The Long Ships (38 page)

They walked up from the beach in the direction of the castle, proceeding across the fields that lay on its southern side. Brother Willibald was just remarking that they had almost reached the place when, suddenly, they heard the tramp of feet and men’s voices coming from the bridge away to their left and saw a herd of cattle approaching them, driven by several men.

“It will be safest to kill these fellows,” said Rapp, weighing a spear in his hand.

But Brother Willibald grabbed him by the arm and forbade him vehemently to use any violence toward men who had done him no harm. Orm agreed and said that, if they made haste, there should be no need for bloodshed.

So they began to run toward the rise. The cowherds stopped and stared at them in amazement.

“Whose men are you?” they shouted.

“King Harald’s,” replied Orm.

“The little priest!” shrieked one of the herdsmen. “It is the little priest who used to attend King Harald! These men are enemies! Run and rouse the castle!”

Rapp and the two men with him sprang immediately in pursuit of the herdsmen, but the cattle blocked their path, so that the others got a good lead. Meanwhile Orm ran to the rise with Brother Willibald, who at once showed him the place where the three stones lay. Orm heaved the topmost one aside; and there, beneath it, lay the necklace, just as Ylva had hidden it.

“Now we shall have to show our paces,” he said as he thrust it into his shirt.

Shouts and alarums could now be heard from the castle; and when they reached Rapp and his men, they found him cursing himself for having failed to stop the herdsmen from giving the alarm. In his anger he had flung his spear at one of them, who, as a result, was now lying outside the great gate.

“But it served little purpose,” he said, “and now I have lost a good spear.”

They raced as fast as they could across the fields toward the ship. Very soon, however, they heard loud whoops behind them, and the pounding of hoofs. Rapp was a sharp-sighted man with his one eye, and he and Orm glanced back over their shoulders as they ran.

“Here comes King Sven himself,” muttered Orm. “That is no mean honor.”

“And in a hurry,” said Rapp, “for he has forgotten to plait his beard.”

Brother Willibald was not so young as the others; nevertheless, he sprinted along nimbly, with his cassock lifted high above his knees.

“Now is our chance!” cried Orm. “Mark them with your spears!”

As he spoke, he stopped in his tracks, turned, and flung his spear at the foremost of the pursuers, a man on a big horse who was galloping just in front of King Sven. When the man saw the spear winging toward him, he pulled his horse back on its hind legs. The spear buried itself deeply in the animal’s chest, causing it to topple forwards and roll over, crushing its rider beneath it. Rapp’s men cast their spears at King Sven, but failed to hit him; and now he was almost upon them, and they had no spears left with which to defend themselves.

Brother Willibald bent down, picked up a large stone, and flung it with all his might.

“Love thy neighbor!” he grunted as it left his hand.

The stone struck King Sven full on the mouth with a loud smack. With a howl of agony, he crumpled on the horse’s mane and slithered to the ground.

“That is what I call a good priest,” said Rapp.

The rest of their pursuers crowded round King Sven where he lay on the ground, so that Orm and his men managed to reach the ship unscathed, though somewhat short of breath. Orm cried to the rowers to begin pulling at once, while he and the others were still wading out from the shore. They were dragged aboard and had come a good way from the shore before the first horseman appeared at the water’s edge. The wind had sprung up again in the gray dawn twilight and was favorable to them, so that, using both sail and oars, they managed to come swiftly out into the sea.

Orm gave the necklace to Ylva and told her of all that had happened to them; and even Rapp was less scant of speech than usual as he praised the excellence of the little priest’s throw.

“I hope he felt it,” said Ylva.

“There was blood on his mouth as he fell,” said Rapp. “I saw it clearly.”

“Little priest,” said Ylva, “I have a mind to kiss you for striking that blow.”

Orm laughed. “That is what I have always been most afraid of,” he said, “that you would become enamored of priests in your piety.”

Brother Willibald protested vehemently that he had no wish to be kissed; nevertheless, he appeared to be not altogether displeased at the praises that were being showered upon him.

“That kiss that King Sven received he will not soon forget,” said Orm, “and it is not his habit to leave such things unavenged. When we reach home, if we do so safely, my mother will have to pack with speed, for I think it will be safest for us to depart into the forests, where no king ventures. And there I shall build my church.”

