Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  “This wound,” he began, glancing an instant to what was behind them. “She felt little, just the power of the thrust. As if she had been punched.”

  They nodded their heads at him, wanting to believe she had not suffered. Her mother mouthed the words after him, As if she had been punched, considering them, taking them in. In coming years when she would awaken haunted by the look of horror on Sigvor’s face, she would remember the big Dane’s words, and draw comfort from them.

  Tindr still stood, his back to the beach and what it bore, looking out at the sea. A shadow fell upon the bleached white of the rock he stood upon. He turned to see Scar there. The warrior raised his hand to his ear, then touched the scar on his face. A little smile cracked his lips. He placed the tips of his fingers together, for the steep roof of Tyrsborg: Tindr and Scar go home now.

  Tindr nodded, and breathed out a deep breath, one he felt he had been holding for hours.

  After they left the grain-seller’s ox cart appeared at the edge of the shrubs. His good wife had set two dark woollen blankets within, so that the dead lovers might be decently covered.

  They were not burnt together. Sigvor’s body was claimed by her parents, and consigned to the flames at the place of burial later that day. Her ashes were buried on the family farm, not far from the tree the girls used to swing from when they were small.

  Eirik’s body was carried to the home of his people. There his father and brothers set it in a tiny skiff charged with oil-soaked kindling. They towed it out next morning at dawn. When it was beyond the forces of the incoming tide they flung a lighted torch into it. His mother, watching from shore, saw the fierce blaze flare up like a fallen star, then be blotted out in the cold water.

  Chapter the Thirtieth: The Sámi

  The Year 886 Late Summer

  TINDR stood at his workbench in Tyrsborg’s stable, re-feathering arrows. Yrling came running in to him, jumping with excitement, eyes shining.

  “Look, look,” he said, touching his eye. His small hands now rose to the top of his head, spreading out like antlers. “Deer, deer!” He pointed down the hill, as if to Nenna’s house, or to the pier.

  He grabbed Tindr by one hand. Tindr set down his arrow and followed the boy along the side of Tyrsborg until they stood by the front door. Tindr saw Scar and Bright Hair already there, standing near the well, looking down the hill.

  Yrling jumped up again, his hands making antlers, then pointed down to where an odd waggon made its way to them.

  Tindr stood, transfixed. It was neither oxen nor horses that pulled the waggon. Over the heads of the beasts that bore it rose long and broad antlers of great sweep. He took a step forward. He could scarce believe it. These were deer, and they were harnessed and pulling the waggon up the hill.

  A rider rode alongside the waggon, on a horse. Tindr looked to those within the waggon. Fur Man was there, he who had come almost every year since Tindr had lived at Tyrsborg. Fur Man wore nothing but the hides of animals, and brought piles of furs for Scar to trade for. He liked honey and Tindr had been given a seal-skin and other hides in return for jars of it. But in other years Fur Man had come with the man on the horse, with his furs in an oxcart.

  His eyes went from Fur Man to another man, driving the deer, then saw a boy seated there too, in the back of the waggon. Both were dressed, as Fur Man was, in the skins of beasts.

  The deer were closer now, and Tindr took yet another step forward. They were like no other deer he had ever seen. They were not red, and their heads were big and blocky, akin to that of a horse. They were brown and white, with longer white fur about the neck, and thick legs that flared to feet larger than a horse’s, covered over with tufts of white fur. And they were big-boned, with broad shoulders and deep chests. Yet they were deer. They were beasts of the forests, yet utterly tame. Tindr could not move his eyes from them.

  “So it is true,” Sidroc was saying to his wife.

  She was shaking her head in wonderment. They had been awaiting the arrival of Osku and Gautvid, and now they were come, and come with the special deer of the far North that Gautvid had told them of. The Gotlander’s ship had just landed them there at the pier, and after the beasts had been harnessed and the waggon loaded, they made for Tyrsborg, their first stop.

  Gautvid was a Gotlander, a cousin of Tindr’s cousin Ragnfast the horse-breeder; and Osku’s trading partner. It was Gautvid who sailed his broad-beamed ship to the northern reaches of the Baltic Sea, where the Sámi folk lived. Gautvid called them Skridfinn, Striding Finns, for the Sámi roamed great distances to hunt and fish. But Osku had his own name for his folk, Sámi, and that is what Ceridwen and Sidroc called him.

