The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Onund and Thrond, Aflaeg and Thormod Shaff, sometimes hunting in couples, more often running their longships together as a fleet. Three who had come west-over-seas together, to be done with King Harald Finehair: one, Aflaeg, who was on Barra already, a friend from earlier raiding days, older than the rest and of mixed breeding so that the Isles were already in his blood. Maybe that was why in land matters he took the lead; why it was he who sat in the High Seat in Hall when the others gathered from their steadings in the settlements round about, and had the last word as to the time for barley sowing or the start of the seal hunt, while in all matters to do with sea-faring, it was Onund Treefoot, without argument, who was the Sea-King, the ship chief over them all.

  Away between the islands the sea was changing colour with the turn of the tide, and his belly told him that it was time to be getting back for the evening meal. Bjarni rolled over and sat up, and remained a few moments with narrowed eyes gazing across the shining water toward the west. No more islands that way, only emptiness until one fell off the edge of the world – unless one came upon those other islands that Aflaeg’s harper sang of sometimes, the islands beyond the sunset, the lands of the ever young . . .

  Meanwhile, the surf was going down, the pale feather of a new moon was in the sky, and he was hungry. He drew his legs under him and scrambled to his feet, Hugin leaping up beside him. Together they started back towards the settlement. Down from the high bare rock and grassland of the mountain shoulder into the lower country of hills and heather moors that sank at last to the machair, the fine grazing-land behind the white sands that ringed all the western length of Barra. Just where moorland fell away to machair a stream came down from the higher ground, pushing its way through a narrow glen suddenly and unexpectedly choked with trees a-tangle, birch and rowan and willow and thorn. Checking a moment with an odd cold fascination to look down, Bjarni saw the corner of a turf roof half lost in thicker woodland, a dense clump of ash trees, old and wind-twisted, and felt, as he always did, the darkness and the chill that seemed to lie over the place. He shook his shoulders, jibing at himself for a fool. It was no more than the God-House, just such another as the God-House at Rafnglas. But at Rafnglas they seldom offered more than a tassel of hair cut from a horse’s tail, a blood sacrifice only seldom and in time of need. Here they kept to the old ways. Here there were bones in the sacred grove, things that had once been alive hanging from the trees. Downwind, you could smell this place from a long way off . . .

  He turned away and went on down, following the spur of moorland, making for the place where the glen opened out and the burn ran clear of the shadow, before crossing over, whistling as he went. But just above his chosen crossing place, in a thicket of brambles spilling down the bank, he came upon a girl.

  She was sitting there, forlorn as a fledgling fallen from the nest, the skirts of her grey homespun kirtle bunched to her knees, nursing one foot, and at her side, an over-set creel, trickling a few blackberries into the grass. Bjarni knew her well enough for the daughter of the settlement’s Odin Priest. He stopped, looking down at her. ‘Thara? What’s amiss then?’

  ‘I slipped among the stones crossing over, and twisted my foot.’

  He squatted down for a closer look. She had been going barefoot and he could see that her instep was already swollen and turning red.

  ‘It hurts,’ said Thara in a small whimpering voice.

  ‘I can see it does. Can you walk on it?’

  ‘No – it hurts.’

  ‘So you said before.’ He looked at her consideringly. She was a plump little thing, but small-boned. Probably not heavy. ‘I’d best carry you,’ he said somewhat grudgingly and got up, thrusting Hugin’s exploring nose aside. ‘Leave that,’ he said as she reached for the over-set creel. ‘Someone else can fetch it by and by – the bramble fruit is not full ripe yet, anyway.’

  She abandoned the creel and held out her arms to him, and as he picked her up he got the distinct feeling that despite the pain of her foot she was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘Put your arms around my neck,’ he ordered. ‘There, that’s the way of it.’

  It was none so easy fording the burn, for the stones rolled underfoot and, feeling him lurch, the girl giggled excitedly and craned round to see how near the water might be. ‘Don’t wriggle, or I’ll like enough drop you,’ Bjarni told her, and she was quiet again.

