Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic (4 page)

The Glaring One's hulking men had killed without purpose, seemingly laying into whomever had made themselves most available. It was an angry, insane sort of thing, and even accounts Kannujaq had heard of revenge-based attacks between families had not seemed as awful as this. Where people had not been available, the brutes had attacked and scattered the cooking fires. They had even kicked in the feeble little walls that made up the Tuniit homes.

Kannujaq felt awkward as Tuniit grieved and pitifully restored order all around him. He began to stare downward, not wanting to take in any more of it. He passed only one person who seemed to notice that he was not a Tuniq: a young mother who clutched her baby tighter at the sight of him. But Siku led Kannujaq along even faster, quickly bringing him to his own little, Tuniit-style place: a sunken, square-walled hovel strewn with odd carvings, bones, and bags deformed with the overstuffing of nebulous materials. It was all, Kannujaq supposed, a shaman's garbage. But Kannujaq wasn't sure whether he was witnessing a shaman's lifestyle, or simply
a boy's tendency to collect things.

On reflex, Kannujaq moved to the left side of the house—the polite thing to do among his own folk, though it might have meant nothing here. He spotted some dried meat, snatched it up and chewed, as was any guest's right. The boy ignored him, stuffing fistfuls of heather into a near-dead fire. This place was a miniature version of what Kannujaq guessed to be the typical Tuniit home. The flagstone floor was a shallow pit, given the illusion of greater height by the rectangle of short stone walls around it. The ceiling was tent-like. Kannujaq didn't have time to study it closely, since he was nearly overwhelmed by smoke billowing from the fire. He began to cough, but Siku just grinned at him from a cloud of fumes, seemingly unbothered.

Sooty Ones,
Kannujaq thought, recalling his people's alternate name for the Tuniit.
No wonder!
This, at least, was exactly as he'd heard: It seemed that the Tuniit did not use
qulliit
—the seal-oil lamps, painstakingly carved from soapstone, that were so central to the homes of his own kind. But then again, women alone were the owners of qulliit, and this dwelling bore every indication that the boy lived by himself.

Where,
Kannujaq wondered,
is this kid's family?

Maybe the boy was an orphan. Or perhaps he lived in some shaman-related seclusion as part of Tuniit custom …

Kannujaq was so tired. It seemed almost painful to keep wondering about everything. To force his mind along, like urging his dog team. To keep thinking …

There was a weird smell that accompanied the smoke. Sharp, but not entirely unpleasant. Within a few heartbeats, Kannujaq's muscles relaxed, like so many dog tethers suddenly cut. He may not have felt much like thinking—but, odd as it seemed, he very much felt like talking.

“Really funny,” slurred Kannujaq to the boy, “thinking I could help with those giant-men. As if anyone could. It's like you think I'm a Tuniq.”

Kannujaq gave his head a shake. His voice sounded a bit strange to his own ears.

The boy grinned at him.

Oh, we forgot to tell you: Shamans were also pretty clever when it came to the things that plants and other natural materials could do. Kannujaq, as it turned out, was right. The boy was an angakkuq—a shaman—and the lad had drugged him with the smoke from his fire. There's no way to know exactly why he did such a thing. After all, we only know what Kannujaq was thinking, not the boy. But the young shaman probably wasn't trying to be mean. If we had to guess, we'd say that he just sensed how freaked out Kannujaq was, and wanted to force a chat with him. Maybe it wasn't the nicest thing to do, making Kannujaq breathe that smoke without telling him what it was. We don't know what it was, either, and we're telling this tale! Let's just hope the boy knew what he was doing, because breathing the smoke from anything is never a great idea.

As it was, the winds rasped at the outside world, and the weeping of Tuniit gradually quieted down, and the hunter and the boy talked. For how long, Kannujaq was unsure—for it seemed that Siku had thrown something other than just heather onto the fire. And with every pinch of the dark, grey, crinkly stuff that burned, time washed away like sand under a gentle tide.

