The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) (16 page)

After the eating was finished, the tale-telling began. Jarl Arinbjorn asked Hastein to tell the gathering a story about the campaign in Frankia. "Tell us about the great battle that was fought with the Franks," he requested. "I have heard some stories of it while at King Horik's court, but many here have not. And I would enjoy hearing your account of what happened."

I soon learned another custom that was practiced in Arinbjorn's feast-hall, in addition to that of horn-partners at the high table. Tales were punctuated frequently with toasts.

Hastein was a skilled speaker, and told the story well. To my embarrassment, he began with the night crossing before the battle, and told the gathered host how two lone warriors had swum the cold river in the dark, and had hunted through the forest along the shore, silencing the Franks' sentries so that the Danish army could cross undetected.

"I have not heard this part of the story before," Arinbjorn, who was enjoying the tale greatly, exclaimed. "Who were the two warriors who did this?"

"One was a skilled woodsman from up on the Limfjord," Hastein replied. "His name is Einar." Looking out across the hall, he called, "Stand, Einar, and be recognized."

When Einar stood, Jarl Arinbjorn stood, too, and said, "Well done. I salute you. To Einar," and he raised his horn and drank. The hall echoed with the shouted responses, "To Einar," first by the menfolk, and then by the women.

"And the other?" Arinbjorn asked Hastein.

"He is here at the high table: Halfdan, son of Hrorik."

I had no choice but to stand, and try to keep my face from turning too bright a shade of red as the toasts were drunk to me.

It got worse. Hastein proceeded to tell the tale, spread by Einar, of how the last sentry had been hidden from us in a spot where we could not get close enough to kill him with our knives. "But Halfdan here has, without question, the greatest skill with a bow that I have ever seen," Hastein continued. "When it proved impossible to kill this final sentry with a blade, he, in the dark of night, amid the deep shadows of the forest, shot an arrow into the center of the Frank's head"—Hastein touched his forefinger to his forehead as he spoke—"killing the man instantly."

An awed-sounding murmur spread across the hall. Asny was staring at me now as if she'd suddenly found herself seated beside someone entirely different.

"How did you do that?" Arinbjorn asked me. "How did you make such a shot in the dark?"

Unable to think of a better answer, I told the truth. "It was not skill on my part," I replied. "It was an accident. I was aiming for the Frank's chest. But at the moment I released my arrow, he tripped and fell backwards. It was luck, not skill, that I hit him at all."

There was silence for a long moment, then the hall erupted with laughter. I could feel my face turning red. Arinbjorn raised his horn, chuckling, and toasted, "To your luck, then. Sometimes that is better to have than skill."

After the toast was drunk, echoed, and drunk again, one of Arinbjorn's captains, who was among those sitting at the high table, suggested, "Surely there were two sets of luck at play there. Halfdan's good luck, and the Frank's bad." Again the feast-hall erupted with laughter.

Hastein's narration of the battle itself was skillful, and by the time he reached the place in the tale where the Franks were breaking through our line, and his own standard and that of Ragnar were at risk, the listeners in the hall were hanging on his every word.

"At that moment," he said, in a muted voice, "I have no doubt that the Norns were holding the threads of my life in their hands—mine, and many others among our army— weighing whether the time had come to cut them. But it was not my fate to die that day, on that field of battle deep in Frankia. For Halfdan—he who is also known as Strongbow—positioned himself on the hillside behind the two standards. And with his bow, he struck down the Franks who had broken through the shield wall in front of me, and he slew the Frankish warrior who had driven Ragnar to the ground and was hacking at his Raven banner. The arrows of Odin himself are no more deadly than those shot by Strongbow that day."

Cheers rang through the hall, followed by many toasts—to me, to my bow and its arrows, to Hastein, to Ragnar, to the Raven banner. Asny had to refill the horn with ale several times. I was thankful we were not drinking mead.

Sigurd leaned across Saeunn—she stroked her fingers through his hair as he did so—and asked me, "In the battle—how many men did you kill?"

