The Long Ships (27 page)

“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.