Nevertheless, Kannujaq quickly learned that this was not the first time the giant-men had attacked. There had been rumours that every Tuniit camp, near and far, had been assaulted. It was said that they wiped out whole communities, or at least tried to, always attacking men and women first. For whatever reason, they left children alone. Some Tuniit escaped them by fleeing inland. More died under their colossal, whirling knives. Always, the invaders laughed, shouting as they slaughtered, as though they were crazy people who thought that murder was like picking berries. And their shouts sounded like:

“Siaraili!”

The war cry of the raiders had become the
common name for them. And so it was that the giant-men were known to the Tuniit as
Siaraili.

There had been peace over this last winter, during which time no Tuniq had heard anything of the Siaraili. But just last month, the monsters had again appeared at the shore, savagely assaulting this camp.

Ice is breaking up,
Kannujaq thought, his mind clearing a bit as the stuff in the fire burned out.
Their loon-wolf-boat couldn't get here over wintertime.

Kannujaq had heard that, unlike his own folk, the Tuniit rarely used boats. If that was true, it probably hadn't occurred to them that the giant-men—Siaraili or whatever they were called—depended on their vessel. It meant that they lived somewhere else, somewhere divided from the mainland by sea, and not in some other camp along the same coast as the Tuniit.

The shaman-boy had his own theories. Siku's belief, as it turned out, was that the Siaraili had followed Angula, this camp's current boss, to this part of the coast. And Siku claimed, with a scowl, that Angula was the cause of all this. Angula was a Tuniq who had brought himself into power, here, by lending tools to other camp people. Not just any tools. Special ones. Angula possessed a fabulous, secret hoard of “special” tools. And it was this collection, the boy claimed, that helped him buy his way into power everywhere he went.

Doesn't like Angula much,
Kannujaq thought, watching the boy's features twist as he spoke of the man.

Kannujaq then learned why the boy had initially seemed so obsessed with his kannujaq necklace. According to Siku, every one of the special tools that Angula held so dear was made of the same stuff as Kannujaq's necklace. It was Siku's belief that Angula had somehow stolen these kannujaq things from the Glaring One himself. And now the giant-men, the Siaraili servants of the Glaring One, were searching for their master's missing goods.

With the difficulty in figuring out the boy's weird Tuniq way of talking, this much of the little shaman's account had taken some time to tell. The effects of the smoke had almost entirely passed, and Kannujaq's thoughts were becoming more focused, sharp as an arrow point. It occurred to him, suddenly, that he might not be getting an accurate version of events, and he found himself wishing for some elders to consult with. That was not very likely to happen, though. Even the Tuniit who had not run from Kannujaq had at least refused to look him in the eye. The boy was the “friendliest” person here.

Almost unconsciously, Kannujaq found his head turning in the direction of where he had left his dogs. The longer he stayed in this place, the more he felt trapped. Listening to the boy made him feel as though he were committing to something—and that, he could not do. It was becoming clear that, in the boy's imaginative thinking, the loop of kannujaq material was a kind of sign from the unseen world that Kannujaq himself possessed a power that only the Glaring One and his giant-men had owned up until now.

The idea was cute. Even tragic. Despite the lad's special status, he still had the childish tendency to believe that events were connected. Kannujaq found himself wishing that he could state things plainly—tell Siku that things just happened. Not all things were signs. Not everything had meaning.

Still, Kannujaq held his tongue. He understood that the boy was afraid. Desperate. The Siaraili were a horror beyond understanding. And Kannujaq's arrival was sheer accident.

How might two senseless things combine to make sense?

Kannujaq could only put up with so much of Siku's imagination. He was not about to stay.

The boy still held a bit of the crinkly, mystery stuff in his hand—the gunk that he threw on the fire along with the heather to produce smoke—and he leaned over to toss more of it into the flames. Kannujaq, almost grabbing him by the wrist, prevented him from doing so.

