Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  To check his excitement, he smoothed out the blanket on his wall pallet; he cut himself a slice of black bread and spread cheese sparingly upon it with his knife. Drinking a little water, he gave himself the pleasure of eating a few Syrian dates that had come in on his last ship. For Ernst Salza was a careful man.

  As he broke his fast there in his sleeping cell, his thin body towering in its black gown, he lifted his eyes to the whip on the wall, the whip that had lashed raw the flesh of his back when he had become an apprentice, forty-eight years before. An apprentice of the Hansa that outsiders called the Hanseatic League, which he now served as agent.

  Beside the whip hung the motto he had picked: "Success comes only with the last farthing."

  Once Klas Stortebecker had seen that motto and laughed. "Never try for the last farthing, Ernst," he had gibed. "'Tis bad luck, that."

  Klas was superstitious. Klas buried the men he killed, and had a Mass said for them, with candle and bell. But Ernst Salza had shed the blood of no man.

  But Klas would come as he promised, and the mist would hide his coming.

  At the window, Salza could barely make out the masts of his own cogs moored to the bridge that divided his Kontor, or warehouse, from the rest of Bergen-town. He could not see the fishing fleet clustered in the half moon harbor, or the quays of his competitors, the Norwegians and foreign merchants on the opposite side.

  He had closed, by virtue of the Power of the League, all the Norwegian coast to those foreigners except the Bergen port of arrival. He had fixed a high duty on the goods they imported, while the Hansa goods came in to the Kontor free. Still the strangers flocked in, to gnaw at his monopoly of the fisheries and the lumber ...

  With a key from his chain he unlocked the clasps of his record book. Carefully selecting a quill and touching up its point with his knife, he dipped it in ink, and wrote:

  "Declaration. I, Ernst of Salza, Achtzehuer of the Bergen Kontor of the Hansa League do avouch and affirm on this day of St. Olaf in the Year of Our Lord 1428, the harbor of Bergen was attacked during the fourth hour-"

  He hesitated, thinking whether he should write more.

  "-by the masterless men and outlaws of Visby," his pen traced out the words crisply. "Wherefore, I do accuse these men of Visby commanded by one Klas Stortebecker, of piracy. I demand that all Christian ports be closed to them, and victuals kept from them, and that they be hunted down and harried to their deaths."

  This he read through carefully, and signed his name beneath. Now, whatever happened to Ernst of Salza this day, there would be evidence in writing that the Hansa had neither part nor parcel in the raid. And who would know the hour in which he had written it?

  Out in the mist he thought he saw the tracery of a ship's mast moving in. With a tingle of excitement he closed and locked the book. Quickly he carried it out to his desk in the meeting hall. Over that desk hung his new map of the Northern Sea marked boldly Mare Germanicum and in smaller letters beneath, oder, Nord-See. For forty and eight years Ernst Salza had driven himself unsparingly to make that inscription a fact.

  A glance at the dripping water clock showed him that it lacked a quarter of the third hour of the morning. The time was close.

  When he strode out of the hall, the journeymen on the stairs bowed to their belts. At the gate, the Kontor guards clashed their halberds in salute. Ernst Salza kept military discipline within this warehouse that he had built like a fortress. Glancing to right and left as he crossed the courtyard, he noted mechanically that the pack of mastiff dogs were loose, the men-at-arms cleaning their crossbows, as he had ordered.

  But out on the quay, where apprentices trundled barrels of pitch and soap ashes, the half-dozen men of the bridge watch were gathered around something, and that something wore a skirt.

  No women were allowed upon the bridge, not that Salza cared what might go on between the Kontor's men and Norwegian wenches, but he was jealous of the trade secrets of the Kontor. So his men slept in their cells of nights, like monks, and the women were kept out.

  "A redhead, my sir," Bode of the guardsmen explained. "With a trifle to sell."

  Red indeed was her hair, hanging long upon her shoulders-so she could not be married. White and clean her small linen slippers, so she could not have walked far. No broad-cheeked peasant lass, but a girl with impudent eyes.

  "What to sell, woman?" Salza asked. She curtsied gracefully, smiling, showed him a blue cape, bright with embroidery that she held. "My name, sir, is Kari, and will not the merchants of the great Hansi give me a price for this that I made?"

