Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [42]
All through the winter, both the settlers and the hunters went about their business anxiously; any move on either side might have started another crisis. There was no trading at the enclosure, but Krona reflected that this was probably a blessing – it was better that the two sides did not meet.
The following summer there was a bumper harvest. The medicine man had triumphed.
His success was complete; his authority now was greater than ever. He waddled about the valley in a stately manner and took gifts from the farmers – not because he needed them but to remind the people of his special relationship with the gods.
“He speaks to the sun god,” they said. The farmers were respectful; and the hunters were cowed.
At the summit of Krona’s hill, the medicine man now made his clearing into a small temple. It consisted of ten large tree stumps set in a circle in the middle of the clearing. In the centre of this little circle, which was only fifteen feet across, he would now build his fire and there, with the help of a young man whom he had selected to be his assistant, he made the sacrifices to the sun god. Twice a year not only the settlers attended, but a small party of hunters too would silently appear from the woods, bringing with them a deer to be given to the settlers’ god.
“He burns his fires above your house,” Liam protested to Krona. “He makes himself chief of the valley.” She could not understand his patience.
And when the hunters in the bowl of land to the south, or on the ridges opposite, saw the column of blue smoke rising from the hilltop they knew that the medicine man was powerful indeed.
In the forest, however, far out of his sight, they made their own sacrifices to the moon goddess who protected all hunters, and performed the old dances before the hunt at full moon, as their ancestors had done since time began.
But still Krona watched, and did nothing.
For despite the arrogance of the medicine man, the two communities were slowly returning to a state of peace. At the trading post in the enclosure, the barter trade between hunters and settlers cautiously resumed. And although the passage of a few years could not remove the fear and distrust that the hunters still had of the settlers and their medicine man, on the surface at least all was calm.
The fact that this state continued unbroken was mostly the work of the two old men: Krona and Magri.
Krona was determined to maintain peace. He had come to the island because he knew that the sea wall would protect the new settlement from the kind of marauders who had destroyed his farm and his family when he was a young man, and he had no wish to see the valley become involved in a useless and bloody dispute with the hunters. He hated the course of action that the medicine man had followed; but even if he suffered personal humiliation, he knew he must still be patient.
“This madness must run its course,” he muttered; and he did not oppose the medicine man.
Instead, he occupied himself quietly on his farm and in all matters except those concerning the sacrifices of the gods, he remained the most influential voice in the community. He became attached to a particular spot immediately in front of the oblong house and there, on one of the big sacks in which the farmers stored the wool from their sheep, he was often to be seen, with his club resting at his feet as a symbol of authority, gazing over the settlement that he had founded. The farmers still came to him as the arbiter of their disputes and even the medicine man approached the old warrior on his sack with some caution. But on most days, Krona was content to sit there alone, attended only by Liam, his sharp, fierce eyes watching the winding river below and the swans that silently glided upon it.
It was to this place that Magri often came. He too was growing old, and he too knew the value of patience. The two men would sit quietly opposite each other, perhaps only exchanging a few words during the course of several hours, but always treating each other with the respectful politeness which