The Long Ships

CHAPTER TWELVE

HOW ORM CAME HOME FROM HIS LONG VOYAGE

KING HARALD fitted out twenty ships for his expedition. Twelve of these were for Styrbjörn, while with the remainder he intended to assert his authority at Skanör, where a strong force of men was always needed to collect the herring tax. He chose his crews with great care; and every Dane was eager to serve on the ships that were to sail with Styrbjörn, for they knew that much booty might be gained there.

Many men came down to Jellinge to join the fleet; and when King Harald had made his choice, Orm and Toke sought among the ones who were left to find folk whom they might hire to row them home in the ship they had stolen from Almansur; but oarsmen were asking a high price, and this they were unwilling to pay, for, now that they had come so near home, they were reluctant to part with any more of what they had won. Eventually, to save themselves the expense, they made an agreement with a man from Fyn called Ake to the effect that he should buy the ship from them and, in return, crew it and convey them both to their respective homes, Orm to the Mound and Toke to Lister, as well as being responsible for providing food for the voyage. There was a tremendous amount of haggling about this, and at one stage it appeared likely to end in a fight between Toke and Ake, for Toke wanted to have a sum of money as well as his passage, since, he asserted, the ship was practically new and thoroughly stable and seaworthy, if somewhat on the small side. Ake, however, refused to accept this valuation; the ship, he protested, was foreign and of inferior workmanship, and, indeed, virtually worthless, so that he was already on the bad end of the bargain. In the end they asked Hallbjörn, the groom, to arbitrate their case, and the matter was concluded without a fight, though Orm and Toke made little profit on the transaction.

Neither of them felt inclined to join Styrbjörn, for they both had other things uppermost in their minds; and Orm’s strength returned but slowly to him, so that he thought he would be an invalid for the rest of his days. He was sad, too, to think that he would shortly have to part from Ylva, who was now permanently chaperoned by a couple of old women, to make sure that she and Orm should not see too much of each other. But although the old women performed their duties conscientiously, they were frequently driven to complain that the King had allotted them a task too arduous for their aged bones.

When the fleet was at last ready to sail, King Harald bade the Bishop bless all the ships; but he refused to take him with him, because of the bad weather-luck that all priests were known to bring. The Bishop wanted to go to Skania to visit his priests and his churches there and to count the number of conversions that had been made; but King Harald told him he would have to wait until another ship sailed to those parts. For he himself, he roundly swore, would never take any bishop to sea with him, nor even a common priest.

“For I am too old to tempt fortune,” he said, “and all sailors know that sea-robbers and water-trolls and all sea-powers hate nothing so much as a shaven man, and set traps to drown him as soon as he leaves the land. My nephew, Gold-Harald, once sailed homewards from Brittany with a large number of newly captured slaves at his oars and straightway encountered storms and blizzards and fearful seas, though it was yet but early in the autumn. When his ship was on the point of sinking, he bethought himself and discovered two shaven men among his rowers. He threw them overboard, and enjoyed excellent weather for the rest of the voyage. He could do this because he was a heathen, but it would ill become me to throw a bishop overboard to calm the weather. So he will have to remain here.”

On the morning that the fleet was due to sail, which was also the morning that Orm and Toke had fixed for their departure, King Harald came down to the jetties to board his ship. He wore a white cloak and a silver helmet, and had a great company of men with him; and his standards were borne before him. When he reached the place where Orm’s ship lay, he halted, bade his followers wait awhile, and climbed aboard unaccompanied to have a few words with Orm in private.

“I honor you thus publicly,” he said, “to show evidence of the friendship I bear you, that no man may suppose any enmity to exist between us because I have not yet granted you my daughter’s hand. She is now confined in the women’s house, where she is the cause of much disturbance; for she is a high-spirited wench and would otherwise be quite capable of running down to your ship the moment I turned my back, to try to tempt you to take her with you, which would be a bad thing for both of you. I and you must now part for a while, and unfortunately I have, at the moment, no adequate gift with which to repay you for the bell you brought me; but I am sure that things will be different when you return in the autumn.”

