Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Quest for Rubber Part 11

"I am rigorously opposed to this business of being in the middle of the food chain!" Kiejstut complained, swatting at the bugs. "In my family, we always sat on the top of the chain."

I recommended chastising them for their lack of respect of his exalted station in life.

"Chastise them? I am already slaughtering them by the thousands! What else can I do?"

I suggested attempting to engage in a meaningful conversation with them, but his only reply was to throw a rock at me.

We had no luck in finding any people, but were more successful when it came to fresh meat.

Kiejstut and I each managed to shoot a deer.

I was walking far in the lead when Kiejstut waved me to take cover. He had the rifle and lay down behind a bush while two small bucks slowly came within range. I stood behind a tree far to his right, watching and waiting. When they came within nine dozen yards, he fired, and his marksmans.h.i.+p was absolutely perfect. Shot through the heart, the buck fell backward without a sound or further motion.

The second buck sprang up and started running, and it had the bad luck to run straight at me. I was surprised, but I had the presence of mind to draw and c.o.c.k my pistol. The animal didn't see me until it was only about a dozen yards away. It turned and offered me a perfect side shot. One does not often get the opportunity to brag about having felled a deer with a pistol, so I fired. The buck went down, but when I got to it, it was still alive. I drew my bayonet, held back its head, and cut its throat.

At that point we were more than a dozen miles from our base camp, and there didn't seem to be much sense in going on any farther. We each slung a buck over our shoulders, but they were heavier than they looked. It was soon obvious that if we tried to bring back both whole animals, we couldn't possibly make it to camp by dark.

I asked if he thought we should abandon one of the deer, or if we should leave our armor, weapons, and supplies behind.

"Sir Odon would have a fit if we abandoned any equipment, even temporarily. Remember that they made him sign for all of it. As to leaving our weapons, well, don't even think about it!"

Kiejstut said, "You really should have let the second deer go. As it is, well, to throw one of them away would be wasteful and little children in Mongolia are going to bed hungry."

I had to agree that he was right, although shooting had seemed a good idea at the time.

Anyway, both bucks were bigger than I had at first thought.

So we stopped, and I built a fire as much to destroy some of the mosquitoes as to cook lunch.

Kiejstut started with the butchering. We cooked and ate one liver, put all of my trail food into my partner's pouch, and then put the second liver in my pouch. This meant that I would have a messy cleaning job to do once we got back, but then the original sin was mine.

Regretfully, we discarded all of the rest of the tripe, the heads, the feet, and even the skins, to get the loads down to a weight we could live with.

Even then, we nearly swamped the kayak bringing home the venison.

When we got back to camp, we found that Taurus and Zbigniew had also brought back a deer each, and they managed to bring back the whole animals. A surfeit of riches.

We spent the next few days gorging on hearts, brains, kidneys, and livers, and spent much of the time cutting most of the meat into thin strips. We built a smokehouse, and then salted and smoked the meat so it would keep. Fritz even made us some smoked sausages. We already had plenty of dried meat, but waste not, want not. '

As we got the garden prepared and planted, a debate arose among us as to whether we should leave someone behind at the camp when most of us walked upstream to map the river. On the one hand, if someone or something despoiled our supplies and equipment, we could be in very serious trouble when winter arrived. But it was also dangerous to split our forces. The decision was finally made when no one would volunteer to stay behind and miss seeing the Midnight Sun.

We radioed the s.h.i.+p that we were leaving and put the radio away in the cave. If we got into trouble when we were away from the camp, it wasn't likely that those on the s.h.i.+p would be able to find us, so we couldn't really expect any help, anyway.

We placed in the cave everything we weren't taking with us, closed the st.u.r.dy door that we'd built, and locked it with one of the new combination padlocks. Then we all spent a few hours covering the entrance with rocks, burying the rocks with dirt, and finally planting a few small bushes in the dirt, as camouflage.

We left a small pile of trade goods outside on a big flat rock, mostly some knives, jewelry, arrowheads, and metal cups- as a gift-in case we were trespa.s.sing on someone's land.

After a total of five days at our base camp, we left with four weeks' worth of supplies in the heavy packs on our backs, heading north along the river.

