Ulric the Jarl

by William Stoddard

  “As many they are,” said Tostig, “as the fingers of a hand. I have heard that they have no fear of men.”

  If the bears had no fear, they at least had much curiosity, and they were coming to inquire what this might be that lay upon the ice with so many men walking around within it.

  Ulric went into the after cabin for a heavier spear than was the light weapon he had with him, saying to Knud, “White bear have I never slain. This chance is mine, but the second fight belongeth to thee. I do not rob thee of thy hunt.”

  “Thine by right, O jarl, is yonder great one,” replied Knud. “No man may go before thee unless thou wert hurt or dead. But I warn thee that the long claw, over there, were he to grapple thee, is worse to meet than might be three Romans.”

  “I would face more than three Romans,” laughed Ulric. “But thy pale friend on the floe is a king of bears.”

  He returned speedily, armed and armored for battle. The spear he brought was long and strong, with a steel crossguard at the heel of its broad blade. It was very sharp, but its weight would have been unwieldly for a slight man.

  Twenty fathoms from the stern of the ship stood the great bear growling, and the others walked around at a greater distance. He was a fathom and a half in length and his paws were tremendous, with claws like reaping hooks. No man ever faced any beast more terrible in aspect than was that angry monster from the darkness which broodeth over the forever frozen sea.

  Down stepped Ulric, and when he was a few yards from the ship some of the men followed with Knud, but not too near, lest any should seem to help and so should spoil the honor of the fight.

  The surface of the ice was broken and there were chasms in it, but it was as firm to stand upon as the dry land. Moreover, The Sword was now lying not far away from the mighty perpendicular front of the ice king. None knew yet what might be his aspect looking northward, and there were those among the vikings on the ship who shook their heads doubtfully, considering this matter of the bears.

  Stone still stood this bear, growling at intervals, until the jarl drew within six paces, holding his spear leveled. Then, with a loud roar and a clashing of his teeth, the huge beast made his rush, rising upon his hind feet and spreading his enormous arms to close with Ulric. Had he done so his hug would have been speedy death, but the point of the spear met him firmly, with a thrust which buried the blade to the crossguard midway between his shoulders.

  “That would slay anything else that liveth,” said Knud to Tostig, “but the white ones die hard. Mark! the jarl! The son of Brander! It is grand!”

  His comrades answered with a shout and then they were still, and so were all the vikings, who crowded the decks and bulwarks of the ship, looking on.

  Horrible was now the roaring of the bear as he struggled against the spear of Ulric, striving to plunge nearer. What tenacity of life must have been his, to fight on with the spear blade in him so deeply! Around swung Ulric on the slippery ice and his whole frame was strained to its uttermost endurance by the swift changes of that wrestling, but the plunges of the bear forced him backward a fathom at a time. His face was now but an arm’s length from that of his vast antagonist, and they were looking each other eye to eye. Red and yet full of green fire were the eyes of the bear, and his teeth glistened awfully in their ranges as his wide jaws opened to gnash them. But that the descendant of Odin was many times stronger than other men the combat might here have ended.

  “Slip not now!” shouted Knud. “Son of Brander, there is a chasm behind thee. Stand fast, if thou canst! Thou art beyond our help!”

  Only his own length from him was the cleft in the ice floe, and it went down to deep water. If he should fall into it in his heavy armor, none might hope to see him again.

  Roar—roar—roar—in dreadful wrath and pain struggled the bear, for this was his death throe; but Ulric’s foot found a brace—a break in the ice—and he gathered his last strength, the strength of the sons of Odin, the hero might of the old gods.

  Snap! The tough ashen shaft of the spear broke at the guard, and both bear and hero fell heavily, but Ulric arose with his seax in his hand. The claws of the bear wrenched away his shield as if it had been a piece of oaken bark, but the seax was driven in to the hilt, and as it came flashing out the life of the bear came with it. Over he rolled with a loud shriek, that was echoed back from the face of the ice king. Then he stretched himself at full length upon the ice and lay still, while Ulric stepped forward to cut off his forepaws for a token.

