The Axe (42 page)

Olav hardly heard what the other was saying—the blood hummed and hammered so in his head. But this was enough, it had given him back the will to revenge—and a dear vengeance it must be, for it would be long ere he forgot this that he had just heard.

“—But the next night she had changed her mind again, barred her door against me. And when I came to her and spoke of marrying, she drove me from her as though I had been a dog—”

“Then I almost think you must put this marriage out of your head, Teit.”

Warned by the ring of the man’s voice, Teit looked up—Olav had risen to his feet and held the little woodcutter’s axe in his hand. Quick as lightning the boy seized his sword and drew it, as he leaped to his feet. Olav was seized with a wild joy on seeing that Teit now grasped it all—the boy’s face seemed to blacken with rage; he saw he had been fooled and he met the other’s wordless challenge with an eager cry of youthful valour.

He did not wait for Olav to attack, but dashed in at once. Olav stood still—three times he warded off the boy’s strokes with the head of his axe. The lad was deft and agile, Olav saw; but not strong in the arm. When Teit cut at him the fourth time, Olav
swerved unexpectdly to the right, so that the sword caught him on the left arm, but the young fellow lost his head for an instant. Olav’s axe struck him on the shoulder, and the sword fell out of his hand. He bent down to pick it up with his left, and then Olav planted the axe in the skull of him; the boy fell on his face.

Olav waited till the last spasms had left the body, and a little longer. Then he turned him over on his back. A little blood had run down through the hair, making a streak across the forehead. Olav took the corpse by the arm-pits and dragged it out into the dairy-shed.

He went to the door of the sæter—night and wind-driven snow, the roar and soughing of the wind in the forests. He would have to wait here till daylight.—Olav lay down on the pallet.

So many a man had fallen by his hand, of greater worth than this one.

Olav threw more wood on the fire. He must shake off this unwholesome—remorse, or whatever it was. Teit had brought it on himself. Bishop Torfinn himself had said a ravisher who was slain by the maid’s kinsmen must be reckoned almost as a self-slayer; he had begged his own death. Teit—had begged his own death. It were absurd that he should feel it as anything worse than—than felling a man in battle. Teit had fallen weapon in hand—there lay his sword on the floor.

Never could he settle Ingunn securely so long as this wretched jackanapes could run hither and thither blabbing of his misdeed, the nature of which he had not the sense to see.

Olav was so cold that his teeth chattered, though one side of him was being baked as he lay. But his elkskin coat stuck to his back, wet and stiff and icy cold, and his footgear was wet through. And he felt the wound he had got on his left arm—he had forgotten it, but now it ached and smarted.

He heaped fresh fuel on the hearth. If the hut burned, let it burn.

Nay, but he must preserve his life for Ingunn’s sake. Long enough she had had to wait for her husband—he must not be missing when she needed him most.

“Nay, my good Teit, ’tis
you
must give way, for I will not.” He struggled to hiss out the words; the other was pressing on his chest with all his weight, and Olav could not get a hold, his
strength seemed to be taken from him. Teit showed his whole white row of teeth, smiling as frankly as ever, though the back of his head was split open. “Cannot you see it, you wretched halfwit?—the woman is mine, so you must give way—take yourself off—”

He was awakened by his own hoarse cry as the nightmare left him. It was almost entirely dark in the room, with only a little glow from the embers. Wind and snow came in through the walls—and the elkskin qerkin was like an icy coat of mail.

Olav got up and went into the dairy, fumbling in the dark. The dead man lay there stiff and still, cold as ice. He had only been dreaming—he must have slept for several hours. He fed the fire again, nor could he endure to sit and stare at it—so he had to take to the pallet again. He got the sacks of hay under his back and the skin coverlet over him as well as he could.

Now and again sleep wrapped him as in a mist, and each time it veiled his thoughts he was awakened by the same dull throbbing pain within him—the smarting of his wound was only an echo of some deeper hurt. Then he was wide awake and lay thinking round in the same ring.

