"My name is Asny," a young woman said who sat down on the bench beside me. She was holding a drinking horn whose silver rim around its mouth was carved with the design of a long dragon, its tail entwined around its body. I recognized the design as similar to that on the banners flown by the two ships we'd encountered approaching Mon. The horn was filled almost to the brim with dark brown ale. "I am your horn partner for the feast."
I did not know how to respond. In part, I was startled by having this young woman suddenly appear at my side, and sit herself beside me. The fact that she was very comely did not help my confusion. I found myself staring at her features, admiring them, when I should have been coming up with some courteous reply. "Horn partner?" I finally managed to say.
Asny smiled, barely suppressing a laugh. "You are not familiar with the custom?" she asked.
I shook my head. "My name is Halfdan," I belatedly added. "I am pleased to meet you."
"Are you the son of Jarl Hastein?" she asked. I was confused by her question and could not understand why she might think so.
"No," I replied. "I am just one of his warriors."
Now she looked confused. "You seem very…"
"Young, to be seated at the high table?" I suggested. She blushed and nodded.
Sigurd leaned over across the body of the young woman who had taken the seat by his side. She did not seem to mind. "He is called Strongbow," he told Asny. "He won much honor in the recent campaign down in Frankia." He sat back and placed his arm around the shoulder of his horn partner. "This is Saeunn," he said, introducing her to me. I nodded in greeting to her. She had red hair, hanging in two long braids down her chest, and very striking green eyes. She looked to be several years older than Sigurd. "I requested that you sit with me this night," he told me.
That, I thought, at least explains why I am at the high table.
Just then Jarl Arinbjorn stood up. The great feast hall gradually grew silent, as its occupants realized he was standing.
"We welcome honored guests this night, and hold this feast to celebrate their visit to Mon," he announced, in a deep, strong voice that carried throughout the hall. "This is Jarl Hastein of the Limfjord district. He is the son of an old and cherished comrade of mine, Jarl Eirik. His father and I bloodied our swords together many times. Jarl Hastein helped command our victorious army in Frankia. Hopefully he will share tales of that campaign with us this night." Raising high the drinking horn he held in his right hand, Arinbjorn continued. "Stand, and join me now in a toast to Jarl Hastein."
All in the feast hall rose to their feet. Beside me, Asny held out the drinking horn for me to take.
"To Jarl Hastein," Arinbjorn called out. "To Jarl Hastein," all the menfolk in the hall echoed, then like Arinbjorn took a drink of ale.
"Now give the horn back to me," Asny instructed. At Arinbjorn's side, his wife—a dignified looking woman who looked to be close in age to him—raised the horn she now held and repeated, "To Jarl Hastein." In unison with the rest of the women at the high table, and others scattered throughout the hall at other tables, Asny said, "To Jarl Hastein," then took a drink from the horn. Turning to me, she smiled and said, "You see? That is how it is done."
Hastein, of course, responded with a toast to honor Jarl Arinbjorn, and the process was repeated. Then, to my relief, Arinbjorn sat down, and the women-folk and thralls working at the central hearth began serving the meal.
I quickly realized that one advantage of being seated at the high table was that its occupants were served first. In so large a hall, those sitting at one of the outer tables would have a long wait for their food.
It was a very fine meal. We were given wooden platters, pottery bowls, and spoons. The serving thralls brought around great pots filled with a hearty soup made with cabbage, carrots, and turnips, then came again with large platters on which were arrayed large sections of roasted leg of mutton. The servers held the platters steady at each place, so the diners could use their eating knives to carve off as much as they wished.
There is a thing about drinking horns. Hastein had given me one, a very fine one, at the funeral feast in Frankia after our victory over the Frankish army. I had not used it since that night, preferring to use a cup instead. A horn filled with ale or other drink cannot be set down. While impressive looking and useful, perhaps, for drinking bouts where many toasts are to be made, a horn is not convenient when one wishes to eat, also.
