Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic (6 page)

Angula, Kannujaq realized, had taken out his treasures.

They also carried bows and arrows in hand. This was not about fighting. It was about murder. They would cripple him with arrows. Finish him with blades.

Kannujaq raced to the sled and frantically pulled away the lashings, retrieving his own bow. His heart seemed to thunder in his ears by the time he found arrows and stepped away from the dogs. He wanted no stray shots falling among them.

The Tuniit apparently noticed his actions. They froze. He could see the cronies darting questioning looks at Angula. Their mouths were moving. Kannujaq could see the puffs of their breath in the cold air.

Probably trying to convince Angula that this is a bad idea,
he thought.

It was.

Angula ignored his cronies. He nocked an arrow and drew, aiming high for a good arc.

Kannujaq backed up and the arrow fell short. And Kannujaq finally released the breath that he had held, due to mingled fright and anxiety, in his chest. As a wanderer, a hunter, his life depended on alertness. Paying attention to details. Back in the Tuniit camp, he had noted the ways in which Tuniit tended to construct things. To lash and tie objects together. He had been unimpressed with their craftsmanship. He had suspected—hoped—that their bows could not send an arrow very far. Fortunately, he now saw that he'd been right.

Angula tried again. This time, his cronies joined in. Several arrows came at Kannujaq, but he again backed up, and they fell short. This happened twice more, and with every failed attack, Kannujaq's smile grew broader.

Kannujaq smiled because he did not bear anything like a Tuniit bow. His was made according to the standards of his own folk, from carefully carved segments of whalebone, lashed together in a style that made it strong and reliable.

Its range was greater.

Kannujaq carefully nocked his arrow. He took his time in drawing back the string. His breath was held once again—but now with concentration rather than anxiety. He made sure of his stance.

And shot.

The arrow was almost beautiful, like a bird as it arced through the air.

It came down, burying itself in Angula's chest. There, the arrow quivered, before Angula fell to one knee. His cry was long. More a wail of despair than of pain. He fell like some boulder that had rolled over shifting ground.

And lay still.

Kannujaq was nocking another arrow when the cronies at last tore their eyes from Angula's body. Not having really wanted a fight in the first place, they fled like startled hares.

Kannujaq issued long expletives under his breath. He hated this.

He walked over to the fallen Angula, frowning, somehow far more angry at Angula's corpse than he had been at the living man.

Idiot!
he thought.
Madman! Making me kill him. The less-than-nothing fool has made me into a murderer.

Kannujaq suddenly felt dirty. As though he were now something less than human. As though he should go into hiding.

Though his arrows were precious, Kannujaq made no attempt to retrieve the one that still quivered, its fletching stirred by wind, in Angula's chest. He stood watching its movements for a time, sickened and confused by the feelings this encounter had left him with. Here was the one thing he could not stand: human smallness. The Land, despite its dangers, had never frustrated him. The Land had never lied, or grasped, or pretended to be anything other than what it was. It was only the narrow-minded behaviour of humanity that could leave Kannujaq feeling this way—hollow and weak.

This, the killing of Angula, had not been necessary. And the greed, the ego, the stupidity of it all brought Kannujaq to a kind of certainty:

The Tuniit are human,
he thought.
They are.

He put his bow away and began to leave. But then he paused.

He actually found himself concerned about the Tuniit. How would things unfold once the Siaraili returned? Maybe better, with Angula gone. But now they had no one to lead them. Would they have the
wits to flee? Or would they sit, confused, waiting to be slaughtered? And where would they go? As long as they lived by a coast, that Siaraili loon-wolf-boat might hunt them down.

It might even find Kannujaq's own folk.

Wherever his family now camped, it was sure to be along some coast or other. Would they not look up one day, startled by the sight of a great loon, having no idea that it brought madness and murder?

He looked back toward the Tuniit camp, now leaderless. He remembered the ptarmigan. It was his friend-animal. If it had not taken flight, Angula and the cronies would have ambushed him. Could it be a sign that he really was supposed to work against the enemies of the Tuniit?

“No,” he grumbled to himself. “Probably means I'll get killed along with them.”

He shook his head, once again swearing in the drawn-out, colourful way of his people. He swore mostly at himself, for beginning to think in terms of signs. Like Siku.

Siku—he was a shaman, but he was also a boy. Would he be able to hold the Tuniit camp together?

Well, there was no point in sledding away so quickly. He might as well tell Siku what had happened. Siku, young as he was, was somewhat respected. He might point the Tuniit to a new leader.

As long as it wasn't Kannujaq.

He gave the dogs the rest of his dried meat, then walked back to the Tuniit camp.

Siku was overjoyed at Kannujaq's return. The lad even puffed himself up, striding about as though he had doubled in height, as though he had predicted every detail of what had occurred. In his weird shaman's way, the boy saw Angula's death as assurance of exactly what Kannujaq refused to accept: that he was here to save the Tuniit.

At least Angula's hold on the community, one based solely on terror, had been eroded. Some individuals actually smiled, however shyly, at Kannujaq. Enough people offered him food that he had to start refusing it.

One of the first things Siku did was to introduce him to his mother, Siaq. She greeted Kannujaq with coolness. This was the lovely woman whom Kannujaq had earlier spotted. Kannujaq was still pretty sure, given her clothing style and overall bearing, that she was not Tuniit in origin—probably one of his own folk. But what was she doing here?

There was no chance to ask. Siku had something of great importance to show him.

In the Tuniit community, only two other people had lived in the same secrecy and solitude as the boy shaman. One was Siaq, Siku's mother. The other was Angula. Siaq had served Angula over the years. She was not his wife, though Angula had taken many wives, never keeping any. No, Siku's mother had only ever been one thing to Angula: his slave.

