The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The share-out was done in several stages and took a long time, so that long before the end the autumn night had closed round them, blotting out the world beyond the smoking wind-teased torches. First the tribute-share of Evynd the Easterner was set aside for him. Most of the church treasure was in that pile, seeing that though he was not exactly a follower of the White Christ himself, his queen and many of the household were. Then the ship chiefs made their choice. Onund took only one thing for his share, a splendid and beautiful ice-bear skin, yellow as old ivory, and flung it down before Aesa, who had come out with the other girls to look at the sea-harvest that the men had brought home: ‘Here’s a bonnie thing for our marriage bed, that shall keep you warm when Sea Witch puts to sea.’ And there was a cheerful roar of laughter, while the girl, flushing in the torchlight, bent to gather the heavy folds against her.

  The rest of the booty was divided into five; five steep piles stacked each on a spread cloak before one of the ship chiefs; and each from his own pile the ship chiefs began the gift-making among their own crews.

  Most of the things would be used simply to trade – for what use is a silver-mounted drinking cup to a man who needs seed corn for his plot or a new pair of sea boots? That was understood. But there were things that would be kept and treasured as the gift to a carle from his chief; an enamelled arm-ring, a fine pattern-forged sword blade, a chain of silver and turquoise for a woman’s neck.

  Bjarni, a mercenary who had sold his sword-service to the one-legged sea lord for one sea-faring summer and then one more and received steady pay for it as a mercenary should, had not had anything from the share-out before, and he did not expect it. But at the very end he heard his own name called, and when he scrambled to his feet and answered the call, Onund grinned up at him, saying, much as he had said once before, ‘For a good fight in good company,’ and tossed him something shapeless and bright. Bjarni caught it and, feeling it unexpectedly light and warm as loops of it tumbled through his fingers, saw that he was holding a string of massive amber beads that caught the torchlight like gobbets of clouded honey.

  ‘A good fight in good company,’ he agreed, and returned the grin. And turning away he met the eager gaze of Thara Priestsdaughter standing among a chattering cluster of girls nearby. He looked away quickly, pretending not to have seen, pretending not to know that she wanted him to give her the string of amber. Quite a few of the longships’ crews were making gifts out of their share to the girls of their choice. He saw Sven Gunnarson on the fringe of the torchlight, with great care and concentration hanging a heavy coral and silver drop in his woman’s ear and following it up with a smacking kiss before they both disappeared into the darkness. He grinned again and put the fragile beauty round his own neck, squinting down at it and not heeding the angry whisk of a girl’s blue skirts as she swung away to become deeply interested in somebody else.

  In the next days the interrupted ready-making for Onund’s wedding got under way again. There was a great baking and brewing; best clothes taken from storage kists, shaken out to air and mended if need be; a black ram and a milk-white ewe were chosen out of the bridegroom’s flock and set aside for sacrifice to Odin, the lord of all the Gods, and to Frigga, his wife, the lady of all things to do with marriage and in the home. Traders began coming in, too, for word of what was in the wind had spread out beyond Barra to the Island Seas and the coasts of Alba and Erin, and a chief’s bride-ale was always good for trade.

  On the day that Aesa, in the midst of much advice from the older women of the settlement, was baking her great bride-cake, the broad-beamed serviceable shape of Sea Cow appeared, beating into harbour out of an autumn squall; and towards evening Bjarni, heading down to the boat-strand on some errand, met Heriolf Merchantman on the track up to the settlement. They greeted each other with much cheerful thumping on the shoulders, and turned aside into the lee of a peat-stack out of the wind for a few words before going their separate ways.

  ‘A fine beard you have grown yourself,’ Heriolf said.

  And Bjarni laughed, but flushing to the roots of his hair; for his beard was not much more than chicken-down as yet, and he was well aware of it. He had not thought that Heriolf knew about that; but the little merchant had a way of knowing more than one expected. ‘They do say that the Hero Cuchulain must needs paint his down with bramble juice.’

  ‘Na, na, no need for that,’ the other said consolingly. ‘And you’ve a man’s shoulders on you.’