“No more smoke,” he told the lad. “Just tell me. Is this Angula person still the camp's boss?”

The boy used his face to indicate “yes,” raising eyebrows and widening his eyes. This startled Kannujaq: It was one of the facial expressions his own folk used to agree with something. Before Kannujaq could think about it further, though, Siku rushed into more complaints about Angula.

It seemed that Angula, the Tuniq boss whom Siku portrayed as such a villain, had become mad with the idea of power. Increasingly, Angula had begun to claim that spirits were giving him his kannujaq tools. He had even begun to claim that his tools gave him, and those who followed him, special powers.

Crazy,
Kannujaq thought.

It was Siku's belief, apparently, that Angula wanted to think of himself as an angakkuq—a shaman. Maybe even something beyond a common shaman. These were strange times. With raids by the Siaraili, people were no longer sure what to believe. Some had given in to Angula's ideas. Many Tuniit simply wanted to leave, even despite their intense love of their homes. But in his madness and power lust, Angula would not let anyone go.

They love their homes?
Kannujaq thought. He couldn't help smiling at the weird notion. This at least answered a question that had been lurking in the back of Kannujaq's mind: If the Tuniit were under attack from the sea, why did they not simply move away? To Kannujaq's folk, home was a dog team, a temporary shelter, or wherever he could meet up with relatives for a while.

Kannujaq kept listening, and Siku explained that Angula's latest bit of madness had been to tell the Tuniit community that the Siaraili were under his direction. Their attacks, the crazy man claimed, were punishment for the camp folk disobeying his orders. According to Angula, the Siaraili attacks would stop as soon as people dropped any idea of leaving, and demonstrated complete submission to Angula's will.

Kannujaq fidgeted as he listened. He was uneasy with this story about Angula, and wondered whether the boy was exaggerating. Among Kannujaq's people, it was a terrible thing to force one's will on another. In truth, if there was anything that Kannujaq's people could have called sacred, it might have been respect for the
isuma—
the personal feelings and thoughts of each individual.

Kannujaq had descended into a spiral of his own dark thoughts, so he was startled when Siku suddenly tossed something. The object landed with a heavy “clunk” on one of the home's flagstones. Kannujaq stared at it for a moment, amazed, before picking it up.

He immediately noted the weight of the object. It was obviously a kind of knife, but it was much heavier than it ought to have been. The knives that Kannujaq's people used were small, typically made of ivory, bone, or antler, and they were feather-light in comparison to this one. He blinked, examining the blade, and a sudden realization almost made him forget to breathe.

Tuniit,
thought Kannujaq,
could never have made this thing!
Their craftsmanship was legendary for its poor quality. And, while Siku's clothes seemed to have been tailored well enough, the rest of these camp folk were dressed in what—to Kannujaq's family—might have been rags. The few tools Kannujaq had seen here were little better. No lamps. No dogsleds or the kit that went with them. No boats. Kannujaq wasn't sure how the Tuniit managed to survive at all.

But this knife was of excellent quality. And what most caught Kannujaq's attention, what even frightened him a bit, was the colour: the dark red of a kannujaq blade. It was cold, like stone. Like the loop that hung from his own necklace. Yet this was no little scrap, the remainder of what had once been a grandmother's needle. This blade was almost as long as Kannujaq's forearm, having only a single, straight edge. The dull side was oddly curved, and along it ran mysterious etchings.

Decoration?

Kannujaq scratched at it with his fingernail. Rust, as could be found on some rocks, came away from the blade. Under the rust was a grey stuff, hard and cold. It was very much like kannujaq, but more dense. Stone could leave scratches on his own sample of kannujaq. But when he took the strange tool and scraped it along one of the floor's flagstones, there was almost no scoring. Kannujaq clamped his teeth on the object, but he immediately sensed that it would shatter every tooth in his mouth before giving way.