The Long Ships (73 page)

Toke had freed his prisoners, and Felimid and his men stared at them in amazement.

“They are the men who rode out to fish for silver,” said Orm. “My men went on a similar errand, and captured them at the fishing-place. But I give them back to you free of ransom, though I doubt not that many men would think me foolish to do so. But I have no wish to haggle with you, Felimid.”

“You are worth all your luck,” said Felimid, “and that is a great deal.”

“I shall bring the great hounds with me, none the less,” said Blackhair, “the next time I pass this way. And that may not be long hence, for now that I have been weighed in silver I consider myself a full man.”

“Be sure you have dancing-girls washed in milk ready to greet us,” said Glad Ulf, “at least as pretty as the ones we saw today.”

Felimid scratched behind his ear. “That is all you think me capable of,” he said, “to provide dancing-girls for you on your return. I shall choose the ugliest I can find, and have them steeped in horse-droppings, lest you foolish children should take it into your heads to steal them from old Felimid, after all the pains he has taken to train them.”

They said farewell to the master jester and his Patzinaks and returned to the ship. Then they weighed anchor and started on their homeward voyage. The wounded among them seemed to be on the way to recovery, and even Olof Summerbird, who was the worst hurt, was in good heart. The men pulled at their oars with a will, though they knew they had a long row ahead of them against the current. Sone’s seven sons were the merriest of all, though they had the bodies of their two dead brothers aboard, intending to bury them at their first camp, with the men who had been killed by the bees. Toke thought that this had, indeed, been a strange voyage, for they had come a long way and won a great treasure, and yet Red-Jowl had not left her sheath. He thought, though, they might find themselves somewhat busier on the way home, with so much gold aboard. Ulf and Blackhair sat happily on the deck, telling the other men of all that had happened to them while they had been prisoners of the Patzinaks. Orm alone wore a thoughtful face.

“Do you regret having let those prisoners go without ransom?” asked Toke.

“No,” replied Orm. “What troubles me is that my luck has been too good, so that I begin to fear that all may not be as it should be at home. It would be good to know how things are there.”

THEY buried their dead, in ground where their bodies would not be disturbed, and journeyed up the great river without adventure, getting good help from wind and sail. Olof Summerbird remained sorely sick; he had no appetite for food, and his wound healed slowly, so that there was talk among them of putting in at Kiev in order that men skilled in medicine might examine him. But he himself would not hear of this, being as anxious as Orm and the others to reach home swiftly. The men rowed past the city without complaint, for they all now regarded themselves as rich men and had no desire to hazard their silver among foreigners.

When they reached the Beaver River, and the rowing became hard, Blackhair took his turn with the others, saying that he was henceforth to be treated as a grown man. The work was heavy for him, but, though his hands were skinned, he did not desist until the time came for him to be relieved. For this he won praise even from Spof, who seldom said an approving word about anyone.

At the portage they found plenty of oxen, in the village where they had bespoken them, so that this time they had less difficulty in dragging the ship overland. When they reached the Dregovites’ village, where the bees and bears were, they rested for three days at their old camping-ground and sent messengers to the village to beg the wise old women to come and look at Olof’s wound, which had been made worse by the bumping of the ship during the drag. They came willingly, examined the wound, opened it, and dripped into it a juice made of crushed ants and wormwood, which made him scream aloud with the pain. This, the crones said, was a good sign; the worse he shrieked, the better the medicine. They smeared it with a salve of beaver’s fat, and gave him a bitter drink, which greatly strengthened him.

Then they returned to their village and came back with a great quantity of fresh hay and two plump young women. The crones undressed Olof, washed him in birch sap, and bedded him in the hay with a bearskin under him and one of the two young women on either side of him to keep him warm; then they gave him more of the bitter drink and covered the three of them with oxhides. He fell asleep almost immediately, and slept thus for two nights and a day in great warmth; and as soon as he awoke, the young women cried that his health was returning to him. The crones were richly paid for this; and the young women, too, were well rewarded, though they steadfastly refused to perform the same service for any of the other men.