  ‘Two summers at the oar,’ Bjarni said.

  ‘Two summers? It seems not so long since you sold your sword-service to my Lord Timbertoes . . . Good summers they’ve been, have they?’

  ‘Aye, good enough.’ Hugin, who had been off about his own affairs, came up smelling strongly of fish guts, and nosed lovingly into his hand.

  ‘Not feeling the wind in your sails then?’

  Bjarni shook his head. ‘Not as yet – tho’ there’s three years and more of my far-faring still before me and maybe I’ll get the itch for strange seas before they are all spent.’

  And an eddy of the wind dipped round the shoulder of the peat-stack and blew a cold spatter of raindrops into his face.

  Two days later came the appointed day for Onund Treefoot to take Aesa from her father’s hearth. Almost before daylight the whole settlement had begun gathering in the broad garth before the Hearth Hall. It was a day of thick yellow sunshine and sudden glooms under a sky of high-piled hurrying storm cloud threatening wild weather to come; but the harvest was in and the fleet home from the sea.

  With the rest of Sea Witch’s crew, Bjarni had spent the night in Onund’s house, and in the early morning, all clad in their best, they went up with him – Onund walking with his familiar sideways lurch and swagger on the fine new wooden leg which the shipwrights had made him from the one he had rough-cobbled from a captured oarloom on the shore of Bute – to demand the bride.

  The women brought her out to him, clad in a kirtle of poppy-red merchant’s stuff, and with her hair bound back under the heavy silver-gilt bridal crown taken in some long-past raid. And Aflaeg set her hand in Onund’s over the fire, binding and unbinding them together three times with a supple sealskin thong. Then they drank together from the same cup in the sight of the whole settlement. ‘I take the woman from her father’s house to mine,’ Onund said. ‘Henceforth I am her man.’

  And Aesa lifted her head stiffly under the weight and balance of her crown, and smiled at him. ‘I go with the man from my father’s house,’ she said. ‘Henceforth I am his woman.’

  And so the thing was done.

  After, bride and groom and closest kin, having drunk the sacred juice that made the gods’ fire come into the priest’s head in time of sacrifice, went out to the God-House in its dark sacred wood, where Asmund the Priest waited with the black ram and the white ewe; and when they returned, walking behind Asmund, whose own robes were spattered, both Onund and Aesa had a streak of blood on their foreheads. But that was to do with seeking the favour of the gods on the marriage that was already made.

  After that it was the time for feasting. The kegs of bride-ale were brought out and the huge bride-cake was broken up and given to all corners. And the rest of the day went by in feasting and harping, while bride and groom and priest and chieftains sat beside the chieftain’s fire in the Hall and the young men of the settlement wrestled and raced against each other, between fresh attacks on the little dark carcasses of hill mutton, the seal meat and cod and great dishes of bannock and ewes’-milk curds and honey.

  Evening came at last, with the tawny light of the feast fires beginning to draw men’s faces out of the gathering dark, and the sound of the sea growing louder as it always seemed to do at dusk. Bjarni, pleasantly weary after a day spent enjoying himself, full with much feasting and in a pleasant haze of bride-ale, had cast himself down beside Heriolf on the comfortable fringe of things, their backs propped against the pigsty wall.

  ‘Thunder coming,’ said the merchant, sniffing the air
like a hound. ‘Aye well, ’twill come in the night and be cleared by morning.’ He had a personal interest in the weather for, having done good trading through the past few days, he was for the seaways again next morning.

  ‘And what sea-road this time? Or are you reckoning to be making for a haven and laying Sea Cow up for the winter?’

  Heriolf shrugged. ‘The Misty Isle, maybe, or further south to Mull. Thorstein the Red is generally worth a visit before the winter closes in.’

  ‘Any bride-ales there?’ Bjarni asked idly.

  ‘Three daughters the man has, all too young for their bride-ales as yet. But I’ve an enamelled cup set with river pearls might please his mother – the Lady Aud has an eye for beautiful things and money of her own to pay for them.’

