The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga)

by Roberts, Judson

  "What is happening here?" I asked.

  Osten, who was clearly very angry—his face was a dark shade of red, and his breathing was ragged—snapped, "This is no concern of yours."

  Until moments before, I would have agreed completely.

  "Osten's wife was stolen by the pirates," Nori said, as if that explained what was happening.

  "We know that," Hastein replied, sounding impatient.

  "They killed her. They killed my wife Bera. This is one of their women. I am taking her," Osten added.

  I wondered for what purpose he wanted her. To replace his wife? As a slave? To kill? "And the stick?" I asked.

  "She tried to cut me just now with a knife, when I told her she was to come with me. I am going to teach her to obey."

  "You will put down the stick and leave," I told him. As I spoke, I shifted my bow to my left hand, and rested my right lightly on my belt, just above where my dagger hung in its scabbard. Osten took a step back when I did.

  "The pirates took his wife and killed her. He has a just claim," Nori protested.

  "I am sorry your wife was taken, and that she died," I told Osten, ignoring Nori. "But this girl had nothing to do with that. And she is under my protection. It was a promise I made to her father before he died. I will not break a promise made to a dying man."

  Osten was angry, but he did not have a death wish. He was but a simple farmer, not a warrior. He dropped the stick, turned, and walked off, his gait stiff and awkward from the anger in his body.

  "It seems she is a concern of yours, after all," Hastein said, an amused expression on his face. "What do you intend to do with her now?"

  "I do not know," I replied.

  "You should decide quickly," he said. "The Gull will be here soon."

  After he left, I called into the tent, "Rauna, come out. The others are gone now. We need to speak."

  After a few moments, she pulled the flap aside enough so that she could peer through the gap she'd made. Seeing no one but me, she pushed it aside and stepped out. She was holding a small knife, with a narrow blade and a handle made of carved bone, in her right hand. Seeing my eyes on it, she slid it into its leather scabbard that was hanging from the belt around her waist.

  "Did you speak the truth?" she asked me. "Did you make a promise to my father to protect me?"

  For few moments I was silent, weighing what to say. "No," I finally said, shaking my head. "I promised only to give you the pouch."

  "So you lied."

  I nodded. "Yes, I lied."

  "And when you made your promise to my father, you did not know who or where I was. Were your words to him a lie as well?"

  "They have not proved to be. I found you, and I gave you the pouch."

  From her expression she did not find my answer convincing. I did not blame her.

  "What do you wish of me? What do you plan to do with me?" she asked. "And do not lie this time."

  "Nothing." That was certainly true, or so I hoped. "Do you have somewhere you can go? To your people perhaps?"

  "I cannot even escape this island," she said. "How do you think I can find my people?"

  I sighed. "I gave you my word that if you did not warn the others or flee, you would not be harmed. I have not lied to you. Gather your things together. We will take you from the island on our ship."

  "And after? What will you do with me then?"

  "I do not know. We will see what can be done."

  * * *

  It was a good thing that the voyage from the pirates' island back to our camp on Oeland was a short one. The Gull's deck was crowded with the bundles and barrels of goods we took from the pirates' encampment, plus the Oelanders and their women. Torvald grumbled at the added weight, and insisted that we discard some of our ballast stones so the ship would not ride too low in the water and be in danger of swamping if a wave should wash over her.

  Rauna's possessions added considerably to the clutter on deck. The tent, even when folded up, made a sizable bundle, and the poles which had comprised its frame—which she'd insisted on bringing, though I suggested she could cut more when she needed them—were so long that the only place they could be stowed without causing a problem was on the raised rack where the longest oars were kept and the boom and sail were secured when we were not at sea. The remainder of her goods she had packed into three large leather bags, each with two straps sewn to them so they could be hauled on one's back. She did not travel lightly, and clearly did not appreciate how scarce space is aboard a ship.