Olof Summerbird recovered swiftly after this. By the time they reached the city of the Polotjans, his wound was healed, and he was able to eat and drink as well as the best of them. Here the chieftains visited Faste again and told him what had happened to his scribe, but the news did not appear to trouble him greatly.

In this town the men felt as though at home. They remained there for three days, drinking and love-making, to the profit and delight of all the people there. Then, as the leaves were beginning to fall, they rowed down at their leisure to the mouth of the Dvina, reaching the sea just as the first frost-nights came.

One morning, off Ösel, they were attacked by Estonian pirates in four small ships full of howling men. Spof saw them as they emerged out of the mist, and straightway bade the men at the oars pull as hard as they could; then, as the pirates drew abreast, two off either bow, and prepared to grapple, he swung the helm smartly round and rammed one of them so that those aboard her had to pull smartly for the shore, sinking swiftly. One of the others succeeded in grappling Orm’s ship, but no sooner had they done this than Sone’s seven sons swarmed over into the pirate ship, shieldless and whooping triumphantly, and hewed about them so furiously with sword and ax that they cleared the ship of its occupants well-nigh unaided. When the other pirates saw this happen, they realized that they had encountered berserks, and rowed hastily away.

Sone’s sons were much praised for this feat, but several of them climbed back over the gunwale in an ill humor, cursing the old man their father. One of them had lost two fingers, another’s cheek had been split by a spear, a third had had his nose pulped, and scarcely one of them had come through unscathed. Those of them who had been wounded most severely said that the old man was to blame for this, having lured them by his prophecy into attempting too much; for they had assumed that they would suffer no hurt. But the others spoke against them, saying that the old man had promised no more than that seven of them should return home alive; he had said nothing about wounds and scratches. It looked as though there was going to be fighting between the brothers, but Orm and Toke calmed them with wise words, and they proceeded on their journey without more incident.

They had good weather all the way from Ösel to the river mouth and made the whole journey under sail. Meanwhile Orm measured out silver to every man aboard, both their hire-money and their share of the treasure. No one was discontented, for he gave each man more than he had expected to receive.

One morning at dawn, as Toke stood at the steering-oar and the rest of the men were sleeping, Orm seated himself beside him, and it was plain from his face that he was heavy-hearted.

“Most men would be merry in your clothes,” said Toke. “Everything has gone well, you have won a great treasure, and we shall soon be home.”

“My mind is troubled,” said Orm, “though I cannot say why. Perhaps it is the gold that makes me uneasy.”

“How can the gold make you uneasy?” said Toke. “You are now as rich as a king, and kings do not hang their heads because their wealth is great.”

“There is too much of it,” said Orm gloomily. “You and Olof shall both have your good shares, but even so, too much will remain for me. I have deceived the men, telling them that the chests contain trash for women, and my lie will bring me bad luck.”

“You meet bad luck before it comes,” said Toke. “None of us yet knows what the chests contain; it may be only silver. It was wise of you to say that they contained women’s trash, and I should have done the same in your clothes; for even the best of men become crazed when they know that gold is near.”

“Before God,” said Orm, “I now make this vow. I shall open one of these chests, and if it contains gold, I shall divide it among the men. We shall then have three chests left, one of which shall be yours, one Olof’s, and the third mine. Now that I have said that, I feel better.”

“You shall do as you please,” said Toke. “As for me, I shall no longer need to be a skin-trader.”

Orm fetched one of the small chests, set it down on the deck between them, and cut away the red ropes that were sealed with the Emperor’s seal. The chest was strongly locked, but Orm drove his knife and Toke’s under the lid and leaned upon them with all his weight until the lock broke. Then he lifted the lid, and the two of them stared silently into the chest.