After carving off a slab of mutton for myself, I had to serve Asny as well, for she could not manage the task while holding the drinking horn. It was apparent that she would not be able to slice her own meat, either.
"Do we pass the horn between us, and take turns eating?" I asked her. I hoped I would not have to feed her, too.
"That could be done," she said. "But in truth, it is not the custom. I will give the horn to you, so you will not have to delay satisfying your thirst whenever you wish. And I will cut your meat for you."
It was a strange way to eat a meal, so dependent on another like that, but after a bit, I found it not at all unpleasant. In order to attend to my needs, Asny had to sit close beside me on the bench, her thigh touching mine. She had a scent that reminded me of freshly cut summer hay.
It was obvious that Sigurd and his companion, Saeunn, had been horn partners before. They seemed very familiar with each other, laughing and talking as they ate, and feeding each other bites of food. I wished I could have as free and confident a manner as Sigurd did. Although I was feeling more at ease than at first, and was enjoying Asny's company, I did not find it easy to make casual conversation with someone I did not know. And I sensed that to Asny, being my horn partner for the feast was more a duty than a pleasure. Although unfailingly courteous, when she smiled, she did so only with her mouth— her eyes rarely joined in. She was, I learned, a daughter of one of Jarl Arinbjorn's captains. Perhaps she felt it beneath her to be paired with a mere warrior, and such a young one, besides.
Glancing out across the hall, my eyes happened to meet those of Floki, from the estate. He and his brother, Baug, were seated near the end of a table in the second row out from the center of the hall. What do you think of me sitting here, at the high table, I wondered? Does it gall you to see me thus honored? Holding his gaze, I raised the horn to him and took a drink. After a few moments, he raised his cup back to me in response and drank, then looked away.
"Who is that man?" Asny asked.
"He was one of my brother's housecarls."
"Was?"
"My brother is dead."
"Whom does he follow now?" she asked.
"On this voyage, Jarl Hastein."
After the eating was finished, the tale-telling began. Jarl Arinbjorn asked Hastein to tell the gathering a story about the campaign in Frankia. "Tell us about the great battle that was fought with the Franks," he requested. "I have heard some stories of it while at King Horik's court, but many here have not. And I would enjoy hearing your account of what happened."
I soon learned another custom that was practiced in Arinbjorn's feast-hall, in addition to that of horn-partners at the high table. Tales were punctuated frequently with toasts.
Hastein was a skilled speaker, and told the story well. To my embarrassment, he began with the night crossing before the battle, and told the gathered host how two lone warriors had swum the cold river in the dark, and had hunted through the forest along the shore, silencing the Franks' sentries so that the Danish army could cross undetected.
"I have not heard this part of the story before," Arinbjorn, who was enjoying the tale greatly, exclaimed. "Who were the two warriors who did this?"
"One was a skilled woodsman from up on the Limfjord," Hastein replied. "His name is Einar." Looking out across the hall, he called, "Stand, Einar, and be recognized."
When Einar stood, Jarl Arinbjorn stood, too, and said, "Well done. I salute you. To Einar," and he raised his horn and drank. The hall echoed with the shouted responses, "To Einar," first by the menfolk, and then by t
he women.
"And the other?" Arinbjorn asked Hastein.
"He is here at the high table: Halfdan, son of Hrorik."
I had no choice but to stand, and try to keep my face from turning too bright a shade of red as the toasts were drunk to me.
It got worse. Hastein proceeded to tell the tale, spread by Einar, of how the last sentry had been hidden from us in a spot where we could not get close enough to kill him with our knives. "But Halfdan here has, without question, the greatest skill with a bow that I have ever seen," Hastein continued. "When it proved impossible to kill this final sentry with a blade, he, in the dark of night, amid the deep shadows of the forest, shot an arrow into the center of the Frank's head"—Hastein touched his forefinger to his forehead as he spoke—"killing the man instantly."
An awed-sounding murmur spread across the hall. Asny was staring at me now as if she'd suddenly found herself seated beside someone entirely different.
