Kaari Utrio

Näyte Vaskilinnun käännöksestä:

THE BRASS BIRD
BY KAARI UTRIO

Translated from Finnish by

ANNA-MARI BARRINEAU
64 Hancock Ave
Ft. Leavenworth, KS 66027

The ship's name was Viper. A snake's name was suitable for a ship and brought luck. The ship had a woven sail, plenty of cargo space and a crew of thirteen men. Arantila's Ari Kaukajalka owned the ship together with Gudmund the Trader from western Götaland.

The friendship dated back to Ari Kaukajalka's father, Aranti. It was useful for both. Gudmund set off from Logen, which was also called Mälare, with Frankish arms and Swedish iron and butter. He sailed up the Aura river to the town of Koroinen, where he sold part of his commodities. Ari Kaukajalka bought another part to sell in Tavastia in the town of Vanaja, where he traveled on business every other year. From the town of Vanaja Ari Kaukajalka brought back furs, wax, honey and the most precious of all: a product made out of beaver that enabled even the oldest man to perform in bed.

Together they took off for a year and a half's trip along the great Eastern trade route. The trip was hard and dangerous. To offset some of their troubles the traders used to take slaves from the Slavic countries, if they happened to see suitable young women on shore.

Unhurriedly rowing the trip took from four to six months to Bolgar, earlier a great trading post by the Volga, and six months back. If the ship, Viper, went all the way down to the delta of the Volga to the former city of the Khazars', Itil, the trip was lenghtened by another six months. The merchants visited their homes every two or three years, spent the winter there and told amazing stories about the treasures of the East, and took off on a new trip in the spring.

Ari Kaukajalka ascended from Arantila's water gate to the yard of the manor. The manor, protected by a stockade fence, was surrounded by fields and behind the fields there was a dark green forest on the horizon. Birch trees with golden autumn leaves made yellow spots in the forest belt which was broken only by the slowly flowing river.

Ari Kaukajalka's cold eyes looked critically around the manor. Everything was in order, the straw roof of the main house had been fixed, one storehouse on top of a pole had been renewed, there were a few poles in the stockade fence that were of lighter color than the rest. Everything was as it should be. Vallittu must still be alive and taking care of the manor.

"Now I would like some good Finnish ale", said Gudmund the Trader from behind Ari Kaukajalka. Ari nodded, although he did not think Finnish ale was good. Nothing in Finland was good as far as he was concerned.

"Ale", said Ari to the people running toward him. He got more and more annoyed. Coming home was already in itself boring and oppressing, and there wasn't even an ale tankard offered to the master and his companion.

On the trip everything was better. Endless motion down the stream and then up, foreign people, strange structures, incomprehensible languages, people riding like the wind from the immensity of the steppes, everything was great and vast, one could see all the way to the horizon, there was no oppressing, never ending forest in the midst of which the Finns lived like moles in their holes.

Vallittu came limping on, body twisted but with a delighted smile on his face.

"Welcome home, lord. Are you happy with your trip?" Ari Kaukajalka's mouth turned wry.

"There is no silver", he said. "Every trip there are less and less dirhems. Now you have to hunt them like squirrels in the woods."

"Where have they gone? Who takes the dirhems from the Eastern trade?"

"Nobody takes them, there aren't any. The great silver mines in Baktria have been exhausted."

Vallittu's face fell.

"When I was in the Life Guards of the Khan of Derbend there was so much silver in Baktria that people just shovelled it into the camels' carrying bags."

"That was almost three decades ago. Everything has changed. The Russes make the whole trade soon impossible", Ari Kaukajalka growled even more angrily. "First the Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav, occupied the great Bolgar, and then he had to go and destroy the Khazars' Itil. And what then? The towns have never recovered. The steppe people can now freely rob the Russian land. The princes only hurt themselves in their greed as they destroyed the blossoming trade people."

Vallittu began to calm him.

"That was also decades ago. For a good merchant there are always earnings in the great Eastern route. Furs, train oil, wax and honey are always in demand."

"They are. But how are you supposed to sell if the buyer does not have silver to pay with?" asked Ari sourly. "It is probably no good to travel to the countries of Allah any more. On the Dnieper the servants of the prince of Kiev collect insurmountable fees and customs. Soon I have to go to the West, but then I have to compete with the Norwegians."

Vallittu listened contentedly. "You complain like your father in his day. It means success.

Ari Kaukajalka raised his eyes. A magnificently dressed woman stepped out of the main house. Ari remembered that he had a wife, which did not improve his bad mood at all.

Wife's name was Suvivilja. It all came to Ari at the same time.

The woman was married to Arantila as payment so that the house of Vanaja in Tavastia would forget about the blood feud. Blood feud? An ancient matter, once a man had killed another in the town of Vanaja, probably drunk from ale. And that was then chewed over and over again. Vallittu, who had seen forty winters, knew all about it. Ari was interested in the future, the past was insignificant to him. As far as Ari was concerned the vengeance should be forgotten, although Merikirja said that the Vanaja people had drowned his father, Aranti, with their storm. That could be. It did not bother Ari. He had barely known his father. He had sailed with the merchants on the great Eastern route since he was a little boy, but never with his father: it was not wise to subject both the lord and his only son to the same dangers.

But that someone killed his moose, that Ari Kaukajalka could not tolerate. What was his, was his, be it silver or a moose calf. Hunting was a great pleasure to Ari Kaukajalka, the only thing that enabled him to stand through the fall and winter in Finland before the next trip. So, without thinking twice, he had killed the man that had shot his moose, and only then understood, that the victim was no slave whose life one can buy with silver.

"Your wife", said Gudmund the Trader with respect, "is more beautiful than the moonlight in August."

Ari smiled. That happened seldom.

"I'd forgotten about her", Ari said.

Gudmund the Trader remembered all the hundreds of women he had had during his life. He hissed with disapproval.

"But she may be all right", Ari continued as the wife came closer and bowed her head.

It was, of course, good that the wife was attractive if she had to be married to keep the peace. At least she had dressed as was expected from a matron of a house of great might: silver coins hanging from the headband moved around on her forehead, and on her neck the watery green pearls changed their color in the sunlight.

The wife was approaching timidly, smiling pleasingly. She was surely beautiful if one liked white skin and a slender body. Actually she was skinny. And not only skinny, but also a tearful whiner. Ari Kaukajalka preferred the dark, voluptuous women of the East in his bed. But he did not give much thought to women in general. He had better things to do than to waste his time on women who earned him nothing unless he sold them to the soldiers from the steppes.

Then Ari Kaukajalka recalled something else. "The child? Show me my son, wife."

Suvivilja nervously wrung her hands. "It cannot always be a boy, master."

Ari Kaukajalka snarled. Merikirja watched from the side with a malicious smile. Vallittu came to help out.

"Ari, you have a beautiful and healthy daughter."

Vallittu motioned with his hand and the nursemaid, Kärppä, brought the girl to the lord.

Ari Kaukajalka looked at the child without a smile. The child did not smile either, neither did she stretch out her hands nor babbled as children usually do. She had tiny rings on her fingers and toes.

"She is an earnest child", Vallittu said. "She will be wise. Arpoja gave her the name Terhen. He thought that she may have the ability to raise weather. Suvivilja has weather wizards in her family.

Vallittu glanced at Ari from the side.

"Such an faculty could prove very useful for the house."