Following four days' march, much of it uphill, the weather was getting colder, and we were marching through coa.r.s.e, dirty snow left over from last winter. When we came to a split in the river, we took the west branch, since taking the other would have involved building a raft and risking the swift-flowing, icy white water.

Three days later we saw our first Midnight Sun, or at least some of one, for the sun was two-thirds hidden by the hills on the horizon.

Twelve hours after that, we climbed to the top of the highest hill around so as not to miss the amazing sight of a sun s.h.i.+ning at midnight. But once up there, the day turned foggy and cloudy and there was no sun to be seen, Midnight or otherwise.

It stayed cloudy for five more days, and I thought we all would die of terminal frustration. But all things pa.s.s, even bad luck, and finally we had clear weather and a mountain-top, and we all cheered.

But now we didn't even have the sun to guide us, for instead of rising in the east and setting in the west, the way a proper Christian sun should, the silly thing just went round and round, above the horizon! Well, it went higher in the south, and it almost kissed the horizon in the north, but it was still most disconcerting!

We had trouble knowing when to sleep, until Father John pointed out that we could still use the sun as a clock, if we a.s.sumed that the face of the clock was lying on the ground. If your compa.s.s was pointed to the east at the clock face's zero, the sun told you the proper army time of day.

Think of that! Telling time with a compa.s.s!

The next day, things started to get more interesting. We were walking near the river when we saw a large herd of the same sort of deer we had been occasionally seeing in ones and twos through the trip. Now there were thousands of them, and they kept on coming!

There were so many that, while they weren't acting aggressively, they were starting to crowd us, and Sir Odon had us all climb a rock outcropping perhaps four yards high, to get out of their way. We were up there for about an hour, taking a forced break from the march, when I saw our first people.

I shouted to the others that they should notice the hunters, chasing the deer.

"Those men! They are not carrying weapons! They aren't hunters!" Kiejstut said. "They are herding the deer!"

Taurus said, "Whoever heard of such a thing? I never thought that deer could be herded."

I said they were herded every year, at Lord Conrad's Great Hunt, except that there, they had to be completely surrounded.

"These are a different kind of deer than what we have farther south," Zbigniew said. "The deer in Poland stay in small groups when they aren't alone. They mostly eat bushes and hide in the thickets and forests. The deer here eat mostly moss and gra.s.s and live in herds. Their faces look different, they have wider noses and bigger antlers. And unless all those deer are male, their females have antlers just like the males."

He jumped down from our rock, right down among the fast-moving deer. Then he lay down right on the ground and looked up at them!

"Get back up here, you crazy fool!" Sir Odon shouted.

Zbigniew climbed safely back up and said, "Sorry I scared you, sir. But you know, most of those deer are females, antlers or no antlers."

The herdsmen running on foot were followed by others, men, women, and children, who were riding on sleds or sleighs. The sleighs were being pulled by deer!

"Using deer as beasts of burden! This has to be unique!" Father John said.

We smiled and waved at the people pa.s.sing us, and they smiled and waved back, but they didn't stop. I had the feeling that they were doing something too important to bother with strangers.

When they were gone over the next hill, Sir Odon said, "Well, at least they aren't hostile. Come on, let's follow them, but at a distance, so we won't threaten them."

We followed, and there wasn't any question of us crowding them. Even at a run, we could barely keep up! Finally, hours later, we came upon their camp. Sir Odon and Father John left their weapons with the rest of us and approached the camp, staying in the open and bowing whenever any of the natives noticed them.

The technique seemed to work, for soon three of the locals, two older men and one mature woman, came out and bowed back, apparently in imitation of our leaders. They began to try to communicate with each other, but they didn't seem to have much luck. Seemingly, the natives spoke neither Polish nor Latin.

After a bit, Sir Odon called Fritz to join them, to try his German on the locals. Fritz came back after a short while and sent Taurus out to try Ukrainian. He was followed by Zbigniew with his Pruthenian, and then Kiejstut with his Lithuanian, but none of them had any luck. Fritz said that whatever they spoke sounded a little bit like Hungarian, but no one in our group spoke any of that language.

Lezek and I were the only ones in our lance who spoke no foreign languages, so we weren't sent to try to talk to the people.

