[centre][h2]The Northern Chiefs 1 - Resilient as Ice[/h2][/centre]

It was no easy task, traversing the Blackwoods in the deep winter - its black pines darkening even more the already deep blue polar night; however, they had no choice, either. The reindeer had journeyed this way, after all - the highway of hoof prints in the snow revealed nothing less, and it was not the first time the Weike had been afoot during the zenith of the winter’s cold. The flock was erratic, these days, frightened by great migrations to the south. A campaign of sorts, heading into the [abbr=The Highlands][i]Lúpmí[/i][/abbr]. The chieftain hadn’t believed it when he had heard it at first, but having seen the tracks and the flocks of men, women and even children moving to Reginsvik to pledge service to the cause, he could no longer choose to ignore it. Good riddance, the younglings had exclaimed - they were ignorant of the way of the world, after all; they were innocently oblivious to the implications of this great assault.

The elders knew, however, and as did chieftain Sabba. 

The Weike had long been dependent on the southern trade routes with the Dunná and the Rákká, and the peoples of the Yellow Plains. They had good relations with most of them, too, and their own crafts and products were well received among their buyers. However, with an invasion like this one, the trade routes that had just opened up again after the turmoil in the south, would once again be left sundered and weakened. 

His people would be left sundered and weakened.

A bray up ahead made him hunker down. His followers slowed down, too. A knock of bone against bone and several more grunts and groans hinted that they had arrived. Sabba placed a finger over his lips and beckoned respectfully at one of his followers in the back. She was a middle-aged woman, his sister, in fact, Aile. She stepped forward slowly, her reindeer hide mittens bringing a small feathered mallet out from a red and blue wool satchel at her waist. In her other hand, she held a small skin drum. She offered her brother an assuring nod, who returned it. Then she walked past him into a clearing in the snowed-down woods. 

As she stepped into the opening under the moon, she began to [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPqKAuzo0tk]sing[/url], beating the drum ever so gently with the mallet as her voice carried through the frozen winds. The reindeer stopped what they were doing to look up, eyeing the woman curiously as her feet edged ever closer to them, her soothing song begging for them to stay. Her voice was not alone, though; the wind chimed in, as well, adding ethereal high notes; the trees wished and swayed from side to side, adding the rhythm of their knocking branches; even the snow seemed to twirl around the woman to dance with her. The reindeer, listening to the chorus of the woman, the wind, the trees and even the lichen, joined in, braying and groaning to the melody. Aile’s fervour grew and her song intensified for a few bars to greet her new friends with mutual respect - they responded in turn, kicking and digging at the snow with their horns to the rhythm. Shortly after their greeting, Aile brought the song to a close, and the reindeer seemed immediately much friendlier to her, the calves approaching to knock heads with her torso. Aile giggled and waved the others over invitingly. The rest of the Weike crossed the forest border into the clearing, and the reindeer remained calm. 

“Well done, Aile,” praised Sabba curtly and caught the incoming head of a curious buck in an embrace, the buck grunting warmly. Aile scratched the buck under the chin and grinned back.

“Hee-hee - that was easy! The reindeer in these parts have been quite lonely, they told me - seeing people again made them really giddy all of a sudden.”

Sabba frowned. “Is that so, huh? Then Sarak and his Loike must’ve travelled east, as well…” He sighed and shook his head. “This is troublesome news.”

“Look at it on the bright side, chief!” came a young and energetic voice. Aile and Sabba both turned to eye a smiling lad of seventeen winters, his pale face rosy in the cold. “More reindeer for us, right?” Sabba frowned.

“Firstly, they’re not ‘ours’, Kveie. They’re unbound souls, free to join us or leave us at their leisure.” The young Kveie rolled his eyes with a smirk - he had obviously heard this lecture many times. “Secondly,” Sabba continued, “our clan hasn’t got the herders necessary to drive all these reindeer from place to place.” He gestured to the flock - in this clearing alone, there were at least a hundred heads; if Sarak and the Loike truly had ventured east, then the west would hold at least a thousand heads more. “We cannot greedily request them all to join us - their stampede across the region would impede the functions of the other spirits.”

“Pfft, alright, calm down, gramps. I was just askin’.”

“Gramps?! Now you listen here, young man--”

“Sabba!” Just as the chieftain grabbed the lad by the collar, Aile took her brother by the shoulder warningly. Sabba looked down at the lad, whose face had lost its smugness to a twinge of fear mixed with uncertainty. The other Weike were staring disapprovingly at both the lad and the chieftain, and even the reindeer stepped over to intervene, braying coarsely for the chieftain to let go. He did, and Kveie staggered back to regain his balance, adjusting his collar properly. Sabba looked around, seeing the people flinch slightly when he looked at them.

