The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) (10 page)

In front of me, Tore's broad back rocked back and forth with each stroke. "Ha!" he exclaimed. "We are pulling ahead!"

I glanced sideways as I rowed, and saw that it was true. Although the
Serpent
had gotten underway before us, now—bit by bit—the
Gull
was edging ahead. Aboard the
Serpent
, Stig had changed his own cadence chant from "pull, pull" to "harder, harder." But it was to no avail. The
Gull
was a very fast ship—faster than the
Serpent
. And I could see, glancing over my shoulder, that we were almost abreast of the headland that marked the mouth of the fjord.

From behind me, somewhere amidships by the sound of his voice, Hastein called, while Torvald still chanted the cadence, "Rowers…ready…."  Then in unison, he and Torvald gave the order: "Raise oars!"

As I pushed the handle of my oar down, holding its blade well above the surface of the water, I could feel the
Gull
's hull flex and twist as she sliced through the low swells that marked the beginning of the open sea.

"Well done! Well done, my brothers," Hastein exclaimed.

A ragged cheer rose from the crew, as the
Serpent
glided up beside us. Stig, standing in the stern at her steer-board, shook his head. "For certain, the
Gull
deserves her name," he said. Pulling a coin from the pouch at his belt, he flipped it across the space between the two ships.

Hastein grinned as he reached up and caught it. "It was a close race," he answered. "Rowers, stow your oars. Let us spread the
Gull
's wings, so she can ride the wind."

While the crew members who had not been rowing readied and raised the sail, the rest of us returned our oars to their racks. As he slid his oar into place, the younger of the two villagers said to me, "My name is Bram. And this"— he indicated his comrade—"is Skuli. We are from the village near Hrorik's estate. We both sailed with him to England, in the early spring of this year."

It was apparent that neither of them recognized who I was.  They thought me just one of Jarl Hastein's men, nothing more. In truth, there was no reason they should have known me. If either of these two had ever visited Hrorik's estate during the years I was a slave, I did not remember seeing them, and they certainly would not have noticed or remembered a young thrall. And during the brief time when I had lived as a free man on the estate—the weeks between Hrorik's funeral and the ill-fated voyage up to the farm on the Limfjord—there had been little contact between the folk of the estate and those of the village.

"Welcome to the crew of the
Gull
," I answered. "My name is Halfdan."

Watching their faces, I could see that at first my name meant nothing to them. I could also see, after a few moments, when it did. The young one, Bram, realized first.

"You are… you are Hrorik's…."he stammered, searching for the correct words.

"Hrorik's bastard? I am."

His companion, Skuli, sniggered, but Bram looked embarrassed and turned his face away for a moment, saying nothing. The gesture made me realize why he'd looked familiar to me. I'd seen him do the same, once before.

"Your father and brother also sailed on the voyage with Hrorik to England, did they not?" I asked.

Bram looked surprised. "Yes," he said, nodding his head.

"But they did not return."

"My father, Krok, was killed in the battle with the English. My brother was wounded. He died on the voyage home."

I remembered how his mother had wailed when she had learned of their deaths. Why did you join this voyage? I wondered. Toke is not
your
enemy. Why do you not stay with your family?

*   *   *

The wind held steady out of the northwest all day, leaving most of us aboard the
Gull
with little to do. We sailed south after leaving the coast of Jutland, and by late morning the island of Samso came into view off the bow.  At first Torvald closely skirted its coastline, keeping the low profile of the land visible off our steer-board side, bearing south and east along it, until the shoreline of the island began to gradually fall away toward the west, and we headed due south again.

At noon, Hastein took over the steer-board to give Torvald a chance to sit and rest his legs. Torvald, Tore, Storolf, and Asbjorn pulled their sea chests into a loose circle and sat on them, passing the time by rolling dice to see whose luck was the stronger. I pulled my own chest close and sat on it, watching. Torvald threw the highest roll the most often. He was lucky with dice. Tore, on the other hand was not, at least not this day. He rolled the lowest more than any of the others, and after a time it made him morose.

