The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson (6 page)

In one of the harvest fields the barley was already cut and stacked; in the others it still stood, whitening
under the footsteps of the wind, waiting for the sickle. On Barra the main work of the fields and cattle-garths was done by thralls, but at harvest time, with the longships back from their summer sea-faring, everybody lent a hand. Tomorrow, Bjarni thought, with a seaman’s content at being back on land, he would take his turn with the sickle among the dry hushing masses of the grain.

Thara Priestsdaughter was already out of his mind.

There were strangers in the Hall that night, the crew of a small trading vessel out from Kintyre. But in the constant coming and going among the islands there was nothing unusual in that. Bjarni saw them on the guest benches, but took no particular notice of them, as he set to work on the great trenchers of oatcake and salt fish, laverbread and ewe-milk cheese on the trestle boards before him. Outside the wind had begun to rise, blowing up into one of the great westerlies that sent the steep seas pounding onto the beaches from the world’s end. The wicker shutters had been pegged across the small high windows, to add their strength to the panes of stretched membrane which were prone to burst like an eardrum under too much pressure when the gale blew from that quarter. But the wind came in through every chink and cranny, the skin rugs and the painted sail-cloth hangings on the walls billowed out, and in the draught-teased flamelight of the torches and the long central hearth the painted dragon-knots on the sail-cloth seemed to stir on the edge of life.

Something, a piece of torn-off thatch from one of the outhouses maybe, came floundering across the roof, and for the second time that day, Bjarni’s mind went back to Evynd’s Hall, over a year ago. ‘Another troll-woman riding the roof-ridge,’ he thought.

Almost, he said it to Sven Gunnarson sitting beside him, Sven Gunnarson with an arm that was as good as new, but who still had a bony lump just above the elbow to show for that night’s work. Almost, but not quite. Sven’s neighbour on the other side said it instead, and got a handful of boiled fish and laverbread ground into his face to teach him that the joke was stale.

A moment more, and it would have come to fighting; one of those small snarling scraps that broke out sometimes in Hall among the men on the benches as among the dogs under the tables, and Bjarni was just making ready to join in. But in that moment a girl’s voice between laughter and exasperation said, ‘Salt fish needs good ale to wash it down,’ and a thin yellow stream descended on the heads of first Sven and then his neighbour. They fell apart like dogs separated by a pail of cold water, shaking their heads and spluttering. And glancing up, Bjarni saw that the girl standing over them with an ale jar poised in her hand was Aesa, the daughter of Aflaeg the Hall Chieftain.

As always a certain resentment rose in him at sight of her, not against anything in the girl herself, but because she was betrothed to Onund Treefoot, with the bride-ale set for that autumn as soon as the harvesting was over. And surely nothing would ever be quite the same between Onund and his ship-carles once he had a wife to come home to – and one almost young enough to be his daughter at that – though of course all men knew that the chief purpose of the mating was the bonding together of the Barra fleet. But seeing her standing there, her face laughing but determined, he had to admit to himself that not many of the girls sitting on the cross-bench or carrying round the ale-jars would have headed straight into the centre of a threatening dogfight on the
warrior-benches and broken up the trouble before it could start.

Aesa turned and went her way. Sven’s neighbour was wiping dark green laverbread out of his eye amid a general burst of laughter, and supper went on.

It was not until the eating was over, and the strangers on the guest benches had been properly filled, that Aflaeg in the High Seat raised his great silver-bound horn to drink to them, demanding of their captain, ‘What news from the seaways and the landing-beaches?’ the customary question asked of all strangers, though it was only a few days since the Barra longships had returned from their own summer sea-faring.

The captain raised his own cup in reply, and answered across the Hall, ‘You have na’ heard, then?’

‘What is there to hear?’

‘That Vigibjord and Vestnor are in these waters.’

There was a sudden silence in which everybody seemed to crane a little closer, and the booming of the sea grew very loud.

‘So-o-o,’ said Aflaeg softly into his greying beard, as he set down his ale-horn, ‘this is sure? No mere wind-blown tale?’