“... We’ll camp here for tonight,” he commanded sternly and looked down at Kveie. “I will be taking this boy fishing… Any objections?” The others were silent. Sabba nodded. “Good. Now get to it.” While the others were setting up tents, Sabba pulled young Kveie along, two quite nicely polished fishing rods in his free hand. Multiple times did Kveie try to run for it back to camp, but the chieftain was always there to drag him by the collar. When the youngster got violent, Sabba would respond with violence, and Kveie would lose upon the first, well-placed hit to the belly. After thirty minutes of this sort of back and forth, they eventually reached a frozen-over river. Kveie grunted sharply.

“Oh, would you look at that. It’s frozen - what did you expect? ‘Go fishing’... Pwah!”

Sabba sighed and grabbed a large rock, stepping out onto the ice. There, making sure to spread his weight as widely as possible by descending to all fours, he began hammering at the ice. “When a barrier obstructs your path, kid, remove it,” he muttered. Kveie scoffed, but eventually a hole was made and the two of them dipped the bone hooks of their fishing rods into the water. There, they waited in silence. For a long time, they only exchanged looks every now and then. Then eventually, Sabba opened his mouth slightly.

“Where does all your anger come from, kid?”

Kveie scoffed quietly. “Maybe it comes from you calling me ‘kid’ all the time?”

“I call you what you act like.”

“I act like I am treated.”

“Oh, grow up. You know very well that it’s your own behaviour that’s the problem here.”

“Oh, do I? I think I might be a little too young to understand these things.”

Sabba snarled and pulled back a right hook. Kveie lifted his arms in reflexive defense, his hook flying out of the water, fishless as expected. Sabba did not hit him, however, but lowered the fist slowly instead. “It’s just… I see a lot of myself in you.”

Kveie grit his teeth together and dipped his hook back into the water. “When has that ever been an excuse to treat someone else like a brat?”

“It isn’t… However, I just don’t want you to repeat the mistakes I made.”

“What, like the fact that you’ve never had kids of your own?” The following silence brought a sudden sting to Kveie’s consciousness, and his following statement had lost much of its smug momentum. “A-actually, I didn’t mean that… I took it to far and--”

“No, you’re right. While that wasn’t the incident i was thinking of, it has, in truth, been one of my great shortcomings, that.” He nodded slowly. Kveie frowned.

“Say… Why haven’t you actually gotten yourself a girl? You’re the chieftain, after all. Shouldn’t ladies be lining up to be with you?” Sabba shrugged apathetically.

“They have been, but I’ve turned them all down. When I die, the role of chieftain will pass to my sister’s son, Tveia. He’s a good lad, that one - the clan will be in good hands.”

Kveie’s frown deepened. “But why? Why have you told them all no?” 

“There’s only one lady for me, son…” mumbled the chieftain mysteriously and looked up at the bright half-moon, contrasted by the dance of the Afterlight. “... Black hair… Broad shoulders… A woman with no sense of fear nor weakness…”

Kveie blinked and shook his head. “Forget that I asked…”

[hr]

Later that night, Sabba gathered everyone in the camp for the sermon of the day. Behind him, Aile and her children sat drumming and humming. The chieftain and some others had fashioned a small altar in the centre of the camp, built out of snow and decorated with feathers, bones and branches. The chieftain took a deep breath and spoke, “It is now that we give thanks to the North God for granting us another day of only encountering the softer hardships of winter. It is in the North God’s grace that we exist, and if their mercy is spent, we will all surely perish. We offer them this bounty as thanks.” With that, the chieftain knelt down and placed a fat salmon on the altar. He then folded his hands in prayer and continued, “Then we must remember those who have passed on into the Afterlight - they life forever in harmony with the spirits of this world, and we must ever remember that we are welcome among them as family. Fear not death, everyone, but embrace it - for in death, we are given new life, like winter becoming spring. Praise the sagely dead.” The whole camp started to sing along with the shamans, and the chieftain started dancing around the altar, tossing up snow with kicks and jumps. Others joined in after a bit, all wanting to show their appreciation for the ancestors and the North God.

The Weike had been reduced, yes, and much suffering was still to come. However, they would ever persevere, for they were survivalists - and the North God was on their side.

[hider=Summary]
The Weike are back, baby! Sabba’s been made chieftain (yes, he survived the troll attack all those years ago - as did his sister Aile, who is now a shaman) and is chasing a reindeer flock with his gang. They find it and Aile goes to worldsing for them. She succeeds, so they get some reindeer friends. Sabba then gets into a fight with a young mang named Kveie, and the two go fishing to bro it up some more. They chat and stuff and find out that Sabba’s not married and has no intention of doing so - he loves only one woman, and that woman’s off somewhere far, far, faaaar away. The post then ends on a ritual prayer to the North God, aka. Yam-Yams with many aspects of Thaa, as well.
[/hider]