The Viking Saga Page 18

  Grummoch nodded, reflectively, and said sadly, ‘That is the trouble, no one will ever be my hand-friend. I once shook hands with a German bear, but he howled so loudly, I could not make myself heard when I asked him what was the matter.’

  By this time Harald Sigurdson was at the steerboard, and called to them to take their places at the benches with the oars, for, he said, if they did not get started soon, they would have the good men of Murdea aboard to burn them off the face of the seas.

  And certainly there was a nasty-looking crowd already assembled at the dockside, muttering and pointing angrily at the Vikings. But Grummoch merely yawned again and called out to them, ‘Would any of you brave souls like a little trip round the harbour before we start on our voyage? We will not charge you anything, and will set you safely ashore again when you have had enough!’

  The men at the harbour’s edge began to shout abuse at the Vikings, so Grummoch called again, this time to the one who seemed to be their leader, ‘You, good sir, with the bald head and the big nose, what about you? You look to be a rare sea-rover, will you not come with us?’

  But he got no polite reply, and so, with stones and refuse whistling round their ears, the Vikings set forth from Murdea, ten men in a little ship full of treasure, to make the long and tedious passage round the south coast of England, and up past the land of the Franks.

  They put in for food once more at the Isle of Wight, and were not dissatisfied with the treatment they received there, for some of the islanders spoke a dialect similar to their own, having themselves come from Jutland many generations before.

  So all went well for the first three days, but, early on the fourth, something happened which was to change the whole course of their lives.

  7. The Small Dark Men

  It was a grey grim dawning, with bursts of rain scudding down from the north and the whipped ocean rolling strongly against the prow of the Arkil. The high sail was useless since the change of wind, and Harald and Grummoch pulled it down together, being buffeted mercilessly as they clung to the writhing canvas with frozen hands.

  The other sea-rovers lay wrapped in their sheepskin cloaks, under the gunwales, sleeping as best they could, for their hands were already blistered with the rowing they had done the day before.

  But Grummoch said, ‘We shall have to waken them, shipmaster, for this is a wind that must be fought with more than snores!’

  Harald woke Olaf only and asked him if he thought they might put ashore in the land of the Franks, at some quiet village, for example; but he shook his head and said grimly, ‘Frank and Northman, fire and water! I had as soon jump overboard now – they killed my father and three of my cousins last summer, trying to teach them to be Christians!’

  So there was nothing for it but to wake the sleepers and set them rowing against the tide. Both Harald and Grummoch took turns at the oars, for with Radbard and Haro sick, they were short-handed.

  But by midday, the weather grew worse, and soon a great gale began to sweep out of the north, rendering the oarsmen as weak as kittens, drenching them through and filling their hearts with fear.

  Haro called Harald over to him and said gloomily, ‘It comes over me that we shall never get this treasure back to the fjord, shipmaster. It weighs the ship down, and soon we shall be foundering if these waves do not slacken. Besides, the boat is so heavy now that we need a crew of giants to move her through such a swell.’

  Harald nodded, thoughtfully, and said, ‘Let us have courage for a little while longer, Haro, and then, if we can do nothing better, we will lighten the load a little.’

  He went back to his oar, but did not say anything about this conversation to the others, for they were all anxious, to a man, to get this great hoard back to their village and live lives of comfort evermore.

  By early evening time, their next misfortune happened. Radbard went aft to broach a keg of water and came running back to say that it was all brackish and undrinkable. The men of the Isle of Wight had tricked them, it seemed, selling bad water for good gold, despite the similarity of the language they spoke.

  Harald and Grummoch went aft to taste the water, and agreed that it would poison a man.

  It was then that the gale caught them and drove them southwards like a leaf falling from a high oak tree, powerless, swirling hither and thither, out of control. Harald shrieked for the men to draw in their oars, but his words came too late; three oars were swept away, out of the weakened hands of the rowers.