  "All three of these are yours?" I asked, nudging one of the leather bags with my foot. I could not imagine what one girl could possess to fill them up.

  "Some of what is in them is mine. Most of it belonged to my father and my mother."

  "Where is your mother?"

  "She is dead."

  I wondered again how she and her father had come to be a part of Sigvald's band.

  I added the three bags and the bundled tent to the heap of cargo filling the center of the Gull's deck and led Rauna to the stern. At Torvald's direction, the Oelanders had settled themselves in the bow, just back of the raised fore-deck. I thought it best to keep her away from them, for Osten had glowered angrily at us when we'd come aboard. "That is mine," I told her, pointing to my sea chest, which for now was pushed against the ship's side just in front of the raised stern deck. "Stay close to it. Do not wander about and get in the way."

  Torvald was in the stern now, too, still fretting over the ship's balance. "Why is she aboard?" he asked.

  "We cannot just leave her on the island," I answered. From the look on his face, I could see that he did not agree. "Are you going to acquire a woman on every voyage we sail on?" he grumbled.

  "What did he mean?" Rauna asked, after Torvald had stomped off toward the front of the ship.

  I ignored her and began removing my weapons and armor to stow them in my sea chest. As soon as I opened it, I realized that lying in plain view inside was her father's quiver and arrows. I'd kept the arrows because I'd thought they would be matched in weight to his bow. I did not need another quiver, but I'd thought the leatherwork on this one was finely done, so I'd kept it anyway.

  She stared at it for a few moments and then said, in a quiet voice, "That belonged to my father. My mother made it for him." She raised her eyes and looked at me, staring into my face. I had paid little attention to her features before. Her hair was the color of rye standing in the fields, at the end of the summer when it is dry and ready to be cut: too light to be called brown, but not pale golden either, like the color of Harald or Sigrid's hair. She had twisted it into a single long braid that hung down the center of her back. Her face had strong, high cheekbones, lightly dusted with freckles, and above them her eyes were a pale blue in color, with just a hint of gray, like the sky as evening approaches. They were glistening now with tears.

  "On the island," she continued, "the man who is your leader…he said you killed my father."

  I'd been wondering when she might say something about this. I was surprised she had not done so already. It made me feel very awkward, speaking with the daughter of a man I had slain.

  "There was a battle out on the sea. You do know that, yes?" I asked her. She nodded.

  "The pirates—the men your father was with—they attacked our ships. We fought them, and we defeated them. Most of the pirates were slain in the fight. Your father was among those who were killed."

  "But was it you who killed him?"

  I did not want to speak of this. I sighed and said, "He killed some of my comrades. He tried to kill me. Yes, I shot the arrow that felled him."

  Now let this matter be, I thought, but she would not.

  "If you killed him with your bow, how could you have spoken with him?"

  "After we cleared—after we captured the ship he was on, I found him lying on the deck, where he had fallen. He still lived, but he was dying. He asked me if it was I who had shot him. When I told him that I had, he asked me to give you th
e pouch he was wearing around his neck."

  I hoped she would not want to know more about how her father had died. I did not want to tell her that Gudfred had stuck his sword through her father's throat.

  "What happened to his body?"

  The same that had happened to all of the pirates' dead aboard Sigvald's ship. While we were being towed behind the Gull and the Serpent toward Oeland, we had thrown them overboard.

  "We put it into the sea." I told her. As I said the words, I wondered if having done so would keep his spirit bound to this world.

  "What happens to your people after they die?" I asked.

  Her brow wrinkled in a frown and she shook her head. "I do not understand."

  And I did not know how to explain. Did her people die at death—was that the end of their existence—or did they have spirits that could go on to another world, as those of our folk did? The spirits of my father Hrorik and my brother Harald had gone after their deaths to Valhalla, the feast-hall of the gods, who honored brave men and great warriors by welcoming them there. My mother was there, too, taken by Hrorik to be his consort in the afterlife. The spirits of all those among our people who were not great warriors went to Hel, the land of the dead, unless their spirits became bound to this world and they became draugrs. But I did not know if the Finns had spirits that lived on after their deaths. Did all men?