It was a fine spring morning, with a clear sky and a gentle breeze blowing, and King Harald was in a merry humor. He examined the ship closely, noting its foreign workmanship, for he was well versed in the ways of ships and knew as much about decks and rowlocks as any shipwright, so that he found a number of points worth commenting upon. While he was thus engaged, Toke climbed aboard, staggering beneath the weight of an ernormous chest. He seemed taken aback to see King Harald there, but lowered his chest carefully to the deck and came forward to greet him.

“That is a fair-sized package you have with you there,” said the King. “What does it contain?”

“Only a few oddments for the old woman, my mother, in case she is still living,” replied Toke. “It is a good thing to bring home a gift of some sort when a man has been away for as long as I have.”

King Harald nodded approvingly and observed that it was good to find young people who still retained respect and affection for their parents. He himself, he added, had noticed little evidence of either quality in his own family.

“And now,” he said, seating himself on the chest that Toke had brought aboard with him, “I am thirsty and should like to quaff a cup of ale before we say farewell.”

The chest creaked beneath his weight, and Toke, with an anxious look on his face, took a step toward him; but the chest remained in one piece. Orm drew some ale from a barrel and offered it to the King, who drank to their luck for the voyage. He wiped the froth from his beard and remarked that ale always tasted best at sea; he would therefore be obliged if Orm would refill his cup once more. Orm did so, and King Harald emptied it slowly; then he nodded farewell to them, climbed ashore, and departed toward his own great flagship, to the mast of which his standard had already been fixed, displaying two ravens with outstretched wings sewn in black upon a background of scarlet silk.

Orm glanced curiously at Toke. “Why are you so pale?” he asked.

“I have my worries, like other men,” replied Toke. “You yourself have not the most cheerful of countenances.”

“I know what I am leaving behind,” said Orm, “but the wisest of men could not tell me to what I am returning, or whether things will turn out as I fear they may.”

At last all the ships put out to sea and steered their separate courses. King Harald and his fleet headed eastwards through the archipelago, and Orm’s ship rowed northwards along the coast to the tip of Sjælland. The wind favored the King’s ships, and before long they had begun to disappear into the distance.

Toke stood staring after them until their sails had grown tiny; then he said:

“Dread the hour

When Denmark’s despot

Bulbous sat

On brittle box-lid.

Faintly yet I

Fear my freight be

Broken-boned

By Bluetooth’s burden.”

He strode to the chest, opened it, and lifted forth his freight, which consisted of the Moorish girl. She looked pale and wretched, for it had been cramped and suffocating in the chest, and she had been in it for a good while. When Toke released hold of her, her knees gave under her and she lay on the deck panting and shaking and looking half-dead until he helped her to her feet again. She began to sob, glancing fearfully around her.

“Have no fear,” said Toke. “He is far away by now.”

She sat pale and wild-eyed on the deck, gazing at the ship and the men without speaking; and the men at the oars gazed back at her with eyes as wide as her own, asking one another what this could mean. But none of them was as pale as Orm, or stared more fearfully, for he looked as though some huge stroke of ill luck had just smitten him.

Ake, the ship’s master, hummed and hawed and tugged his beard.

“You made no mention of this when we struck our bargain,” he said, “that a woman should be aboard. The least I ask is that you should tell me who she is and why she came aboard in a chest.”

“That does not concern you,” replied Orm blackly. “Take care of your ship, and we will take care of what concerns us.”

“He who refuses to reply may have dangerous things to hide,” said Ake. “I am a stranger in Jellinge and know little of what goes on there, but a man does not have to be wise to see that this is a crooked business and one that may easily bring evil in its wake. Whom have you stolen her from?”

Orm seated himself on a coil of rope, with his hands clasped round his knees and his back toward Ake. Without turning his head, he replied evenly: “I give you two choices. Either hold your tongue or be thrown into the sea, headforemost. Make your choice, and be speedy about it, for you yap like a mongrel puppy and disturb my head.”

Ake turned away mumbling and spat over the side, and they could see as he moved again to his steering-oar that he was brooding darkly and in an evil humor. But Orm sat still and silent, staring as he pondered.

After a while Toke’s girl recovered her spirits, and they gave her something to strengthen her; but this at once made her wretchedly seasick, and she hung groaning over the gunwale, refusing to be comforted by the soothing words that Toke proffered her. In the end he let her be, fastening her to the gunwale with a rope, and came and sat beside Orm.

