The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [88]
Sometime after the killing, when the fjord was full of ice from shore to shore, the Greenlanders in a group of twenty-two men surprised the skraelings at their camp, and caught a group, including the killer, inside their hut. There were seven men and boys and four women. One of the men ran out, and was killed with an ax, and after this the Greenlanders drove all of the skraelings out by setting fire to brush at the windows and doors of the booth, so that the demons were overcome by smoke, and the skraelings were killed as they tried to escape. However, two of the skraelings escaped under cover of smoke and darkness, and ran out onto the ice of the fjord. They ran all the way across to the opposite shore, although one of them kept falling. Opposite to Solar Fell were two beaches, one a flat, pebbly peninsula forming a little harbor, and the other the steep scree of a mountain. The Norsemen chased the two skraelings toward the steeper beach, and the one who had kept falling down was caught and killed. The other managed to climb up the slippery slope about twelve or fifteen ells. Now Ragnvald came up to the dead one and grabbed his left arm and cut it off with one blow of his ax, and then he raised it high and shouted, “Skraeling! As long as you live, surely you won’t forget your brother!” And then it was dark, and the Norsemen went home, leaving the bodies of the demons out in the ice and snow. When the Norsemen awoke the next day, the skraelings were gone from Eriks Fjord, and by the next day they were gone from Isafjord, and no more was seen of them during that winter.
Kollbein Sigurdsson was much put out by Ragnvald’s actions and said that they endangered the whole settlement, for now he expected that the skraelings would return from the north soon enough, and more of them than the Greenlanders would know what to do with. Others, especially those who had profited by the recent trading, also disapproved of the course the Solar Fell folk had taken, but more said that Ragnvald had earned the second killing by not avenging the death of Vestein, so that the demons had considered themselves free to do as they wished. The years-old killing of Erlend Ketilsson’s ewe was recalled, as well as other thefts and little conflicts, and these were said to show a pattern of increasing audacity. The Greenlanders pointed to the huts of the skraelings, which were empty but tightly built and known to be warm and dry—warmer, in fact, than a Norseman could tolerate, for the skraelings, both men and women, were known to sit about savagely naked—and declared that the way these huts had been built and then left showed a plan, first to take over the farms and pastures of the Greenlanders, and second to go for reinforcements and return. And so Kollbein and the Greenlanders came around to agreement on what was to be expected, but continued to disagree on how Ragnvald and his men should have acquitted themselves. Discussion of this topic raged throughout the winter, and hordes of skraelings in fleets of skin boats were looked for each day, but such a thing did not come to pass, and the settlement was quiet.
This winter was a time of great hunger, especially for the beasts, for the dry harvest had been sparse and the hay poor in quality, and then the snows came early and deep, around Eriks Fjord in particular, so that it was hard, and then impossible, for the sheep to paw through to their forage. Three times before Yule Margret Asgeirsdottir went on skis across Eriks Fjord with Asta Thorbergsdottir, carrying the child tied in a cloak on her back, as she had carried Gunnar as a young girl. Each time she dragged home as much hay as Marta could give her, but the last time