by Tom Holt
So really it goes to prove the old saying about who you are depending on where you are. Back in Iceland or the Eastern Settlement, if you looked up from your work and saw six men looking like that headed towards you, maybe you’d be curious, if they were strangers, but no way would you be scared; just as you wouldn’t be frightened at the sight of a penned bull. What the hell: first time I came to the City, there was this funny-looking brass statue on a short pillar, in a small park near the river. I strolled up to look at it, and bugger me if there wasn’t a horrible shrill whistling noise, and then the statue began spinning slowly round and round, and moving its arms up and down. Scared? When I finally stopped running, I realised I’d wet myself. But nobody else in the park even took any notice of it. They were too busy gawping at the crazy foreigner.
Which is what we were both doing, the leather-boaters and us, as though there was a mirror with an invisible frame set up in the middle between us. I don’t know, maybe I’ve thought it all right out of proportion over the years. Maybe it was no big deal. I can’t say
So we stood there, and for a short while nothing much happened. Then, right out of the blue, that useless bloody bull started snorting and bellowing, scratching at the ground with its front hooves, carrying on the way they do when they’ve been overfed and kept penned too long. That was too much for the leather-boat people; they turned round and ran like hell, their bundles bouncing against their backs.
Well, soon as we saw they were frightened, we all brightened up no end. Couple of our men started laughing; the leather-boat people must’ve heard them, because they stopped running and looked round, just in case they were being ambushed or followed. But the bull carried on bellowing, and now it was running up the pen towards them, so again they turned and bolted, stopped and looked back at us, like a herd of bullocks when you clap your hands and yell.
‘Don’t think we need worry too much about them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Pretty timid bunch, they strike me as.
That cheered up most of us - not me, because a few minutes ago we’d been just as timid, or more so - and a couple of the men started jeering and calling out names and whatever. But I was thinking: they’ve come here to see us, and they’ve brought bundles and a basket. If they were planning on attacking us, how were they going to go about it -smother us to death? Seemed to me it wasn’t too smart to go acting all aggressive till we knew what was in those bundles.
Or maybe I thought that a bit later on, with hindsight. It’s been so long now that I can’t be absolutely sure.
‘I know,’ someone called out. ‘Let’s turn the bull loose. That ought to be a bit of fun.’
Most of us turned to look at Thorfinn; but either he hadn’t heard or his mind was somewhere else. Anyhow, he didn’t say anything, and next thing, a couple of the blokes -Illugi was one of them, I think, and Thorkel Snot - dashed off, vaulted the pen rails, nipped across and threw open the pen gate.
Off goes the bull. Now by and large, he wasn’t a bad-natured old boy; not naturally vicious, like some are. But he was frisky, and now and then he liked to run. I think it was just his way of letting off steam; and if you stood still till he was right up close and then suddenly spread your arms out wide and shouted, he’d stop dead still like he’d just run into a tree, look at you for a bit and then wander off and graze. But you had to know that, of course; and the leather-boat people didn’t. Far as they were concerned, we had a tame monster and we’d just set it on them. They didn’t hang about, just took to their heels. Good runners, all of them, very impressive turn of speed and they could keep it up over distance.
Well, even I was laughing now, because there’s something about the sight of other people being chased by a bull that’d make a corpse grin. We carried on laughing for a bit; but then the bull, who was enjoying himself no end, started to gain on them, and instead of just running straight, they veered off, heading straight for the houses.
That wasn’t quite so funny ‘The bastards,’ someone said; and Thorfinn started shouting out names; you, you and you, get to the houses and bar the doors quick. He needn’t have bothered, we were way ahead of him. The leather-boat people were making such good time, they almost beat us to it, at that; but about half of us got indoors and put up the bars, while the rest of us, including me, scuffled into the yard to keep them out of the barns and buildings.