“Not Fafnir
1
In time of yore
Guarded e’er
A brood more bonny,”

said Toke reverently; and Orm remained silent, though usually, when Toke wrought a verse, it was his habit to reply with one as good or better.

The sun had by now risen, and its rays struck into the chest. It was filled with gold, which the river water had not tarnished. Most of it was coins, of many different sorts and sizes, filling the chest to its rim; but among them many precious ornaments lay bedded—rings great and small, chains, necklaces, clasps, bracelets, and suchlike, marvelously worked—“like lovely pieces of pork,” thought Toke, “in a soup of good pease.”

“This trash will please our women well enough when we bring it home,” he said. “Indeed, I fear the sight of it may make them mad.”

“It will be no easy task to share this out,” said Orm.

The men had by now begun to wake up. Orm told them that one of the chests of women’s trash was to be shared out among them, and that its contents were better than he had expected them to be.

The division of the gold lasted the whole day. Each man received eighty-six coins, of varying sizes; the same amount was held back for each man who had been killed, to be given to his heirs, and Spof got a helmsman’s quadruple share. Sharing out the ornaments fairly proved a more difficult task, and sometimes they had no alternative but to chop rings and bracelets into pieces, to make sure that nobody received less than the next man; though often the men bargained with one another, giving coins in order that they might have the whole of some trinket that had particularly taken their fancy. One or two arguments began, but Orm said that they would have to wait till they reached land before fighting them out. Several of the men had never seen gold coins before; and when Spof told them how much silver went to a piece of gold, they sat gazing foolishly at the deck, with their heads in their hands, unable to calculate how rich they were, though they racked their brains to do so.

When everything had at last been shared out and the chest was empty, many of the men set to work with needle and twine to enlarge the pockets of their belts. Others rubbed and polished their gold, to make it brighter; and there was great cheerfulness among them as they talked of their luck and the fine homecoming they would have, and the deep drinking that would then take place.

They reached the river mouth and rowed upstream until they came to the land of a farmer whom Orm knew. There they dragged the ship on to the bank, amid the crunch of fresh night-ice, shedded her, and went about hiring horses. Some of the men departed for their homes, but the majority remained.

Spof was uncertain what to do. It might be best for him, he told Orm, to stay with this farmer, who was said to be a good man, until the spring, when he would be able to find a ship to take him home to Gotland.

“But it will be a sleepless winter for me,” he added, shaking his head gloomily. “For what farmer is so good that he will not instantly kill me in my sleep as soon as he discovers what I have in my belt? Besides which, all men have a tendency to kill Gothlanders without asking them questions, because of the wealth they think we all possess.”

“You shall come with me,” said Orm, “and be my guest for the winter. It is no more than you have deserved. Then you can return to this place when spring comes and find a ship home.”

Spof thanked him for this offer and said that he would gladly accept it.

They rode their horses away; and it was difficult to guess whether Orm or Olof Summerbird was the more anxious to see Gröning again.

They came to a place where the road forked, and one of the paths led to Sone’s house. But the seven brothers stood sourly scratching their heads. Orm asked them what might be troubling them.

“We are lucky now,” they replied, “more so than other men. For we are rich and know that we cannot die before we reach home. But as soon as we see the old man again, the spell is broken, and we can die as easily as anyone else. Before we left home, we had no fear of death; but things are different now, when we have so much gold to live for.”

“Then you shall come with me,” said Orm, “and join with me in my homecoming feast. You are good men, and it may be that I can find sleeping-room for you all until the spring. Then you can ride forth on a new adventure if you feel so inclined, and thus live as long as you want to.”

Sone’s sons accepted this offer gladly and promised each other that it would be a long while before they revisited their father. Their best plan, they thought, would be to make another voyage to Gardarike.

“If that is your intention, come as my men,” said Blackhair. “It will not be long before Ulf and I return there.”

“You are young to use the words of a chieftain,” said Orm. “You must wait awhile yet.”