The Long Ships

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONCERNING THE GREAT HOUNDS’ CHASE

SOME of the crazy magister’s men escaped in boats; but not many, for they were hunted by men and dogs along the shore. Their wounded were killed, since they were all miscreants. Twenty-three of Orm’s men had been killed and many wounded; and all agreed that this had been a good fight, and one that would be much talked about in the years to come.

In the village they found a great qauntity of ale, and many hogs were slaughtered; then the men buried their dead together and raised a mound over them and drank to their death voyage. As they had expected, they found a number of stolen women in the village. Each of these was given a cow and allowed to go whither she pleased, with as much booty as she could carry. Among these were Ylva’s two servant-girls, who were both young and were greatly delighted at being thus liberated. They had been forced, they said, to endure great indignities and had been kept indoors, closely guarded, ever since Torgunn had run away. They now wished to be wedded to reliable men.

The hounds were much praised for their part in the battle; only two of them had been killed. When all the cattle had been rounded up as booty, Orm said that the work of driving them back to Gröning could safely be left to the hounds, since they were used to this. Horses were found for all the wounded; then, as soon as these had recovered sufficiently to be able to sit on horseback, Orm rode forth from the bandits’ village and headed homewards by the shortest route, which led southwards along the shore of the lake.

Ludmilla rode with the rest, and Olof kept his horse close to hers. He had begged Orm and Toke not to mention the two women who had kept him warm at the Dregovites’ village, lest she should take the matter amiss. They had both laughed at this and had replied that he must be sick in the head with wounds or love if he supposed that they would do any such thing. But Olof had shaken his head doubtfully, saying that he was a good deal older than she and so could not be too careful.

They rode slowly, for the sake of the wounded. Ahead of them the hounds drove their herd at leisure; no disputes broke out between them and their charges, though when any cow tried to change her direction or escape from the rest, they were quick to show her her mistake.

They camped early that evening and saw to the wounded; then next morning they proceeded alongside the lake toward the place that old folk called Tyr’s Meadows. In former times men had lived there, and the meadows had been the scene of great battles, from which they had won their name. Men said that so much blood had been spilled on Tyr’s Meadows that the grass flourished more richly there than elsewhere. But neither man nor house was to be seen there now.

As they approached these meadows, the hounds grew restless, so that the men wondered whether they had scented bear, or the smell of the old blood. Leaving their herd, they roamed into the woods and ranged this way and that, until, of a sudden, two or three of them began to bay. Others joined them, and soon the whole pack of them was snarling savagely and driving deeper into the woods, as though they had once more been slipped for battle. Orm could not understand what the cause of this might be, for none of the bandits had fled in this direction; and he and all the men ran up to the top of a heathered hill beside the track to see what was afoot.

Away on their right hand, beyond the woods, there lay open grassland. Across it the hounds were running, driving before them a great herd of cattle, but cattle such as few of the men had seen before.

Suddenly one of Toke’s men cried: “The wild ox! They are driving the wild ox!”

The hounds seemed to have taken it into their heads that these beasts belonged to their herd and were to be driven home with the rest. They spared no efforts to see that none escaped, and from the hill the men could see how they fought with the more obstinate animals to drive them along with the others. The wild oxen resented this treatment, and their bellowing could be heard even above the baying of the hounds; but at last all but a few ceased their resistance, and the herd disappeared southwards into the wooded hills, with the hounds still gamboling behind and about them.

Realizing there was nothing they could do to stop them, the men proceeded on their way, driving the tame cattle themselves. Toke’s men, who knew the ways of wild oxen, said that sometimes, in the beginning of winter, they came down from West Guteland to pasture in Tyr’s Meadows. While they grazed on the war-god’s land, they were held by old folk to be under his protection and so were never disturbed there. In former times, as was well known, they had been far more numerous in these parts, but nowadays they were only to be seen in Tyr’s Meadows, and that but seldom.

They found traces of the wild oxen’s flight in the country east of the Kraka Stone; but in the dense forests farther south, it was clear that the hounds had found their task beyond them, for the tracks of the herd showed it to have diminished in strength mile by mile. They had, nevertheless, succeeded in keeping some of them together; and when Orm reached home, he learned that the hounds had arrived there driving two bulls, five cows, and a number of calves. The men had done their best to halt them, but had been unable to do so; and when the hounds saw the beasts proceeding into the country beyond their home, they appeared to have felt that they had done enough for honor and went to their food-troughs, very weary and sore-footed.

After this, wild oxen were seen in various parts of the forest country, and no event for many a year past had aroused so much amazement as their reappearance. Now that, with their own eyes, they had seen wild oxen in their district, anything, men said, could happen; and they all reminded one another of the old saying that no king would ever be seen among them until the wild oxen returned to the land. Wise ancients shook their heads and warned their neighbors to prepare for the worst and to keep their bows and spears ready to hand. Some baptized persons thought that Christ would come to Göinge in a great wagon drawn by wild oxen; but few men agreed with them in this surmise. Most took it to mean that King Sven would march against them; and when certain tidings came that he had died in England, black in the face with anger at the stubbornness of the people there, there was such rejoicing in Göinge that all the ale was drunk up, and men sat hoarse and thirsty at their tables with nothing save milk to fill their cups with.

But such as lived long enough saw the old saying fulfilled, when Canute Svensson the Mighty, King of Denmark and England, sailed to the estuary with the greatest fleet that any man had ever seen or heard tell of, and fought with the Kings of Sweden and Norway on the waters of the Holy River.

And this is the end of the story of Orm Tostesson and his luck. He fared forth no more on voyages or campaigns; but his affairs prospered and he aged contentedly. The only thing he found to complain of was an ache in his back which sometimes troubled him, and which even Father Willibald was not always able to dispel.

Olof Summerbird wedded Ludmilla. They lived happily together, though it was rumored that he had not fully as great a say in the management of his house as he had been wont to have. Spof besought Torgunn many times to marry him. At first she refused, finding him short of limb and gray of beard; but when at last he threw caution aside and revealed to her what his belt contained, she found herself no longer able to resist his prayers. They sailed to Gotland, in the ship that lay in the shed by the estuary; and with them, in the same ship, sailed Blackhair, Glad Ulf, and Sone’s seven sons, upon a longer voyage. They took two of the hounds with them, to fulfil the promise they had made to Felimid, and stayed away for seven years.

When they returned, Glad Ulf wedded Oddny, who had steadfastly refused to look at any other man. But Blackhair sailed to England, and in the battle on the Holy River he fought in King Canute’s own ship.

Toke Gray-Gullsson gained much pleasure from his chest of gold, and hung so many ornaments upon his wife and daughters that their clatter and jingle gave good warning of their approach whenever they went out in their best attire. He sold his house in Värend and built himself a larger one near Gröning. There he and Orm found much satisfaction in each other’s company, as did Ylva in Mirah’s, though neither Toke nor his woman ever allowed themselves to be baptized. In good time Orm’s youngest daughter was wedded to the eldest of Toke’s sons, their fathers having decided long ago that they were well suited to each other.

Both Orm and Toke lived to a ripe age without wearying of life; and never, until the day they died, did they tire of telling of the years when they had rowed the Caliph’s ship and served my lord Almansur.