    And of Orm’s subsequent adventures in the forest country far north toward the border, the story also shall be told; of his zeal for Christianity, and Brother Willibald’s triumphs of conversion; of the opposition they encountered from the Smalanders, and their feuds with them; and of how the wild oxen returned to the land.

THREE years had passed since Orm, after selling in haste his father’s house on the Mound in order to flee from the wrath of King Sven, had toiled up to the border country with all his household, his wife and mother, his servants, and his little priest, his horses and cattle and as much silver and valuables as his beasts could carry. The estate that Asa had inherited from her father in the border country was called Gröning; but for some years now it had been a neglected wilderness of sagging roofs and overgrown fields, inhabited only by an ancient and infirm bailiff, his wife, and a gaggle of scrawny geese. Orm found little to be enthusiastic about when he saw the place, and thought it a poor homestead for a man of his quality and for a woman who was King Harald’s daughter; and Asa ran to and fro weeping and calling to God in her misery, and inveighing violently against the old couple; for she had not visited the place since the days when she had been a girl and her father had lived there in wealth and prosperity, before he and his two sons had been killed in a feud.

But Ylva was contented; for here, she said, they would be safe from King Sven and his ruffianly following.

“This is a place that will suit me well enough,” she said to Orm. “if you can prove yourself as skillful at house-building as you have shown yourself to be at fighting and handling a ship.”

Their first winter there they fared meagerly, for there was little food for man or beast, and they found their neighbors hostile. Orm sent men to a thane of the district, Gudmund of Uvaberg, whom men called Gudmund the Thunderer, and who was famed for his wealth and pugnacity, to buy hay and hops; but the men returned to Orm empty-handed, having received short shrift, for a newcomer to the border who was a follower of Christ to boot did not appear to Gudmund to be worthy of his notice. Then Orm saddled his horse and set forth with One-Eyed Rapp and three other good men. They arrived at Uvaberg a little before dawn. He succeeded without much difficulty in gaining entry to Gudmund’s house, picked him out of his bed, carried him out through his own front door, and dangled him by one leg over his own well, while Rapp and the others set their backs against the door that the people in the house might not disturb their parley. After Orm and Gudmund had argued the matter for a while over the mouth of the well, a bargain was concluded between them by which Orm was to receive all the hay and hops he required at a fair price; whereupon Orm turned him right ways up again and set him on his feet, pleased at having been able to settle the transaction without being forced to resort to violence.

The Thunderer’s wrath, though considerable, was equaled by the respect in which he now held Orm, and was a good deal less than his astonishment at finding himself still alive.

“For, you must know,” he said, “that I am a dangerous man, even though you are somewhat larger of frame and may therefore have to wait awhile before you sample the flavor of my wrath. Few men would have dared to let me escape alive after serving me as you have done; indeed, I hardly know if I myself would have been bold enough to do so, had I been in your trousers. But perhaps your wisdom is not commensurate with your strength.”

“I am wiser than you,” said Orm, “for I am a follower of Christ, and therefore possess His wisdom in addition to my own. It is His wish that a man shall be gentle unto his neighbor, even though that neighbor should do him mischief. So if you are sensible, you will go on your knees and thank Him; for your well looked to me to be somewhat deep. But if it is your wish that we two should be enemies, you will find that I can be wise in more ways than one; for I have encountered more dangerous adversaries than you, and no man has yet worsted me.”

Gudmund said that he would have to endure much mockery for the indignity that he had been forced to undergo, and that his good name would suffer in consequence; besides which, his leg had been painfully stretched by having to support his weight over the well. As he was speaking, the news was brought to him that one of his men, who had rushed at Orm with a sword as the latter was carrying Gudmund out of the house, was now being tended by the women for a broken shoulder that Rapp had given him with the blunt edge of his ax. Gudmund then asked what the attitude of Orm and Christ might be to this piece of information, and whether they thought that such an aggregate of injury and insult was not worth some compensation.

Orm pondered this problem for a while. Then he replied that the man whose shoulder had been broken had only himself to blame for his injury, and that he would give him nothing.

