The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

‘Yet once a man has made his land-take and so is looking to the time ahead, he can be doing with two good blades,’ said the Lady Aud. ‘One for his own hand, and one for giving to his son when the time comes.’

  Bjarni sheathed his new sword. The belt-thongs were somewhat worn and would need renewing, he thought, before he could hang it at his belt. He stood nursing it across his forearm and looking at her, gravely at first, then with a sudden delight. ‘My thanks, Lady, and the thanks of my maybe someday son.’

  Later that morning, with the voyage safely blessed by Brother Ninian, with the women and the last of the gear finally on board and the oars already swung out, Bjarni stood with those who had shared the forest winter but were not sharing the Iceland faring, and watched them head out from the shallows, Seal Maiden in the lead and Fionoula following behind, and wished for the moment that he had made his choice the other way; and a small pang of loss knotted in his belly.

  Then a hand came down on his shoulder, and for the one instant he thought that it was Erp. But he had just taken his leave of Erp on the tide-line; when he looked round it was only one of the shipwrights.

  ‘Come away, lad, we’ve a keg of ale to drink to fair seas and following winds for the old lady. Reckon Iceland doesn’t know yet what’s coming down on them.’ The man grinned.

  Bjarni turned to the broached ale-keg, with a feeling of stumbling forward over a new threshold: and when he looked out to sea again, Seal Maiden and Fionoula had almost disappeared into the morning murk that hung above the swinging waters of the Pentland Firth.

  17

  Storm at Sea

  ONLY A FEW days after the Lady Aud sailed for Iceland, a band from the main settlement started out by way of the Great Glen to fetch up the first women and baims and breeding beasts. And with them, carrying his few possessions and his old sword slung behind his shoulders, went Bjarni Sigurdson.

  Presently there would be a steady coming and going along the way between the Islands and the new Caithness settlements; galleys on the long chain of lochs, and portage-ways and drove-roads of a sort through the forests and across the moors in between. But for now the way was hard and hazardous, and slow to travel. Three of the band were dead in one way or another, and early spring was drawing on towards summer when the air began to take on the soft familiar tang of the West Coast, and they came down at last to the blue waters of the Firth of Lorne.

  They managed to gather up a few skin-clad coracles from the fisher-villages down-coast, and so came at last into the home-harbour of Mull. The first thing Bjarni in the foremost coracle saw as they came bobbing past Calf Island into sheltered water was the fat familiar shape of Sea Cow, beached above the tide-line.

  The second thing was a wild and joyful baying and a familiar black shape ploughing out through the shallows to meet the coracle. Then he was out over the side with the rest, to haul the light craft up the beach; and Hugin was plunging and circling round him like a black seal. Bjarni abandoned the coracle – it would not take more than the three of them anyway to handle her – and gave himself up to being greeted and half drowned by his dog.

  Among the high-tide kelp he squatted down, his eyes shut and his arms round the wriggling and ecstatic body, while Hugin lunged against him, licking his face from ear to ear. And when the great hound’s joy had somewhat abated and he opened his eyes again he saw Sea Cow’s master standing straddle-legged grinning down at him. He scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Heriolf! Here’s a fine meeting! Why did the sea news not tell me I’d be seeing you before the day was out?’

  ‘But I knew I would be seeing you,’ said the merchant, ‘for has not this black devil of yours been sitting on the ship-strand since first light, staring out to sea?’

  The other coracles had been dragged ashore by now, and a crowd was gathering, women for the most part, calling for word of sons and husbands, for there had been little enough news since the first ill tidings of their Lord’s death. Bjarni took his share with the rest, giving what answers he could to the eager and anxious questions. But the affairs of the Caithness settlements were no longer any concern of his; in a little he collected his sea-kist and, once again slinging his worldly goods over his shoulder, headed with Heriolf for the ale-house at the far end of the ship-strand.

