Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [45]
It was true: these items were greatly prized by the farmers on the north European coast, and the island was rich in all of them.
“Taku shall arrange it,” Krona concluded.
In the last few years, the lame hunter had become a remarkable trader, taking the big skin canoes up and down the five rivers and even along the coast in search of goods which he brought back to the settlement. Now it took him only a few days to amass an impressive cargo, enough to fill two of the biggest canoes. There were deer skins, fox furs, badger pelts and even some bison skins which had made their way down the island’s network of rivers from the north. These activities of Taku’s were the first beginning of what was to become a substantial island trade; and with justifiable pride Taku hobbled from one pile to another, pointing out the high quality of each pelt.
“It is enough,” Krona said when he had inspected them. But if he thought that Taku was satisfied, he was mistaken; for now the lame hunter laid before the chief his most important request.
“Let me go with them,” he asked, “with my son,” and he indicated the eldest of his sons, a young man who appeared to be a carbon copy of his father.
Krona paused. Would he be useful?
“We can paddle,” Taku added. Indeed the hunter and all his children had made themselves accomplished boatmen. But still Krona was not sure. He wondered if the settlers manning the boats would accept his presence. To his surprise, however, there was general support for the idea. The former criminal turned ubiquitous trader had become quite a popular figure, arriving unexpectedly at farmsteads, but always with some new item that he had found to please the farmer or his woman.
“Very well,” Krona said. “Let him go with his son.”
That night Taku addressed his children solemnly.
“We shall cross the sea,” he said. “Perhaps we shall not come back. But even if we do not, other voyages will be made, in the future, and men will return. You must do as I have done. Use the boats, and trade: that is the best way for our family.”
For when Krona had originally lamed him and severely reduced his ability to hunt, he had unknowingly done Taku a great favour. Necessity had driven the hunter to find another way to subsist, and as the settlement grew, he had seen what the other hunters had failed to understand, that such a community must trade. Since the farmers were few in number and busy clearing the land, he had seen his chance and begun to act as a carrier of furs and game, a middleman on the five rivers. Now he perceived that bigger opportunities would open out with a crossing over the sea and he was determined to be a part of this new activity. He operated by instinct – for he had never seen a developed trading community such as already existed on mainland Europe; but his instincts were good.
The voyage was a success. The farmers got all the livestock they needed; the cattle enclosure had to be enlarged; and Taku had also found some small sheep with the finest wool. But most important of all, he and his son saw the larger settlements and the vigorous trade that was developing on the mainland.
“You were right to make peace with the settlers,” Taku confided to Magri. “They are even more powerful than we thought.” And to his son he said: “We need bigger boats now. We must trade across the sea.”
As the new era of prosperity developed at Sarum, only one nagging problem remained to trouble Krona as he entered the last phase of his old age – for he was nearly fifty now – and that was how to find a leader for the two communities to succeed him.
Liam was not in doubt.
“Name our son,” she urged. Their elder boy was thirteen now. In a few years he would be a man. As she gazed at her old husband with pride and tenderness, she was sure she could look after him and keep him alive long enough to see his strong young son become a fitting leader. “They will follow him, even if he