Luckily, the bull had had enough by then. He stopped running, gave us all a dirty look, and ambled off for a feed. But the leather-boat people were in the yard, with a crowd of us all round them; they were shouting at us - not fierce or angry shouting, more a case of trying to make us understand them by sheer force of noise - and we were yelling back. They couldn’t understand us any more than we could understand them, but I should think they got the general idea that we weren’t friendly and they’d done something, wrong.
Well, for quite some time Thorfinn just stood there, catching his breath. Eventually though, he held up his hands and yelled, ‘Quiet!’ - which did the trick. We stopped shouting, and so did they Then it was all dead quiet for a bit; they stared at us and we stared at them and nobody moved a muscle. You know how it is when you go to a farm where you’re not known, and the dogs come bounding out right up at you, barking their heads off. You stop dead still, and when you aren’t moving it’s like they can’t quite see you; they’re puzzled and wary, and they growl a bit with their ears back, as if to say where did he vanish to? And then the farmer or someone comes out and calls them off, and they wander away wagging their tails, and everything’s fine. I think on this occasion we were the dogs and they were the stranger, though the edges were a bit blurred, if you see what I mean.
We could have gone on standing there for a very long time, I think; but then one of the leather-boat people, stocky sort of middle-aged bloke, took a couple of steps forward, very slow and careful, knelt down and started untying his bundle. When he unrolled it, we could see what was inside: all sorts of different kinds of fur, squirrel and marten and fox and rabbit and wolf. Poor bastards had only come to trade with us, and we’d treated them like a bunch of vikings.
I think most of us had the good grace to feel really really stupid. I know I did; and so, fair play to him, did Thorfinn. At any rate, he looked round and waved towards the houses to unbar the doors. Meanwhile the other five leather-boat people had rolled out their bundles, all more of the same, so obviously they were prepared to give it another go. Pretty good of them, I think, in the circumstances.
Mind you, we didn’t actually want to buy furs; we’d got plenty of our own, after half a year’s hunting and trapping. But that didn’t really matter. We obviously needed to make it up to them for being so nasty. Question was, what did we have that they might want in exchange? It wasn’t like we had anything much, certainly nothing to spare - if we hadn’t needed it, we wouldn’t have brought it with us.
I suppose that was what was going through Thorfinn’s mind, as he stood there with a sort of dozy grin on his face, his idea of a warm smile of welcome. That was about as far as he went, where diplomacy was concerned; and if that’s how he went about trading back in the East, God only knows how he managed to stay in business.
Then we had a stroke of luck; mostly, I think, because Gudrid and the other women remembered their manners, which was a sight more than could be said about the rest of us. Out they came, with jugs of milk and a big dish of bread, butter and cheese. Trust women to know what to do, when the men’re doing their best to screw everything up.
Anyhow, Gudrid marched up to the leather-boat people -she was about six months pregnant at the time - smiled nicely and sort of waved the milk and the food at them.
They hesitated for a moment or so; then the man who’d been the first to unroll his bundle took a step forward. He was looking at the food on the tray like he had no idea what it was. I think he may have taken a deep breath, summoning up courage or whatever; then he grabbed a pat of butter and took a big mouthful.
You never saw such a look on a man’s face. It
was like he’d wandered into Heaven in the middle of dinner. He chewed, then stopped, then chewed a bit more; then he chewed very fast, and bit off another big faceful; then he swung round and held out the rest of the pat to his mates, jabbering away at them with his mouth full. They all tried some, and a heartbeat or so later it was like we all didn’t exist, and all that stuff with the bull hadn’t happened. They swooped down on the dish like a flock of rooks; one of them tried a hunk of the cheese, and that went down pretty good as well. Gudrid was a bit taken aback, like you’d expect, but she coped well; she looked round at the woman behind her and told her to get some more butter and cheese, quick. By then, the leather-boat people’s leader or whatever he was had started drinking the milk, straight from the jug because nobody’d thought to pour any into a cup for him; and we all just stood and watched, and a bloody good show they were putting on, at that.
