Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic (8 page)

Once again, Siaq laughed, and the response irritated Kannujaq. “Siku believes what I want him to,” she said. “He knows what I permit, and he makes up the
rest, like always.”

“Then tell him the truth,” pressed Kannujaq. “Tell him I have no special destiny here. Our futures are what we make of them. Maybe the Tuniit believe in destiny, but you are not a Tuniq! You are one of my kind. You must understand what I'm saying. We don't have to die. We can return the stolen property. Leave it on the beach for when the Glaring One next arrives. Flee and never speak of him again ….”

“Nothing will stop the Glaring One,” muttered Siaq. Her arms were now folded around herself. She rocked, staring into the dying fire, and seemed almost to forget that Kannujaq was present. “Nothing,” she added, “will make him quit.”

Kannujaq sighed, rubbing at his sooty eyes. Maybe Siaq was right. He recalled the raid's end that he had witnessed. Such bloodshed. Such unnecessary murder. Perhaps the Glaring One wanted his property returned; but the way of his men was hardly that of a group in search of something. Unless that something were madness.

But these were barely men, were they? These were folk whose ship prow was carved to resemble a beast—a wolf. And that was how they attacked. The Tuniit were like mindless caribou, panicked and chased and inevitably slaughtered. They were all the victims. The caribou.

And the Siaraili were wolves.

Wolves,
Kannujaq thought.

The notion repeated itself over and over in his mind.

Siaq was stuffing more heather into the fire, when Kannujaq asked her:

“How does a Tuniq hunt a wolf?”

“They don't,” she said. “Wolf pelts, among the Tuniit, are rare and valuable. Because it is almost
impossible to get near enough to a wolf to kill it.”

But Kannujaq knew how his own folk hunted them.

One did not catch a wolf by running it down. Nor by ambushing it. The creatures were too wily. They could sense humans, evading them every time. Instead, one used a wolf's habits against it. A wolf was like a dog. If it found food lying about, it would stuff itself with as much as its gut could carry, eating faster than it could think. So Kannujaq's folk used this observation to their advantage: They crafted a trap that was frozen into a large chunk of fat or meat. The wolf gobbled it down without thought. When the food thawed in the wolf's stomach, the trap sprang.

Dead wolf.

Siku walked in while Kannujaq was trying to explain this idea to a disinterested Siaq. The boy shaman, however, immediately bent an ear to Kannujaq's words. He even seemed to grasp what Kannujaq was implying, and began to rummage through his bags. In a few moments, the lad had retrieved a handful of dried, hideous, near-black lumps. He held them out to Kannujaq, smiling, his blue eyes dancing in the firelight.

“Is that,” Kannujaq asked, “what you burn to make people sleepy?”

Sick, too,
he thought.

“It has a few uses,” Siaq said without emotion, “depending on how it is prepared. It can make people dreamy, wanting to talk and tell the truth about things. But it can also make one very sick. It is rare, and very dangerous. It can make one forever stupid—even kill, if used by one who is already stupid. But an angakkuq, like myself or Siku, can prepare small amounts of it properly.”

After a long moment, Kannujaq asked Siaq and her son, “You said it can kill?”

“If we made a thick soup of it,” said the boy,
grinning his toothy grin.

Siaq frowned, her dark eyes growing wide. She glared at her son.

“Why would you do such a thing?” she asked him. “You know that you should never consume that stuff. It was one of the first lessons I taught you.”

“It's not for any of us,” said Kannujaq with a sigh. He hated this. This moment meant committing himself to a terrible act.

“Would it still work,” he asked, “if we soaked some meat in it?”

“Yes,” said Siku, sounding surprisingly mature in the firmness of his answer, “if we use enough. But I have three bags here.”

Siaq, suddenly understanding, ran off to retrieve her own supplies.