  ‘That would be her they call Aud the Deep-Minded?’ Bjarni said after a moment.

  The merchant laughed. ‘Aye, that would be her. But she has the wisdom not to let it show too much . . .’

  Out in the clear centre of the garth someone was playing a pipe, and some of the men and older women had begun to sway and stamp and clap their hands for dancing. The hunter’s moon was up, broad as a buckler and yellow as corn sheaves, among the tumble of cloud and clear, its quiet light mingling with the fierce flare of fires and torches; and thrusting through the crowd in answer to the piping, Bjarni saw that in the clear space in the midst of it all, the girls had formed themselves into a ring-dance facing outward, laughing, arms linked and feet moving in little neatly braided steps under them. The young men had gathered also and stood idly looking on, pretending not to be much interested, passing the ale-jack from hand to hand. The clapping women had taken up the pipe tune and begun to make the quick lilting mouth-music that has no words but set the feet jigging and the blood to dance, and the young men drew closer and forgot the ale-jacks.

  Bjarni, watching the girls circling by, saw Thara’s pretty, stupid little face go by with bursts of coloured silk twisted into the pale bright braids of her hair. Three times he saw her go by. Then, circling still, the girls slipped their arms free of each other and the steps became wider and looser, the circle swifter and more ragged as each girl darted out from it to catch whichever of the young men caught her fancy and swung him back with her into the dance. Bjarni found Thara’s face close to him, flushed and foolish, and next moment she had flung herself upon his chest, her arms round him, laughing, trying to kiss him wetly, trying to drag him into the jigging, bounding circle behind her.

  If he had been stone-cold sober he would not have done it. He would have had too much sense, or maybe too much kindness. But the bride-ale was strong and he had drunk a good deal of it, and he did not want to find himself caught up with Thara Priestsdaughter, who seemed to be forever hanging round him. He pulled her arms away and thrust her cheerfully into the arms of the man next beside him, and himself grabbed the next girl to spin by and swung her off her feet as he pranced out with her into the ring of dancers. He scarcely knew the girl, but she came willingly, squealing with laughter, and they danced together in the ragged spinning circle. The whole night was spinning, swimming and circling under the yellow moon to the lilt of the pipes and the fog of ale and the nearing scent of thunder in the air.

  Once he caught sight of Thara in the swirl of the dance, her head turned over her shoulder to watch him, her face without its prettiness, her big blue eyes seeming turned to splinters of ice as they met his and with a look in them that reached him through the torchlight and the ale, and for the moment almost sobered him. Then the pattern of the dance closed over between them and he almost forgot about it – almost, but not quite.

  The thunder-clouds were coming up against the wind in the unchancy way of thunder, banking thick behind the hills, soon to swallow up the moon. And at the same time the men of Sea Witch, Onund’s ship-carles and hearth companions, were beginning to gather also, knowing that their lord would be wanting to get his bride back beneath his own roof before the storm broke. It was then that Bjarni found Hugin missing. He whistled, the shrill two-note call that at most times brought the great hound leaping back from wherever he might be. But this time no black shape answered the call. Always, when Sea Witch was in harbour, Hugin slept at his feet, and there was just enough of the old uneasiness left in the back of his neck – maybe it was the low mutter of the nearing thunder and nothing more – made him unwilling to leave the dog here and go back to Onund’s house without him tonight. He knew Hugin’s ways and the good friends that he had among the kitchen thralls, and headed for the cookhouse, fairly sure of finding him.

  In the lea of the kitchen peat-stack he sensed rather than saw, two figures, one of them clinging to the other. There would be many such couples among the outbuildings of Aflaeg’s Hall tonight. He took no notice of them and, among all of the comings and goings, Bjarni’s feet in his lightest brogues for dancing made scarcely any sound, so they remained unaware of him. Then the man spoke, ‘It was for this that you brought me out here?’

  And the girl answered, ‘Oh my father, I could not have speech with you in Aflaeg’s Hall.’

  And Bjarni knew the voices, Asmund the Priest and his daughter. And something, some unreasoning sense of danger, made him check and freeze.