“Now the worst is past,” he said, “though this is certainly a troublesome and nerve-racking way of obtaining a woman. I do not think there are many men who would have dared to do as I have done; however, I suppose my luck is greater than that of most people.”

“It is better than mine,” said Orm. “I grant you that.”

“That is not so certain,” said Toke, “for your luck has always been good; and a king’s daughter is a greater prize than the woman I have won. You must not grieve that you have not been able to do as I have done, for even I could hardly have succeeded in kidnapping a girl as closely guarded as yours was.”

Orm laughed between his teeth. He sat silent for a while and then ordered Rapp to replace Ake at the steering-oar, for the latter’s ears looked likely to stretch themselves to tearing-point. Then he said to Toke: “I had supposed that a firm friendship existed between us two, since we have been together for so long; but, as the old ones truthfully used to say, it takes a long time to prove a man. In this mad enterprise in which you have now involved us both, you have behaved as though I did not exist or was not worth bothering about.”

Toke replied: “You have one characteristic that ill becomes a chieftain, Orm, and that is the ease with which you take offense. Most men would have praised me for stealing the woman single-handed, without endangering anyone else; but you regard yourself as having been insulted because you were not told about everything beforehand. What kind of friendship is it that breaks on so small a rock as this?”

Orm stared at him, white with fury.

“It is difficult to forbear with such addleheadedness as yours,” he said. “What do I care about what methods you use to get your women, or whether or not you keep your plans to yourself? What does concern me is that you have earned us King Harald’s enmity and wrath, so that whithersoever we go in the Danish kingdom, we shall find ourselves outlaws. You have got your woman, and have barred me forever from mine. A man does not have to be quick to take offense to find fault with such evidence of friendship.”

Toke could not find much to say in reply to this charge and was forced to admit that he had not thought of it in this light before. He tried to mollify Orm by saying that King Harald was old and feeble and could not live much longer; but Orm drew scant comfort from this, and the more he thought about it, the more irrevocably he felt himself to be separated from Ylva, and his anger waxed accordingly.

They put in for the night in a sheltered creek and lit two fires. Orm, Toke, Rapp, and Mirah sat by one of them, and Ake and his crew around the other. None of the Vikings was in a mood for talking, but the other men kept up a greedy murmur of discussion. They spoke, however, in low tones, so that the matter of their talk could not be heard.

After they had eaten, the woman curled up to sleep by the fire, with a cloak covering her body. Orm and Toke sat in silence some way apart from each other. Dusk began to fall, and a cold wind sprang up, turning the sea gray; and a storm-cloud appeared in the west. Orm sighed deeply several times and tugged hard at his beard. Both he and Toke were black with anger.

“It would be best to settle this matter,” said Toke.

“You have only to say the word,” replied Orm.

Rapp had gone to gather fuel for the fire. Now he returned and overheard their last words. He was a silent man, who seldom minded anyone’s business but his own. Now, however, he said: “It would be a good thing if you two could leave your fighting till later, for we have other work to do. There are fourteen men in the crew, and we are but three; and that is already difference enough.”

They asked him what he meant by this.

“They are planning to kill us, because of the woman,” said Rapp. “I heard them discussing it as I was gathering wood.”

Orm laughed.

“This is a fine hare you have started,” he said bitterly to Toke.

Toke shook his head sadly and stared with troubled eyes at his woman as she slept beside the fire.

“Things are as they are,” he said, “and the main thing now is to decide the best way out of this affair. I think the wisest course for us to follow would be to kill the lot of them where they sit, while they are still planning how to dispose of us. They are many, but they are far from being such men as we.”

“It looks as though we shall have rough weather tomorrow,” said Rapp, “and in that case we cannot afford to kill many of them, for we shall need them in the ship, unless we want to spend the rest of our lives in this place. But whatever we do, let us do it at once, or we shall have a rough night of it.”

“They are foolish folk from Fyn,” said Toke, “and once we have killed Ake and one or two of the others, the rest will tumble over themselves to do our bidding. But it is you, Orm, who must decide what we are to do. Perhaps it might be wisest to wait till they are asleep and attack them then.”

