The Viking Saga Page 14

  He gave a wry smile of resignation and looked down at his hands and arms. They were burnt almost black by the sun, and scarred from finger-tip to elbow. And as he looked at each scar, he recalled the occasion which had created it …

  ‘This one came when I fought in the torchlight beside Bjorn, in the long-house in Pictland, when they betrayed us while we slept. Poor Bjorn, rest in Valhalla … And this one came when I tried to drag the rocks off great Aun Doorback, as we escaped from Leire’s dungeon. May Aun be happy in Valhalla with his comrade, Gnorre Nithing … I almost wish I were with them, to hear the tales they will tell … And this scar came when I struggled with the sinking curragh, far off the coast of Caledonia, with John the Priest supporting me until the Danish longship found me …’

  Harald Sigurdson passed his hand over his eyes and said, ‘Dear John, we shall never see your like again. The priests who have come here are not of your mettle, good friend. They think more of words than deeds. Alas, that I shall never see you again. Your heaven is not my own.’

  He glanced over his shoulder, down the steep hill, to where the village lay, snuggling along the shore of the great fjord. The blue woodsmoke was twisting now as the sun set. They would be laying the tables with barley bread and a roast pig, filling the drinking horns with honey mead and heather ale; all for the feast.

  Harald must be there, he knew, for he was the shipmaster of the village by the fjord, after his experiences a-viking, adventures which no other man in the place could equal. Yet his heart was heavy.

  ‘My father should be the shipmaster,’ he said to himself. ‘I am not worthy to step into his shoes. But he is gone, gone after only one voyage with me …’

  Bitterly he recalled the one foray they had made on a sleepy little coastal village in Northumbria. The Northmen had been confident that all would be well, that they would return to their ship with bags of barley meal and baskets of eggs. Then Sigurd had been struck down by an arrow that flew out of the darkness, and the others had turned to find their longship ablaze … They had sailed, empty-handed, carrying their dead leader, in a ship that more resembled a funeral pyre than a vessel. Harald remembered how they had wallowed offshore, trying to put out the blaze with their cloaks, with salt water from their helmets, even by rolling on the flames, stifling them with their own bodies.

  It had been a sad homecoming for them, for that ship had cost the villagers three years of harvest to buy. Old Thorn, the headman, had been furious, waving his stick and spluttering all manner of curses on the weary Vikings who dragged the charred hulk ashore.

  Yet even Thorn had let fall a tear when they carried the body of Sigurd up the runway, back to his lonely hut, for of all men, old Thorn most loved and respected Sigurd, the noble warrior who had chosen to make his home in the sprawling wattle-and-daub village by the fjord.

  And now Sigurd’s only son, Harald, sat mourning for his father at sunset, among the grubbing swine at the edge of the high beechwoods.

  But at last he rose and fastened the hide strapping round his breeches, getting ready to go down to the feast.

  ‘Only the bear’s widow mourns for more than one day,’ he said, recalling an old Norse saying. ‘And she soon gets caught!’

  He was about to lay his stick on the back of an old pig that would not herd with the others and come down the hill, when he heard a sudden quick movement among the bushes just within the wood. He waited for a moment, expecting to see a fox or a badger, but when nothing appeared, he forgot the noise and turned once more towards the little path that spidered its way downwards to the thatched roofs of the village.

  And at that moment, a man ran out from the beechwoods, swift as an attacking wolf, and kicking Harald’s feet from under him, sat astride the boy, his knees pinning Harald’s arms. The pigs grunted and stopped once more, searching for something else to eat among the heather-covered rocks. The man above Harald snarled, ‘If you shout I shall kill you. Believe me, I am a hungry man. I set no store by the laws of this place.’

  Harald did his best to smile up at him and said, ‘By your black hair and the sort of brooch you wear, I judge you to be a Dane. We have a saying in my village: “Trust a snake before a Frank, a Frank before an Englishman – but do not trust a Dane at all!”’