"How did you do that?" Arinbjorn asked me. "How did you make such a shot in the dark?"
Unable to think of a better answer, I told the truth. "It was not skill on my part," I replied. "It was an accident. I was aiming for the Frank's chest. But at the moment I released my arrow, he tripped and fell backwards. It was luck, not skill, that I hit him at all."
There was silence for a long moment, then the hall erupted with laughter. I could feel my face turning red. Arinbjorn raised his horn, chuckling, and toasted, "To your luck, then. Sometimes that is better to have than skill."
After the toast was drunk, echoed, and drunk again, one of Arinbjorn's captains, who was among those sitting at the high table, suggested, "Surely there were two sets of luck at play there. Halfdan's good luck, and the Frank's bad." Again the feast-hall erupted with laughter.
Hastein's narration of the battle itself was skillful, and by the time he reached the place in the tale where the Franks were breaking through our line, and his own standard and that of Ragnar were at risk, the listeners in the hall were hanging on his every word.
"At that moment," he said, in a muted voice, "I have no doubt that the Norns were holding the threads of my life in their hands—mine, and many others among our army— weighing whether the time had come to cut them. But it was not my fate to die that day, on that field of battle deep in Frankia. For Halfdan—he who is also known as Strongbow—positioned himself on the hillside behind the two standards. And with his bow, he struck down the Franks who had broken through the shield wall in front of me, and he slew the Frankish warrior who had driven Ragnar to the ground and was hacking at his Raven banner. The arrows of Odin himself are no more deadly than those shot by Strongbow that day."
Cheers rang through the hall, followed by many toasts—to me, to my bow and its arrows, to Hastein, to Ragnar, to the Raven banner. Asny had to refill the horn with ale several times. I was thankful we were not drinking mead.
Sigurd leaned across Saeunn—she stroked her fingers through his hair as he did so—and asked me, "In the battle—how many men did you kill?"
It was a question I could not answer. It was not just the amount of ale I had consumed that night, nor even that on the day of the battle, during the charges by the Frankish cavalry against our line, I did not know how many of the Bretons I'd hit had died. In truth, I could not even remember now how many I had hit. But it was more than that. It was what had happened after Ivar had launched his attack on the Frankish army's flank and their warriors had become caught between his force and our main army. We had all closed in around them and had held them trapped, pinned against each other. By then I had long ago run out of arrows and had left my bow up on the hillside. I remember pushing forward with the rest of our warriors against the horses, which were pressed together so tightly they could not move, all the while stabbing, stabbing, and hacking with my sword. When the mounts directly in front of us had all been cleared of their riders, we hacked and cut at them, too, until poor beasts collapsed, while others of our warriors, impatient to kill, clambered across their backs to get at the remaining Franks beyond. All of us—Danes, Franks, and horses—had drenched in blood, and the ground beneath our feet had grown sodden and slippery from it.
"I do not know," I answered. The feast hall faded, and in my mind I saw and smelled the blood again, and heard the screams. "I do not know."
"Was it more than ten? More than twenty?"
I truly did not know. The butchering had gone on for a long time. "Perhaps. Probably," I replied.
"I have never killed a man," Sigurd said. He sounded disappointed. "You killed a man in a duel, also, did you not? In Frankia?"
I nodded my head. "Yes. I did."
By now Hastein was finishing his tale of the great battle. Arinbjorn stood, wobbling a bit as he did, and addressed the hall, many of whose occupants were by now looking bleary-eyed from the many toasts that had been drunk.
"We all thank Jarl Hastein for his fine telling of the great victory of our Danish warriors over the Franks. It would be good to hear more tales of the campaign, but the hour grows late, and the ale has been freely flowing. Let us all away to our beds. The feast is ended."
I, for one, was glad. As the evening had worn on, I had tried to pace my drinking, taking only modest swallows for many of the toasts, but nevertheless I felt unsteady on my feet as I stood up from the bench. Asny, too, seemed affected by the quantity of ale we had shared, and rocked backward when she stood. Fearing she might lose her balance and fall, I reached out and grabbed her arm above the elbow, pulling her upright and toward me to steady her.
