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 relationships 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 relationship!"
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 canals 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 steamships, designed to hold bulk cargoes of coke or iron ore, to run between the Vistula and the Torne, with steel-making plants at the mouths of both rivers. Coke from Poland would be shipped to the plant on the Torne, and then the ships would be filled with iron ore to be shipped 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 canals 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 ship, 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 magnetite 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 ship 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.