Orm’s melancholy had left him, now that there was work to be done. He got to his feet and stood as though making water, so as to be able to survey the group around the other fire without exciting their attention.

“There are twelve of them there,” he said when he had sat down again, “which may mean that they have sent two of their number inland to get help, without our noticing their departure. If that is so, we shall soon have a swarm of foes descending on us; so I think we would do best to settle this business without delay. It is plain that they have little foresight or lust for combat, or they would have tried to overpower Rapp when he was in the woods alone. But now we shall teach them that they must manage things more skillfully when they have men of our mettle to deal with. I will go alone and speak with them; then, while their eyes are upon me, come silently up behind them and hew well and quickly or it will go hard for us. I must go without my shield; there is no help for it.”

He picked up a tankard they had used at supper, and walked across to Ake’s fire to fill it from the barrel that they had brought ashore and set down there. Two or three of the crew had already laid themselves down to sleep by the fire, but most of them were still seated and awake, and their eyes turned toward Orm as he walked toward them. He filled the tankard, blew off the froth, and took a deep draught.

“There is bad wood in your barrel,” he said to Ake; “your ale smacks of it already.”

“It was good enough for King Harald,” retorted Ake sullenly, “and it should be good enough for you. But I promise you that you will not have to drink much more of it.”

The men laughed at his words, but Orm handed him the tankard as though he had noticed nothing untoward.

“Taste for yourself,” he said, “and see if I have not spoken the truth.”

Ake took the tankard without moving from where he sat. Then, as he set it to his lips, Orm gave the bottom of the tankard a great kick so that Ake’s jaw was broken and his chin fell upon his breast.

“Does it not taste of wood?” said Orm, and in the same instant he whipped his sword from its sheath and felled the man beside him as the latter jumped to his feet.

The other men, dumbfounded by the suddenness of all this, barely had time to grab for their weapons before Toke and Rapp fell on them from behind; and after that they had little time to show what mettle they were made of. Four of them were killed in addition to Ake, two fled into the woods, and the remaining five ran to the ship and prepared to defend themselves there. Orm cried to them to throw down their weapons, vowing that if they did so he would spare their lives. But they stood wavering, uncertain whether to believe him.

“We cannot be sure that you will keep your word,” they shouted back.

“That I can believe,” replied Orm. “You can only hope that I am less treacherous than you have proved to be.”

They held a whispered conference and then shouted down that his proposal gave them insufficient assurance and that they would prefer to keep their weapons and be allowed to depart, leaving the ship and everything else to the Vikings.

“Then I give you this assurance instead,” cried Orm, “that if you do not instantly do as I say, you will all be killed where you stand. Perhaps this knowledge will comfort you.”

So saying, he swung himself up on the ship and walked slowly toward them, without waiting for Toke and Rapp to follow him. His helmet had been knocked off by a stone that one of the men had thrown, his eyes were narrow with fury, and Blue-Tongue glittered wetly in his hand as he strode toward them, measuring them as though they were hounds that required the whip. Then they obeyed his bidding and threw down their weapons, muttering baleful curses upon Ake, for they were incensed that everything had turned out otherwise than as he had foretold.

It was by now quite dark, and a blustering wind had sprung up, but Orm thought it unwise for them to remain any longer in the bay. If they lingered, he said, they would have half an army of loyal Sjællanders descending upon them to recover King Harald’s woman and restore her to her rightful master. Therefore, despite the darkness and hard weather and the fact that they were so few, he felt there was nothing for it but to try their luck against the sea; for the consequences of Toke’s folly, he feared, would dog their heels for many a day.

Having no time to lose, they made haste to bring aboard the food-chest and ale-butt. The woman wept and grated her teeth at the prospect of such a voyage as the weather promised, but obeyed without complaint. Orm stood guard over the prisoners with drawn sword as they sat at their oars, while Toke and Rapp lifted the ale aboard. Toke was handling the barrel very clumsily and awkwardly, and Orm shouted angrily at them to be quicker about it.

“The wood is slippery, and my fingers cannot get a proper hold,” replied Toke mournfully, “for my hand is not as it should be.”