  The man grinned down with fury and said, ‘It is true. I am a Dane, and I am proud to be such. But that is neither here nor there. I am a hungry man at this moment, and I swear by my gods and yours that I will let nothing stand between me and my hunger. I want only one of your pigs, a small one will do. But I cannot carry it whole into the forest. I shall kill it and carve it here. So lie still, for I intend only to give you such a knock on the head as will keep you quiet until I have done what needs to be done.’

  He leaned over and took up a round stone that lay by them. Harald tried to move, but was powerless under the great weight on his chest. So he smiled again, as the man raised his hand, and said, ‘My friend, why should you knock me on the head, when I can help you? I thought you Danes were better bargainers than that.’

  The Dane said, ‘Why should you help me to steal your swine? That does not sound likely, coming from a Norseman! No, I must knock you on the head, my friend. You are too strongly built for me to take any chances.’

  He raised the stone once more, taking aim. But Harald looked up into his dark eyes with his own sky-blue ones and smiling still, said, ‘Very well, what must be, must be; but let me tell you before you go to all this trouble that I would willingly give you a fat pig, and help you to skin and carve it. They are not my pigs, and the man to whom they belong is no special friend of mine.’

  Slowly the Dane let fall the stone and got up from Harald’s chest. He looked very tired, and Harald observed that a trickle of blood had run from a wound in his shoulder and had dried on his arm. In spite of his rich clothes and his gold-studded belt, he looked like a man who was near the end of his tether.

  He stood watching the boy suspiciously. ‘You must go before me,’ he said ‘Choose me a good pig and do what needs to be done. If you try to trick me, I shall …’

  But even as he said that, Harald’s leg shot out, striking the Dane at the side of the knee. He staggered, with a hoarse cry, but before he could regain his balance, the boy had slipped sideways and had flung him face-downwards on to the springy turf.

  ‘Now,’ said Harald, drawing the man’s arms behind him as he sat astride the Dane, ‘who shall be knocked on the head, my friend?’

  The Dane said, ‘I am a fool, and I deserve to die for trusting the word of a Norseman. Kill me and I shall be satisfied.’

  But Harald said suddenly, ‘Why should I kill you? You look like a warrior to me, and it would ill-become a swineherd to kill a warrior with a stone. No, instead, I will offer you friendship. You shall come down to the village with me and eat your pig there. What do you say to that?’

  For a while the man did not speak. Then at last he said, ‘No, I would rather be killed by a swineherd than let any gap-toothed villagers jeer at me for being caught so easily.’

  In reply, Harald got off the man’s back and stood away from him, his hands open, palms upward, to show that he carried no weapon, not even a stone.

  ‘I am no boaster,’ he said. ‘I would not say that I had caught you by a trick. But later, when you have fed, if you still wish to die, I will borrow a sword from someone and will do what you ask, decently, in the proper manner.’

  Then he took up his stick, and ignoring the Dane, gathered his pigs together into a neat herd, and started off with them down the hill.

  When he had gone twenty paces, he heard a cry behind him.

  ‘Wait,’ shouted the Dane. ‘I will come with you. We can talk about swords when I have a meal inside me.’

  Harald nodded and said, ‘That is just what I told you, my friend.’ He handed the staff to the Dane.

  ‘I see you are limping, my friend. Lean on this. I can drive the pigs on with a smack of the hand.’

  The Dane took the staff,
wondering. Then he smiled and said, ‘Judging by the size of your hands, my friend, I wager the pigs would rather be struck with your staff!’

  So, laughing, they reached the village.

  2. The Feast and What Befell There

  Old thorn was beside himself with rage when he saw the guest he was to entertain. Though half-crippled with rheumatism, he bobbed up and down in his anger on the hide-thong bed where he usually lay, and threatened Harald with his stick, saying that the village had little enough for itself, without giving entertainment to good-for-nothing Danes, who ate up all they could, then brought their families in longships the next year to pillage their hosts.

