The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

  Then on the fourth day, the day before the new moon, which seemed to please the Picts mightily – Bjarni wondered if the Lady Aud had known that among them, the new moon was the time for a wedding, for the start of all things – meal and honey were brought from the store, and new milk from the little black cattle, hardly larger than faery cattle, that grazed the hill pasture. A fire was made within the Women’s House, and soon the smell of baking stole out through the camp, telling the waiting men that Groa the daughter of Thorstein the Red was making her bride-cake, and word was sent to Dungadr in the hunting camp that he had made a short way downriver.

  Next morning, while the shadows still lay long through the camp and across the river marshes, Groa came into the Hearth Hall, clad in a gown of once-brilliant eastern striped silk that had been worn by the Queen of Dublin before her, and with her hair braided under a silver-gilt wedding crown. She walked beside her grandmother to the freshly made-up fire where her father and Dungadr with his groomsmen and the brown-robed Christian Priest waited for her.

  Thorstein joined their hands together above the leaping flames in the sight of the mingled gathering of Picts and Northmen that filled the smoky Hall. And Groa and Dungadr, who had had only that one passing sight of each other until now, looked at each other steadily through the drifting peat-reek, while the sealskin thong was tied and re-tied and the drops of bright sacrificial blood fell into the fire. Afterward, the brown-robed Priest stood forth to sign them both on the forehead with the Cross in token of blessing. It was a good way to let the White Christ into the bride-making, though of course all men knew that it was the hands above the fire that in truth made the marriage bond, that and the carrying the woman home to her new hearth . . .

  The huge flat bride-cake was broken up and the fragments piled into the hollow of a shield for sharing among all corners; and the crowd spilled out on to the open turf before the Hall, where the smell of baking meat was already wafting from the cooking pits. The day passed like most other feast days, the young men running and wrestling and showing off their weapon skills against each other, Pict against Pict, Northman against Northman, Northman against Pict; and in between, returning hungry for more of the roast boar meat and venison and the great bowls of oaten bannock and wild honey.

  Bjarni, sprawling beside one of the fires with his mouth full of the black pudding that had been his prize in a wrestling match, found his thoughts wandering back over the years to that other wedding feast on Barra, and how the day had ended for him. Well, Hugin was safely out of it this time, anyway . . . Safely out of what? He sat up sharply; safely out of what? Then he relaxed; safely out of nothing. It was the two-year-old memory that had given him that sudden sense of change in the wind; something coming to an end. No more than that. He laughed at himself, and crammed his mouth with the rest of the black pudding, and the feeling faded. But it did not quite go away.

  The day had moved on towards evening; a day of sunshine and clear distances, which was rare in those parts. And in the mouth of the rough timber Hall, Thorstein sat with Dungadr, and between them the Lady Groa, her wedding finery laid aside for the little sisters to be wearing when their own days came. Her farewells were over with them and her grandmother and Muirgoed who had been her nurse, and they were away back to the Women’s House. She was the only woman now in all that company, and waiting, as they were all waiting, for the next thing that must happen.

  Meanwhile the bride-ale still went round, and the warriors sprawled at their ease around the fires, drinking to all things under the sky, gnawing the last sweet shreds of meat from the stray bones and tossing the remains to the hunting dogs, asking long complicated riddles, while Thorstein’s harper strolled among them, declaiming the long saga of Wayland Smith to any who cared to listen.

  The sun had scarcely slipped below the rim of the moors, leaving a smear of brightness in the north-westward sky, when somebody set up a shout and, looking where he pointed, all men saw the first faint nail-pairing of the new moon afloat in the bright after-wash of the sunset.

  Next moment turmoil broke out, as the Picts, who had begun melting away for some while past, came pouring round from the rear of the Hall where their small shaggy horses had been tethered in readiness, flinging themselves astride them as they came. The chief’s horse they led among them, and on the instant Dungadr was up on his feet, laughing. He caught Groa and, slinging her up onto his trampling beast, mounted behind her and swung his horse toward the gate-gap in the camp’s turf wall, his sword companions closing up around him with much laughter and eldritch shrieking to the new moon as they streamed through. They had all known what would happen, but it was all so sudden, like something in a dream.