After they’d cleared the dish of everything except the bread - they didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in it - the boss put his hands on the shoulders of two of his mates, as if to say Steady on; then they talked together for a bit, very fast and earnest. By then, fresh supplies of butter and cheese had shown up; but instead of pouncing on it, they hesitated, like they were thinking, or doing sums in their heads. Then the boss looked Gudrid in the eye, to get her attention; he pointed at the empty dish with one hand, and his bundle of furs with the other; then he sort of waggled his eyebrows, as if to say, Well, what about it?
‘Fuck me,’ someone just behind me said. ‘He wants to pay for his dinner.’
Gudrid scowled at whoever’d just spoken, typical woman’s what-will-our-guests-think-of-us scowl; no need, of course, since the leather-boaters didn’t have a clue what’d just been said. Meanwhile, their boss did the pointing and eyebrow-waggling thing again, and it was pretty clear that that was exactly what he meant: his bundle of furs in exchange for the cheese and butter that they’d just gobbled.
First off, Gudrid stared at him like he was mental; then she nodded very fast. I don’t think the leather-boaters nod like we do, because their boss didn’t seem to have a clue what she meant by it. He backed off a bit, so she smiled, knelt down and pulled the furs toward her. He waggled his eyebrows a bit more, and his mate scooped up his bundle and came and stood next to him. The woman with the fresh supplies put her dish down on the deck, and they scrambled to help themselves. After that, it was pretty plain sailing: six dishes of butter and cheese for six bundles of fur. When they’d done scoffing the sixth helping, they stood there waving their hands in a friendly sort of way for a bit, then turned round and walked off. We opened up our circle to let them pass and away they went - giving the bull a wide berth, understandably but otherwise all nice and happy and friendly We watched them till they were out of sight.
‘What the hell,’ someone said, ‘was all that about?’
Actually now I come to think of it, that was me.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
‘Your friend Kari,’ I said, maliciously, ‘was just telling me about your first run-in with the locals.’
Eyvind put down the water jug he’d just filled and looked sideways at me. ‘Was he, now,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘He’d just got to the bit where they’d eaten the cheese, then left,’ I said. ‘Then Kari got a bad pain in his stomach and went off somewhere. Is he all right?’
‘Him? Oh yes, fine. It gets him sometimes. Had it for years. I keep telling him, it’s because he bolts his food. What did he tell you about Bits and the leather-boat people?’
A rose or a fruit tree is always improved by judicious pruning. There are many occasions on which the same can be said of the truth. ‘He told me,’ I said, ‘that all they wanted in return for their bundles of furs was a few platefuls of butter and cheese. Is that right?’
Eyvind laughed, and poured water into two cups. ‘Bits had it all figured out, right from the start, soon as he set eyes on them,’ he said, handing me a cup. ‘See, the leather-boat people don’t go much on growing stuff, apart from a bit of that funny sort of corn they have out there; and they don’t keep any tame animals to speak of. Mostly they live off the big deer in the forests; and the thing about wild meat is, it’s all lean. No fat. That’s all right in a hot place like this, but where it’s cold most of the year, you need a healthy dose of fat in your diet to keep you going. So, far as they were concerned, butter was the most amazingly wonderful stuff they’d ever eaten.’ He sighed, as though recalling a good memory. ‘So,’ he went on, soon as Bits realised they were there to trade, he sent in to the house for butter and cheese, which we’d got plenty of, and in return we got, what, a hundred silver marks’ worth of furs. Just what we needed for the cold season. Like I told you before, they don’t come much shrewder than old Bits.’
I decided to be a little bit of bramble snagging on his sleeve. ‘You say Thorfinn deduced all that the moment he saw those people?’ I said. ‘How come?’