Sigurd, who clearly had not paced himself at all during the toasting, misjudged my action.
"No, Halfdan," he slurred. "She is well-born and marriageable. That is why her father encourages her to be a horn partner at Arinbjorn's feasts. If you want a woman for your bed this night, I will send a thrall to you."
Asny's face turned a deep shade of red. "I am sorry," she murmured to me. "I know you did not intend…"
"It is of no consequence," I told her. "I am glad I did not give you offence. And I thank you for your company this evening."
As she hurried away, I turned to Sigurd. He was leaning on Saeunn, one arm draped over her shoulders, one of her arms around his waist. "Well?" he asked. "Shall I?"
If I were to say yes, would you even know the name of the girl you sent to my bed, I wondered? Would you care at all how she might feel, being ordered to submit to the pleasures of a man she had never seen before? I found myself suddenly intensely disliking Sigurd.
With difficulty, I reminded myself what Hastein expected of me. I must at all times act like a man who could be a chieftain, a leader of men. That surely included wearing a lying face, to avoid making an enemy of the son of a rich and powerful man.
"I thank you," I told him. "You are very kind. But I am very weary, and this night I wish to find nothing more in my bed than sleep."
"In the morning," Sigurd called, as I was walking away, "perhaps we will shoot bows together."
* * *
The day meal served the next morning in Arinbjorn's hall was a simple, informal affair. Two large pots of hot barley porridge were suspended by chains over glowing coals at one end of the large central hearth, tended by a stout woman with graying hair. As the folk of the estate and the guests awoke, they stumbled outside to the privies, relieved themselves, washed, and made their way to the hearth. There a thrall handed out pottery bowls and wooden spoons, and the gray-haired cook filled the bowls with porridge. Thick slices of dense rye bread were available, too, and a soft cheese to spread on them.
Despite the night's sleep, my mind still did not feel completely clear from the effects of too many toasts. I felt thankful again that Jarl Arinbjorn had not chosen to serve mead at his feast to honor Hastein's visit. At least my head, though foggy, did not throb.
I had taken my food back to the location where I had slept last night on one of the longhouse's long wall-benches, using my cloak as bedding. The porridge was having a soothing effect on m
y stomach. I found the bread somewhat dry, but I'd spread enough of the soft, runny cheese on it to make it easier to swallow. I was completely absorbed by the meal—enjoying thinking about nothing more than the taste and feel of the food in my mouth and belly, and ignoring the sights and sounds of the hall around me—when a voice broke through my reverie.
"Ah! There you are. I have been looking for you."
It was Sigurd. He looked surprisingly fresh and alert, considering his condition when I had last seen him. He was holding a bow in his left hand and a quiver of arrows in his right. The sight of them brought back to me his parting words the night before.
"Do you have your bow with you, or is it on your jarl's ship?"
Thanks to Hastein's insistence the day before, I had it with me. I jerked my hand with its thumb extended back over my shoulder, indicating where my bow, quiver, and sword were lying along the wall, at the back edge of the bench. "It is there," I said, after managing to swallow the mouthful of bread and cheese filling my mouth.
I had no wish to shoot with Sigurd. In truth, I had no wish to spend any further time at all in his company. He struck me as spoiled and arrogant, and completely unlike the two men who were his brothers. But I could see no way to courteously decline.
"Where do you shoot?" I asked.
"There is a large butt of rolled hay which we use for a target," he replied. "It is not very far from the longhouse."
Perhaps this was not a bad thing after all. I had had little opportunity of late to shoot my bow. Since the capture of Paris, I had shot it in practice only once, briefly, with Tore at Hastein's estate during our layover there. A longbow is not a weapon that can be shot both infrequently and well.
Sigurd sat down beside me on the wall-bench while I hurriedly finished my porridge and bread. "Do you know my brothers, Ivar and Bjorn?" he asked.
The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) Page 12