The Long Ships (68 page)

“The best course for you now, scribe,” said Toke, “is to jump overboard and fish for your treasure; for if you arrive without it, I fear things may go somewhat ill for you.”

The scribe, though vexed at this occurrence, appeared not to be greatly alarmed by it. The sheepskin, he explained, was more important than the heads; as long as he still had the former, he could manage without the latter. There were only nine of them, and he doubted not that he would be able to borrow substitutes from public officials in Kiev with whom he was friendly; for there were always plenty of malefactors in their custody awaiting execution.

“We are taught to be merciful, after the example of God,” he said, “and therefore think it good to help one another when we are in distress. And one head is as good as another.”

“Then you are Christians in this land?” said Orm.

“In Kiev,” replied the scribe, “for the great Prince has so commanded us, and we think it best to comply with his wishes.”

They reached a place where two rivers joined. Their course lay along the right-hand fork, which was called Ulla, and it was now that the hard rowing began. For here the current soon became stronger and the river narrower, and often they found themselves unable to make progress and had to haul the ship ashore and drag her forward along the bank. They had to toil long and strenuously, so that even the strongest among them felt it, and regretted the good days they had spent on the Dvina. At last they reached a place where Spof ordered them to bring the ship ashore, though they were making good progress and it was yet early in the day; for this, he said, was the great portage.

The ground here was scattered with various kinds of timber, left by travelers ascending or descending—broken planks, rollers, and a type of rough runner. Some of them were still usable, and the men axed others from fallen trees. They drew the ship up on the bank and after a great deal of carpentry managed to fasten runners down both sides of the keel. While they were thus occupied, some men were seen to come out of the forest a little farther up the river and stand there uncertainly watching them. Spof appeared pleased when he saw them; he waved to them, held up a tankard, and shouted the two words that he knew of their language: “oxen” and “silver.” The men came nearer and were offered drink, which they accepted; and Orm was now able to make use of Faste’s scribe, who was able to interpret between him and the strangers. They had oxen they were prepared to hire out, but only ten, though Spof wanted more. These oxen, the men explained, were grazing deep in the forest where robbers and tax-collectors would be less likely to find them, but they would be back with them in three days. They asked only a small price for the use of them, and begged that they might be paid in sailcloth instead of silver, as their women liked the striped woof; but in the event of any ox dying, they wanted to be given good compensation. Orm found their demands reasonable, and thought them the first honest people he had dealt with on this voyage.

All the men now set busily to work chopping and carpentering, and in a short time they had built a broad wagon, with strong rounds of oak to serve as wheels. Upon this they piled the portageale and made it fast, together with most of the other things from the ship.

The strangers then returned with the oxen as they had promised; and when everything was ready, two oxen were harnessed to the wagon and the rest to the ship.

“If we had six more oxen,” said Spof, “all would be well; as things are, we shall have to help with the dragging ourselves. But we must be thankful that we have got any help at all, for to drag a ship up the great portage without oxen is the worst task that a man could be faced with.”

When the dragging began, some of the men walked ahead to lift fallen trees out of the way and smooth the track. Then came the wagon. They guided the oxen cautiously, lest anything should give way; and when the wheels began to smoke, they greased the axles with pork and pitch. Then came the ship, with many men harnessed to the ropes beside the oxen. Where the track led downhill, or over grassland and moss, the oxen were able to manage without assistance; but where it led uphill, the men had to lend all their strength, and where the going was rough, rollers had to be placed beneath the runners. The ox-drivers spoke to their beasts the whole time, and sometimes sang to them, so that they dragged willingly, but when Orm’s men spoke to them, using the words they used to address oxen at home, they received no response, because these oxen could not understand what they were saying. This surprised the men greatly; it showed, they said, that oxen were far wiser beasts than they had hitherto supposed, for here was evidence that they possessed a characteristic in common with men—namely, that they could not understand the speech of foreigners.

