Swords From the Sea (30 page)

"That," assented Brand, "is easy to say."

Kristi gazed at him as if trying to see what was beneath the skin and hard bones of him. "What makes you so strange?" she asked.

"A tale," said Brand, "that I have no mind to tell you, little Kristi. Yet I will tell how once I served the Emperor of Constantinople, where even the palace guards wore gold helmets. A magician there was-"

Kristi got up with dignity. "You are hateful to me now, and I will never let you touch my hair again."

"Not even," Brand smiled suddenly, "if I hang your mittens on a sunbeam to dry?"

"There's no sun," Kristi pointed out. Then she stamped her foot angrily. "Oh, you will not mock me!"

She went away into her hut and shut the door. Brand turned over on his back and looked at the sky, through which the pale sun gleamed for a while. Then he rolled up in his bearskin and went to sleep.

But Fighting Mord sat on the bench under the hang of the afterdeck with Sir Ranulf beside him. They were drinking beer and between his knees Fighting Mord had an open sea chest. "Do you not see," he said, "how fair your young sister has grown? If she had fitting garments and gold to deck her, she would be the match of any woman."

"That," uttered Ranulf, "I did not know."

"Well, here is a silk dress and here is an embroidered cloak, with red slippers. Give them to her, with this gold arm ring-" the Viking lifted a small band of fine red gold-"for I have a mind to her. Are you willing that it should come to a match between us?"

Ranulf felt amazed. For Fighting Mord was a man of mark in Norway, a leader in the wars, with threescore swords to follow him, and rich lands to his name. It seemed good to Ranulf, for the sake of his wealth, that Kristi should wed so strong a man. "Right gladly," he cried.

"Did you think I had come upon this cruise merely to smell the western sea? Give Kristi the presents, and when we come to a town, then you and I will lay down the terms of the match. Until then I shall look to Kristi's safety myself, and I will deal with any man who seeks to beguile her."

Well content, Ranulf called for fresh beer. But a serf came running, stopping beneath the deck. "Listen, my masters," the man cried. "The gulls!"

So it happened that Sir Ranulf had other things on his mind than Kristi for many days. When he went up to the open deck, he saw gray gulls circling and screaming about the masthead-gulls that must have come from some shore. The clouds had thinned to a light haze; the sea gleamed blue under a mild sun. And soon they saw the white surf along a coast on the starboard beam.

"Land!" cried the seafarers.

The sky cleared and they saw the new land, level and dark with forest growth. Late that day when the sea had calmed, they came abreast the mouth of a fiord. Into this Sir Ranulf steered his ship, for he could not find a better place for a landfall.

"It is like," he told Fighting Mord, "we shall find a settlement on this fiord."

When they were in it, they lowered the sail and all hands took to the oars. They rowed the ship slowly up the narrow channel, where the walls of the forest drew ever closer upon either side, while the gulls clamored overhead. The branches of the trees nearly met above the mast when, after sunset, the forest wall fell away and the ship came through into a lake red with the last sunset fires. They could smell the odor of ferns and forest mold from the shore. Then Sir Ranulf ordered the anchor stone to be dropped, and he rowed ashore in the aft-boat.

That evening they gathered wood and cooked salt meat in a pot on shore and Kristi baked hot bread. For twenty and eight days they had lived upon dried fish and hard bread, so they feasted well. After they had done that, Kristi watched the bright stars mirrored in the still lake, and she thought this place fair enough to be the home of the gods.

The next morning the men were eager to explore the surrounding country, and Kristi occupied herself with making a bower out of pine branches while the serfs brought the animals ashore. The gaunt cows and the hungry goats went at once into a meadow where golden wheat grew rank. Kristi wondered who had planted that wheat, and she wondered more when the men came back at nightfall without having found a trace of any habitation. But Fighting Mord had slain an antlered buck with an arrow, and they had fresh meat to eat.

"By Thor's thunder," he laughed, "I did not know this Green Land bred such game."

Brand had brought in a strip of strange bark as long as his arm. On the outside it was the hue of gray silver; it was all of one piece that could be bent and rolled and it smelled sweet-as did the entire forest of this lake-yet it was thin as well-woven linen.