‘Ah,’ said Eyvind. ‘He explained it to me later. He said, none of the other expeditions’d come across these people, not till Thorvald got killed, and we’d been there ourselves a whole summer and winter and spring and not seen anything of them; so, he reckoned, they couldn’t be farmers, living all the time in the same place, or we’d have seen their fields and houses. No, he figured they must be wanderers, following the deer as they move around in the big woods. He’d already guessed that before we got to Meadowland, actually; but when he saw them, he noticed that they didn’t have what we’d call cloth, that’s like wool or linen or cotton. All their clothes and shoes and everything were buckskin and hide and fur. It wasn’t the first time he’d been among people like that, see; there’s a whole load of them right up north, in Finnmark and Permia, wandering around after the big herds of reindeer they have there. Very much the same sort of people, Bits said, except bigger and taller. And he knew the Permians go nuts over butter and cheese, so it stood to reason that this lot’d be just the same.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘You’re right, he was shrewd.’
‘Got to be, if you want to get on as a trader,’ Eyvind replied. ‘It’s a basic skill of the job, being able to size people up at first sight.’
‘A useful talent,’ I agreed. ‘So,’ I went on, ‘you were on good terms with the locals after that:
A frown flitted across Eyvind’s face. ‘For a while,’ he said.
But Bits wasn’t absolutely happy with the way things’d gone (Eyvind went on). He didn’t like the way those people had been able to walk right in on us like that, without us noticing. Fine so long as they were friendly; but what about if they turned nasty for any reason? Like, maybe the ones who came to trade were from a different clan or whatever from the ones who killed Thorvald? Bloody good point, that; they’d most likely still be sore over Thorvald killing the people he had found sleeping under the boats. What if they came creeping up on us out of the wood? And besides, even if that was all forgotten about, a smart man like Bits knew all too well how quickly things can go wrong when you’re among strangers, and you don’t even know the language. You can give mortal offence without even knowing you’ve done it.
So the day after the traders came to visit he sent us off into the woods to cut a big load of twelve-foot stakes, and we built a good strong palisade right round the house and the buildings. First we dug a ditch, four feet down, and threw the spoil up behind us so that it made a nice, solid bank about three foot high; and we drove the stakes into that, each one down four feet, to leave two-thirds of its length above ground. Once we’d got all the stakes in, close enough so a rat couldn’t squeeze between them, we sharpened the tops of the posts to make them awkward to climb over; and we put in a proper gate and everything. Everyone felt a damn sight safer after we’d done that, I can tell you.
Not long after we’d finished that job, Gudrid had her baby. We were all outside, just putting the last few touches to the palisade, and suddenly we could hear this kid squalling. Bits dropped the sledgehammer he was holdi
ng and dashed in through the gate. Then the penny dropped for the rest of us, and we all dashed in after him. Turned out it was a boy; the first Northerner to be born in Meadowland. They called him Snorri, and you can bet your life he got spoiled rotten by all of us. Sort of a symbol to the rest of us, I suppose you could say; like it meant we weren’t just passing through, we were there to stay
‘Talking of which,’ I interrupted. ‘I’ve been wondering. There were four other women along on this expedition besides Gudrid, right?’
Eyvind frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But they aren’t important.’
I smiled at him. ‘You’ll excuse me saying this,’ I said, ‘because for obvious reasons I can’t claim any real understanding of this subject; but there were, what, sixty men and five women, and one of those five was the boss’s wife. How could the other four not be important? I’d have thought you’d have been fighting to the death over them.’
Eyvind’s frown deepened. Northerners can be a bit scary when they’re tense, even an old codger like Eyvind, and if he’d told me to drop the subject, I’d have done so. But he said: ‘It wasn’t like that. They weren’t-‘ He hesitated. ‘Let’s say, they weren’t things of beauty.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘Sixty men, out there for the best part of a year-He looked away ‘And let’s just say’ he went on, ‘they weren’t there exactly out of choice. Not theirs, anyway’
‘You’re embarrassed about something,’ I said.
He was getting annoyed. ‘Well, maybe it wasn’t the best decision Bits ever made. But he needed to make up the numbers, and there’s men’s work and there’s women’s work, and none of the Eastern Settlement women were particularly keen to go. So he had to do the best he could.’