It was a question I could not answer. It was not just the amount of ale I had consumed that night, nor even that on the day of the battle, during the charges by the Frankish cavalry against our line, I did not know how many of the Bretons I'd hit had died. In truth, I could not even remember now how many I had hit. But it was more than that. It was what had happened after Ivar had launched his attack on the Frankish army's flank and their warriors had become caught between his force and our main army. We had all closed in around them and had held them trapped, pinned against each other. By then I had long ago run out of arrows and had left my bow up on the hillside. I remember pushing forward with the rest of our warriors against the horses, which were pressed together so tightly they could not move, all the while stabbing, stabbing, and hacking with my sword. When the mounts directly in front of us had all been cleared of their riders, we hacked and cut at them, too, until poor beasts collapsed, while others of our warriors, impatient to kill, clambered across their backs to get at the remaining Franks beyond. All of us—Danes, Franks, and horses—had drenched in blood, and the ground beneath our feet had grown sodden and slippery from it.

"I do not know," I answered. The feast hall faded, and in my mind I saw and smelled the blood again, and heard the screams. "I do not know."

"Was it more than ten? More than twenty?"

I truly did not know. The butchering had gone on for a long time. "Perhaps. Probably," I replied.

"I have never killed a man," Sigurd said. He sounded disappointed. "You killed a man in a duel, also, did you not? In Frankia?"

I nodded my head. "Yes. I did."

By now Hastein was finishing his tale of the great battle. Arinbjorn stood, wobbling a bit as he did, and addressed the hall, many of whose occupants were by now looking bleary-eyed from the many toasts that had been drunk.

"We all thank Jarl Hastein for his fine telling of the great victory of our Danish warriors over the Franks. It would be good to hear more tales of the campaign, but the hour grows late, and the ale has been freely flowing. Let us all away to our beds. The feast is ended."

I, for one, was glad. As the evening had worn on, I had tried to pace my drinking, taking only modest swallows for many of the toasts, but nevertheless I felt unsteady on my feet as I stood up from the bench. Asny, too, seemed affected by the quantity of ale we had shared, and rocked backward when she stood. Fearing she might lose her balance and fall, I reached out and grabbed her arm above the elbow, pulling her upright and toward me to steady her.

Sigurd, who clearly had not paced himself at all during the toasting, misjudged my action.

"No, Halfdan," he slurred. "She is well-born and marriageable. That is why her father encourages her to be a horn partner at Arinbjorn's feasts. If you want a woman for your bed this night, I will send a thrall to you."

Asny's face turned a deep shade of red. "I am sorry," she murmured to me. "I know you did not intend…"

"It is of no consequence," I told her. "I am glad I did not give you offence. And I thank you for your company this evening."

As she hurried away, I turned to Sigurd. He was leaning on Saeunn, one arm draped over her shoulders, one of her arms around his waist. "Well?" he asked. "Shall I?"

If I were to say yes, would you even know the name of the girl you sent to my bed, I wondered?  Would you care at all how she might feel, being ordered to submit to the pleasures of a man she had never seen before? I found myself suddenly intensely disliking Sigurd.

With difficulty, I reminded myself what Hastein expected of me. I must at all times act like a man who could be a chieftain, a leader of men. That surely included wearing a lying face, to avoid making an enemy of the son of a rich and powerful man.

"I thank you," I told him. "You are very kind. But I am very weary, and this night I wish to find nothing more in my bed than sleep."

"In the morning," Sigurd called, as I was walking away, "perhaps we will shoot bows together."

*   *   *

The day meal served the next morning in Arinbjorn's hall was a simple, informal affair. Two large pots of hot barley porridge were suspended by chains over glowing coals at one end of the large central hearth, tended by a stout woman with graying hair. As the folk of the estate and the guests awoke, they stumbled outside to the privies, relieved themselves, washed, and made their way to the hearth. There a thrall handed out pottery bowls and wooden spoons, and the gray-haired cook filled the bowls with porridge. Thick slices of dense rye bread were available, too, and a soft cheese to spread on them.

Despite the night's sleep, my mind still did not feel completely clear from the effects of too many toasts. I felt thankful again that Jarl Arinbjorn had not chosen to serve mead at his feast to honor Hastein's visit. At least my head, though foggy, did not throb.

