and right of the fire pit were wooden benches covered with wool blankets and sheepskins. Sitting on the bench on the left, holding a soapstone bowl, was Stephen.
“You’re here for the boy,” said the man, entering the house behind him. He had extinguished the torch.
“I’m…” Osric started, and then trailed off. He’d been about to say, “I’m not one of them,” but it occurred to him that perhaps he was.
“Not my concern,” said the man. “You’ll have to sleep here tonight. Head back in the morning. There’s soup in the pot. Only one bowl, though. You finished, boy?”
Stephen nodded and handed the bowl to Osric, averting his eyes.
“Thank you,” Osric said, both to Stephen and the man. Finding himself suddenly famished, he dipped the bowl into the pot. “You were… expecting us?”
“I’m not one of them, if that’s what you’re asking. Like I said, not my concern. I’m just a shepherd. Occasionally I catch a stray.”
Osric sat down next to Stephen. “You send the strays back to their flock?”
The man shrugged, taking a seat on the bench across from them. “Sometimes my own sheep wander into the valley north of Höfn. They don’t come back, and I don’t go after them. I used to, but sentries guard all the passes. There’s no getting through. So I won’t shed a tear if they lose a few strays.”
“Is there anywhere to go?” he asked. His intention was to communicate to Stephen the foolishness of attemp
ting to escape from Höfn, but he couldn’t deny that a small part of him hoped that there was some way out. Osric sipped at the hot soup. It tasted of onions, lentils and gamey mutton.
“Three days walk to the northeast, there’s a fishing village. I sell them wool sometimes. You would find life there harder than at Höfn.” As Stephen continued to stare at the coals, the old man caught Osric’s eye. Osric, understanding, gave him a curt nod.
“Finish your soup and get some sleep,” the man said. “You’ll want to start home at first light.” He lay down on his bench and turned away from them, pulling a blanket over his shoulder. Stephen did the same. As there were only two benches in the house, Osric would have to sleep next to Stephen. As the old man began to snore, Osric gulped his soup, thinking about what the man had said—and what he had not said. It was well-known that the villages west of Höfn had an arrangement with the Dvergar: any runaways that reached them would be captured and sent back to Höfn. But if what the old man had said was true, the fishing village to the northeast was not party to any such arrangement. You would find life there harder than at Höfn.
Exhausted, Osric fell asleep not long after. He was awakened by the old man shaking him by the shoulder. He roused Stephen, and after breaking fast with porridge and cold water, they thanked the old man and set out for home. The torch burned out after the first hour, but by that time the sky was beginning to lighten in the east. Stephen seemed embarrassed at the trouble he had caused, and they did not speak of the matter the whole trip back. They picked their way across the rocks to the shore and then headed west back to Höfn, arriving at mid-morning. Stephen went back to work on the longhouse, and Osric, finding his morning class waiting for him, resumed teaching where he’d left off. It was no secret that Stephen had run away and Osric had gone after him, but no one spoke of it. Ake and his superiors Beyond the Pass must have known, but after his third day back Osric allowed himself to believe they were going to let his misdeed pass without making an issue of it. Whether they would punish him in some other way, perhaps by permanently disqualifying him from ever being recruited to work Beyond the Pass, he did not know and was too afraid to ask.
By mid-winter, Stephen was as well-adjusted as any worker at the village. His abortive escape attempt seemed to have cured him of any rebellious inclinations. At times he would still sit alone, silently weeping, but the fuming rage was gone. Such was the pattern followed by most of the younger children who came to Höfn—although very few of them attempted escape, and those who did invariably went west to Hella and were promptly sent back.
More problematic were the older children, whose attitudes were not as malleable. Most of these were ostensibly volunteers, which generally meant that they’d been sold into slavery by their parents, who could not afford to feed them. Anger and resentment among teenagers proved more difficult to extinguish—all the more so because the object of their anger was less well-defined: whereas Stephen could blame his fate on monstrous barbarians from the north, the older children, who been born into poverty and sold out by their own families, were angry at the world.
Osric found it difficult to comfort these young people, in part because he didn’t know much more than they did about their situation. A boy Stephen’s age could see for himself—given enough time—that their captors were not the monsters he had imagined, but the older children could sense the secrecy and the subtle threat of violence that lay hidden just under the surface of the seemingly idyllic settlement. They had heard rumors about what lay beyond the pass, and had heard stories about what happened for those who went to see for themselves.
“I think they are evil,” said a quiet, dark-haired boy named Nikolai, echoing Stephen’s words from six months earlier. School was done for the day, and Osric and Nikolai had gone for a walk along the beach while waiting for the supper bell to ring.
