The firepit crackled low beneath the stretched hides of the long tent.
Smoke wove through the rafters of driftwood and bone. Outside, the snow hissed against the earth, falling heavy and wet, burying old trails.
Inside, they argued.
The Saqqaq war-chief Kunnuk stood with a carved seal-tusk staff in hand, his voice raised in frustration. Scars crossed his cheek and brow like claw marks.
"He is not like the others," Kunnuk said. "He is not Skraeling, not Vinlander. Not even the Norse we once drove from Iceland. This one brings war like a sickness. He builds traps where there are no men. He strikes in silence, then howls like a wolf."
"He calls himself a wolf," spat Atanarjuat, the Dorset chief draped in polar bear fur, his eyes sunken and rimmed red from age and smoke."
"But I remember when men like him were chased into the sea like dogs. Their longships burned. Their women wept. That was before he came. Before this white wolf.""