  Bjarni caught one glimpse of Groa’s face looking down, white and startled, from the hard curve of her new lord’s arm. Then he was racing with others of Fionoula’s crew for the place where their own horses were waiting. It should have been for the bride’s brothers to give chase, but since she had none, it must be for the youngest of the men who had brought her to her bride-ale to take their place. And indeed, remembering that glimpse of her white stricken face, Bjarni, slipping free the tether of the nearest horse and swinging a leg over its back as they in turn headed for the gate-gap, felt as though he were indeed her brother, and this a real marriage by capture instead of a ritual pretence.

  The marriage party were well on to the moor by the time he and his fellows were clear of the gate, skeining out like wild geese as they headed for that sheen of brightness in the north-west. They settled down to ride. Presently they began to gain on the group in front. That was part of the pattern of things, for Pictish custom demanded that the brothers should come up with those who carried off the bride, so that there should be fighting for her. But both chiefs had given their orders that the fighting was not to get out of hand, for a sham fight could be dangerous between one-time enemies who might yet become enemies again. So the struggle, when the Viking leader caught up with the tailmost of the Painted People, swinging his horse to meet him, was not too deadly; a flurry of blows at the outset, becoming a running fight with the stray blow between riders leaning towards each other, the stray attempt, half-laughing, to pull each other from their horses’ backs as they headed on through the heather and the white tufted bog grass toward the crescent moon. The fight was a good one, with some heart in it, all the same; few of the riders came off from it unscathed. Bjarni had broken knuckles and a black eye to show for it when they came up the rising ground to the headland fort of Dungadr, high on its sheer sandstone cliffs above the Pentland Firth. The entrance to the great turf ramparts were ablaze with torches to light the way with welcome, and draw them in, Bjarni thought: but it seemed that they were not to enter the stronghold yet. Something else had to happen first. The torchbearers were leaping down the slope to meet them; men brought marriage cloaks for bride and groom, a headdress of golden eagle feathers for Dungadr.

  Other Picts were taking the riders’ bridles as they dropped from the horses’ backs. ‘What now?’ Bjarni shouted to the man who took his horse.

  The man shook his head. ‘Nothing to fear,’ he said. ‘Nothing to fear.’ But clearly they were the only three words of the Norse tongue that he possessed, and must have been taught to him for the occasion. They were in a narrow furze-grown cleft that dropped away between the thrusts of the cliff edge, the leading torches ahead now, then Dungadr with a hand reached back to Groa behind him, and the rest of the wedding party, Pict and Northman following after with the remaining torches strung between. Bjarni found himself next to Fionoula’s captain and demanded of him, ‘Where are they taking her? What is all this about?’

  The other shook his head. ‘I would not be knowing. It is my guess that they have to pass the marriage night in some special place.’

  The defile ran out on to the cliff face, and became a path snaking steeply downward, to end at last in a grey pebbly shelf above the tide-line. And there, only a few galley-lengths off shore, rose the nearest of the three
stacks that marked the mouth of the Pentland Firth with the hills of Hoy to the northward.

  On the seaward side the stack rose sheer with scarce as much as a lodgement for a sea bird’s nest between the surf at its feet, and the rough grass at the flat crest; but here on the inland side a track much like the one they had just come from leapt and straggled upward among ledges and steep grass slopes, the course of it shown by torches already set along the way; and a curragh, a skin boat, lay leaf-light at the edge of the water, nuzzling at the pebbles.

  It was all so strange that it seemed to Bjarni afterwards like a dream that he never quite forgot. The yellow sparks of the furze flowers among the dark pelt of the bushes, the hot resin smell of the torches mingled with the cold reek of the sea murk as the tide went out; the faint soft throb of a drum somewhere high overhead, that began as Dungadr lifted the Lady Groa into the curragh and the boatmen took up their poles.