  He gained the opposite bank safely, Hugin leaping out after him and showering them both with burn water as he shook himself. Bjarni whistled him to heel and set out once more for the settlement.

  ‘But you’re so strong,’ Thara said, continuing where they had left off in midstream. ‘You feel so strong. You would never drop me.’ And somehow she made it sound as though his strength was something that she was proud of, something that belonged to her.

  He glanced down, and found speedwell-blue eyes surrounded by feathery silver-gilt lashes gazing up at him, and noticed for the first time how bonny she was in a kitten-witted kind of way. He had never carried a girl before, and the feel of her in his arms was warm and soft and pleasant. But she was heavier than she looked, and there was still quite a way to go, and he had to stop once or twice to heave her further up when she started to slip.

  ‘I have seen you when you come under Onund’s armpit, for him to use you as a crutch. So strong you are . . .’

  And that was true. At most times Onund Treefoot was as swift and able on his wooden leg as though it were a part of him, but there were times, just now and then, when the stump grew hot and red and even wept a little, so that it would not bear his weight. He had a crutch for such times, but most often he used who came nearest. And Bjarni was just the right height. Also he was left-handed . . . ‘Together, we make a fine two-bladed swordsman,’ Onund had said, and they had practised the thing, half in jest, half in deadly earnest, with the rest of the crew baying them on. It did not in fact take all that much strength. But Bjarni would have braced himself to it gladly, if his chief had been built like a bull walrus.

  But it was not a thing he wanted to talk about, especially to a girl. He grunted, making a great thing of how heavy she was becoming, until soon after on the edge of the settlement, he came to the fine long house-place of Asmund the Odin Priest – after the chieftain, the priest, with his barns stacked with tribute, was generally the richest man in any settlement. And there he let her down on the threshold and left her to the scolding care of the woman thrall who came in answer to his shout, and went on, stretching the strain out of his shoulders as he went, up through the in-take fields toward the Hall.

  In one of the harvest fields the barley was already cut and stacked; in the others it still stood, whitening under the footsteps of the wind, waiting for the sickle. On Barra the main work of the fields and cattle-garths was done by thralls, but at harvest time, with the longships back from their summer sea-faring, everybody lent a hand. Tomorrow, Bjarni thought, with a seaman’s content at being back on land, he would take his turn with the sickle among the dry hushing masses of the grain.

  Thara Priestsdaughter was already out of his mind.

  There were strangers in the Hall that night, the crew of a small trading vessel out from Kintyre. But in the constant coming and going among the islands there was nothing unusual in that. Bjarni saw them on the guest benches, but took no particular notice of them, as he set to work on the great trenchers of oatcake and salt fish, laverbread and ewe-milk cheese on the trestle boards before him. Outside the wind had begun to rise, blowing up into one of the great westerlies that sent the steep seas pounding onto the beaches from the world’s end. The wicker shutters had been pegged across the small high windows, to add their strength to the panes of stretched membrane which were prone to burst like an eardrum under too much pressure when the gale blew from that quarter. But the wind came in through every chink and cranny, the skin rugs and the painted sail-cloth hangings on the walls billowed out, and in the draught-teased flamelight of the torches and the long central hearth the painted dragon
-knots on the sail-cloth seemed to stir on the edge of life.

  Something, a piece of torn-off thatch from one of the outhouses maybe, came floundering across the roof, and for the second time that day, Bjarni’s mind went back to Evynd’s Hall, over a year ago. ‘Another troll-woman riding the roof-ridge,’ he thought.

  Almost, he said it to Sven Gunnarson sitting beside him, Sven Gunnarson with an arm that was as good as new, but who still had a bony lump just above the elbow to show for that night’s work. Almost, but not quite. Sven’s neighbour on the other side said it instead, and got a handful of boiled fish and laverbread ground into his face to teach him that the joke was stale.

