Mui'n

An older man of commanding size, Mui'n carries the record of past violence on his face: three long claw scars rake the left side, one of them crossing an eye socket left hollow and empty. A tooth is missing from his lower jaw. Over his clothing he drapes the hide of a bear, its head, sliced away below the snout, pulled over his own like a hood while the front paws knot at his throat to hold the pelt in place. Fittingly, his name carries the meaning of bear in the Mi'kmaq tongue.

War, to Mui'n, is always the answer, and he treats the Norse arrival as an opportunity as much as a threat. He brushes aside Miskwekepu'j's warnings about sickness, arguing that fighters who risk their lives ought to help themselves to the settlers' goods as fair payment. When Thorfinn promises the colonists will depart on their own, Mui'n scoffs, refusing to trust them and rejecting the half-year grace the shaman grants; he is sure the Nords will only use the time to dig in. What he truly covets is the blade that once severed his hand, and he tells himself that a righteous man like him alone deserves such power, to wield it in the name of order.

Mui'n first appears at the gathering of tribes that Miskwekepu'j convenes to decide how to handle the foreigners. He backs the plan to force them back across the sea but balks at the shaman's demand that their homes, belongings, and fields be burned to purge the land, since he means to carry off their valuables instead. Miskwekepu'j counters that the settlers' illness is no small matter and their possessions must stay untouched, and reminds Mui'n that a shaman, not a fighter like him, speaks on such affairs. When Thorfinn pledges a voluntary withdrawal, the shaman agrees to hold the attack until spring; Mui'n protests that no single man can grant so long a reprieve and demands an immediate surprise assault while it is certain to succeed. Niskawaji'j relays his meaning to Thorfinn, Einar, and Bug-Eyes: the man loves fighting and hungers for the Nords' property. Reading him plainly, Miskwekepu'j names the weapon Mui'n truly craves, and the warrior insists that only someone as upright as himself should ever hold it.