While this was going on, small gifts were exchanged with the deer herders. We gave them a dozen small knives, some needles, fishhooks, and some gla.s.s beads for jewelry, since the woman already had some sewn into her coat. In return we got some fresh meat and some nicely made handicrafts, including some beautifully embroidered leather belts.

While our leaders continued to make progress, the rest of us pitched camp where we were standing and built a fire, since, despite the snow on the ground, there were still mosquitoes flying.

We cooked a meal, and the three locals were invited to come and join us. They were particularly taken with the dried fruit we had with us, and were given paper bags of it to take back with them.

Finally, they left with what we thought was an understanding to return after we all slept for a while. We posted no sentries, since that might show distrust of our new friends.

When we woke, four hours later, the locals had already packed up their camp and left. None of us could figure out why.

We followed them for three days, traversing three fords, heading due north where the river we had been mapping was now heading northwest. It eventually became plain that they were outdistancing us.

"The only way we could keep up with them is if we had some Big People with us," Lezek said.

I said that yes, Anna's children could run as fast as a deer, but an ordinary human with weapons and a backpack could not.

"I hate to lose our only contact with the local inhabitants, but I'm afraid that the two of you are right," Sir Odon said. "We'll pitch camp here and rest for a day before we head back to continue mapping the river."

Chapter Seventeen

From the Diary of Josip Sobieski WRITTEN FEBRUARY 4, 1249, CONCERNING JUNE 12, 1248.

A FEW days later, while we were sitting around a fire, Taurus said, "I've been thinking about those deer people, and you know, I don't think that they were herding the deer after all."

"So?" Sir Odon said. "Just what do you think they were doing?"

"I think that they were following the deer. I mean, think about it. They weren't ahead of the animals, they were behind them at all times. When the animals moved, they moved, and they didn't dare stop, for fear of being left behind. When the deer stopped for a while, they could stop, too, and try to talk to us. You could see that they were curious about us, and they were friendly enough. But when the deer started to move again, they packed up everything in a hurry and left.

I think they did that because they had to do that. They eat the deer, they wear the deer, and they ride behind the deer. I'd be willing to bet that they protect the deer as well. Without the deer, they would be absolutely nothing! So they must follow them wherever they go."

Sir Odon thought awhile and said, "You know, that's almost crazy enough to be the truth!

To think that a whole tribe of people are in effect enslaved to a herd of deer! Amazing!"

"But are the people really the slaves?" Father John said. "It is the deer that are slaughtered and eaten. It is the deer that pull the sleighs. And I'll tell you, I examined some of those sleigh draft animals, and they were castrated males. Do masters permit their slaves to castrate them?"

"But it is the deer who decide where both the herd and the tribe are going," Sir Odon said.

Zbigniew said, "Maybe the people don't care where they're going, as long as the deer are there. Perhaps the deer know best where the better grazing is to be found. I mean, who would know better than a deer where the best food for a deer is?"

"I suppose so," Sir Odon said. "But it is still one of the strangest relations.h.i.+ps that I have ever witnessed."

"I can tell you have never met Komander Sliwa," Lezek said. "He has six wives and everybody in the family is happy. Now, there is a strange relations.h.i.+p!"

A few days later we found the iron deposit. At first all we saw were several small mines that must have been used sporadically by native blacksmiths. They were little more than holes in the ground, actually, and scattered over several square miles.

But then, when Father John noticed that the ore from all of the mines was identical, he suggested that the whole area must have a huge seam of iron ore under it. We dug a half-dozen small pits, and found iron in every one of them!

We spent a further three weeks at the site, digging dozens of holes to define just how big the thing was, and digging a deep hole in the center of it, like a well, to find out how thick the ore seam was. Any way we figured it, there was more iron available than the army could use in three hundred years!

We surveyed the area, and sketched in some grandiose plans for equipment to mine and clean the ore, and then started to work our way back, making preliminary drawings for a series of ca.n.a.ls and locks to get the ore down the river to the Baltic.

We were all vastly excited about the possibilities ahead of us, because according to the army policy statement concerning explorers, we would all be getting a percentage of the profits of the mine. Not a huge percentage, but as Kiejstut put it, "A small part of infinity is still very large!"