  So, as night came on, the Arkil went her own way, far off the course Harald had set, until at last Radbard cried out that if the storm did not die away soon, they would eat their next meal in Africa.

  He was not far wrong. The storm grew from fury to fury, throughout the night, and all through the next day, lashing the little longship as though it was a hated thing, almost turning it turtle a hundred times, snapping off the mast, breaking in the gunwales on one side, and straining the stout oak strakes to the utmost of their strength.

  Now the battered Vikings had no heart left for anything but to huddle close to each other, in whatever shelter they could find, which was little enough. Even the stoutest stomached of them had been sick, and not a man but was frozen until he could hardly speak.

  Then, as the utterly chill dawn of the third day struck across their ravaged deck, the wind fell and the seas rolled back to their accustomed places. And far on the steerboard bow, Harald at last sighted a thin grey shape low on the horizon.

  ‘Yes, that is land,’ said Grummoch, ‘though who should know which land it is, we have been so buffeted! And I for one do not care which land it is, for if we can only reach it, I will never set foot on a ship’s deck again.’

  And others, even the hardiest of the Vikings, said the same thing.

  Then the problem was taken out of their hands, for on the larboard beam and bow suddenly appeared three ships, long and low in the water, gliding towards them like sea snakes, catching the morning wind in their triangular red sails.

  Harald rubbed his eyes and said, ‘I have never seen such ships before; they are built for speed and even if we had our sail and our oars, we could not escape them.’

  Radbard, who stood with him at the gunwales said in his high voice, ‘It is not the ships which worry me, it is their crews. Look, they are little dark men, not sea-rovers at all.’

  Grummoch shaded his eyes and there was fear in his voice as he spoke. ‘We can expect no mercy from them, my friends,’ he said. ‘I know their like. For the love of god, strike off these gyves so that I can at least defend myself when they draw alongside.’

  Then, to the horror of all the Vikings, Harald said, ‘We have no hammer, Grummoch. It went overboard in the night and I could not save it.’

  At this, Grummoch gave a great cry and jumped overboard. Radbard tried to stop him, putting out his hand, but it would have been as easy to hold back an oak, falling in a high wind.

  ‘He will drown, with those leg-gyves on,’ groaned Radbard. ‘His ghost will never let me rest for what I did to him.’

  But Haro said, ‘You should be worrying about your own ghost, my friend, not Grummoch’s, for the men who are coming to board us do not carry bunches of flowers in their hands!’

  Now Grummoch had disappeared among the breakers, and the Vikings turned, to sell their lives as dearly as their failing strength would let them, each armed with a weapon from the store they had taken from the cave.

  And as the sharp-prowed ships cut in at them from all directions, their gunwales lined with dark-faced men, Radbard shouted suddenly, ‘They may take our heads, but they shall not take our gold!’

  Then, before anyone could stop him, he had torn back the plank that led beneath the deck, and all men saw him give a great heave at the oak bung in the ship’s bottom.

  The green sea rushed in, ice-cold and hungry, about the waists of the Vikings in a flash.

  ‘Radbard, you fool!’ shouted Harald, as he saw the man flung down beneath the deck planks by the onr
ush of water.

  Then they were in the sea, with the Arkil sucking at them as she sank, and the three cruel-looking ships above them, treading them down into the waters it seemed, and the little dark men grinning above them, their white teeth gleaming in the early morning sunlight.

  8. Slave Market

  For years afterwards, the events which followed came to Harald like a strange dream; first someone leaning down and trying to pull him up into the boat, then the sensation of falling again, clutching out and missing his hold, and then the green swirl of waters above him while the harsh keel of the boat rolled over him, forcing him down and down, until he thought that his lungs would burst. Then, at last, coming back from a dark and rushing nightmare to find himself lying on a white-scrubbed deck in the sunshine, between two rows of black-legged rowers and the taut red sail above him, bellying in a following wind … And, best of all, Radbard and Haro lying beside him.