"Now I have been in many lands of the earth," he said, "and I have never seen until now the silver tree from which this bark comes."

"What good is it?" demanded Kristi contemptuously.

Brand, the far-wandering man, shook his head. "It may be a sign." Kneeling, he scratched with a twig upon the ground as if seeking for a message out of runes. "They said in Ice Land that we would find bare rocky heights and bare fields rising from the sea's edge in Green Land. Now here we have found no fiord but a river. Aye, the lake water is fresh and sweet. Here is a lofty forest and standing grain that was never sown. Here is bark from an unknown tree. So, it seems to me that we have come to some unknown land."

"What land could it be," retorted Mord, "except Green Land, or perhaps an island?"

"It is not an island."

Ranulf nudged Mord and whispered, "Let be, the man is fey. He may have the gift of seeing what is to be."

The next day he remembered to give Kristi the presents from Fighting Mord, and the girl carried them off to her bower, to lay them on her knee and run her fingers over the fine texture. After a while she fetched a small keg of water from the lake and washed herself from head to foot, and put on the new garments reverently. The shoes were a little big, and after she had studied herself in the bronze mirror she got out her comb and combed smooth her unruly hair, plaiting it into two long tresses after the manner of the great ladies she had seen. Then she walked slowly through the camp.

All the seamen and the Vikings stared admiringly, but Kristi kept on until she found Brand. Then, when he said nothing, she felt her cheeks grow hot with a rush of blood.

"Don't-don't you think they are pretty?"

His eyes smiled at her. "The garments are pretty, little Kristi. But you are no lovelier by reason of them."

She felt hurt, and turned away from him, running back to her bower, apart from the camp. Hastily she took off the new things and put on her old dress. She was undoing her hair when a shadow fell over her and Brand came and sat by her. In his two closed hands he held something.

"This," he said, "is an ornament that was worn once by a princess in Constantinople. She was lovely as the starlit night, but you are like the dawn in the sky. Now take it."

He showed her what was in his hands-a slender necklet of linked gold in which were set square stones that gleamed with blue fire. Pushing back the mass of her hair, he placed it about her bare throat and snapped the clasp. Then he looked long at the flushed girl.

"But this is a-treasure," she whispered. "Why did you put it upon me?"

"Because," he said, and stopped, hearing the tread of feet nearby, "because you are fairer than the sapphires that were chosen among the jewels of an empire, and the beaten gold of the master smiths loses its luster upon your breast, Kristi. It is yours, because the body of me aches by reason of your beauty." And he bent over to kiss her opened hand, which trembled when he touched it.

Then he stood up to face Mord and Ranulf, who had followed him to the bower. "All this," he said, "cannot be helped. What have you to say?"

His face black with rage, Fighting Mord leaned down and clutched at the necklet on the girl's throat. But the clasp held, and the girl bit her lip to hold back an exclamation of pain. Before the Viking could wrench it away, he felt the touch of Brand's hand on his shoulder and turned.

"Now," he said between set teeth, "I will cut the life out of thee for coming in my way."

Brand took up the great ax that he had leaned against the girl's bower and he walked beside Fighting Mord out to some clear ground beyond sight of the camp. Then he stood still, leaning on his double ax head, looking at Mord's Vikings who had wind of the quarrel and had come up to see the weapon-play. "Ho," he said, "the ravens gather to the man-slaying." He walked to the nearest tree, an old oak. Swinging up his great ax, he whirled it around his head with one hand until the steel whined in the air. Then he struck it deep into the tree trunk. "Pull it away if you can, little men," he told the stalwart Vikings.

"Hark you to this," he said to Fighting Mord. "I am a Berserk of Berserker blood."

And Fighting Mord growled deep in his throat, gripping his iron sword hilt. For the Berserks were wild fighters. Before a battle they cast off their clothing except for the bearskins, and they went into the weapon-play as other men to a feast. Aye, they wooed the kiss of the Valkyrie maidens and they fed the wolf packs with blood. They did not stop until they were slain.

"Berserk, or common man," he snarled, "it is all one to me."