Our plans called for specially built steams.h.i.+ps, designed to hold bulk cargoes of c.o.ke or iron ore, to run between the Vistula and the Torne, with steel-making plants at the mouths of both rivers. c.o.ke from Poland would be s.h.i.+pped to the plant on the Torne, and then the s.h.i.+ps would be filled with iron ore to be s.h.i.+pped back to Poland. It would be a most efficient operation!

We then discovered there were four seasons up there in the north. They were June, July, August, and winter.

By the time we made it back to our base camp, three months had gone by. The short northern summer was over, and the rivers were all frozen over. We suddenly realized that our carefully drawn plans for two gross miles of ca.n.a.ls and locks were all a waste of time! If they were built, they would be useless for most of the year.

So we started all over, and this time we designed a railroad. Fortunately, we could use the same surveys, and do the design work at our base camp, which was wonderful, since we again had some variety in our meals. For the last six weeks, while on the trail, we had been eating nothing but fresh venison, and even that delight became very tiresome after a while.

Our radio messages concerning our find were well-received on the s.h.i.+p, and as they were getting back to Poland every month, we heard that Lord Conrad was pleased with us. It seems that the seam of magnet.i.te at Three Walls was almost depleted, and another source of high-grade iron ore was urgently needed. We were now certain that our discovery would not be ignored.

On less important topics, our garden had been surprisingly productive, considering that it had only about five weeks of growing season. When we got back, we found a half acre of plants that had matured, but were mostly frost-killed and rotted. The potatoes, beets, and other root crops could be salvaged, but little else was saved.

Nonetheless, the long days of sunlight did allow for a decent enough harvest, except for the fact that a farmer would have to do all of his work, from plowing to harvest, in only five weeks, and it didn't seem likely that a man could make a living that way. Maybe gardening would be a hobby for some of the workers at the steel plant we would build here.

We made a few quick excursions back up the river, to check on a few alternate railroad routes and to bring back more samples of the ore for the metallurgists, but for the most part, the balance of our year on the Torne was spent at our base camp.

Once, coming back from the ore site, we crossed the tracks of the deer people, but we didn't meet any of them. We found out later, over the radio, that they had been contacted by two of the other explorer lances, southwest of there, toward Sweden. Hopefully, the others would learn more about those strange people than we had.

Before the Baltic froze over, a few people from the s.h.i.+p dropped by, to pick up our ore samples, along with our maps and drawings, and drop off some fresh fruits and vegetables, but army policy was that an explorer lance should spend at least a year at a site, so we did.

Once it became really cold, having the cave was a G.o.dsend. It was pleasantly warm in there compared to what it was outside.

A cave stays the same temperature all year around. This temperature is the average of all the outside temperatures in the area over the past several years. At least, that's what our data showed once we'd collected it over a year.

In fact, recording the temperature, along with the weather and the time the sun rose and set, was about all we did for the last six months in camp. Cooking, eating, and sleeping were the only other things we had to do besides writing up what had happened the summer before.

I expanded my notes to cover my entire life up to then. That is to say, this is when I wrote most of the journal you now hold, although now that I've gotten this far, I think I might continue with it.

At the Winter Solstice, the opposite of the Midnight Sun happened. One day the sun never does come up. But you cannot celebrate something that doesn't happen, so we didn't.

We tried trapping fur-bearing animals, using traps we made according to one of the manuals we had with us. Either there weren't any animals to be trapped or we didn't know what we were doing, or both, but the project was not successful.

We did find a large bear, or rather, he found us. Apparently, the cave had been his winter home, and he vigorously objected to our possession of it. This was only fair, since we objected to his repossession of the premises with even greater vigor. The bear made it all the way through the doorway before dying with over a dozen bullets in him. Bear meat was a refres.h.i.+ng change from venison, and we made his pelt into a rug.

Kiejstut and I managed to catch Sir Odon with the old outhouse trick, but it just isn't as much fun when the s.h.i.+t is frozen solid.

Lezek and Kiejstut wrote quite a few songs that winter, and some of them have gotten popular around the Explorer's School. When next you hear "Under the Midnight Sun," or "The Baltic Challenger," or even "Ten Thousand to One, Against Us," also known as "The Mosquito Song,"

think of them, up there in the cold.