Angula's empty home was left untouched, as though it were now a haunted place. So there was no one there to greet them as Siku led Kannujaq into it. It was large. Not as big as some Tuniit dwellings, since Tuniit liked to group many families together in a single place, but it was large enough for a family of a decent size. There was something grave-like about it, Kannujaq thought, now that it was abandoned.

It's the fire,
Kannujaq realized, his eyes finding the spot in the floor where Tuniit traditionally burned their handfuls of heather. There was nothing burning there at the moment.
It's like Angula, now. Dead.

Siku did not pause for a heartbeat. With his typical feverish intensity, he led Kannujaq to the rear of the place, where there was a kind of adjoining chamber meant for storage. There was little of value in here. Just some old, ragged caribou hides. But Kannujaq had already developed a suspicion concerning what he was about to see.

Sure enough, Siku pulled away all the trash to reveal overly large flagstones. There was one in particular on which Siku set his attention. The boy hooked fingers onto the edge of it, heaving in grunts and spasms. With each heave, he shifted the stone about the width of a little fingernail.

Kannujaq got tired of watching, waiting, so he knelt with Siku to help move the stone.

The weight of the thing! Kannujaq was embarrassed to let the boy see him straining. It was amazing to think
that the timid Tuniit moved such stones around all the time. He reminded himself that Siku's mother was not a Tuniq—so neither was the boy a Tuniq, even though he had grown up among them.

Kannujaq had never before thought of himself as weak. But alongside the boy, he found himself smiling grimly, thinking:

We're almost unable to move this thing, even working together. How long must the kid have taken, doing it himself? Then putting it back again!

But Kannujaq's folk were all about working together to do things. Once he coaxed Siku into heaving to a certain rhythm, pulling at the same time as Kannujaq, the flagstone quickly slid aside.

Here were Angula's treasures.

Kannujaq realized that he was looking at all the things the Glaring One so desperately wanted back. All the things that Angula had stolen. Given what he already knew of the blade Siku had first shown him, then those even more monstrous blades hefted by Angula and his cronies at the time of Angula's killing, Kannujaq had developed the idea that few other objects could impress him.

So wrong—he'd been so wrong!

The pit was crammed with treasure.

Not one item in this pit, not one, was as poor as Siku's rusted knife. There were knives here, yes, but of such fine quality as to render Siku's laughable. And there was little in the trove that showed rust. As Kannujaq went through the pile—gingerly at first, then with increasing enthusiasm—he found blades like those that Angula and his cronies had carried, but better. It was clear that Angula had not allowed anyone to openly view his real treasure.

Parts of these Siaraili blades gleamed like captured sunlight. They were actually beautiful, as though their
makers had wanted them to please the eye. Kannujaq nodded as he inspected the work. His own people were the same as the Siaraili in this way, wanting tools to be well made, but also splendid to look at. But … the sheer artistry of these treasures, combined with their hugeness, soon raised some doubt in Kannujaq's mind as to whether they had ever been intended as workaday tools. Some were so polished that he could see his own face reflected in their surfaces, as though he were regarding his image in wind-stirred water. The most polished blade in the pit was as long as Kannujaq's arm, shining like a fish belly, handle decorated with some sun-coloured substance. Its home was a sheath made of fine leather, wood, and what looked to be wolf fur.

This was pretty, but Kannujaq was more impressed with the tools that suggested working practicality. The majority were heavy, curving crescents—a bit like a woman's
ulu.
Among Kannujaq's people, an ulu was a common personal tool, usually made by a husband for his wife. But it was small! These Siaraili tools were over a hand span in size, attached to the sturdiest wooden hafts that Kannujaq had ever hefted.

With this stuff,
he kept thinking,
you could hack through anything.

And he shuddered, suddenly, remembering the Tuniit victims. He remembered what Siku had told him of how the Siaraili loved to kill.

Mad as it seemed, Kannujaq wondered:

Are these meant for people?

He shuddered again.

Then he remembered more of Siku's words. The Siaraili, bloodthirsty as they were, never harmed children. But why did they so hate men and women?

There were other things, as well. Spearheads. Arrowheads. Not a single object made of flint, jade, or ivory. Everything was of enormous size. It took Kannujaq
some time to figure out that some items were belts. Other things he recognized as the strange bowls worn on the heads of the giant-men. Were they for protection? In case the Siaraili used such fierce weapons on each other? There was also a silvery, flexible thing, shaped like a coat; but made of tiny, tiny rings. There were curved plates with no apparent function. Maybe for serving food? And there were necklaces. Rings. All were made of different stones set in shining kannujaq-like stuff, gleaming as though they contained coloured fires.

“We must keep no part of this,” Siku told him, eyeing Kannujaq's fingers as they brushed across an arrowhead.

Kannujaq grunted, unsure of what to say. Unsure of what he felt.

By the time Kannujaq had pawed through it all, he was breathless. At the same time, he was a bit sad. Here was even more evidence that Angula had been mad. A sane man would have used such objects as tools, not weapons. As well, he would have shared them with friends and family. Life on the Land was hard enough, at times, without greed and stupidity to worsen it.

Mostly, Kannujaq felt panic. He now understood why the Glaring One wanted to regain these treasures. How, in all imagining, had Angula managed to steal this stuff?

Together, Kannujaq and Siku replaced the items. Then Siku took Kannujaq back to his grubby little shaman's house. The boy's mother, Siaq, was there. She looked up, giving Kannujaq an icy stare as he entered. As Kannujaq found a place to sit, the young shaman suddenly slipped back outside, leaving the man and woman alone.