"In a day of the past," chanted Brand, his eyes glowing, "I followed the war bands from sea to sea in the long ships. One comrade lived to join the guard of the Emperor with me. At this time we both drank deep of wine and we looked about us for fighting. One night in the taverns we quarreled when we were out of our minds and we took to the swords. I cut his skull open, and slew this one ship's mate of mine. Then I took oath that never would I bear sword again and never would I lift weapon in brawl or quarrel. I took what I had of gold and gear and I wandered from land to land to find that one wherein I would be at peace. Now I think we have come to a new land unknown to our gods."

He looked at the high forest ruddy with autumn's gold. "This is not like other lands; and I have a fear and a foreboding. Thou or I must safeguard this maiden. If we take to the weapons we may both find our deaths, or you alone. Now it has come to this between us, that neither can abide by the other in the same place. So I will take food and a pot and fire in it. I will go off alone and seek for other men, or some sign of what this land hath in store for us. But you will not lay hand upon Kristi, or I will come to know of it." He turned on his heel and went to the oak. There the other Vikings had been trying, one after the other, to free the ax. With a crooked grin Brand watched until the last wrestled with it, the veins standing out on the man's bare arms.

When he had done and the ax was still fast in the tree, Brand walked up to it. Clasping both hands on the end of the shaft, he thrust up quickly and then pulled down. The steel squeaked shrill in the wood and the ax came away in his hands.

Going back to the camp, Brand filled a sack with salt and meal. He put embers from the fire into a small iron pot and covered them with moss and dried wood. Then he rolled the sack with his bearskin into his leather sleeping bag, took the ax on his shoulder, the pot on his arm.

"Why do you go, Brand?" Kristi asked him. The men had told her he was faring away into the forest.

He smiled down at her. "To look for a star to set in your hair, little Kristi."

Again she was angry with him, but now she felt an ache in her heart. "Will you be coming back, Brand?"

"If you will be wanting me."

He strode off into the forest then, and Sir Ranulf said after supper that surely the red giant was fey. "It is clearly to be known from his talk of stars and an unknown land where the gods have not set foot."

But the next day a serf came in to the lake shore with wine berries that he had plucked from vines in a clearing. Sir Ranulf knew that wine berries did not grow in Ice Land or Green Land.

They talked much of those wine berries. Kristi gathered many and crushed them, to make a sweet, strong drink of the juice, and the men said that while it was not like beer, it was well enough. Then Fighting Mord proposed to Sir Ranulf that he and his Vikings take the ship back to the sea and cruise south along the coast, to seek a settlement before the first great storm of the winter closed the sea to them.

When he had gone, Kristi felt more at peace. Her brother told her how Mord had said he would make an offer for her when they reached a settlement. It excited her that a man of mark should have made such a proposal; at the same time she was frightened.

She liked to wander alone in the forest, while Ranulf's seamen and serfs built a long house out of hewn logs and turf against the need of winter. The forest had clad itself in a rich mantle of fallen leaves except where the somber pine trees stood. Kristi saw many deer flitting away, but no reindeer. She watched the two cows and the sheep feeding in the last of the wild wheat, and she helped the younger men bring in grain and ferns for winter feed. She thought that this was a kindly land, although silent.

Then Fighting Mord came back with the ship. He had found no settlement or sign of living men. Yet once he had seen smoke in a clear sky and the ship had passed along wide white beaches of sand. Reluctantly he and Ranulf agreed that this could not be the coast of Green Land.

It disturbed them because they both felt near them the presence of other living beings. How else had the wild grain and the wine berries come there? And in the forest, along the animal trails, they had come upon pointed tracks shaped like human feet, yet different from the imprint of good Norse feet. And soon the presence made itself known beyond doubt.

After the first hard frost and a light fall of snow, one of the sheep disappeared. It vanished whole from the grazing flock without trace of blood, so a wolf could not have taken it off. Ranulf set an armed guard over the animals. In spite of this another sheep vanished. And one of the seamen who had gone into the forest to search for it did not come back.

That night a good ash plank disappeared from the very door of the house. It was then that the great snow came. For three days it raged around them with a fury that amazed the Norsemen.