Orm had never heard him speak so heavily before. His sword-hand had been split at the joint of the third and fourth fingers, so that two of his fingers pointed one way and two the other.

“The loss of blood does not trouble me,” he said, “but this hand will be of little use for rowing tonight, and that is a bad thing, for we shall need to row hard if we are to get out of this bay before daybreak.”

He rinsed his hand in the water and turned toward the woman.

“You have helped me much already, my poor Mirah,” he said, “though it may be that I have done the greater share. Let me now see whether you can help me in this matter, also.”

The woman dried her tears and came to look at his hand. She wailed softly when she saw how grave the wound was, but none the less contrived to dress it skillfully. She said she would have been happier with wine to wash it in and cobwebs to lay upon it, but since these were not available she made do with water and grass and chewed bread. Then she bound it up tightly with bandages that she tore from her clothing.

“The most useless things can be turned to useful purposes,” said Orm. “And now we are both left-handed.”

It was evident from the way he spoke that his anger against Toke had been allayed.

Then they pulled away from the land with seven men at the oars and Toke minding the steering-oar, and the work of getting the ship out of the bay and round the point into the lee of the coast was the hardest that Orm had known since the days when he had toiled as a galley slave. He kept a spear in readiness at his side to kill the first prisoner who flagged; and when one of them caught a crab in the trough of a wave and was thrown on to his back, he was up on his bench and pulling again at his oar within the instant. The woman sat huddled at Toke’s feet, rolling her eyes in fear and wretchedness. Toke steadied her with his foot and bade her take up the baling-bucket and perform some useful service; but although she tried to obey him, her work was of no avail, and the ship was half submerged when they at last rounded the point and were able to set sail and bale.

For the rest of the night they were at the mercy of the storm. Orm himself took over the steering-oar, but all he could do was to keep the ship headed toward the northeast and hope that she would not be driven aground before day broke. None of them thought there was much hope of surviving such a tempest, which was worse than that which they had endured on their voyage to Ireland.

Then Rapp said: “We have five prisoners aboard, unarmed and in our power. It is doubtful whether they will be of any further use to us as rowers, but they may help us to calm the storm if we offer them to the sea people.”

Toke said that this seemed to him an excellent and proper suggestion, though he felt that they might begin by throwing one or two overboard, to see if that had any effect. But Orm said that they could not do this with any of the prisoners, because he had promised them their lives.

“If you want to give someone to the sea people,” he said to Toke, “I can only suggest that you offer them your woman. Indeed, I think it might turn out to the advantage of us all if we could rid ourselves of someone who has brought us so much ill luck.”

But Toke said that he would allow nothing of that sort to happen so long as he had breath in his body and one hand capable of wielding a sword.

So no more was said on that subject. As day dawned, a heavy rain began to fall and stood around them like smoke, and the storm began to lessen. When it became light, they could discern the coast of Halland ahead of them, and at last they succeeded in getting the ship into an inlet with her sail slit and her belly half full of water.

“These boards have carried me here from St. James’ tomb,” said Orm, “and now I have not far to go. But I shall come home without my necklace, and without the James bell, and little profit have I gained from giving them away.”

“You are bringing home a sword and a ship,” said Toke, “and I have a sword and a woman. And few of those who rowed forth with Krok have as much as that to show for their voyage.”

“We carry with us also a great king’s anger,” said Orm, “and worse than that can hang around no man’s neck.”

The hardships of their journey were now past. They set the five prisoners ashore and allowed them to depart in peace; then, after they had rested for a while and had put their ship and sail in order, they got good weather and sailed down the coast before a gentle breeze. Even the woman was now in good spirits and was able to help them with one thing and another, so that Orm found himself able to endure her presence better than before.

As evening fell, they drew in to the flat rocks that lay below Toste’s house, against which, when they had last seen the place, Krok’s ships had been gently rocking. They walked up the path toward the house, with Orm at their head. A short way from the water’s edge the path crossed a frothing stream, by means of a wooden bridge consisting of three planks.