  “Hael!” shouted every voice among the vikings, as the white one rolled over. “Hael to Ulric the Jarl, the son of Brander! The son of Odin! Hael to the first good death and to the long cruise of The Sword!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER V. The Unknown Thing.

  THE ICE KING HAD lost only one of his fierce white flock. It had been the largest of them all, however; and in the latter part of Tiw’s day there had been a feast of his flesh. Greatly had the crew of The Sword enjoyed that feast, and they believed the saying of Knud that there was courage and strength to be gained by such eating after so brave a battle. “The gods themselves eat mightily,” he said, “and they have nothing better than this.”

  During that day a number of the vikings went out to explore the ice fields somewhat, and they captured many wild fowl easily with bow and arrow. They reported having seen in the distance other animals, like great seals or walruses. They also planned to hunt the remaining bears, but the jarl forbade it, being unwilling that they should go far from the ship lest harm should befall them from sudden breaking of the ice.

  Nevertheless, to all testing, it seemed to be packing even more firmly. The entire visible mass of it drifted steadily southward, as if the ice king, or the under gods who were pushing him, knew of the channels by which they were to steer him into other seas than this.

  Night came, and then the day of Odin. But now the worst foe of the ice king, deadlier than even the sun, was wearing him away with floods of warm rain. There were rivulets pouring down his sides, and some of his pinnacles and crags came crashing, thundering down from time to time. This was, therefore, not a good day for hunting, and the vikings passed it on board the ship, or near it, but not dismally, for there were among them many whose minds and tongues were busy with old voyages and old fights, and the land to which they had sailed. Also there were songs to sing, and there was much ale, and no man was hindered from feasting. It was a time, too, for the remembering of sagas, and many spoke of Hilda, but Ulric did not utter her name, saying rather that it would be well if Oswald and his harp were on board.

  These two, indeed, the saga woman and the old harper, sat at home in the house of Brander that rainy day, speaking to one another across the ash heap, on which a slow fire smoldered. Their talk was of many things, but from all it would ever come back to some word concerning the ship and her crew and Ulric. To others Hilda had spoken little, and they noted that she had not eaten since the launching. Oswald was fretful and fitful, and he said that he cared not for harping. In an early hour of the day he had gone out and he had even climbed to the crag on the top of the headland that he might look far to seaward, but he had returned, shaking his head, to say to Hilda:

  “All is ice! She is out of sight, but the floes have closed behind her.”

  “So they close not before her I care little,” replied Hilda. “They will conquer the ice, for the sun will help them, and they are sailing nearer the sun.”

  Oswald was long silent then, and at last he arose and walked out of the hall while Hilda went to the door and gazed seaward. It was to his own room that the harper made his way, leaving his harp near the dais. In a far corner of the house he had been given his place, for he was held in high honor. Nevertheless, it was but small, and bare save for a table and a lamp thereon and a stool. There was, also, a heap of skins for warm sleeping, and from under this Oswald drew out something, stooping and then looking behind him to be sure the door was closed. “What will the jarl bring me, when he returneth fro
m the southlands?” he muttered. “Bright gold, I hope, for there is more to love in the yellow, the heavy, than there is in light silver. The touch is not the same, and gold hath a better ring.”

  It was a bag that he held, untying its mouth, and his hand was now in it. He drew out pieces of varied shapes, looking at them and rubbing them with his fingers. “The faces of kings are on them,” he said. “Runes of the southlands. I can read some, but all I cannot read. May the gods guide the jarl to places where he will find many like these and bring them to me. He careth not for them himself.”

  Hilda, standing in the doorway, grew sad and wistful in the face. “Gone,” she said. “Gone beyond seeing or hearing. And I love him so! He is my hero! My beautiful one! I am old, and I am soon to pass away, and I know not clearly whither I go. Sometimes I would that one of the gods might come and tell what things there are in those countries for such as I am.”