  Osku the Sámi had not come to Tyrsborg last Fall. Gautvid came to the trading road alone, and with few furs. He said little about why the Sámi trader did not cross from the northernmost limits of the Baltic that year. Thus Sidroc was doubly glad to see both Gautvid and Sámi, and to note the size of the waggon Osku’s deer pulled.

  Yrling had been joined by Eirian, and both had run down to greet the waggon, and were standing by the side of the road with Alrik’s children, who looked on open-mouthed. As it neared Tyrsborg Ceridwen heard the clicking of the wheels on the hard and stony ground, and saw that more folk than Osku sat in the waggon. Tindr was standing, stock-still, awaiting it, and like Tindr it was the deer that her eyes fastened upon. Their heads were broad and strong-muzzled, the coats as thick and bristled as a wolf’s, with cream-coloured bellies, and grey and brown backs.

  They wore no bits in their mouths, and the harness they were hooked to was of the simplest design. They tossed their heads as they pulled the waggon up the packed clay road, the many-pronged antlers shaking in the still and warm afternoon air. Somewhere there were bells tied to them, for she heard a merry tinkle as they moved. Now she looked beyond the beasts themselves to the folk who sat within the waggon they drew.

  Osku was easy to mark; he sat upright next to the driver, and with his loose white-yellow hair resting on his shoulders and tunic of tanned animal skins looked as he ever had the years he had come to Tyrsborg. But he had always come alone, with Gautvid. Now he had his own kind with him, for the waggon was driven by a young Sámi man, dressed in skins as was Osku, and behind them perched a Sámi boy of ten or twelve Summers. The driver was of slight build, with two long white-yellow braids coming down from under his skin cap and falling almost to his waist. The young boy too had the same light hair, short and loose about his face. They must be Osku’s sons, and even from the distance she could see how pleased the younger was, with eyes wide open and a smile stretching across his mouth.

  Gautvid smiled down from his saddle at those before the front door. He was ten or more years older than his cousin Ragnfast, a small and wiry man, brown haired, and well-suited to the hardships he endured on his forays North to bring its costly furs to the trading folk of Gotland. He did not speak yet, for there were customs which must be followed with trading, and with the Sámi folk.

  He and the waggon were close enough now for Ceridwen and Sidroc to hear the snorting breath of the big deer as they neared. The waggon came to the top of the hill and turned in. Ceridwen marvelled silently at their beauty, and their seeming strength. Even more to wonder at was their tameness, though Gautvid, who had travelled for years in the lands of the Sámi, had told of the great herds the folk kept there, how they trained them to pull their sledges in Winter and waggons in Summer, and even penned the she-deer after they had weaned their young and milked them and so made cheese.

  “Ren deer, we call them,” Gautvid had once told them. “The Skridfinn have their own name for them, but the use of an animal’s name is a sacred thing, and they do not often do it, for fear of bad luck. But if you saw a team of ren deer pulling one of their sledges over snow, you might think they flew. They are as fast and sure-footed on ice as a skogkatt up a tree.”

  The waggon had now stopped, and the young driver sat with quiet hands as the deer tossed t
heir heads a final time. Ceridwen could not see the driver well as Osku was next him, but was close enough to see the black fringe of lashes that framed the dark and lustrous eye of the ren deer nearest her.

  Sidroc now moved forward to greet the trader. Osku stepped down from the waggon, and turned to face him. Sidroc opened his hands and spoke.

  “I welcome you, Osku,” he said, and inclined his head to his guest.

  “I am welcomed by you,” answered Osku, returning the nod. He pressed his own hands together at his chest. “May our trading leave both of us happy and prosperous.”

  Osku did not know much of the Norse tongue when he had first travelled to the hall, but each visit had shown him with a greater command. What he did not know, Gautvid could tell him, for he was versed in the speech of the Sámi. Yet as Sidroc had often said, trading needs no speech. All merchants knew a good sale could be made without words. But if the trader was to be one’s guest, it was more pleasant for all to be able to share a few words in common.