  As he raved in the smoke-filled hut, the Dane shuffled his feet with irritation; but Harald still smiled as he laid his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘Send him away, and send me, Thorn,’ he said softly. ‘My father would have counselled you as I do. My father, Sigurd, would not have forgotten the laws of hospitality.’

  Thorn’s eyes goggled and a vein stood out in his thin neck. But at last he was quiet again and said, ‘Be it as you say. He shall stay as long as he wishes. But mark me, he has the look of a pursued man about him, and that bodes no good to anyone. What if he is a nithing, then? What if his king sends for him, and takes our heads too?’

  The Dane said, ‘I am no nithing, old man. As for my king, he is dead and will never send here for me. He was my brother, and I should have ruled in his place, but for my taste for sailing the seas in longships.’

  When Thorn heard that their visitor was of royal blood, he put a rein on his temper and even tried to smile.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘then you still may be useful to us. Though you have indeed a look about you which I have seen on the faces of men who are pursued.’

  The Dane said, ‘We are all pursued, old man; and the one who pursues us will get us, each one of us, in the end.’

  Old Thorn, who was very superstitious, crossed his fingers at those words, to keep away Loki, the evil spirit, who listened at the chimney hole to what men said.

  Harald laughed and said, ‘So, you have been a-viking, Dane! What sights did you see?’

  The Dane snorted and replied, ‘Such sights as may not be told, young fellow, for fear of keeping sleep from a boy’s eyes for a year or more!’

  Harald answered, ‘I could match them, Dane.’

  But the Dane had turned and was looking across the village compound, up towards the hills again, listening, as though he expected someone to come leaping down the heather-covered rocks towards the houses.

  Then the horn sounded to summon the villagers to the feast in the long-hall.

  Soon the oaken table was thronged about with men and women, for this was not a warrior-meeting, where only the men gathered; and soon the long pinewood hall was thick with smoke from the wood fire in the centre, so that one could hardly see from one side to the other. The village folk ate their pork and barley bread ravenously, each trying to outdo his neighbour and to get good value from the occasion, for each had contributed his share. Then, when the mead-horn had passed round the board a time or two, and the heather ale had been poured into the great helmet and sampled by all, men began to cry out for a song.

  The village sagaman, old Nessi, so old that he had to be carried in his chair by two boys wherever he went, began to strike on a little drum with the flat of his dry old hand, giving himself a rhythm to work to. His drum was an earthen gourd, covered by a tight and thinly-scraped sheepskin, bound about with deer sinews. It gave off a sharp little note that cut through the talk about the table and caused all the villagers, even the most quick-tongued woman, to fall silent, while the bard declaimed his words.

  ‘There are three things a man should fear,

  A wolf, a sword, and a woman.’

  He sang, smiling wickedly.

  The men began to laugh and the women to make angry faces at the old poet. But when the uproar had died again, he started again more seriously and sang,

  ‘It came from no man knows where;

  It hides beneath the deepest rocks;

  It will not be wooed with promises;

  Yet most men love it better than life itself.

  What say you, wise ones, that it is?’

  The hall was filled with the voices of men and women, who tried to guess the answer to the riddle. But at each attempt, the sagaman shook his head and smiled.

  Then he looked towards the Dane who sat between Thorn and Harald, at the head of the table.

  ‘You seem to be a quick-witted fellow,’ said the bard. ‘Will you not try to guess?’

  The Dane shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled. ‘I shall not need to guess,’ he said. ‘For I know what the answer is. I made up that song myself, at my brother’s house in Hedeby, many years ago. The answer is: Gold, nothing more!’

  At first there was silence, then there was an excited shouting among the people. The sagaman smiled and said, ‘I recognized you, Arkil the Prince, as soon as you came in. That is why I tried your own song on you. Here, take the drum; I hand it to a better bard than myself.’

  The people clapped Arkil on the back and made him go forward, against his will, to stand beside the fire and sing them a song. He struck the drum a time or two, but then flung it back to the sagaman, saying, ‘I can get along better in my own way, Nessi the Bard’.