The men grew weary with the heat and toil and the business of changing the rollers; but they kept bravely on, for it was a great incentive to them to see the wagon with the portage-ale moving ahead of them, and they did all they could to keep pace with it. As soon as they pitched camp for the night, they all cried loudly for portage-ale; but Spof said that this first day’s work had been light, and that Faste’s mead was reward enough for it. They drank of this, grumbling, and soon fell asleep; but the next day’s work proved more arduous, as Spof had told them it would. Before the afternoon was far advanced, many of the men began to flag; but Orm and Toke cheered them with words of encouragement, sometimes lending a hand themselves with the dragging so that the men might be stimulated by their example. When evening came on this day, Spof at last said that the time had come for the portage-ale to be opened. They breached a cask and gave a good measure to every man; and although they had all tasted the same brew in the Gotland Vi, they declared unanimously that they had not until this moment appreciated its quality to the full, and that the labor they had undergone had been well worth while. Orm ordered that the ox-drivers, too, should have their share; they accepted this offer willingly, and at once became drunk and sang noisily, for they were only accustomed to thin mead.

On the third day they soon came to a lake, long and narrow between asses’-backs, and here their task was lightened. The wagon and the oxen proceeded by land, but they launched the ship into the lake, with her runners still on her keel, and, favored by a mild breeze, sailed down the water, encamping at length on the farther shore. On a hill not far from their camping-ground lay a village with rich pastures below it; here they saw fat cattle being driven in from their grazing, though it was yet a good while before evening. The village, which appeared to be large, was curiously fortified, for, though it was surrounded by a high rampart of earth and stone, this was broken in places by a stockade of rough logs which did not look difficult to scale.

The men were in good spirits, for this was the lightest day’s work they had had for a long while, and the sight of the cattle awakened in them a longing for fresh meat. Neither Orm nor Olof was prepared to pay out any more silver for food, reckoning this to be an unnecessary expenditure after all they had already been put to; but many of the men, unable to control their longing, determined, none the less, to go and fetch their supper. Faste’s scribe said that the people who lived in these parts were wild men of the Dregovite tribe, who had not as yet paid their taxes, so that the men might act as they chose toward them. Spof said that the previous time he had been here, seven years before, this village was in the process of being built; but they had seen no cattle on that occasion, and so had not disturbed the inhabitants. Orm told the men that they must not kill anyone in the village without due cause, and must not take more cattle than would be enough to meet their needs. They promised, and set out toward the village. Sone’s sons were the most anxious to go, for, ever since they had rowed in to the river Ulla, they had had no opportunity to go hunting, because of the incessant work to which they had been subjected.

Shortly afterwards the men who had been coming by land with the wagon arrived at the camp. When the ox-drivers learned from the scribe that men had gone to the village to get cattle, they fell to the ground shaking with laughter. Orm and the others wondered what they could find in this news to be amused at, and the scribe tried to get them to explain the cause of their mirth, but in vain. They would only reply that the cause would in a short while become evident, and then began again to shriek with laughter.

Suddenly shouts and screams were heard from the direction of the village, and the whole company of cattle-raiders emerged, running down the hill as fast as their legs would carry them. They whirled their arms above their heads and yelled fearfully, though nothing else was in sight, and two or three of them fell to the ground and remained there, rolling from side to side. The rest ran down to the lake and jumped into the water.

Everyone in the camp stared at them in amazement.

“Have they devils or ghosts after them?” said Orm.

“I think bees,” said Toke.

It was evident that he was right, and all the men now began to laugh as loudly as the ox-drivers, who had known about this from the beginning.

The refugees from the bees had to sit in the lake for a good while longer, with only their noses showing above the surface, until at length the bees tired of their sport and flew home again. The men returned slowly to the camp, greatly dejected, with swollen faces, and sat with few words in their mouths, thinking they had lost much honor in fleeing thus from bees. The worst of the business, though, was that three men were lying dead on the hill, where they had fallen: two of Olof Summerbird’s men and one of Sone’s sons. They grieved at this, for the dead had all been good men, and Orm ordered that portage-ale should be drunk again that evening, to honor their memory and to cheer the stung survivors.