I had taken my food back to the location where I had slept last night on one of the longhouse's long wall-benches, using my cloak as bedding. The porridge was having a soothing effect on my stomach. I found the bread somewhat dry, but I'd spread enough of the soft, runny cheese on it to make it easier to swallow. I was completely absorbed by the meal—enjoying thinking about nothing more than the taste and feel of the food in my mouth and belly, and ignoring the sights and sounds of the hall around me—when a voice broke through my reverie.

"Ah! There you are. I have been looking for you."

It was Sigurd. He looked surprisingly fresh and alert, considering his condition when I had last seen him. He was holding a bow in his left hand and a quiver of arrows in his right. The sight of them brought back to me his parting words the night before.

"Do you have your bow with you, or is it on your jarl's ship?"

Thanks to Hastein's insistence the day before, I had it with me. I jerked my hand with its thumb extended back over my shoulder, indicating where my bow, quiver, and sword were lying along the wall, at the back edge of the bench. "It is there," I said, after managing to swallow the mouthful of bread and cheese filling my mouth.

I had no wish to shoot with Sigurd. In truth, I had no wish to spend any further time at all in his company. He struck me as spoiled and arrogant, and completely unlike the two men who were his brothers. But I could see no way to courteously decline.

"Where do you shoot?" I asked.

"There is a large butt of rolled hay which we use for a target," he replied. "It is not very far from the longhouse."

Perhaps this was not a bad thing after all. I had had little opportunity of late to shoot my bow. Since the capture of Paris, I had shot it in practice only once, briefly, with Tore at Hastein's estate during our layover there. A longbow is not a weapon that can be shot both infrequently and well.

Sigurd sat down beside me on the wall-bench while I hurriedly finished my porridge and bread. "Do you know my brothers, Ivar and Bjorn?" he asked.

I nodded. "We have met."

The brevity of my answer seemed to leave Sigurd momentarily at a loss for words. He overcame it.

"I had two other brothers," he said. "Eric and Agnar. They were born to Father's first wife, Thora. She died. Eric and Agnar are dead now, too. They tried to conquer the Svear kingdom and take its throne, but King Eystein defeated and killed them."

This seemed a strange thing to volunteer to someone almost a stranger. "I did not know that," I replied, for lack of a better response. A desire to acquire a kingdom seemed to run in this family. It was certainly a hunger that afflicted Ragnar. I glanced sideways at Sigurd, wondering if he, too, wished to someday become a king. When I did, I noticed again that there was something strange about his right eye.

"You are staring at my eye," Sigurd said.

"What is wrong with it?" I asked.

"Nothing. It is the sign of the serpent. I am called Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye because of it. My mother, Kraka, says it means that I have the spirit of a dragon within me, and that I am marked for greatness."

It sounded like something a mother might say. There was a red line, sort of a wiggle, across the bottom of the colored center of his eye, but I would not have thought it to be a serpent.

"I am finished," I said. I stood and slung the long strap of my quiver over my left shoulder so that its arrows hung at my right hip. Draping my cloak over my arm, and picking up my sword and bow, I told Sigurd, "Take me to the butt."

It was a warm day, and a number of the folk of the household, as well as many of the members of our two crews, were standing or seated around the yard outside of the longhouse, enjoying the sunshine. Hastein and Arinbjorn were there, too, speaking together, and Torvald, Hrodgar, and Stig were standing nearby. As we passed them, Hastein called out to me, "Do not go far. One of Arinbjorn's captains did see the two ships we are seeking. He will be here soon."

Before I could answer, Sigurd announced in a loud voice, "We are just going to the archery butt. Halfdan and I are going to shoot bows together."

"I would like to see that," Arinbjorn told Hastein. "From what you have said, his skill is remarkable."

Unfortunately, the prospect of entertainment when there was nothing else to do prompted most of those who were out in front of the longhouse to follow as well. I noticed that Gudfred, Floki, and Baug from the estate were among them.

I had just hoped to get in a little practice with my bow. Having an audience to watch me shoot was bad enough.  Torvald found a way to make it worse.

"Jarl Arinbjorn," he said. "Are any of your men especially skilled with the bow? Perhaps they could shoot against Halfdan."