Chapter 37: End of Winter III

It was strange that Oddr had spent the entire winter down in those caves with the lot of them and had come out looking younger than he had gone in.

How was that even possible?

The old man had a quirky personality, yeah. His personality was picaresque to say the least, he would be all giggly, and teasy, and unbearable most times.

Most times, except when it mattered.

When things got serious Oddr had a way of shredding all the bluff and silliness and all of a sudden behaving with the patience, seriousness and wisdom of a man centuries old.

For example, he put himself in charge of the sick.

That was all he actually did, in fact. There were two women helping him, always on a corner of the plaza, and with a pot of something that tasted of bark. He saw perhaps eight people a day.

Which made a huge difference.

Because life brings with it its coughs, its cut hands, its fair share of serious illnesses.

By all means, Oddr was the man for the job.

Not only because he was dexterous and knowledgeable with herbs, nutrition, and the dressing and treatment of wounds, but also because he talked, and he listened more than he talked.

So inside a month there was nobody on that island who knew more about who was doing what, who was quarreling with whom, and where everything was and who was running it.

Of course, everybody had noticed this.

Nobody had commented on it.

While the old man sat in his corner, Hiccup went to do the things nobody else could do.

He did them early. As early as possible, before dawn, mostly, when the streets were empty and the light was grey, because it was easier for everybody that way.

Mostly it was hauling.

Some of the streets they planned to settle on were choked with fallen stone and every piece of it had to go to the masons to be cut down and reused. A block that took eight men and a sledge took Hiccup one trip. So he carried one on each shoulder, walked it downhill, and then the next.

By dawn there would always be a neat stack at Dwarf's working yard.

Then there were the door-stones.

A house cannot have a doorway without a long stone across the top of it, and a good many of those had cracked and dropped over the centuries. Putting a fresh one up meant twenty men, two sets of pulleys, and most of a day of hard labour.

Hiccup lifted them into place by hand, with one man on each side to tell him when it was straight.

No matter how many times people watched him do it, they never quite stopped staring.

That morning he came round a corner with a slab on his shoulder and nearly walked over two women sweeping away with brooms, and all three of them almost tripped over each other.

Some polite apologies, and so on.

The older one chuckled and said good mornings, and asked whether he was going to be long with that, because they wanted to get past.

He moved out of the way.

They went past, sweeping as they went.

So he stood there in the street a moment afterward with the slab still on his shoulder, feeling something he could not put a name to, happiness, a sense of belonging?

The evening councils had moved out of the caves and to the seats around the plaza fire.

Not that anybody actually called it 'councils'.

It was more an informal meeting type of thing.

It was Haaland and Oddr, a few stubborn but knowledgeable elders, and some of the more capable young ones and whoever else felt like taking part, all of them sitting on stones around the fire in the middle of the mud, which had yet to dry, arguing about the future.

That night it was a discussion on working the forest against the fields.

"We cannot do both," Dwarf was insisting. "I have eleven men who can lift and forty who cannot. Before anybody says it, yes, I am one of the forty. If working the fields takes eight of the eleven, then the roof work will go much slower, we might not meet our objectives, I fear."

"It can slow down for a few fortnights."

"It can stop for a few fortnights if we pray it does not rain."

"The fields will not clear themselves," chuckled a woman from the sweeping crew. "We strolled through them yesterday, there's centuries of debris on them. That is not merely a week's worth of work, that is a moon at minimum, and it has to be done before we plant anything in the ground."

The argument went round a couple of times.

Then Haaland turned his head and furrowed his brow, "Hiccup, what do you say?"

Wonderful.

Hiccup winced as every face turned to look at him.

See, the last few weeks he had been sitting well back from the ring, which was where he always sat, elbows on his knees. He did want to listen, but not particularly to be involved in the arguing.

Thank you, Haaland.

Of course, he got asked anyway. Actually, he got asked most evenings.

So he let out a long sigh and answered.

"We are well stocked on smoked fish already, and the weather is still cold, so the sooner the homes are done the better for everyone."

He paused, and watched the mood of the fishing crew go sour in front of him.

"But eleven men is a great deal of men, and the fields must be seeded come spring, we don't want to lose the seeding season. So let the masons take five."

They looked at each other, and then at him, and after some other back and forth slowly nodded.

"And if you are still short on people, I can lend a hand."

For whatever that may be worth.

Then Hiccup stood up, said his good nights to everyone, and walked away from the fire.