  Then turned she and went back to her great chair by the fire; but Ulric also was thinking of her and of Oswald, for he said to Tostig and Wulf and those who were with them, under the after deck: “The tongues of the south folk? We do well to talk about them. My father knew many. Oswald, the harper, and Hilda could speak with him in all of them and they had more that he knew not. She hath learned much in her hundred years, and she is not like other women. When I was a child, and afterward, in the long winter evenings, when we had naught else to do, I loved to have them teach me, and they said it would be my need some day. I can talk with a Briton or a Roman or a Greek. But Hilda and Oswald taught me many words of a tongue that belongeth to a people who live on the easterly shore of the Middle Sea. They are a trading folk, and our sea kings found them everywhere. They are not like other folk, and they have a god of their own, but none of them can tell what he is like. I have thought I would wish to see him, but Hilda sayeth that he will not come out of his own country. And that, too, is much the same with our own gods; but I wish they may go with us now, for some of these southland gods are cunning and strong.”

  “Not as are the gods of the North,” said Tostig, sturdily. “I too have heard of these Jews and their god, but I do not care to see either him or any other god. It is more than enough for me when I hear them whispering across the fiords.”

  “So!” exclaimed Wulf the Skater. “I have been out far on the ice, when there was no wind and there was a bright moon, and I have gone landward with speed lest their voices should overtake me. I heard them loudly once, and that night I was chased by many wolves. I slew some, but I stopped not for their skins, for the rest were an army.”

  “Glad am I,” said Ulric, “that if I meet one of these gods I can speak to him fairly well in his own tongue. How else, for instance, could I question this Jew god? We shall sail all around the coasts of the Middle Sea before we come home.”

  “What couldst thou ask him?” replied Knud. “And what thinkest thou he might tell thee?”

  “One thing that Hilda knew not,” said Ulric. “I am curious if the gods of those lands know the gods of the North. I would know if this Jew god hath ever met with Odin and Thor, and whether or not they are friends. If they have fights, as do our own gods, which of them is the stronger? I have thought that if I were a god, I would bring all the others under me. It is not managed well.”

  “I would not have land gods meddling too much with the sea, save in battles,” said Tostig. “It is well as it is. But the Middle Sea is wide; we may not look upon all of its coasts. There are deep bays and many islands.”

  “They say,” responded Ulric, “that there is an open water leading southward, and that if one can find it and will sail into it boldly, fearing nothing, he may follow its leading until he shall find the city of Asgard and the home of the gods. Moreover, there are lands which no foot hath trodden. I would see some of them if they are to be found by sailing not too far.”

  So said they all, and there were other tales to tell concerning seas and lands.

  They still were talking of these things when a loud shout from one of the watchers summoned them, and they rushed out to the gunwales and the decks. The rain was no longer falling and the sky was clear, so that they saw well what was doing. The ice king had not at all lost his grip upon his own floes, but southward was a vast rift in the ice pack. Wide and blue was the open water, but it was not very near them, and as they were looking at it from their icy anchorage the watcher shouted again:

  “O Ulric the Jarl, whales! They will come up again from under the floes. I saw them. A great herd!”

  Loud voices replied, inquiring, but they ceased, for the herd quickly showed itself. Many and huge were the whales that emerged, and some of them sprang half their length out of the water.

  “They are pursued!” exclaimed Knud the Bear. “I have seen them spring in that manner when the swordfish troubled them. But see them flounder now!”

  Strange indeed was the confusion and the tumbling about of this herd of the sea. They were beating the waves into foam, and they were plunging hither and thither as if wildly affrighted.

  “I think that it is neither the swordfish nor the thrasher,” said Tostig the Red, for he had halfway climbed the mast and he was leaning out to see. “O jarl, it is one of the monsters that Hilda hath told us of. She sayeth that only a few are left, for the gods destroyed them lest they should eat up all the whales. Look yonder!”