"Do you think it is true?" he suddenly asked. "What that woman said? Was the sacrifice rejected by the gods?"

"Our sacrifice was not rejected," Hastein said, from where he stood back on the stern deck.

"There was nothing wrong with the sacrifice." Torvald agreed. "You were just clumsy, but that is nothing new.  If your clumsiness so angered the gods that they would kill us all for it, we would be long dead."

Tore glared at him. Turning to me, he asked, "You know that woman, Halfdan. Does she see things before they happen? Does she have the second sight? Or is she a witch? Did she curse us?"

My mother had possessed the sight. She sometimes saw things that had not yet happened in our world. She had known of Hrorik's return from England, and that he was dying, before his ship had reached the estate. But that had nothing to do with Tore's question.

I shook my head. "Gunhild is just a bitter and angry woman. She wishes ill on others, and hopes to see it happen. But she has no power to make it so."

"But what if it
was
an omen?" Tore persisted. "What if the woman spoke the truth about that? What if we are all going to die?"

"Of course she spoke the truth," Torvald said. "We
are
all going to die. It is the only sure thing in our lives, from the day we are born."

Storolf and Asbjorn began laughing. Even Hastein, up on the stern deck, smiled.

"You are mocking me," Tore snapped, and pushing his sea chest aside, he strode angrily toward the bow of the ship.

Torvald shook his head, watching him go. "Tore is much changed since Odd died. He has lost his laughter, and sees signs and portents everywhere."

Signs and portents. The words caused a shiver to run down my spine. Harald had spoken those same words, the first night of our voyage up to the Limfjord. We had seen a star fall from the sky, and he had said that some believed such events foretold the death of a great man. A few nights later he was dead, slain by Toke and his men.

"Do you not believe that sometimes there truly are signs to see?" I asked. "That sometimes there are warnings of things to come?"

Torvald shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. What does it matter? I myself would not wish to see such signs. It would be a great woe to know in advance of your own death. Every man must die, and no one can avoid death when his time is come. It is all in the hands of the Norns. It does no good to worry what the morrow will bring. What will be will be."

*   *   *

By midafternoon we left the southern tip of Samso astern, and as Hastein swung the
Gull
to head due east, we hauled on the braces and sheets, pivoting the sail to keep the wind behind it. The
Gull
tended to heel over with the wind blowing from more directly off her side, so we slid our sea chests to her high side, and stood or sat there to help balance her. But the sea remained calm, and still we made good time.

We made landfall—a narrow promontory jutting out from the western coast of Sjaelland—in the late afternoon.

"We have made good progress this day," Hastein said. "We will break our voyage here tonight, and on the morrow, if we have fair wind again, we should be able to make our way down the great belt, and hopefully beyond."

Sjaelland—the island of the Danish kings. I had been here once before, when Hastein had sailed from Hedeby to hold council with King Horik and other great chieftains of the realm, including Ragnar Logbrod. It was then that the decision had been reached to carry war to the Franks. Was it truly just earlier this same year?

The tip of the promontory ahead of us loomed over the sea, higher than the mast of the
Gull
, its sides falling off sharply down to a narrow, rocky beach below. When we drew closer, I could see a small building atop the point, and beside it, what looked to be a large pile of brush and wood. As I watched, three men came out of the building and pointed in our direction.

"Watchers," Torvald said. "King Horik's men." He turned toward the stern, where Hastein was standing, also staring at the men. "Hastein?" he asked.

Hastein nodded. "Aye," he said. "Show the peace-shields. Though I do not think they would light the beacon for just two ships."

Torvald went forward and unfastened two shields, each painted solid white, from where they had been secured in the peak of the bow, below the carved, brightly painted dragon's head that topped the
Gull
's front stem post. He lashed one on either side of the dragon's head, covering its fierce visage and showing that we came in peace.

Hastein steered the
Gull
closer to shore as we passed below the watch-post. Torvald pulled the tall standard pole down from the overhead rack, stripped off its cover, and— stepping back to the stern deck to stand beside Hastein— raised the standard so that Hastein's Gull banner rippled back and forth in the breeze above him. Up on the cliff, one of the guards raised his arm overhead, waving in acknowledgement and greeting, and Hastein did the same in reply.