Orm said: “Be careful of the one on the left. It is rotten.” Then he gazed at the plank and said: “It was rotten long before I left this place, and every time my father crossed this bridge he said that he would have it mended at once. Yet I see that it is still unmended, and still holds together, though it seems to me that I have long been parted from this place. If this bridge still stands, it may be that the old man, my father, has also survived the years that have passed.”

A little farther on they saw a stork’s nest in a high tree, with a stork standing upon it. Orm stopped and whistled, and the stork beat its wings and clattered its beak in reply.

“He remembers me,” said Orm. “It is the same stork; and it seems to me that it was but yesterday that he and I last spoke together.”

Then they passed through a barred gate. Orm said: “Shut the gate securely; for my mother gets angry if the sheep escape, and when she is out of temper our evening fare suffers.”

Dogs began to bark, and men appeared at the door and gaped at the three Vikings as they approached the house. Then a woman pushed her way through the knot of men and came toward them. It was Asa. She was pale, but apart from this looked as brisk and spry as when Orm had last seen her.

“Orm,” she said, and her voice trembled. Then she added: “God has heard my prayers at last.”

“His ears seem to be deafened with prayers nowadays,” said Orm. “But I never thought that you, of all people, would turn Christian.”

“I have been alone,” said Asa; “but now all is well.”

“Have your men sailed forth already?” asked Orm.

“I have no men left,” she said. “Odd stayed away the year after you left, and Toste died three years ago, in the year of the great cattle sickness. But I have managed to survive because I turned to the true religion; for then I knew that my prayers would be answered and that you would come back to me.”

“We have much to speak of,” said Orm, “but it would be good if we could eat first. These are my men; but the woman is foreign and is not mine.”

Asa said that Orm was now the master of the house and that all his friends were hers; so they entered, and were entertained like heroes. There were tears in her eyes as she carried to the table those dishes which she knew that Orm loved most dearly. They had many things to tell each other, and the telling of them covered many evenings; but no word was said of how Toke had won his woman, for Orm did not wish to temper his mother’s joy so soon after his return home. Asa took to Toke immediately and tended his wounded hand with great care and skill, so that it quickly began to mend; and she was fond and motherly toward Mirah, though they could talk but little together, and praised her beauty and black hair. She was disappointed that Orm and his men were not willing to thank God with her for their lucky return; but she was too overjoyed to take offense at their refusal, and said that Orm and the others would understand these things better when they were older and wiser.

At first Orm found such blitheness and gentleness somewhat strange in Asa, and it was six days before he heard her make one of her sharp-tongued sallies against the servant-maids and could feel that she was beginning to be herself again.

Orm and Toke were now friends again, though neither of them ever mentioned Ylva. As they described to Asa the adventures that had befallen them since Krok’s expedition had first rowed forth, Orm felt his old affection for Toke rekindle, and was eloquent in the latter’s praise; but whenever his thoughts turned to Ylva, his humor darkened, and then the sight of Toke and his woman gave him little joy. Mirah grew prettier every day, and laughed and sang the whole time, and she and Toke were so happy together that they had little time to notice other people’s troubles. Asa prophesied that they would have fine children, and Mirah, when this was explained to her, smiled and said they were doing all they could to ensure that this would be so. Asa observed that she must now begin to look for a wife for Orm, but Orm replied with a dark countenance that she could take her time about that.

As things now were, it was impracticable for Toke to proceed home by sea, at least as long as King Harald’s ships were at Skanör; so he decided to journey to Lister by land, with no company save that of his woman (for Rapp was remaining with Orm), and bought horses to carry them. Early one morning they took their leave, with many expressions of gratitude to Asa for her hospitality; and Orm accompanied them for a short distance to show them the right path for the Lister country.

“Here we must part,” said Orm, “and with all my heart I wish you a good journey. But it is not easy to be hopeful about the future, for King Harald will not rest until he has hunted you down, whithersoever you may flee.”

“I fear it is our fate to be unlucky with kings,” replied Toke, “though we are as meek-minded as other men. Almansur, King Sven, and now King Harald; we have made enemies of them all, and the man who brought our heads to any one of them would be well rewarded. None the less, I intend to hold on to mine.”

So they parted. Toke and Mirah rode eastwards and disappeared in the woods; and Orm rode back to the house to tell Asa of the danger that hung over them from King Harald’s wrath.