  It was some time before Harald discovered that his legs were bound – and that none of the rest of his crew besides Radbard and Haro had been picked up. When he knew that, his sunlit mood turned to one of black despair.

  Radbard, who had miraculously shot up to the surface when the Arkil sank, was grim and tongue-tied; Haro sat nursing his aching arm, too deep in despair to speak, even to his dear friends.

  Shortly after Harald’s senses had returned to him, a tall man dressed in a long white robe and wearing a red turban came down between the sweating oarsmen and kneeled beside him. Harald noted that his long brown fingers were covered with gold rings and that his curved sword had an exquisite hilt of chiselled steel, set with amethysts.

  The man smiled at him, showing his perfectly white teeth, and began to speak to him in a soft and musical voice. But his words were strange and Harald could not understand him. The man made several attempts to make his meaning clear, but Harald shook his head.

  At last the man shrugged his shoulders and began to make signs. He pointed to the hide bonds which fastened Harald’s ankles, then he made the motion of counting out money from one hand to the other. Harald understood. ‘You want us to pay you to let us free?’ he asked.

  But the other did not understand and smiled, nodding his head.

  Then, with a cold shudder, Harald said, ‘Are we slaves?’

  The man heard the one word, and nodded happily, ‘Slaves,’ he said, recognizing that single word, ‘Slaves, you slaves!’

  Radbard heard this and turned away with a groan. Haro put up his good hand to his eyes for they had filled with tears.

  Harald clenched his teeth and said to the man, ‘If I had a sword I would give you the payment you deserve.’

  But the man still smiled and shook his head, not understanding. Then, seeing that he would get no further with these three rough bears of the north, he shrugged his shoulders as though he had done all he could and went back to the helm, swinging the long narrow ship towards the shore, which rapidly grew nearer and nearer, until Harald could actually distinguish the shapes of gaily clothed men and women moving in the sunshine before the white houses.

  Soon after that they were running in alongside a low jetty, and then that same man with the red turban came to them and indicated with his long white staff that they were to disembark. But this time he did not smile, and when Radbard rose slowly, he felt the weight of that white stick, suddenly and viciously. Harald stopped, aghast, and then, with a slow cold anger, turned and struck the man a blow with his clenched fist between the eyes.

  ‘No man shall treat my crew like that while I am here to prevent it,’ said Harald, glaring round him. But Radbard shook his head gravely. ‘That was a daring thing to do, Harald,’ he said. ‘Now look what the results may be.’

  The tall man sprawled on the sun-dried planking of the jetty, holding his head and speaking to his followers in a vicious tone of voice. These followers ran immediately to do his bidding, and soon came back from a shed with a smouldering brazier.

  Haro said listlessly, ‘It would seem to be their custom to brand rebellious slaves. I had not thought to be branded when I set out from Murdea with my share of the treasure glittering in my dreams. Alas, but a man’s life is quite unpredictable!’

  Radbard said, ‘I have a dragon tattooed in the middle of my chest. I hope these fellows do not mar the design with their clumsy botching. What do you say if we offer to brand each other, to see that the job is done properly?’

  Then they were dragged forward, towards the brazier. A thick-armed man bent over it, blowing the coals to white heat with a little sheepskin bellows. They saw that an iron lay in the fire, getting hotter and hotter. A small crowd of men and women had gathered now, anxious not to miss any entertainment that might be offered by the slaves, and the man in the red turban, who had now regained his former air of authority after his blow on the head, was talking excitedly to the crowd, explaining some point or other, which necessitated his waving his hands violently up and down.

  Harald said, ‘I think he is telling them that we deserve the punishment. He wishes them to think him a just man, doubtless.’

  Radbard said, ‘It comes to me, from the look of these folk and the shape of their houses, that we must be in that part of Spain where the Moors have come to live. And if that is so, then we must expect to find them a very just people, for their Caliphs make strict laws, causing them to be respected in this part of the world. We can look for justice, no doubt.’