Unhappy Kannujaq! Once again, when he'd only wanted peace, a life of exploring the wide Land, the violence of others pulled him into violent response. But, as his own elders might have reminded him, the Land is far more than rocks and lichen and hills and coasts. The Land is also those living beings, humanity being no exception, that dwell on its surface. Peace is possible only if all possess the will for it. And Kannujaq, without even knowing that he was doing so, had shifted his role from hunter to warrior.

It took a little over a day to ready everything, and the Tuniit needed a great deal of convincing. Kannujaq was aggressive about securing their promise that they would help out, when the moment arrived. Everyone's movements were planned. Rehearsed. The homes nearest the beach were left abandoned. Storage areas left full of meat. As many Tuniit as possible would share homes nearest the hills, allowing them a head start if the raiders
were sighted. They were not to move far, but only to take cover near the base of the hills.

Kannujaq alone would creep back to the camp to see if the Glaring One's men took the bait. If so, he would signal.

There was no alternate plan.

The days were long now, so it was late evening when the Glaring One returned in creeping dusk.

One by one, the great boat's torches sprang to life as it reached the shore, to the roars of:

“Skraeling!”

“Skraeling!”

“Skraeling!”

The Tuniit camp, and especially Kannujaq himself, had already spent hours in nervous anticipation. All eyes were on the sea. Everything was set, and cries of alarm spread faster than flame in heather among the Tuniit, who were soon running inland with all the fleetness their stocky bodies could muster. Kannujaq ran alongside of them, desperate and hoping that the Tuniit would be able to summon their courage when the time came.

Kannujaq's great worry was that the raiders would not behave as expected. Siku and Siaq had prepared a kind of rancid-smelling tea out of their dried shaman stuff. Each had assured Kannujaq that the soup would
be undetectable on meat that had soaked in it. They were wrong. Kannujaq himself had sampled the tiniest bit of the food. It had no peculiar scent, but its flavour was off. Bitter. Even from the nibble he had tried, his stomach had begun to lurch soon after swallowing. He had puked it all up before learning what else it had in store for him.

Maybe,
he hoped,
the raiders will arrive hungry. Either that, or they're just stupid.

The Tuniit reached the hills and many sheltering boulders, keeping low. Kannujaq could already spot commotion down by the beach. This turned out to be raiders kicking in the short walls and ripping the tops off of Tuniit homes. Stamping their way through cooking fires. Kannujaq gave them time, letting the rosy light of evening approach. After the amount of time it might have taken for someone to boil up soup, he began to creep back down, doing his best stalk, hoping that his now sooty clothes would help him blend in with the landscape.

It was like torture, creeping down to the beach, wondering with every beat of his heart if raider eyes were already tracking him. At last, he arrived at the edge of the community. Fortunately, there were many large rocks about the place—enough, at least, for him to move from cover to cover.

The Glaring One was easy to spot. There was that owl-like mask, once again gleaming by torchlight. The Siaraili leader never seemed to stray far from his boat. As before, he was arguing with one of his own people. He seemed frustrated by something. At last, as Kannujaq watched, the leader tore off the kannujaq shell over his head—it seemed to be one piece with the mask—and he cast it on the stones of the beach. The Glaring One, as it turned out, was ruddy skinned for one of the Siaraili. But, other than a short, dark beard, Kannujaq could see little of his features.

The Glaring One's hulking servant, the one he had argued with, watched his leader climb back into the boat, searching about until he picked up something near its stern. Then the Glaring One stretched himself out, drinking from what looked like a kind of skin container. If so, the container was much like the sort Kannujaq's own folk might use. Given what Siaq had told him of the Siaraili drinking habits, however, Kannujaq doubted that it held water.

The servant shook his head and left his leader there, joining the other raiders at a fire they had constructed. For fuel, they were burning the precious few driftwood tools the Tuniit had made over generations.

But at least they're eating,
Kannujaq noted. The raiders had found the meat, but the poison would take some time to work. Kannujaq needed patience. The kind of patience he required while hunting. Compared with waiting for a seal to surface, however, this wait was easy.