  "I knew he was dead," she suddenly volunteered. "His spirit came and told me, on its way to the other side."

  "The other side?"

  "The spirit world."

  Her words gave me a sense of relief. I did not regret killing this girl's father. He had been an enemy, and would willingly have killed me. But now that she was, for at least a brief time—through no wish of my own—in my care, it would have been even more awkward than it already was if I had also condemned him to be a draugr by preventing his body from receiving a proper burial.

  "You saw your father's spirit?" I asked. After his death, Harald had more than once appeared to me in dreams. But I had never seen him when awake.

  "It was in the evening of the day of the fight out on the water. I was at our tent, laying wood for a fire to cook the night meal. I did not know, at the time, that there had been a fight out on the sea. I only knew that the ships had gone out in the morning to hunt, and I was expecting that they would return soon. I heard a strange noise above me, a croaking voice that seemed to be saying my name: ‘Raa-naa, Raa-naa.' I looked up, and there was a raven in the tree above me. When our eyes met it nodded its head, and then flew away. In my heart I knew it was my father, and that he was telling me he had died."

  "Your people become birds after they die?" It seemed a very strange belief.

  She shook her head, and looked at me as if she thought me dim-witted.

  "The raven allowed my father's spirit to enter its body, to get a message to me before he left this world completely and passed to the other side."

  I thought it unlikely.

  "Where is this place your people's spirits go to?" I asked.

  She held out her hands in front of her and answered, "It is here. It is everywhere. It is all around us. We just cannot see it from this world, because it is the other side." After a moment, she added, "It is not just my people. The spirits of all things, of all men and all creatures, go there when their time in this world is finished."

  The Finns, I thought, must be a simple folk to have such a belief. What of the gods? What of Valhalla? I felt certain that Harald's spirit was feasting there, not wandering unseen through the forest.

  She pointed at the quiver in my sea chest and said, "If you have that, where is my father's bow? Do you have it also? It is a famous bow among my people. My father was a great hunter."

  If his skills in the woods matched his skill with a bow, I could well believe it. The bow was in the long sealskin bag I stored my own bow in. It was wide enough to hold them both.

  I nodded. "Before he died, your father gave his bow to me."

  She frowned. "He gave it to you?" She looked skeptical. "Is this true, or do you lie again?"

  "It is true," I said, feeling annoyed. I may have spoken a few untruths when there was a reason to, but I did not like her constantly suspecting that I lied.

  My answer seemed to trouble her, for she turned away and found a space nearby at the end of the line of stacked cargo filling the center of the Gull's deck where she could sit, her feet tucked up beneath her, and be alone—as alone as one can be aboard a crowded ship.

  * * *

  The Gull reached our encampment on the beach of Oeland by late afternoon. While we had been gone, the hale members of the Serpent's crew had been hard at work preparing for the funeral to be held on the morrow for our dead.

  On orders from Nori, that morning some of the men-folk of Oeland had brought four teams of oxen to our camp. The teams had been hitched to lines attached to the bow of Sigvald's ship. As some of our men had placed cut lengths of logs in front of it for the keel to roll across and others had walked alongside, supporting the hull so that it did not tip over, it had been dragged out of the water, across the beach and fields beyond, and up the high ridge that overlooked them, to an area of level ground halfway up its side. It made a good site for a funeral pyre, high enough to look out across the land and the water beyond.

  By the time we returned, the ship was already in position. The sections of logs which had been used as rollers were now propped against its sides, holding it secure, and cut brush and wood had been piled under and against the hull on all sides. The gangplank had been set in place amidships, and the sail and awnings had been arranged over the deck to tent it.

  Hastein was pleased to see that the preparations were so far along. "I thank you," he told Nori, "for sending the men and the oxen to help us."