‘As to that . . .’ growled the merchant captain with feeling, ‘Findhorn has been raided, and the God-House gold; and the people gathered to some festival of their god carried off for the slave market. And the word is already along the coast up from the south that ’tis them and their fleet. We barely escaped them off Colonsay. Only got clear, I reckon, because they were heavy with loot and weeping captives.’

Onund, who had been silently gazing into the depth of his drink horn, looked up and asked quietly in a voice which Bjarni had never heard from him before,
a voice with fur on it, but none the less terrible for that, ‘Vigibjord and Vestnor?’

‘The word is for both brothers,’ said the merchant.

‘How many ships?’

‘The word is for eight, when they come all together.’

‘Quite like old times,’ said Onund, with a kind of laughter like the cold flicker of sea-fire at the long corners of his mouth. He drained his drink horn and held it up.

‘More ale! My throat is as dry as the salted cod.’

The girl Aesa brought the ale-jar and poured for him. And a great roar of voices broke out; men baying for the hunt, shouting for an autumn sea-faring, men calling that the ships could not be ready for sea again in less than half a moon, one old blind warrior who lived in the warmest corner of the Hall lifting up a quavering voice to demand why it must be for the Barra fleet again, why could not Red Thorstein of Mull or one of the other sea lords put an autumn fleet to sea. But it was only Fredi White, and all men knew that age had made him foolish, so no one even troubled to answer him.

Under cover of their voices Bjarni turned to Orlig Anderson, the oldest and most full of knowledge of Onund’s ship-carles, who sat beside him, his face at the moment hidden in the ale-jack they were sharing between them, and asked, ‘Who are they?’

Orlig took his face out of the ale-jack. ‘Who are who?’

‘Vigibjord and Vestnor?’

‘Old enemies. They used to come raiding along the Irish coast before Evynd Easterner took on the defences.’

‘That would be a good while back?’

‘A good while – when Onund had two sound legs under him, in our own sea-raiding days.’ He wiped
the back of his hand across his mouth, and held the jack out to Bjarni. ‘These waters weren’t big enough for the three of them then, and I doubt they’re big enough for the three of them now.’

Bjarni drank thoughtfully and returned the ale-jack to the hand that came out for it. ‘It sounded – Onund sounded – as though it was something more. Like a kind of holm-ganging, a duel to the death.’

‘You’re not so witless as you look,’ Orlig told him kindly. ‘Aye well, they never had much care, those two beauties, for the custom that protects merchantmen at sea. They captured a small trader, one time; they had heard there was gold on board, and when they found none, only salt and hides, they sank her and left the crew to drown . . . One of them was Onund’s young brother – younger than you, he’d be.’

‘What did he do? Onund?’

‘Oh, he went after them, of course, when he heard. Thought he’d settled the debt; seems he hadn’t.’ Orlig held the ale-jack high. ‘More drink here!’

In a short while first Thrond and then Thormod, summoned from their own steadings and each with a knot of his own men, came striding into the Hall, throwing off storm-wet cloaks to steam before the fire, and the four sea lords, joined by the merchant captain and young Raud, who captained the fifth longship of the Barra fleet, drew together into a huddle between the High Seat and the fire.

It was not a long council, for clearly all of them were of one mind; and Onund got up, and stood with his drink horn held high, looking round him at the crowded benches and from the benches the crews of the Barra longships,
Sea Witch
and
Wave Rider, Reindeer
and
Red Wolf
and
Star Bear,
looked back at him, knowing that this was a sea-faring and sea-fighting matter, and therefore the leadership was to him.

‘With captives aboard they’ll likely enough be making for the Dublin slave market,’ someone said.

The storm, which had quietened somewhat, came swooping back, filling all the dark world beyond the torchlight with a turmoil of black wings, and Onund lifted his voice against it, reaching to the far end of the Hall. ‘This harvest time it must be for the women and the bairns with the thralls to cut and carry home the sheaves – whatever the harvest is worth that the wind and rain have left to us. For the longships of Barra there is fine hunting down the Dublin sea, maybe a kill waiting to be made.’