That fellow had got his deserts. He had had to kill so many a better man in battle, and never taken it to heart. There might be sense in pitying Ingunn, but not this one—no. If there were none to mourn the lad, either here or in his own land, that were well; then no innocent would suffer because the guilty had found his punishment. These years, first with his uncle and then with the Earl, ought to have been enough to harden him. This was uncalled for—he had got his deserts. And so on, round in a ring.

He started up—no, it was only a dream that Teit stood there in the doorway with the baler, offering him a drink. He lay safe enough where he should lie. “Oh nay, Teit, I am not afraid of you. And if I am afraid, you never had the wit to know what it is I am afraid of. My poor little Ingunn, you must not be afraid of me.”—He was wide awake again.

Then there was this new burden that he had to face—what should he do? Give notice of the slaying at the first house he passed, when he came down from the wilds? And take upon himself this new case of manslaughter before he was wholly quit of the old one, with weregild and fines?—And feel the common talk barking in his tracks—what quarrel could such a man as he have
had with that vagabond Icelander?—ay, to be sure, ’twas Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter—No, not that either.

But then—how was he to be rid of the corpse?

So many a better man had he seen fall from the ship’s side and be lost in the sea. So many a good thane’s son of Denmark must have been left to the wolf and the eagle after the Earl’s attack. But that was the Earl’s doing, not his; it had never been his fault if a dead man was left without Christian burial. And since he was so soft that the mere slaying of such a one as this Teit, his wife’s paramour, weighed upon him, he would be ill fitted to go through with the other thing, which
was
sin.
That
would be a sin that he could not throw off.

But if he declared Teit’s slaying at his hands, then they could not even
pretend
that Ingunn’s honour was saved.

At last he must have fallen asleep and slept long and dreamlessly. The sun shone in through the cracks between the logs when he opened his eyes. The hearth was black. He heard nothing of the wind—not a sound but the black cock’s note from far and near, and now and again a belated chirping.

He stood up, stretched and rubbed himself. His arm was stiff and rather sore—not much. He went to the door and looked out. The world was white and the sun was high in a blue and cloudless sky. The mist had sunk and lay like a white sea, made golden by the sun, with points of rock and wooded ridge jutting out, and they were golden with fresh snow on which the sun was shining. The white carpet of the hillside sparkled red and blue; hare and bird had already printed their tracks in the fresh snow, and the call of the black cock resounded everywhere in the woods.

In this infinitely white world of wild, snow-covered forest he stood, the only human being in the wastes, and knew not where to hide that other little carcass, the dead man. Break through the carpet of snow and bury him—no. It must be done in such a way that beasts could not come at it—that he would not have. Let it lie and be found when folk moved up to the sæter—that was impossible; then it might come out who the dead man was—and after that all the rest.

The two pairs of skis stood in the drift beside the wall, snowed under. Olav took the good pair, which he had borrowed from the convent, cleared them of snow, and laid them down. He clenched his teeth firmly; his face grew stiff and blank.

He went in and smoothed out the couch. Then he fetched the corpse and laid it there—tried to straighten it out. There was clotted blood and brains in the hair, but not much on the frozen grey face. He gaped hideously, Teit. Olav could not get the mouth and eyes closed. So he covered the dead man’s face with the worn and blood-stained fur cap.

Underneath the ashes he found some sparks, and when he laid on bark and twigs and a mass of wood, the fire soon burned up. There was a load of hay in the dairy; Olav brought it in and threw it down between the hearth and the bed. His foot stumbled against Teit’s sword—he picked it up and laid it on the boy’s breast. Then he scraped up an armful of bark and twigs and threw it on the heap of hay.

Now the fire was burning briskly on the hearth. Olav took a long stick and raked the brands into the hay—with a flicker and a hiss as they caught the bark the flames shot up. Olav sprang out, carrying the skis under his arm, and waded up the slope through the fresh snow.