  A moment more, and it would have come to fighting; one of those small snarling scraps that broke out sometimes in Hall among the men on the benches as among the dogs under the tables, and Bjarni was just making ready to join in. But in that moment a girl’s voice between laughter and exasperation said, ‘Salt fish needs good ale to wash it down,’ and a thin yellow stream descended on the heads of first Sven and then his neighbour. They fell apart like dogs separated by a pail of cold water, shaking their heads and spluttering. And glancing up, Bjarni saw that the girl standing over them with an ale jar poised in her hand was Aesa, the daughter of Aflaeg the Hall Chieftain.

  As always a certain resentment rose in him at sight of her, not against anything in the girl herself, but because she was betrothed to Onund Treefoot, with the bride-ale set for that autumn as soon as the harvesting was over. And surely nothing would ever be quite the same between Onund and his ship-carles once he had a wife to come home to – and one almost young enough to be his daughter at that – though of course all men knew that the chief purpose of the mating was the bonding together of the Barra fleet. But seeing her standing there, her face laughing but determined, he had to admit to himself that not many of the girls sitting on the cross-bench or carrying round the ale-jars would have headed straight into the centre of a threatening dogfight on the warrior-benches and broken up the trouble before it could start.

  Aesa turned and went her way. Sven’s neighbour was wiping dark green laverbread out of his eye amid a general burst of laughter, and supper went on.

  It was not until the eating was over, and the strangers on the guest benches had been properly filled, that Aflaeg in the High Seat raised his great silver-bound horn to drink to them, demanding of their captain, ‘What news from the seaways and the landing-beaches?’ the customary question asked of all strangers, though it was only a few days since the Barra longships had returned from their own summer sea-faring.

  The captain raised his own cup in reply, and answered across the Hall, ‘You have na’ heard, then?’

  ‘What is there to hear?’

  ‘That Vigibjord and Vestnor are in these waters.’

  There was a sudden silence in which everybody seemed to crane a little closer, and the booming of the sea grew very loud.

  ‘So-o-o,’ said Aflaeg softly into his greying beard, as he set down his ale-horn, ‘this is sure? No mere wind-blown tale?’

  ‘As to that . . .’ growled the merchant captain with feeling, ‘Findhorn has been raided, and the God-House gold; and the people gathered to some festival of their god carried off for the slave market. And the word is already along the coast up from the south that ’tis them and their fleet. We barely escaped them off Colonsay. Only got clear, I reckon, because they were heavy with loot and weeping captives.’

  Onund, who had been silently gazing into the depth of his drink horn, looked up and asked quietly in a voice which Bjarni had never heard from him before, a voice with fur on it, but none the less terrible for that, ‘Vigibjord and Vestnor?’

  ‘The word is for both brothers,’ said the merchant.

  ‘How many ships?’

  ‘The word is for eight, when they come all together.’

  ‘Quite like old times,’ said Onund, with a kind of laughter like the cold flicker of sea-fire at the long corners of his mouth. He drained his drink horn and held it up.

  ‘More ale! My throat is as dry as the salted cod.’

  The girl Aesa brought the ale-jar and poured for him. And a great roar of voices broke out; men baying for the hunt, shouting for an autumn sea-faring, men calling that the ships could not be ready for sea again in less than half a moon, one old blind warrior who lived in the warmest corner of the Hall lifting up a quavering voice to demand why it must be for the Barra fleet again, why could not Red Thorstein of Mull or one of the other sea lords put an autumn fleet to sea. But it was only Fredi White, and all men knew that age had made him foolish, so no one even troubled to answer him.

  Under cover of their voices Bjarni turned to Orlig Anderson, the oldest and most full of knowledge of Onund’s ship-carles, who sat beside him, his face at the moment hidden in the ale-jack they were sharing between them, and asked, ‘Who are they?’

  Orlig took his face out of the ale-jack. ‘Who are who?’

  ‘Vigibjord and Vestnor?’

  ‘Old enemies. They used to come raiding along the Irish coast before Evynd Easterner took on the defences.’

  ‘That would be a good while back?’

  ‘A good while – when Onund had two sound legs under him, in our own sea-raiding days.’ He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and held the jack out to Bjarni. ‘These waters weren’t big enough for the three of them then, and I doubt they’re big enough for the three of them now.’