  "No," said the agent, without a second glance at it. The girl Kari drew back the mass of her henna-red hair, and the lustful eyes of the halberdiers went up and down her body. Her long eyes had the color of the sea in them. "We have cloth narrow and broad to sell, not to buy," Salza added mechanically, wondering what had brought her here.

  Bode touched his arm, and he saw the square leather sail of a longboat turn in to the quay, with one man at the steering sweep. This stranger let down the yard with a crash, and let go an anchor stone. "Ho-good is the landfall," he called, "on St. Olaf's Day i' the morning."

  Jumping up to them, he swayed with the feel of the sea in his legs. Leather covered his long body; a pair of horns projected from a dinted and polished iron cap. "I rode the long ways," his voice chanted, "on this steed of the sea."

  A gold ring gleamed on his arm, and Salza saw that it had Icelandic runes upon it. He thought that this man might have stepped out of the mist of a century before now.

  Suddenly Kari laughed. "By the saints 'e hath the look of a Viking. Do ghosts, coming out of the mist, have a way of speaking, my sir?"

  Vikings, Salza thought, no longer sailed in their dragon ships to raid out of Norway's coast. No, they had lived in a darker age of barbarians. The seafarer looked at Kari's hair, and the scar along his chin made it seem as if he grinned. "Aye, woman," he said, "they come back at times from the isles of the sea to the old country."

  Reaching down, under the aft deck of the boat, he pulled up a hoop, with a great brown bird, perched upon it, hooded. Its wings lifted restlessly as it sensed the men near it.

  "An eagle, that," cried Bode.

  "Nay, a falcon of the Green Land that gathers meat for me."

  "At sea?" demanded Salza, noticing the white marking on the bird's throat, the grip of its talons. Not for many years had a trading ship touched at Greenland, to fetch back one of these giant falcons, the rarest of their species, and seldom trained.

  "The sea or the land-it is all the same to this sky-soarer," the Viking said. Over the water a crane was winging lazily. "Now watch," he said, "for this bird is fast."

  Pulling loose the thongs, he drew the hood clear of the restless head. Taking the falcon's talons on his arm, he tossed it up. The brown wings threshed over Salza's head, and the hawk was soaring.

  "Hungry it is indeed," cried the Viking.

  So swiftly did the brown falcon circle up that it was over the crane before it passed. The wide-winged creature sighted the falcon and swerved, its long beak pointing up. The falcon circled higher, and the crane headed for shore.

  Suddenly the brown bird swooped, driving down at its prey. Cutting in from the side, it struck the crane, and feathers sprang into the air. Hawk and quarry shot down, until the brown wings threshed, and the falcon reached the ground tearing at its victim.

  "Savage it seems," Salza said coldly, "yet I'll pay thirty nobles in hand for it."

  The Viking, watching the bird shook his head. "Elijah ne'er sold his raven."

  "Forty then," Salza nodded. "Coin of Lubeck."

  "Not for forty, or a hundred."

  The Viking, it seemed, was quick at bargaining. And Salza wanted that falcon the more. His mind quested along its possibilities. The falcon could go with the Baltic convoy, from Lubeck the headquarters of the League, on to Muscovy, or even down the rivers and over the Brenner Pass to Venice, where he could get Eastern jewels for the bird.
And those jewels might be cleared in the Amsterdam market for more than a thousand nobles.

  "We can give the highest price," he conceded, "because we have a market. Agreed at a hundred."

  The Viking only shook his head.

  Unreasonably-for he was watching the haze over the harbor intently for a sign of the ships coming in-Ernst Salza craved the brown falcon, as he had never craved liquor. He could see the picture of it so clearly now; himself appearing with the royal Greenland bird, before the council at Lubeck to announce the triumph of this St. Olaf's Day, and the full mastery of the Norwegian coast. "Have it your way," he cried, "and name your price for the falcon. Almighty! Have you no need of monies?"

  "That have I," the Viking laughed, "for this is the day of my namesake, Olaf. And I shall be opening up the ale kegs in Bergen-town."

  "Well, so-"

  "So the falcon is mine, and will be mine, merchant." Olaf the Viking rubbed the scar on his chin. "For I doubt much if the bird can be held by any hand than mine, devil that he is. Here!" He pulled off the gold arm ring. "Lend me a fistful of farthings on this surety."