“It was lucky for the foolish fellow,” he said, “that Rapp is as devout a believer in Christian principles as I am; otherwise the man would not now require any attention from your women. He should count himself fortunate to have escaped so lightly. But as regards the injury and insult that you claim to have suffered, I think there is some justice in what you say, and I shall give you compensation. If you will accompany me, I will introduce you to a holy doctor who is a member of my household at Gröning. He is the cleverest physician in the world and will speedily cure the pain in your leg; indeed, so holy is he that, after he has treated it, you will find it sounder than its fellow. And it will greatly add to your honor, and to the respect in which your name is held, when it becomes known that you have been attended by a man who was, for a long period, King Harald’s personal physician and treated him for the many ailments from which he suffered, and cured them all marvelously.”

They argued about this at some length, but in the end Gudmund agreed to ride back with Orm to Gröning. There Father Willibald applied soothing salves to the leg and swathed it in bandages, while Gudmund plied him eagerly with questions about King Harald; but when the priest tried to tell him about Christ and the advantages of baptism, he became very violent and told him that he could keep his mouth shut on that subject. For, he roared, if it became known that he had fallen a victim to such nonsense, it would damage his reputation worse than the news of his suspension over the well, and men would never cease to laugh at him. It was a poor thing, he concluded deafeningly, that anyone should hold so low an opinion of his intelligence as to suppose him capable of being gulled by such foolish prattle.

As he took his leave of Orm, having received payment for his hay and hops, he said: “It is not my wish that there should be a blood-feud between our houses; but if the opportunity should arise for me to repay the insult that you have inflicted upon me, be sure that I shall not neglect it. It may be some time before such an opportunity will present itself, but I am a man whose memory is long.”

Orm looked at him, and smiled.

“I know you to be a dangerous man,” he said, “for you yourself have told me so. Nevertheless, I do not think this vow of yours will cause me to lie awake at night. But know this, that if you attempt to do me a mischief, I shall baptize you, whether I have to hold you by the legs or by the ears to do so.”

Father Willibald was dejected by his failure to convert Gudmund and declared himself convinced that his work in the north was doomed to failure. Ylva, however, comforted him with the assurance that things would be easier once Orm had built his church. Orm said that he in good time would fulfill his promise to do this, but that his more immediate concern was to build himself a house; and this, he avowed, he would start work on immediately. He straightway applied himself earnestly to the task, sending his men into the forest to fell trees, lop them, and drag them back, whereupon he himself chopped them into lengths with his ax. He chose his wood most meticulously, using only thick trunks that had no flaw in them; for he intended, he said, that his house should be of fine appearance and built to endure, and no mere forest shack. Asa’s estate comprised the land that lay in a bend of the river, protected by water on three sides; the soil was firm, and not liable to flooding. There was room here for all that he wished to build, and he enjoyed the work so much that, the further it became advanced, the more ambitiously he began to plan. He built his house with a walled fireplace and a slide-board in the roof for the smoke to leave by, the same as he had seen in King Harald’s castle; and the roof itself he constructed of peeled ash saplings, surmounted by a layer of birch bark and thick turves. Then he built a brewhouse, a cattleshed and a storehouse, all amply proportioned and finer than any that had previously been seen in these parts; and at last, when all these were completed, he announced that the most important buildings were now ready and that he would shortly be able to begin thinking about his church.

That spring the time arrived for Ylva’s confinement. Both Asa and Father Willibald took busy charge of her; they had a deal to do, and fell over each other in their eagerness to ensure that nothing might be left undone. The confinement was a difficult one. Ylva screamed fearfully, vowing that it would be preferable to enter a convent and become a nun than to endure such pain; but Father Willibald laid his crucifix upon her belly and muttered priest-talk over her, and in the end everything went as it should, and she was delivered of twins. They were both girls, which was at first a disappointment to Asa and Ylva; but when they were brought to Orm and laid upon his knees, he found little cause for complaint. Everyone agreed that they bawled and struggled as vigorously as any man-children; and, once Ylva had accepted that they were girls and could never become boys, she regained her cheerfulness, and promised Orm that next time she would give him a son. It soon became evident that both the girls were going to be red-haired, which Orm feared might bode ill for them; for, he said, if they had inherited the color of his hair, they might also develop a facial resemblance to him, and he was reluctant that his daughters should be condemned to such a fate as that. But Asa and Ylva bade him desist from such unlucky prophesying; there was no reason, they said, to suppose that they would look like him, and it was by no means disadvantageous for a girl to be born with red hair.