  "And I you," Nori replied, "You and your men, for helping us recover our women-folk who had been taken from us. There will be joy in many households this night because of what you have done.

  "I will leave you now," he said, "but I will come again before daylight, to lead you and your men to where the sacrifice will be made. It is inland, but not too far from here. The feast will be held there also."

  Despite his words he did not leave, but stood rocking from one foot to the other, a look of indecision on his face.

  "Yes?" Hastein asked. "Is there something more?"

  "There has been much discussion among our people…," he began, then his voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and began again. "We have another boon to ask of you."

  Torvald rolled his eyes. Hastein's face, which had been smiling, slowly took on a harder expression. Perhaps he expected, as I did, that Nori was going to ask that we give the folk of Oeland some of the spoils we taken from the pirates' encampment.

  "What is it that you wish?" Hastein said, his voice sounding clipped.

  "Your prisoners," Nori replied. "The pirates you captured. What do you intend to do with them?"

  The question clearly caught Hastein by surprise. "I have not decided," he replied.

  "They and their dead comrades committed many crimes against our people. They robbed us many times, and stole our women, and in the first raids, they killed some of our men-folk. These are things that should not go unpunished. Those whom you killed in the battle found the fate they deserved. But those who were taken alive should also pay. Will you give them to us?"

  "You would take revenge against them?" Hastein asked.

  "It is not revenge we seek," Nori replied, shaking his head. "We would mete out justice for what they have done. That is a different thing. Would you not wish to do the same in our place?"

  Hastein was silent for a long time. Finally he said, "You may have them."

  I was surprised by Nori's reaction. His face blanched and he gave a low gasp. I wondered if he had hoped Hastein would refuse the request. He swallowed several times, as if his throat had suddenly grown dry, then croaked, "I thank you. We will send men before nightfall to collect them." Then he turned and
hurried away.

  "Others of his people may wish to put these men to death, but he clearly has no taste for it," Torvald observed. "At least this takes them off of our hands."

  "Hmmn," Hastein grunted in reply. He turned to me. "Do you recall what we spoke of earlier?"

  I had no idea what he meant. The two of us had spoken of many things.

  Seeing the confused look on my face, Hastein explained, "Your oath of vengeance. The prisoner Skjold, who has helped us in the hope of gaining mercy. If you do not wish it, I will not give him to the Oelanders with the others. I will leave his fate in your hands."

  I did not answer. I did not know what to say. It was not a decision I wished to make.

  "It is not easy, is it?" Hastein said, in a quiet voice. "Killing a man in battle is one thing. This is another. You must decide for this one man what I had to for all of the others. They are in our power, at our mercy. Do I let them live or send them to their deaths? They, no doubt, will feel I betrayed them and broke my word which I gave when they surrendered. But as you pointed out to me, I promised only that I and my men would not harm them."

  * * *

  Hastein had ordered that one of the casks of ale we had found among the wares at the pirates' camp be brought ashore, for we would drink many toasts this night to the twelve comrades whose bodies we would burn on the morrow, and share many memories of them. The rest of the goods were left aboard the Gull, for now.

  Our first night on Oeland, after washing the bodies of our fallen comrades, we had dressed them in the finest clothing we could find in each of their sea chests, and had laid each, stretched out upon his back as if asleep, upon a cloak. It was a task that was much easier to do before the death stiffness fully set in.

  By now—two days after they had died—the bodies were beginning to swell and stink. Moving as quickly as possible, we lifted them by the cloaks they lay on and carried them up the ridge and onto the death ship, where we arranged them side by side along the center of the deck. Each man's armor and weapons were placed with his body, and at his feet we placed those of a pirate who had been slain in the battle. We had little else in the way of death offerings to send with them on their final voyage save the ship itself, although that admittedly was a very fine gift. At least the weapons of their slain foes and the ship captured from them would show those in Valhalla that though these men had died in the battle, they were the victors.