  All the short late summer night the skin drums throbbed on the cliff top, with sometimes a thread of pipe music woven in and out among the pulse of it, while the men of the wedding party spent the dark time as best they could on the sloping pebbles, making sure that no one else should come to the crest of the stack under the new moon. At dawn the curragh came back out of the curls of sea mist that had begun to rise, and the Chieftain lifted his woman ashore, and they turned their faces again to the cliff path. Then the drumming stopped, and the morning felt curiously light and empty without it.

  This time the crowd in the gateway, Dungadr’s womenfolk foremost among them, were there to draw them in. And that day there was feasting in Dungadr’s Hall as yesterday there had been feasting in Red Thorstein’s, all for the strengthening of the peace-bond between the two peoples. And Bjarni for one began to feel that there had been enough of feasting and merry-making, and to be glad that they would be returning to their own camp the day after.

  The women of the Painted People did not eat with their men at feast times, but later and apart in their own hall. And meanwhile they served the men, carrying round the jars of mead and heather-ale to keep the drink horns brimming. Groa had not been seen for most of the day; but she was back now and foremost among the Chieftain’s women, with silver apples weighting the ends of her braided hair, and a kirtle of some dark forest-green stuff, pouring for her new lord, then moving up and down the hall among the small tables to pour for any man whose cup was low.

  Bjarni, seeing her come towards him, held up his cup for refilling and under cover of the harp-song and the usual evening uproar, asked, ‘What shall we tell the grandmother? Is it well with you, my Lady Groa?’

  She finished the pouring, careful not to spill any drop, before she lifted her eyes. She was changed from the Groa he had known. He wondered if she still remembered St Brendan’s Isle. She had the look of someone taking herself and life very seriously; but she did not look unhappy or afraid. ‘Tell the grandmother it is well with me. Tell her that I wish I might come home; but I remember the thing she told me, how she hungered for her father’s Hall when she first was Queen of Dublin, and was not comforted until her first bairn, my father, was born.’

  She flashed him a swift smile and moved on with her mead jar to the next empty cup.

  Next morning the little band set out on the ride back to camp. They rode cheerfully. The peace was safely made with the Painted People. Soon it would be time to replace the ships’ awnings with thatch. Soon it would be time to bring in wives and bairns, clear the land-takes for ploughing and planting barley, breeding cattle for the rough moorland pastures, dogs to herd the cattle. Jogging along with legs comfortably trailing in a very different manner from the way they had ridden the other way two nights ago, Bjarni began to think how he should get Hugin up from Mull – unless of course he was to return to Mull himself, in which case better to leave him there. Oh! but it would be good to feel the black fluttering ears under his hands again . . . There had been fighting earlier in the summer – Jon Ottarson riding beside him had an ill-healed scar below his shoulder to show for it – but now, all things seemed to have gone almost disappointingly smoothly.

  Yet when they came within close sight of the settlement that would one day be the heart and soul of the Norse settlement of Caithness –

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ said Jon, and hitched at his arm, which still bothered him.

  The whole hill slope was swarming with movement, throbbing like a softly tapped drum. Horses were being brought in from pasture, men were gathered about the armourer’s bothy from which came the red flare of the forge fire and the ring and clatter of hammer on anvil, while others waited their turn at the weapon store in the midst of camp, where spare weapons and bundled stores were being brought out and set beside the horse-lines, ready for loading the pack beasts.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ Orm Erikson asked of one of Sea Serpent’s crew, who squatted within the gateway burnishing his war-cap with a rag of greasy wadmal.

  ‘Word from Jarl Sigurd, that’s what’s amiss,’ said the man. ‘The peace-talking has gone up in flames, and swords are out again. So Thorstein gathers in the war pack; three ships’ crews of us, heading south with tomorrow’s sunrise.’

  No one was much surprised; it was the kind of thing that happened. ‘Which crews?’ someone asked.

  ‘Sea Serpent, o’course, Walrus, Fionoula.’