And tipping back his head he drank long and deep from the silver-circled horn, as men drink to an oath that has been made. A roar went up from the warrior-benches, a hammering of ale-mugs on table-boards, and men caught down their weapons from the walls behind them as though they would be launching on the next wave. Blades were half out of the sheath, men thumping each other on the shoulders, the four sea lords with the rest.

‘Did I not say there was not seaway enough for them and us in these waters?’ grumbled Orlig joyfully into his beard.

‘Why Dublin?’ Bjarni asked.

‘Did even you know a raider keep living captives aboard a day longer than need be? They’ll be south along the sea-road to Dublin slave market.’

FOR THREE DAYS
the gale lasted, pounding the steep western seas onto the coasts of Barra. But the time was not wasted, for the longships that had been drawn up onto the slipways ready for their winter refit had to be hurriedly made ready for sea again. There was torn canvas to be renewed, water-kegs to be filled and stowed, while on every hearth the women were baking the flat oaten sea-bannocks that never grew stale. The gear and rigging was brought down again from the ship-sheds and hastily overhauled before being stowed once more aboard, stores and spare weapons stowed in the narrow spaces below the deck planking; the dragon-heads, still rimed with salt, shipped at each prow.

Even so, on the third day, with all things ready and ship-shape and the gale sunk to no more than a stiff breeze, Arnulf Grimson, who was steersman of
Sea Witch,
found an unsuspected weakness – the start of a crack, maybe the work of sea-worm – in the vital steerboard side of the stern post, and would have had the sea-launch put back a day while repairs were made.

Onund, with the smell of his old enemy already in the wind, would have none of that. ‘We have lost ten years as it is, another day may like enough lose us the quarry. It has held up through the summer, it will hold up a few more days.’

Arnulf shrugged. ‘Or fail tomorrow. Very pretty you’ll look, drowning.’

‘You’ve always been one to croak like an old woman. We’ll take a log of wood for repairs if need be.’

And so they ran the five longships down into the shallows, with a serviceable baulk of timber stowed beneath the deck planking, and sailed on the turning tide.

Bjarni, settling to his oar, cast a parting look out past the high curve of the stem to the boat-strand they were leaving, and saw the crowd that had gathered to see them away; old men – not many of those – women and bairns and dogs, Hugin’s lean black shape among them. The first summer Hugin had tried to swim after
Sea Witch
and Bjarni had had to go overboard himself and drag him back to land and beat him to make him understand, but now he had settled into the life-pattern of his kind, who followed at their master’s heels while the longships were in their winter quarters and ran as a pack or hung around the women and baims during the summer sea-faring. So now he barked furiously but made no attempt to follow. There was another pair of eyes to watch Bjarni go. Thara Priestsdaughter had hobbled down on her still-sore foot to see the galleys away; but he never noticed her,

‘Lift her! Lift her!’ came the call of Onund at the steering oar. At sea Arnulf his second-in-command was
Sea Witch’
s steersman. But always Onund Treefoot himself took her to sea and brought her in to harbour.

‘Lift her! Lift her!’ as
Sea Witch
led the Barra fleet out into open water.

In the fore-dawn darkness half a moon later, Bjarni was squatted among the thin scrub of hazel and dwarf willow at the southernmost head of the Dark Islet, Eilean Dubh in the tongue of the Old People, and gazing southward, his sword naked across his knees because somehow that made him feel more ready for action and less like to fall asleep at his watch-post than if he had left it in its old wolfskin sheath at his side. Behind him Loch Ruel ran away up into the mainland mountains; ahead, dark and furry as a crouching beast, the mass of Bute lay nose-on-paws on the paleness of water, where the water divided to become the tideway of Eastern and Western Kyles flowing past on either side of the island to the sea. The moon was still up; and in the light coming and going with the drifting cloud-roof, he had been able to glimpse from time to time scatters of low-lying islets and the ruffled bars of shoal water that spread their danger across the head of the Eastern Kyle, even between the muzzle of the crouching beast and the thrust like an elbow where the Western Kyle changed direction and was lost to sight, the half-fallen remains of one of those strange towers that some people said had been built by the Old People for defence against the Viking kind, but not even the Old People knew for sure.