He went up through the wet streets toward the old halls with his hands in his sleeves, Toothless fell in beside him somewhere around, coming down off the roofs where he had been snoring all evening.

"Do not start," Hiccup snorted.

The dragon started pushing at him with his stupid fat snout, again, again.

"You are a menace, is what you are."

He could hear crisp and clear how behind them, down at the campfire, the argument started up again and settled a quarter of an hour later on exactly what he had suggested.

He had known it would.

That was rather the point.

Houses were the first problem they had to overcome, but not the only one, and not the biggest one. In fact, food was the bigger problem.

It had been the conversation since the snow began melting.

The forest was full of deer, ox, venison and boar, and probably had been for centuries, precisely because nobody had been hunting it.

A hundred people eating off it every day would still not threaten the population of game, the island being big enough. However, it would threaten the populations closer to the ruins and the plateau.

Hunting trips would grow longer and longer. They already were.

Valleys in close proximity had almost run empty, one had to venture close to the mountains to find anything big, and after that they would be walking a full day to bring back a carcass that could feed half a hundred for a single night.

The bays were better and worse.

When the fish came in, they came in such numbers a child could quite literally grab them out of the shallows. When they did not, they did not, and no amount of willing made any difference.

Half the crew had already learned that the hard way in the winter.

When the run went somewhere else for weeks on end, they were forced to rely solely on hunting and what few things they had smoked.

That was the whole of it.

Living from hunting and fishing alone would leave them vulnerable to the mercy of seasons, one bad winter would put them back in those caves counting sacks, or worse.

So they needed grain, which could be grown in vast amounts, and cattle, which could breed.

At the end of the month they put the first spade into the fields.

It should not have been an occasion. It was a few men and a few makeshift hoes working in the early light, on a strip of hillside they had spent more than a week clearing it of scrub and stone.

But by the time the sun was properly up, half the settlement was there watching, because word had gone round and it turned out everybody wanted to see.

One of the older farmers crouched down.

He was a small hunched man, bent at the shoulders from a lifetime spent looking at the ground, and one of the few in that camp who had spent his whole life working soil.

He turned over the first clod of grass and roots and stood there inspecting it.

Then he knelt and put his hand into it.

The soil underneath was black. It was deep.

Only the Gods knew how many centuries of wild grass and bush had gone down into that soil and rotted and gone down again. No clay. No rock. None of that thin grey mainland dirt that gives you a few good years and then quits on you.

He kept probing and it went down past his wrist and it was still rich and black.

"Ohh."

The gasp came out of him small and surprised, the way one sounds when something turns out better than they had let themselves hope.

The other farmers, a few dozen at least, went along the strip on their knees with their hands similarly reading the ground.

Some of them took time to study it, to smell it, to check for other things.

Then some laughed, some nodded to themselves, reassured. The old farmer stood up eventually and wiped his hands on his thighs, the grin on his face said it all.

He looked out along the vast fields running east and west under the hills in long terraces, and up at the ones above it, and the ones above those, all hugging the mountains.

"We could feed a thousand people off this hill," he gasped.

"More," put in another.

The old farmer did not seem to hear him.

"A thousand people."

Then he turned round, his eyes still on the fistful of soil in his hand. He paused, looked around, and finally asked.

"So, when does the seed come in? Best to sort it before any rain comes."

Seed.

Ah.

Hiccup opened his mouth and closed it again.

Right. I did not think about that.

He looked at Haaland, who was standing beside him and already looking back at him, and shrugging.

"Oddr," Haaland called.

"I know." The old man had been studying the rich soil too. "I know. I am thinking."

"Is there anything in the stores?"

He gave a short dry laugh.

"There is barley. We are eating it. There is not a sack to spare."

Oddr's voice went deadpan, "If we want seed in the ground this spring, we are going to have to go and find it ourselves."

"The forest," somebody offered. "Nuts. Berries. There must be something wild we could put in the ground."

The hunched farmer just rolled his eyes, "You cannot plant a hillside with hazelnuts, lad."

The talking spread out along the crowd.

Quick and hopeful at first, then quieter and much less hopeful, with more and more of them stealing glances at Hiccup as they worked their way down to the end of the same short road.

Of course.

They had farmers.

They had a hundred people willing and eager to work. Apparently they also had more good soil under them than the north had ever seen in one place.

Of course there is not one grain of seed on the island.