But at least seal hunting was sane. Kannujaq could still not believe that he was doing this. If the poison failed, or if the giant-men spotted him …

For now, it seemed that the Glaring One's men were cocky, overconfident, too used to their raids going smoothly. They had not even bothered to post a lookout. Kannujaq sighed to himself, pleased with such luck. If an alarm went up, the entire plan would dissolve like fat in fire. So far, he had not spotted anyone hefting bows and arrows. That, too, was a piece of luck. He doubted that any archery contest between himself and the Siaraili would go as well as his encounter with Angula.

It was a sudden thing when it happened. Kannujaq's breath hissed between his teeth.

The Siaraili were still laughing, but Kannujaq could see that their movements had become funny. Loose. Disjointed. After a few more minutes, whenever one of the raiders arose from sitting, he teetered dangerously,
almost staggering into the fire pit.

One of them suddenly vomited. The others laughed at this, crazily, before they did the same. The mad pitch of their laughter increased, until they fell. First, they were on their knees. Then, they started to fall on their sides. Most began gesturing. Calling out at empty air.

In time, all eight of the raiders were down. Some were shaking violently, like a sleeper having nightmares. One lay still. Others were laughing or weeping uncontrollably.

Jerky from his own nerves, Kannujaq unravelled a bull-roarer that he carried in hand. The object was a small bone that could be found inside a caribou's hoof. When attached to a cord about arm's length, it could be whirled round and round. The resultant noise was a low-pitched buzz, useful for sending a signal.

Feeling that, even now, it was a bit of a risk to abandon his crouch, Kannujaq paused for a long moment, watching his fingers tremble. Then he cursed himself as a coward, forced his legs and back straight. He whirled the bull-roarer with all his strength. The caribou bone hummed, singing on the air.

He was calling the Tuniit.

Now! Now!
Kannujaq thought, almost panicking when none of the Tuniit appeared.
I can't do this alone!

But how could he expect the Tuniit to be any less terrified than himself?

At last, Tuniit men appeared next to him, long bear-spears in hand. They stood stunned by what they saw of the fallen raiders. Kannujaq roared at them to get moving.

He did not watch as they stabbed the giant-men.

Kannujaq's objective was the boat. Hissing aloud like some mad angakkuq, he ordered several Tuniit men to join him and do as he did.

Kannujaq flew down toward the water, almost leaping, almost stumbling, head forward, when his legs seemed incapable of running fast enough. At the water's edge, he threw himself against the bow of the boat. The Tuniit men did likewise. Together, they began to shove the great loon-wolf-thing backward, until even the waterproof stitches of Kannujaq's boots were useless, as the seawater's biting cold surrounded his legs. Still, Kannujaq and the Tuniit heaved, and the huge boat did move.

Kannujaq's one great worry was the Glaring One himself. He had hoped that the man would join his fellows in feasting. He'd been wrong. Instead, the Glaring One seemed to have gone to sleep in the stern. Siaq and Siku had both insisted that the weird fluid the giant-men liked to drink made them sluggish, but still violent. Could they get the boat away from the beach before the Glaring One woke up?

Keep on sleeping,
Kannujaq thought toward the Glaring One as he heaved.
Just sleep …

But there was a sudden, dry, rasping sound—that of a weapon being drawn—and the Glaring One appeared with a bellow. Kannujaq barely fell away from the boat as a great blade bit into the wood near his face.

The Tuniit, however, at last found their courage. No longer fleeing like frightened caribou, they came together as a team, and put their powerful shoulders into one last heave. By the time they managed to push the loon-wolf-boat away from the beach, all stood up to their thighs in the frigid water, Kannujaq included. They splashed and waded back up onto the beach, shivering from a combination of cold and nervous tension. Kannujaq was the first to turn, to look back and see if the Glaring One dared to climb out of his boat.