  Checking an exclamation of anger, Salza turned the heavy ring in his fingers, pondering. "There are runes written on it," he murmured.

  "Aye."

  Salza glanced into Olaf's gray eyes, level with his own, and made his decision. This seafarer, who kept a rare falcon for hunting mate, who knew so little of the power of money, who thirsted after ale from a keg, would not have the skill to read. He handed back the arm ring to Olaf. "As you will, outlander," he said indifferently. "Keep the ring. The Hansa does not deal in pawn. If it is coppers you want, my men will bring you out two score, and a quittance to sign against their repayment."

  He called out in German to a passing clerk, and strode away from them into the Kontor gate. Across the harbor he had seen four sailing barges coming in from the fiord, and he had made out the wolf's-head crest of Klas Stortebecker on the leading sail. Olaf was watching his falcon, which had taken to the air again and was coming down in lazy circles to the longboat. Carefully Olaf coaxed the bird to its perch and tied the hood upon his head. He gave the bird water.

  When a journeyman approached with a fistful of copper coins, Olaf pouched the farthings without counting them. He took the pen the other gave him and made a cross where the man's finger pointed, beneath some lines of fine writing on a scrap of parchment.

  "Dunderhead!" cried Kari involuntarily, when the man had gone with his receipt. "Did you read what you put your name to?"

  "Not I," Olaf stretched his long arms, and picked up an ax with a bone handle and shining steel head from the boat. "I know what was said and agreed between us. And who says dunderhead?"

  Taking the girl's chin in his great fist, he tipped up her face. "Red hair dye from Venice," he muttered, "and a lady's slippers on your hoofs."

  Crimson flooded Kari's throat and surged up to her cheeks. She had tried to dye her hair for this morning as she had heard the famous ladies did in Venice-who were the loveliest in the world.

  "Are you light of love?" demanded Olaf. "I think not."

  Kari choked with rage upon a word. Yet the harshness of the Viking frightened her.

  "Word maker!" she gasped. "Duck stealer!"

  "The falcon steals the ducks, Kari. I think well you have stolen away from the farm for this holyday."

  It was true enough. Kari had become weary with tending the cattle up in the mountain saeter of her father; she had got together this splendor-as she thought-of garments and appearance, to come to Bergen-town.

  "Still, you are lovely enough underneath, girl," Olaf admitted. "And as this is my day for wine and women, you can come with me to the feasting."

  "If you are thinking that I will sit on your knee and pour your farthing's worth of beer-"

  "Ale," said Olaf, shouldering his ax. After consideration, he drew the cape she had brought over her shoulders and pulled the hood over her head, hiding the hair. "You will do well enough," he said, taking her hand, "young as you are."

  Kari was nearly sixteen years old. Tears of rage filled her eyes, and she pulled away her hand.

  She hoped that this boaster who had wounded her tenderest feelings would choke on his ale and lose his wild hawk. And she wanted to run away from him quickly.

  But at the end of the bridge, the Kontor apprentices were ranging barrels in a row across the way, and behind the barrels loitered Bode and his men-at-arms, leering at her now that they were clear of the Achtzehuer's eye. Olaf had to push through the apprentices.

  "No weapons on this holyday," shouted Bode, noticing Olaf's long ax. "Put away that woodchopper."

  Olaf stopped, turning this way and that. He saw that the Kontor's men carried no arms here, but crossbows and halberds were stacked out of sight back of the heavy casks which made a fair breast-high barricade.

  He looked at Bode, and his voice chanted slowly, "Messmate, when I make use of this ax, wolves and ravens are fed, and strife starts, and a war is waged, for I am a fast-fighting man. Now what do you say?"

  Kari felt a thrill of excitement, seeing Bode's hands grip hard on his belt. But he hesitated, glancing at the Kontor. "Well, take it off the bridge," he growled, "you and your light o' love."

  When they walked through the Street of the Shoemakers, Kari tossed her head. "What war have you seen, seafarer?"

  Looking into the open shops, Olaf answered thoughtfully, "In Tsargrad, in Hispania where the Moors are. In Granada and the Isle of Crete, and across the western sea. But this is a day of homecoming and peace."