  ‘Surely this is a woman’s matter, and you should be making your plaint to the goddess who protects women, the Lady Frigga herself,’ Asmund said. ‘She should listen kindly, having had her own sacrifice this feast day.’

  Thara was almost sobbing. ‘Nay, but you do not understand – it is not kindness that I seek –’

  ‘And that’s true enough. For I’m minded that it’s revenge, my daughter.’

  ‘And should I not? – Shaming me before the whole settlement –’ Thara was almost whimpering. ‘He has used me so ill – I could show you the bruises on my arms –’

  Well, she couldn’t be talking about him anyway. He hadn’t used enough force on her to raise a bruise the size of a finger-tip.

  The thunder muttered again, nearer this time, and the girl seemed to seize upon it with a kind of triumph. ‘Do you not hear? It’s Thor! It is the Lord of Thunder, who grows angry for lack of a sacrifice on his altar. Tell that to the chieftains and the people and they will not dare gainsay you –’

  The thunder rolled closer, swallowing the last of her words, and when it had muttered away into the stillness, the two shadows had moved on.

  Bjarni stood where he was for a few moments. What he had overheard made very little sense to him; except that Thara wanted revenge on somebody who had used her roughly – a revenge that her father as the Priest could work for her. And likely, in one way or another, she would get her own way. He was glad that whoever the man was, it wasn’t him.

  After a moment he moved on, kicking a stone out of his way and cursing, to make sure that anyone could hear him coming, and whistling for Hugin as he went.

  Almost at once there was a scuttering of paws from the direction of the kitchen midden, and the great hound’s muzzle was thrust into his hand.

  ‘Come, greedy one,’ Bjarni said, twisting a hand in his collar as they turned back towards the Hall.

  The thunder muttered again and there was a distant flicker of lighting over Ben Harr; the storm was circling to the north and seemingly no nearer than before, as they rejoined the others who were gathering in a cheerful and jostling crowd before the Hall. Onund had come out to them and in the broad foreporch doorway Aesa stood with all her bridal finery muffled in the folds of a thick hooded cloak, and her mother and all the women of the household fussing about her.

  ‘Let you bide until the storm be passed,’ said the chieftains, but Onund said, ‘Nay, the way it’s travelling ’twill be half the night before it breaks this side of the ben,’ and he laughed, reaching out to slip Aesa against his side. ‘And I’m minded to have the lass under my roof before then.’

  Aesa said nothing at all.

  And so they set off, with torches to light their way, singing and a little unsteady in the way of wedding parti
es, to bring home the bride. But it is not easy in coast and mountain country to judge the speed and pattern of thunder coming up against the wind; and Onund, though agile as a goat on his wooden leg, was less swift than he had been in his younger and two-legged days; and always forgot to allow for that.

  The thing became a race and they had only just reached the edge of his own in-take land, when the storm broke over them with great booming crashes of thunder that rolled and re-echoed from the hills to the sea, and flash on flash of lightning that set the whole sky a-flicker. Then, driven before the wind that came upon them with the speed of a galloping horse, came the streaking rain.

  It drove hissing against their faces and quenched the torches. Onund flung his cloak over Aesa, and Bjarni heard her laughter skirling like a curlew as he dragged her close. And ahead of them the light of the steading fires glimmered ragged through the swathing rain, swelling on the sight as they pelted towards it.

  They plunged in through the house door at last, laughing and cursing, gasping, half-drowned. Warmth and light met them. The house thralls had kindled the wall-torches and the drift-wood fire down the centre of the hall burned high. The last bride-cup was brought, and Onund and Aesa drank together, their hands meeting on the sides of the gilded cup, and then disappeared together through the heavy painted curtain of the bridal chamber, Sea Witch’s crew cheering them on their way with wishes for many sons.

  And when they were gone, Bjarni and the rest flung off drenched cloaks and settled down among the dogs in the rushes along the fire, with a keg of ale to keep the night from going flat, while the storm hurled itself across the roof and the lightning sent flash on blue-white flash through the chinks in the wicker shutters.