  The mistress of Tyrsborg now came forward and dipped her skirts to the Sámi. Osku smiled upon her, and lifted his hand in greeting.

  Tindr now came nearer himself, and Ceridwen could not help but see how struck he was at the Sámi’s return. Tindr had always looked long at the man, perhaps because Osku wore only the hides of animals. Osku’s light brown tunic was of napped animal skin, as were his leggings, and his close-fitting cap. The only bits of cloth about him were the lines and dashes of bright blue and red wool thread that had been worked into the neck-opening of his tunic, and circled the sleeves at the wrists and ran up to his shoulders. His cap was also worked over with such designs, and Gautvid had told her that each Sámi man, woman, and child had a pattern unique to themselves in the thread-work that adorned the cap that sat upon their heads. The head, centre of thought, was sacred, and deserving of such attention and hand-work.

  Tindr wore wool and linen clothes, like all on Gotland; and deer hide tunics in Winter. But he made his own boots, cut and sewn by him from the tough hides of the boar he had killed in the forests. He had made his first pair when he took his first boar, his mother Rannveig had told her. Ceridwen thought he did this to return the strength and vigour of the beast back into the forest in which it had run, lived, and died. When he trod the forest floor with his boots some part of the animal’s vital energy flowed back into it. Like Osku Tindr left the fur upon his boots. Dressed all in skins as he was Osku seemed almost as much animal as man, and Tindr had responded to this with looks of awe.

  Now here was the Sámi arrived in a waggon pulled by animals which should have been wild, yet were not. It seemed a form of magic to her, and she not could imagine how Tindr looked upon it. He came close to the ren deer, but did not touch them, even though they stood as quietly as halted oxen. He just stood, taking it in with his blue-white eyes.

  Osku turned his head to the waggon, waved his hand at the boy who had sat behind him. The lad came forth, dressed as was Osku, all in skins. His cap was worked in red and blue thread of squares that interlocked. He smiled, showing strong white teeth.

  “Ulmmá, my son,” Osku said, and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The young man who was driver now jumped down from his seat and came around to them. He stopped a little behind Osku and Ulmmá, and Ceridwen looked at him.

  It was not a man at all. The driver was a maiden, of perhaps eighteen Summers, she thought; maybe more. She was so slender as to have little womanliness in her form; or the loose fitting skin tunic and tight leggings she wore hid it well. Her tunic was longer than that of Osku and the boy, and bore more of the bright thread-work in red and blue, and her cap was covered in the same wools closely stitched in circling designs. From under that close-fitting cap fell her whitish braids, not thick but wondrously long, for even braided they did indeed fall to her narrow waist. After moving nearer to them she stood perfectly still; her face unmoving, eyes trained on Osku’s back.

  Even up close a quick glance might have fooled one accustomed to more womanly dress into believing that a young man stood before them. It was the fullness of her lips that checked this; that and the fineness of the skin on her throat, white skin through which thin blue veins faintly shone. She had an odd and fey beauty, and there was no woman Ceridwen had seen she could compare her to. As she stood staring at her she glanced her way. She was indeed like no other woman, and now she saw why. She had a face like a deer, not those she drove, but those in the forest behind the hall. The face was narrow and fine-boned, with cheekbones so high and sharply-angled as to make the eyes appear slightly aslant. Those eyes as she looked back at her were a clear and unclouded blue.

  She was much struck by her, and could only think: If Freyja comes as a white hind this is how she would appear.

  The woman glanced away, forcing her own gaze to shift, and she saw Tindr, just to her right and near the ren deer’s head, staring at her too.

  Tindr had lifted his hands in the air, almost as if they reached toward her. He saw she was a woman, and saw too that she looked like a deer. It was not the face of the Lady who had come to him, but the high cheekbones and planes of her visage were doe-like. This, and her near-white hair, brought his Lady to his mind. He had sometimes imagined that if she donned clothing she would wear the skins of the animals she ruled over, loved, and protected.

  Osku half-turned to the girl, and said, “Šeará. My daughter.”