  Bjarni drank thoughtfully and returned the ale-jack to the hand that came out for it. ‘It sounded – Onund sounded – as though it was something more. Like a kind of holm-ganging, a duel to the death.’

  ‘You’re not so witless as you look,’ Orlig told him kindly. ‘Aye well, they never had much care, those two beauties, for the custom that protects merchantmen at sea. They captured a small trader, one time; they had heard there was gold on board, and when they found none, only salt and hides, they sank her and left the crew to drown . . . One of them was Onund’s young brother – younger than you, he’d be.’

  ‘What did he do? Onund?’

  ‘Oh, he went after them, of course, when he heard. Thought he’d settled the debt; seems he hadn’t.’ Orlig held the ale-jack high. ‘More drink here!’

  In a short while first Thrond and then Thormod, summoned from their own steadings and each with a knot of his own men, came striding into the Hall, throwing off storm-wet cloaks to steam before the fire, and the four sea lords, joined by the merchant captain and young Raud, who captained the fifth longship of the Barra fleet, drew together into a huddle between the High Seat and the fire.

  It was not a long council, for clearly all of them were of one mind; and Onund got up, and stood with his drink horn held high, looking round him at the crowded benches and from the benches the crews of the Barra longships, Sea Witch and Wave Rider, Reindeer and Red Wolf and Star Bear, looked back at him, knowing that this was a sea-faring and sea-fighting matter, and therefore the leadership was to him.

  ‘With captives aboard they’ll likely enough be making for the Dublin slave market,’ someone said.

  The storm, which had quietened somewhat, came swooping back, filling all the dark world beyond the torchlight with a turmoil of black wings, and Onund lifted his voice against it, reaching to the far end of the Hall. ‘This harvest time it must be for the women and the bairns with the thralls to cut and carry home the sheaves – whatever the harvest is worth that the wind and rain have left to us. For the longships of Barra there is fine hunting down the Dublin sea, maybe a kill waiting to be made.’

  And tipping back his head he drank long and deep from the silver-circled horn, as men drink to an oath that has been made. A roar went up from the warrior-benches, a hammering of ale-mugs on table-boards, and men caught down their weapons from the walls behind them as though they would be launching on the next wave. Blades were half out of the sheath, men thumping each other on the shoulders, the four sea lords with the rest.

  ‘Did I not
say there was not seaway enough for them and us in these waters?’ grumbled Orlig joyfully into his beard.

  ‘Why Dublin?’ Bjarni asked.

  ‘Did even you know a raider keep living captives aboard a day longer than need be? They’ll be south along the sea-road to Dublin slave market.’

  5

  Sea Fight

  FOR THREE DAYS the gale lasted, pounding the steep western seas onto the coasts of Barra. But the time was not wasted, for the longships that had been drawn up onto the slipways ready for their winter refit had to be hurriedly made ready for sea again. There was torn canvas to be renewed, water-kegs to be filled and stowed, while on every hearth the women were baking the flat oaten sea-bannocks that never grew stale. The gear and rigging was brought down again from the ship-sheds and hastily overhauled before being stowed once more aboard, stores and spare weapons stowed in the narrow spaces below the deck planking; the dragon-heads, still rimed with salt, shipped at each prow.

  Even so, on the third day, with all things ready and ship-shape and the gale sunk to no more than a stiff breeze, Arnulf Grimson, who was steersman of Sea Witch, found an unsuspected weakness – the start of a crack, maybe the work of sea-worm – in the vital steerboard side of the stern post, and would have had the sea-launch put back a day while repairs were made.

  Onund, with the smell of his old enemy already in the wind, would have none of that. ‘We have lost ten years as it is, another day may like enough lose us the quarry. It has held up through the summer, it will hold up a few more days.’

  Arnulf shrugged. ‘Or fail tomorrow. Very pretty you’ll look, drowning.’

  ‘You’ve always been one to croak like an old woman. We’ll take a log of wood for repairs if need be.’

  And so they ran the five longships down into the shallows, with a serviceable baulk of timber stowed beneath the deck planking, and sailed on the turning tide.