  Haro grinned and pushed away a man who had gripped him too strongly by the shoulder of his injured arm. ‘Yes, but what if we do not care for their justice, friend?’

  Harald said, ‘We are Northmen, not Moors, Radbard. Our justice is what I would go by, not theirs. Besides, he deserved the blow I gave him, according to any man’s justice, for he struck you when you were unable to move any faster.’

  Radbard smiled and said, ‘Very well, you are the shipmaster and I obey your orders. What shall we do?’

  Harald said, ‘We must make it unpleasant for them if they try to harm us. That is as far as I can think, with these three ruffians hanging on to my arms.’

  Suddenly a great hush fell on the chattering crowd, and then the man in the red turban gave a signal to the guards who held Harald. They dragged him towards the brazier and then waited. The man in the red turban spoke harshly to the one who bent over the flames, and as he straightened, the hot iron in his hand, Harald gave a great cry, ‘Up the North!’

  He heard his cry echoed by Haro and Radbard, behind him, and then he lunged forward with all his strength, snapping the hide thong which held his ankles. He felt the thing go, and with his new freedom he kicked out, catching the brazier with the side of his foot and scattering the coals among the crowd. He heard men and women cry in sudden alarm, and then he had shaken himself free, and was punching out to left and right. He had time to see that Haro and Radbard were doing the same, and then, overpowered by sheer weight of numbers, Harald sank down to the ground, half-suffocated by the Moorish sailors who clutched him wherever they could get a hold.

  For a moment, he saw nothing but legs and feet, and was momentarily afraid that they might trample him to death. Then he heard a strong voice cutting through all the hubbub, and suddenly he found himself free again, and looking up at a short, squat man who wore a round helmet and an iron breastplate, and whose skin was very much lighter than that of the pirates who had captured him. This man’s high boots were of the old Roman pattern, as was his short purple cloak and the broad sword which swung in a moroccan leather scabbard at his right side. He seemed to be a man of power, from the way in which he addressed the pirate captain in the red turban.

  Harald could not understand his speech, for he spoke the Arabic of the Moors; yet even Harald could recognize that his manner of saying the words was not that of the sea-rovers who had bound him and brought him to this place.

  Suddenly, when all was still again, the man touched Harald in the side with the toe of his fine riding-boot and said, ‘Well, and is this the sort of behaviour
one would expect from a slave?’

  Harald stared at him in wonder for he spoke the tongue of the north – though not like a Northman, but like one who had learned the words in his travels there.

  Harald stared him in the eye and said, ‘I am Harald Sigurdson, a shipmaster. These men have attacked my ship, Arkil, and have caused us to scuttle her off this coast. Now they treat us like beasts.’

  The man nodded and said, ‘You are their rightful prize, my good fellow; they are slave-runners and do not go out to sea for the fun of it. They plan to sell you in the slave market, at a good price, for you are all young men and have plenty of work left in you, if a man only knows how to fetch it out of you!’

  The man in the red turban now came forward and began to argue with the other, who answered him in Arabic. At length the newcomer turned and said to Harald, ‘This captain says he wishes to punish you all for your rebellious behaviour, to leave such a mark on you as will warn other good men that you are savage beasts and must be watched.’

  Harald answered, ‘Then he is a fool, for we only did what any warrior would do, no more. We are not savage beasts, but good Northmen, whose only wish is to go about our own business without interference from any man.’

  The man in the helmet tugged at his dark beard and smiled a little grimly. ‘I am a Frank,’ he said, ‘and so I have some knowledge of you good Northmen, and of the business you like to go about!’

  Radbard broke in, saying, ‘What, you a Frank, and you side with these heathen?’

  The man said, ‘I was captured in battle, my friend, and so became a slave, as you are. But my master, Abu Mazur, is an enlightened man; he used me sensibly, making me his emissary up and down the land, for this and that. I am contented. I have known worse masters, and Christian ones at that.’ He paused for a moment and then smiled and said, ‘You should have no cares about my fate, for after all you too are heathen, my friends!’