Osric hesitated to reply, knowing that the simple truisms that had placated Stephen wouldn’t work on Nikolai. Stephen’s notion of evil had been impersonal, almost elemental. He’d thought the Norsemen were literal monsters, who delighted in tormenting innocents, and his own experience eventually proved him wrong: the foreman who oversaw his work and the other Norsemen in the village were, for the most part, kind people who treated him fairly. Nikolai’s view, Osric knew, was more subtle: he saw these kind, decent people as puppets of a malevolent power that lived beyond the pass. He didn’t know what the people Beyond the Pass were up to, but he was certain it was nothing good.
Osric found it difficult to argue with this notion because he believed essentially the same thing. Nikolai’s words were, in fact, an uncomfortable reminder of just how little progress Osric had made toward his goal of bringing this mysterious principality under the mantle of Christendom. Imparting morsels of the gospel to his students was all well and good, but he was convinced it was for naught if he did not reach the rulers of this place. If the people Beyond the Pass were not brought under the auspices of Rome, Christianity would never take root among those who did their bidding.
It had been made abundantly clear to Osric, though, that he would never be allowed Beyond the Pass unless he played by the rules and kept his mouth shut. So far, no one had interfered with his teaching, but he suspected this was due more to benign neglect than any deliberate plan. The Dvergar were so desperate for teachers that they couldn’t afford to be picky about the subject matter. Even so, Osric was careful to avoid sensitive subjects, going so far as to skip over entirely the story of Moses freeing the Israelites from captivity. His heathen students were a long way from a complete understanding of Christian doctrine in any case, and he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his chances of one day being recruited to work Beyond the Pass.
“Sometimes what we think is evil is just a matter of perspective,” Osric said.
“You said yourself that the Dvergar are outside of God’s grace,” Nikolai said. “How can people in a state of sin accomplish anything but evil?”
Osric winced at the sound of his own words assailing him. Nikolai was a quick study, and he had no difficulty seizing on theological concepts and applying them to their own situation. “The Greeks were strangers to the gospel as well,” Osric reminded him, “but they produced much wisdom.”
“The Greeks spoke openly, allowing their arguments to be exposed to the daylight of reason. Thieves and assassins work in secret. The Dvergar’s own secrecy condemns them.”
“It does no good to speak of such things,” Osric chided him.
“You are a coward, father.”
“Do not talk to me that way.”
“Or what? You’ll turn me over to the Dvergar?”
Osric sighed. “I am your friend, Nikolai. We’re in this together. If we are to survive and do any good here, we must remain silent for now.”
“There is no good to be done in this place,” Nikolai said. The supper bell rang, and Osric was glad, because he was afraid that what Nikolai had said was true.
Chapter Twenty-five
The attack came just after dawn, four weeks after the oil well was finished. Some threescore Indians armed with tomahawks, camouflaged by the morning sun, managed to get within fifty feet of the eastern side of the island before one of the Mi’kmaq raised the alarm. The first had reached the partially constructed eastern wall of the palisade before the settlers could even get their weapons. The Norsemen always worked with their guns nearby, but O’Brien had judged it would be a waste of manpower to set permanent lookouts. Visibility across the swamp was good enough that a watchman might buy them a few seconds, at most. Whether those additional seconds would have bought them a few lives was a question that would haunt O’Brien long after the attack.
O’Brien had on the western side of the island, overseeing the construction of a barge intended to transport oil barrels to Sjávarbotn. Up till now, they had stored the filled barrels on pallets on the west side of the island, within view of the tents where the men slept. This was due more to the lack of any good way to transport th
e barrels across the swamp to Sjávarbotn than any tactical considerations: floating the barrels across the swamp the way they had done with the pine logs had proved awkward and time-consuming. So for now the three-hundred-some barrels sat in plain sight, about eighty feet west of the eastern wall—which was, at this point, the only wall.
O’Brien ordered the three men helping him with the barge to grab their weapons and he ran up the slope to the pile of logs where he’d left his rifle. The other riflemen went for their guns as well; those who had no rifles grabbed axes.
The Indians streamed around the wall on both sides, meeting Mi’kmaq armed with axes and shovels. The battle might have gone far worse were it not for the fact that the ground sloped sharply here, giving the defenders the higher ground. Four of the attackers fell almost immediately, three hewn by axes and the fourth brained by a shovel. The next wave was greeted with a cacophony of gunfire. Only one attacker, hit in the chest, fell, but a moment of terror swept through the others. Whatever tribe these Indians belonged to, they’d never witnessed gunfire up close, if at all. Their hesitation gave the riflemen enough time to chamber another round. A muscular warrior, his face painted ghostly white, screamed a war cry and his men rallied, pressing the attack once again. The Mi’kmaq, now as worried about friendly fire as the enemy attack, attempted to fall back. One of them slipped and was clipped with a tomahawk at the base of his skull. He fell to the ground. Gunshots rang out again. Three attackers fell. A Mi’kmaq, having turned to run up the hill toward the riflemen, cried out as a bullet hit his shoulder.
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