The finger of land we were passing formed the north side of a broad bay. Hastein steered the
Gull
south now across its mouth, toward a second peninsula that jutted out from the big island's mainland, framing the bay on its south side.

"Where will we stop for the night?" Tore asked him.

"The north shore here is steep and its beach rocky, but there is a spot along the south shore of the bay, near its mouth, where the bottom is smooth and shallow enough for a good anchorage close to the beach," Hastein replied. After we'd sailed on for a short time, crossing most of the distance across to the far side of the bay, he called out, in a louder voice, "Prepare to lower sail. Oarsmen, draw your oars."

We rowed a short way along the south shore of the bay, near its mouth, until we found the shallows Hastein was searching for, and anchored the two ships close in and parallel to the shore. With their gangplanks extended from amidships, it was only a short wade through ankle deep water to dry land. Hastein and Stig dispatched four men to stand watch from the heights overlooking our anchorage, while the rest of the members of the
Gull
's and
Serpent
's crews set about the tasks of preparing to camp for the night. Some used the sail and awnings to pitch tent-like covers over the ships' decks, for shelter to sleep under. Others scattered ashore, searching for firewood. I elected to help Hastein's thrall, Cullain, prepare the evening meal, as did Tore, Storolf, and Gudfred from the estate.

Cullain and the cook for the
Serpent
's crew, a stocky, balding carl named Regin, set up their tripods on the beach and hung large iron cook-pots, half-filled with fresh water, from them. As our scavengers began piling the wood they found nearby, Tore and Gudfred used small-axes to chop up the larger branches and stacked the cut pieces beside the tripods, while Storolf and Regin laid fires beneath the cauldrons and lit the tender with sparks from their flint and steel.

I helped Cullain butcher the ram that had served as our sacrificial offering that morning, while nearby Regin began chopping carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas on a slab of wood. As he filled up the surface of the board with diced vegetables, he would sweep them into the two pots, then grab another handful and begin chopping again.

Cullain had gutted the ram early in the day, to keep the meat from spoiling. Most of the offal he'd tossed overboard as we were sailing, but he'd reserved the heart and liver. We laid the ram on its back on the beach—its body had stiffened, making it somewhat awkward to work with—then with Cullain working on one side, and I the other, we slit the skin down the neck and chest and along each leg, and began working the hide loose from the body. Spreading the flayed hide out on the ground, bloody side up, we used it as a working surface to cut the carcass into sections on.

By now both ships were tented. Most of the crew members who'd help set the shelters came ashore, and having nothing better to do, several gathered around where we were working, to watch. Torvald was among them, as were two brothers named Bjorgolf and Bryngolf, who rowed in the
Gull
's bow. Hastein's men called them the ravens, perhaps because both had coal-black hair and beards, or possibly because they were twins, and looked so much alike it was difficult to tell them apart. Like Storolf, they had remained behind in Jutland to guard Hastein's lands during the Frankia campaign, and had only joined the
Gull
's crew on our return to Denmark, to replace men lost fighting the Franks.

"I want all of the meat cut off of the bones," Cullain told me. "All that we can. We will cut it into small pieces, like this," he added, making a circle with his thumb and finger to show me. "We are starting this stew late in the day, and will need it to cook as quickly as possible."

We had already cut all of the muscles off of the neck, and had separated the front and rear legs from the carcass. Storolf and Tore began cutting the large sections of muscle from the neck into small chunks, as Cullain had instructed, adding them by handfuls to the cauldrons.

Cullain was using a knife to separate the sections of muscle from one of the rear legs and free them from the bone, tossing the bloody pieces of meat into a heap on a clear area of the hide as he cut them free. I had skinned and butchered many beasts while a thrall, and had come to think of myself as more adept than most at the task. But watching the speed with which Cullain turned the carcass of the ram into cleanly trimmed portions of meat, with quick cuts of the small, sharp knife he wielded and no wasted motion made me feel clumsy and unskilled.