  They were near enough to see, but could not note clearly until a great fragment broke away from the field of ice which carried The Sword. Through that chasm at its outer border there came up a shape which was not the head of a whale. It was long, with vast jaws, and in them were pointed saws of long white teeth, with which it tore terribly the side of a tremendous bull whale that was nearest. But the bull whale turned and fought him, and there was a vast whirling of foamy water, as the two sea creatures struggled against each other, beating with heads and fins and tails, but the vikings could none the better discern the form of the whale’s enemy.

  “He is a comrade of the ice king,” said Wulf the Skater. “Never before was he seen in these waters. He is somewhat like a snake, but with a vast belly. I saw his head once before, long ago. Ten more were with me in the ship, and we had been long storm-driven. The old men told me much about him.”

  “He could upset a ship,” said Tostig. “I am glad we are here on the ice. But thou mayest have seen another like him.”

  “Not so said the old men,” replied Wulf. “He is alone. There! He showeth again!”

  “I am glad we have seen him,” said Ulric. “But I am more troubled concerning the ice king. See ye not that he is fast melting? I have thought that he is beginning to lean this way. We are drifting, truly, but we do not get away from him. We are his prisoners.”

  They well understood that there might be deadly peril for them in aught that should change the position of the iceberg, but there was naught that they could do, even if sure death were coming. So they preferred to gaze after the herd of whales, and every now and then they thought that they caught fresh glimpses of the monster from the under sea, the terror of all other monsters. Few of them but had heard and could tell old sagas of such creatures, the remnants of the forgotten days, and they agreed that this one was the world-snake that Hilda had sung of as the destroyer.

  “He eateth men joyfully,” said one, “when he can get them.”

  “Hilda said,” replied Ulric, “that he cometh among men no more. He cannot live in any sea that is plowed by the keels of ships. The gods are against him. But now the whales have fled and he hath followed.”

  Then turned they to stare at the ice king, and he seemed as strong as ever. Far away at his right they saw the bears, walking to and fro, and the wind brought from them a sound as if they were moaning.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VI. The Fall of the Ice King.

  WHEN THE SUN AROSE upon the fifth day of the week, the day of Thor, the glittering pinnacles of the ice king still towered high above the floes, and these covered the sea as far as the eye could re
ach. All the white mass was evidently in motion and the drifting was rapid, but it seemed to the vikings as if their danger were striving to push nearer to the ship. She was now lying almost within his reach, if he should choose to strike her—and she was but a very small thing. Her crew, going and coming around her, were but so many specks upon the ice. From her masthead still fluttered bravely out her White Horse banner, and she was yet altogether unharmed, but the rowers were at their places continually.

  A prudent captain was the jarl, for, although the men were impatient, he forbade their going far from the ship. He held them back even when the remaining white bears appeared near the feet of the ice king.

  Knud was almost angry that he was not permitted to go forth and slay them.

  “One man for each bear, Ulric the Jarl,” he said. “It is our right. We may not ever meet them again, and the chance for honor were lost. Thou hast won thy pair of claws.”

  “Thou hast slain bears enough,” said Ulric. “Were I to let thee go, thou mightest perchance be left behind on the ice, or under it. Small honor in that. I promise thee the next chance to get thyself killed fairly.”

  “I obey,” growled the grim old hunter, “for thou art my jarl. But when we return from this cruise I will go with Wulf the Skater into the winter of long night and we will find them there. I will not go to Valhalla until I have slain one as large as thine.”

  “Mind not thy bears now,” responded Ulric. “Seest thou not? Art thou blind?”

  He blew his horn sharply, and all who were on the ice around the ship sprang on board in haste.

  “Mark!” he shouted. “Between us and the foot of the ice king there is a chasm that widens. We know not when the field may break away. Then he will be upon us. Every man at his place this day!”

  They who saw could understand, and there was no more talk of hunting. Even when a white fox came and looked at them, within bowshot, no arrow went after him.