  Šeará, Ceridwen repeated inwardly. Her name sounded like the hiss of wind soughing through trees, or the sigh the waves make as they are sucked back across the rocks to the ever-hungry sea.

  Tindr saw Fur Man gesture to the woman and then speak. He saw Bright Hair and Scar speak to her, nod their heads in greeting. The woman watched them speak, and cocked her head without replying.

  She is like me, Tindr thought; she cannot hear. He had been holding his breath as if he neared a wild beast in the woods. Now he took a silent intake of air.

  She did not smile as did her young brother, but only nodded at Sidroc and Ceridwen in turn. Tindr stood unmoving looking at her, and her head turned. She held his glance a moment.

  Ceridwen was watching them both, knowing she should make some gesture of welcome to her, to them all; but was caught and held by the Sámi woman’s striking face and still form.

  Gautvid spoke and broke the spell. “It is good to see Tyrsborg again,” he said, and swung down from his horse.

  Tyrsborg had been a source of wealth to Gautvid, from the first Winter when Sidroc had surprised his wife with the bundles of furs he had bought from Gautvid to keep her warm, and then through the last three trading seasons but one when Gautvid had brought Osku himself to meet and trade with them. “I hope you had fair trading last year in what I sold you.”

  Sidroc took his arm in greeting and grinned back. “Only fair,” he teased.

  “Then perhaps you have no desire to see Osku’s cargo,” Gautvid teased back.

  Sidroc laughed. He had been such a good customer that Gautvid always came to Tyrsborg first, so that Sidroc might have first pick. “I will take a look,” he answered, still grinning.

  Ceridwen opened her hands to all in a gesture of welcome. “You will be the guests of Tyrsborg for this night,” she invited.

  Her thoughts had already gone ahead, gauging if Gunnvor could feed all of them. She baked every second day, and had done so this morning, so that there was bread aplenty; and the browis she was already at work on could readily be doubled. Helga could go down to the trading road and meet a returning fishing boat and buy several fat herring or cod.

  “The ren deer,” Sidroc said, looking to the beasts. “We have a second paddock; they are welcome to it.”

  Osku was looking to Gautvid, who spoke back to him in the Sámi tongue. Osku responded, and Gautvid nodded at Sidroc.

  Šeará went to the ren deer’s head, Tindr close behind. Ceridwen heard her make a sound to the deer – not the clucking noise made to horses or oxen, this was almost
a sung call – and the deer ambled onward, with her resting her hand on the neck strap of one of them. They wore the simplest of bridles, a headstall and cheek piece only.

  Tindr saw her lips part, and the flutter at her throat. He saw too how the deer responded, following at her call. She was not deaf.

  The others led the way into the grassy space near the stable, the deer walking after. Gunnvor had set up ale and buttered bread on the table by Tyrsborg’s back stone wall, and now seeing how many they numbered, turned to bring out more cups, and a jug of honey-water too. Osku and Gautvid went to the back of the waggon and began to untie the leathern cords over-strapping the bundles there, Sidroc at their sides.

  The Sámi woman began the task of unfastening the harness on the ren deer she had led. Tindr stood but an arm’s length from her, leaning towards her in his readiness to help. He made a low grunt, which made her turn her eyes to him. He shook his head, brow troubled, as if he were sorry. He cupped his hands together and extended them towards her: Please. Then he pointed to the second ren, and made a gesture like unbuckling. She said something then; he saw her lips move again. Tindr’s blue-white eyes fastened on her face, and her own darker blue eyes looked back at him. He shook his head. She spoke again. She saw the struggle on his brow as he grunted back in return.

  Šeará paused. Then she stuck out her tongue, and touched it a moment with her finger. She closed her mouth and opened it again, gesturing with her hand that he do so too. Perhaps he could not speak because his tongue had been cut out. He opened his mouth, his tongue lolling. She saw his brow furrow as he looked at her.

  He was almost desperate to speak, and yet feared making the braying call which answered for his speech. He forced his mouth closed.

  Then he placed his hands one over each ear. He shook his head rapidly: Nai. I cannot hear. His hand went to the neck of his tunic, and he pulled out the little bone whistle lying there. He blew softly into it, showing how he summoned folk.