  Bjarni caught in his breath with a little hiss, as he urged his horse fast with the rest. Life was good, and he was not going to get left behind with the bairns again.

  A little later, having got his war-sark out from his sea-kist and found the stitching of one of the horn shoulder plates worn through, he was heading for the store-shed in search of waxed thread; and so came upon the Lady Aud overseeing the issue of ship’s bannock and dried meat for the war-bands while Muirgoed, helped by the two remaining granddaughters, dealt with wound salves and bandage linen.

  She beckoned to Erp, standing near, to take her place, and stepped aside for the moment. Bjarni was seemingly the first of the wedding party she had seen since their return.

  ‘Is it well with the bairn?’ she asked.

  Bjarni nodded. ‘It is well with the Lady Groa. I had word with her before we left and she bade me tell you that, and also that she wished she might come home to you, but that she remembered that you told her once how you hungered for your father’s Hall when first you were Queen of Dublin, and were not comforted until your first bairn, her father, was born.’

  ‘My first bairn . . .’ said Aud, and her gaze went out for a passing moment to follow where Thorstein the Red strode through the camp, with his war-axe on his shoulder and the late sunlight making a bonfire of his coppery beard.

  She brought her gaze back to Bjarni. ‘She will do well enough, the little one, if all that this mating has been for does not go up in a shower of sparks and fall to ruin, after all.’

  14

  The Making of Treaties

  IN THE GREEN light of early morning with the plovers calling over the moors, the war-bands rode out through the gate-gap in the turf rampart; a moving darkness of men and horses heading south. Thorstein Olafson with yesterday’s messenger beside him and his own sword companions close behind and, behind again, the men of the three longships’ crews, with the pack beasts among them. And beside Bjarni, rather surprisingly, rode Erp, to act as horsemaster and maybe scout.

  ‘A horsemaster you will need; and like enough one to spy ahead for you,’ he had said, standing before Thorstein the night before.

  ‘And how shall I be sure that you will not lead us into a trap?’ Thorstein had asked, as one reasonable man to another.

  ‘If this were Argyll and my own land, I might well do that thing,’ Erp had returned in the same manner. ‘But these are not my hills and the people are not my people, though I can pass for one of them more easily than you could do. Also our tongues are kin, though not the same. Did I not serve you well enough in the turning of tongue to other tongue when you had need, in times before this?’

  And Tho
rstein the Red had thought on the question a moment, pulling at his fiery bird’s-nest beard, then said, ‘Sa, sa – ride with us, then, and if you have earned it, and live to ride back again, the first thing that Grim the Smith shall do after our return is to cut the thrall-ring from that scraggy neck of yours.’

  They rode south at speed, a three-day ride, checking for a few hours at night, and a short break at noon to feed and rest the horses; for themselves scarcely any rest at all. And they rode with their swords sitting loose in the sheath.

  More than once they halted while Erp scouted ahead, where a river bend or steep glen mouth or deserted rath might shelter an ambush; but even when they drew toward the Dornoch Firth and the Sutherland boundaries, the country seemed empty, and surprisingly quiet for a land locked in battle. Burned homesteads and slaughtered cattle, yes, but of warriors, living or dead, scarce a sign and no sign of women or bairns about the ruined steadings, who must all have taken to the wildwood.

  ‘This is a land that has been at war, but one way or the other, I am thinking that the war is over,’ Erp said, sitting with Bjarni beside their horses as they ate their noontide bannock on the third day.

  They had begun by that time to find bodies. Bodies of their own kind and the Painted People, sprawling among the heather or beside a river ford, from which the horses shied, wild-eyed and snorting.

  And not long after, cresting the ridge ahead of them, they came in sight of Jarl Sigurd’s camp, the usual rookery of turf bothies and ships’ awnings, and saw here and there the scars of burning, and beyond the grey sheen of the firth, and dappled mountains far to the south. And from then on they rode through a spent battlefield, with the smell of death lying over it, from which the ravens and black-backed gulls burst upward at the last moment from beneath their horses’ hooves.