  And he began to clap his hands against each other, making many different sounds, and many complicated rhythms. The folk in the hall would have been well contented to hear him clapping like that for long enough, but the Dane suddenly began to sing in a deep musical voice:

  ‘Away where the seal plays,

  In the light of the dying sun,

  Where the wave rocks forever

  The white bones of the great sailors,

  And the ghosts of all longships

  Swing on the tides,

  There have I been.

  I have been where

  The halls of the sunset

  Echo with song, echo with voices

  Of all the great army

  Of those who have left us,

  Left us to roam.’

  As he stood there, in the flickering firelight, a strange look came over his face. He seemed to be asleep, or voyaging in a dream among the islands of his song. And the folk in the hall gazed at him raptly, sharing his vision.

  Then suddenly the door was flung open and a great gust of cold air scattered the ashes of the fire, and brought everyone back to the world they knew, with its harsh chill.

  ‘Who has opened the door?’ shouted old Thorn angrily, grabbing his stick to lay it about the shoulders of the man who had been so careless.

  But then men gasped. Standing in the doorway were two strange and frightening figures. They were bigger men than anyone at that feast had seen before, bigger even than Aun Doorback himself had been. Their long black hair was knotted up with bone pins, and about their bodies they wore thick corselets of horsehide. Each carried a long, leaf-bladed sword of bronze and the firelight glistened on the broad streaks of blue which stretched across their dark cheeks. They smiled grimly to see the fear they had roused among the villagers.

  Then one of them spoke. ‘I opened the door, old man,’ he said. ‘Will you beat me with your little stick, then?’

  Old Thorn was a brave man, despite his age and his rheumatism. He began to rise, saying, ‘Aye, that I will, whoever you may be!’

  But Harald pulled him back on to his seat. ‘Take care, Thorn,’ he said. ‘These are lawless Irishmen; I see that from their coloured breeches, which are such as their inland tribes still wear. Do not anger them.’

  When their first shock was over, many men cursed themselves for obeying the old feast laws, which decreed that they must leave their weapons at home; while the women wished they had their ladles or rolling pins.

  One woman, Thora, the niece of Thorn, a strong-armed creature with a great reputation for keeping her husband in order, rose and called out, ‘If only I had my
skinning-knife, you rascals, I’d make you skip back to Ireland, and glad to go! That I would!’

  Then the other Irishman spoke, coldly and viciously, ‘If we had the time, woman, we would teach you the lesson your husband should have taught you by now. But we are not concerned with you folk. Our man stands there. We have followed him half over the world and shall not let him go for the threats of a roomful of midden-churls and their women.’

  He pointed with his sword at Arkil the Dane, who still stood by the fire, the sagaman’s drum by his side on the table.

  Arkil shrugged his shoulders, ‘You have come a long way to find me. Now let us go outside and settle this quarrel properly, as men should, without disturbing the feast.’

  The Irishmen smiled grimly and shook their heads.

  ‘What we have to do shall be done here, without delay,’ said the first one. ‘We cannot risk losing you in the darkness again.’

  They saw that Arkil was trapped, with his back against the table, and they saw also that he carried no sword or axe. They moved across the space towards him, their blades raised to strike. The horrified men and women about the tables saw that the Dane still smiled, and made no attempt to run from the threatened blows.

  Yet as the first great Irishman struck downwards with his sword, the Dane flung the sagaman’s drum at him with all his force. The earthen jar shattered to pieces with the impact, and the Irishman staggered backwards, with a cry of pain, his hands to his face.

  Then there was a great shout from the head of the table and Harald leapt forward, scattering dishes before him in his haste. He could not reach the second Irishman in time to grapple with him, but did something even more terrible. As he passed the fireplace, he snatched up a flaming log and flung it at the barbaric figure. The Irishman swung round, trying to ward off the brand with his sword, and in that moment, Arkil leapt upon his back, bearing him down.