  He headed after the townspeople in festive cloaks, where a merrymaker walked on stilts, and a trained bear danced. Down in the square by the docks, tables had been set and kegs opened. Olaf sniffed the odor of steaming cod and hot punch, and something else.

  "Reindeer steak!" he muttered happily. Kari shivered.

  Finding a place by the dancing bear, where they could hear the fiddle music, Olaf called for cheese and a horn of ale, and berries and cake for the maiden. At first Kari would not touch the dainties. Then, because she was hungry, she began to eat.

  Pushing back his sleeves, Olaf leaned his elbows on the table. "Eh," he said contentedly, "they are singing'Come All Ye Faithful."'

  When the singing stopped, Kari noticed that the best-dressed burghers and Norwegian shopkeepers went from the tables toward the quays, and a buzz of whispered talk ran around her. Visitors were landing from a convoy-sailors who had lost their way in the mist, and put in for the feasting: Klas Stortebecker and the mariners of Visby Island.

  The first group of strangers rolled up to the tables, talking with the meisters of Bergen. They wore sea capes and some had on mail, but their scabbards were empty of swords.

  "Stortebecker and his lads fly the peace flag," called out a Flemish trader. "They come to drink. They bring honey mead."

  Klas Stortebecker came up, broad as a bear with half his head bald, and white scars showing on the bare skin. "Fire the pots," he bellowed, "fill the tankards, ye Bergen folk. Kindle up for Stortebecker."

  Behind him more men staggered up from the boats, with hogsheads on their shoulders. These they set down by the great open bed of coals where an ox had been roasted.

  "They stint not their drink," said Olaf, watching.

  Some of the women around them were fearful of the Visby sea rovers, who had put the torch to more than one town. Still, they seemed peaceful enough on this St. Olaf's Day, and across the harbor stood the walls of the German Kontor, with a strong garrison. Kari looked at the fine wolf's head embroidered on Stortebecker's tunic.

  Olaf had not put his arm around her, or tried to pull her to his knee, and for that she was glad. The shouting rose loud about her, as the seamen gulped meat and swallowed beer.

  "Bergen beer," said Olaf. "They do not open their own hogsheads."

  A giant from Visby kicked away the dancing bear and called for a champion to tug at war with him. The stout Flemish merchant came forward at the challen
ge.

  "The bull's hide, Lefard," roared Stortebecker. "Pull the hide, man."

  The Visby gamester took one end of the rawhide stripped from the bull's carcass, and showed the Fleming how to hold to the other end by the legs. Lefard took his stand at one side of the smoldering bed of coals, and, at a word from Stortebecker, heaved at the hide, while the Fleming strained back, across the fire. The taut hide moved back and forth as the giants tugged. Suddenly the man Lefard threw himself back on his heels. Jerked off balance, the merchant plunged into the embers, the hide falling across him.

  He writhed up, and fell again and dragged himself clear of the fire, smoking and blackened. A whimpering came from his mouth.

  "The goat bleats," said Stortebecker, looking around. The Bergen men were silent, startled. "Let the goats bleat!" Stortebecker roared.

  Olaf grinned and drank more ale.

  Kari shivered, feeling for the hurt of the burned man. And Lefard, striding back to their table, took the nearest ale horn, which was Olaf's, and emptied it.

  The big Visby man looked at Olaf, who said nothing. Then he bent over Kari, pulling the hood back from her head. At sight of the flaming red hair, he crowed.

  Two heavy hands gripped the girl's waist and lifted her high. She felt the blood rush through her body. And then she jolted down on Lefard's knee, as he seated himself on the bench.

  "Pour out the ale, girl," Lefard said in her ear.

  Kari felt cold with fright. She made no move to touch the ale horn. Now she felt ashamed of her red hair. "For wine or for a woman," laughed Lefard, "I wait not."

  His shaven head turned toward her, and his hand smelled of the wet bull's hide. Beside her, Olaf watched curiously, saying nothing. And Kari closed her eyes as she felt her throat choking.

  She heard Olaf's chanting voice: "Messmate, you play hard. Let this child go, and pour your own drink."

  While the Visby man stared at him, Olaf reached down to the ground between them. His hand came up gripping the ax under the head. The head of the ax caught Lefard under jaw and ear, knocking him aside.