Up at the top, where the wind had bared the old crust, he halted, knelt, and bound the skis fast to his feet. Then he took the staff in his hand. But he stood there till he saw the grey smoke curling out of every crack in the walls. He repeated the burial prayers in a low voice—almost overcome by terror: was this blasphemy? But it seemed he had no choice—a dead man lay within; he
must
do it.

He had left his axe in the hut, he remembered, and the wallet, but it was empty. Now both the whey-vat and the store of bread would be burned; it was a small matter among all the rest, but—Never had he disdained God’s gifts; the smallest piece of bread that he dropped on the floor he would take up and kiss before he ate it. This was almost the only thing he remembered of what his great-grandfather had taught him.

To hell with it. In the wars he had seen whole storehouses of food and franklins’ homes given over to the flames. And better men than this one had been caught in the fire, both living and dead. Why should he count this as so much worse—?

In old days they burned their fallen chieftains thus. “I have given you a funeral pyre fit for a sea-king, my Teit—with your sword clasped in your hands, food and drink beside you.”

The smoke kept creeping out—now it enshrouded the whole
sæter. The fire shone through it—the first flames found their way out under the eaves. Olav set out swiftly, with no trail to follow.

When the sæter-folk came up in the summer, they would find the bones among the ashes—he tried to console himself. He would be laid in Christian ground in the end.

He swept down to a watercourse, while his ears sang and the snow spurted from his skis; flew across the bottom of the slope, halted on the other side, and looked back. The fine, long hump of the ridge he had left stood out golden in the sunshine against the blue sky. In one place a little cloud of dark smoke was spreading.

An hour later he crossed the top of a fence, buried in the snow, into white meadows. There were houses here; the snowdrifts made them level with their surroundings in many places but smoke was rising from a louver. There were tracks between dwelling and byre, and fresh refuse on the midden.

Olav looked out over the landscape as he brought himself to a standstill. The country was white, tinged with yellow, and blue in all the shadows. Far to the northward he had a view of a broad valley in which were great farms.

Say that he had quarrelled with his companion last night and it ended in their seizing their weapons. And then brands from the fire had been flung into the straw.

He pulled himself together and set out again over the fields.

Late in the afternoon he came to Miklebö. Arnvid was out-had started for the woods two days before with both his sons to look for capercailye. But his house-folk gave their master’s best friend a good reception.

Olav was out in the courtyard next day at sunset when Arnvid and his sons came home. Magnus was leading the horse—both it and the men wore snowshoes—and it was packed with knapsacks and the like and a fine bag of game. Arnvid and Steinar were loaded with skies and bows and great empty quivers.

Arnvid greeted his guest with quiet heartiness, the sons received him frankly and becomingly. They were half-grown now, two fine, fair-haired, promising youths.

“As you see, I changed my mind—”

“That was well.” Arnvid smiled a moment.

“But—have you fared through the forest with no weapons but that little spear?” asked Arnvid as they sat talking while the food was being brought in.

Olav said no, he had had an axe with him too, but he lost it yestereve; he was cutting some branches to make a bed—ay, he had found a shealing and slept in it. Graadals booth?—it might be that. Nay, in the snow and the darkness he had not been able to find his axe again. For that matter, he had given himself a scratch on the upper arm as it flew out of his hands.

Arnvid wished to see the wound before they went to rest. It was a clean, straight slash—looked as if it would heal quickly. But how Olav could contrive to wound himself just there, Arnvid could not make out—well, these old axes with a long pointed barb at each end might play one many tricks—and surely they were unhandy for lopping branches.

I
NGUNN
had the child on the third day after Hallvard’s Mass.
When Tora lifted the new-born babe from the floor, the mother clasped her head in her arms and shrieked, as though afraid to see or hear.

When Ingunn was put to bed, Tora brought her the child, ready wrapped.

“You must
look
at your son, sister,” Tora implored. “He is so pretty—he has long, black hair—”

But Ingunn shrieked and drew the coverlet over her face.