The ox-drivers now told them about the Dregovites, the scribe translating what they said.

These Dregovites, they said, were more cunning than other men and had found a means to live peacefully in their villages. They had many swarms of bees which lived in the tree trunks that formed part of their fortifications, and which, as soon as any stranger touched the trunks or tried to climb over them, came out and stung him. It was fortunate for the men, they continued, that they had tried to invade the village during daylight, for if they had made the attempt by night, they would have suffered far worse. The bees could only guard the village by day, since they slept during the night; accordingly, the wise Dregovites had also equipped themselves with bears, which they trapped when young and trained and gave good treatment. If robbers came in the night, the bears were released and mauled the invaders, after which they returned to their masters to receive honey-cakes in reward for their services. Because of this, nobody dared to enter the villages of the Dregovites, not even the important men who collected taxes for the great Prince.

The next day they remained in this place and buried the dead. Some of the men wanted to throw fire into the village as a revenge, but Orm strictly forbade this, because no man had raised his hand against the dead men, who had only themselves to blame for their fate. Those who had been worst stung were in a sorry plight, for they were too ill to move; but the ox-drivers went up to the village and, standing at a distance from it, shouted to the inhabitants. A short while later they returned to the camp bringing with them three old women. These old women looked at the men who had been stung and placed a salve on their swellings, consisting of snake’s fat, woman’s milk, and honey, blended with the juices of healing herbs, which soon made the sick men feel better. Orm gave the women ale and silver; they drank eagerly, being careful to leave no drop in their cups, and thanked him humbly for the silver. The scribe spoke with them; they gazed curiously at him, curtsied, and returned to their village.

After a while some men appeared from the village, bringing with them three pigs and two young oxen. The scribe went to greet them, but they brushed him aside, walked up to Orm and Olof Summerbird, and began to talk eagerly. The scribe stood listening, and then, of a sudden, uttered a yell and fled into the forest. Nobody could understand the villagers except the ox-drivers, and these knew but few words of the Northmen’s tongue; but by gestures they managed to explain that the villagers wished to make Orm a gift of the pigs and oxen if he would hand the scribe over to them; for they wished to give him to their bears, because they disliked any man connected with the great Prince. Orm found himself unable to accede to this request; however, he gave them ale and bought their beasts with silver, so that they parted on amiable terms. Later that afternoon several more old women came to the camp with great cheeses, which they gave to the men in exchange for a good draught of ale. The men, who had already begun to roast the meat, thought that everything was turning out better than could have been expected. The only pity, they said, was that old women had come instead of young ones; but these the Dregovites would not allow out of the village.

Toward evening the scribe slunk back into the camp from his hiding-place, tempted by the odor of the roasting meat. He begged Orm to lose no time in getting away from these wild people. The great Prince, he said, would be informed of their behavior.

They proceeded on their way and at length came to a lake larger than that which they had just left; then, on the seventh day of their portage, they reached a river that Spof called the Beaver River and the ox-drivers Berezina. There was great rejoicing among the men when they saw this river, and here they drank the last of the portage-ale, for the worst hardships of the voyage were now past.

“But now,” said Orm, “we have no ale to help us on our homeward journey.”

“That is true,” said Spof, “but we shall only need it on the way out. For it is with men as with horses; once their heads are turned homewards, they move willingly and do not need the spur.”

The ox-drivers were now paid off, and received more than they had demanded; for it was so with Orm that he often felt mean toward merchants, who for the most part seemed to him to be no better than robbers and often worse, but never toward men who had served him well. Besides which, he now felt that he was a good deal nearer to the Bulgar gold. The ox-drivers thanked him for his generosity and, before departing, took Spof and Toke to a village, where they spoke to good men who were willing to hire out oxen for the return journey. Orm ordered his men to dig a hiding-place, where they hid the rollers and runners until they should need them again, having worn out three sets of runners during the long land drag. The wagon he took with him, thinking that it might prove useful when they reached the weirs.