  And later, when the rest of the returned ship-carles had scattered to their own homes or were eating in the Chieftain’s Hall – men still ate there, passing the harp among them, where Egil, Thorstein’s former war-band captain, now sat in the High Seat – and news of their return was already running to the farthest headlands of Mull, Bjarni sat taking ease with Sea Cow’s crew around the ale-house drift-wood fire, with Hugin sleeping at his feet. Some of the faces in the firelight were strange to him, but most were familiar enough, and there was a certain warm contentment in him because in the new life that he knew he had walked into, the old life could still reach out to him friendliwise. They passed the ale-jack from hand to hand, and exchanged the news of the past three years. So Bjarni heard of Sea Cow’s long voyage south and east into the Mid-Land Sea for dark-skinned slaves for the Dublin market, and told in his turn of Onund Treefoot’s visit to Jarl Sigurd of Orkney and how he gained the right to water ship from his springs, and of the deaths of the two Chiefs before the Caithness settlements came into being, and of the Lady Aud’s departure on her Iceland faring. But a good part of these later stories they had heard already, and so were more interested in his own part in them.

  ‘And what reward did the Lady Aud give you for the slaying of her son’s slayer?’ one of the men asked, leaning forward into the firelight.

  ‘Na, na, I was but first blade in that hunting,’ Bjarni told him quickly. He still remembered the young Pict’s face too clearly for comfort. ‘When I told her that I was for taking back my sword-service, she gave me much what the Chief would have given me in paying-off geld.’ He hesitated, looking down at the sword in its horsehide sheath at his side. ‘Then she gave me another sword. So I am a two-sword man now.’ He half drew it, rejoicing as always at the song-note of the blade on the metal sheath-lip and the way the light slid and rippled on the pattern-forged blade.

  ‘Sa, sa . . . One for you and one for the son to come after you. A man of property, you are,’ said Heriolf in kindly mockery, and leaned forward for a closer look. ‘That is a good blade. And where will you carry it, I am wondering? Will you try Dublin once again?’ His small dark eyes narrowed in laughter. ‘A fine beard you have now.’

  Bjarni shook his head, ‘My five years are up and my debt is cleared. I am to Rafnglas again, I and my black devil. You would not be heading that way?’

  He did not really expect it, but Heriolf, looking into the fire, said slowly, ‘Well now, I was thinking of a run south through the Islands before the old lass heads for the far seaways again. Like enough there’s buying and selling to do in Rafnglas . . .’

  Bjarni slapped the pouch at his belt. ‘I can pay my passage, this time.’

  Heriolf took a swig at the ale-jack and passed it over. ‘Nay now! There’s twice you have come with me as bodyguard, and as the Fates who mark the future on men’s foreheads seem to have decreed a third time, let you not spoil the pattern.’

  Sea Cow sailed two mornings later. Normally Heriolf would have spent longer over his trading, for the Mull settlements were rich in skins and a fine market for luxury goods, bronze and amber and the goods of foreign lands, but now the whole island was restless, poised for flighting like the wild geese in the spring, and restless yet, too full of the change that was upon them to have much mind to spare for the splendours of bronze and amber, the unusual beauties from Eastern markets or thick snow-bears’ pelts.

  ‘When Egil has had time to settle into the High Seat, the market will come back,’ Bjarni said.

  But Heriolf was less sure. ‘Maybe, in a while, a longish while. If Egil is strong enough to hold the settlement together meanwhile, and hold the raiders off . . .’

  So they ran Sea Cow down into the bay and out p
ast Calf Island and headed south.

  They took the in-shore route, in good weather. They ran the keel ashore on the white ship-strand of Islay and put in a day’s trading, and then put into the south-west end of Argyll, to trade for fine wildcats’ skins from the forests inland. Then to Arran, and then the Islands fell back, and they were out into open water with the empty sea space of the Solway Firth to the east, and the dim blue-drawn line of Ireland edging the world to the west. And away and away south-eastward, unseen for a long while as yet, but suddenly Bjarni seemed to smell it as a horse smells its own stable, the long mainland coastline and the Lakeland settlements. He had sailed these seaways before, in five summers’ sea-faring, but this time was different, this time he was for his own landing beach, and the settlement that was home for him, so far as any place was home. And the shallow side-valley far up Eskdale, where he would make his land-take and build his bothy that would one day be a house, with a woman spinning beside the fire and the son he had his second sword put by for.

  It was a good prospect, and yet it lacked the fierce joy to it that he had expected when he came at last back to his own landing beach.

  Rafnglas was the most northerly of all the Lakeland settlements. Soon now, well before dark . . .

  It was then that the storm reached out to them. First, no more than a dark cat’s paw eddying after them, dying away once more into a flat calm, and then a great buffeting wind from the north-west that leapt upon them as they lost the shelter of the land, out of the emptiness beyond the Solway Firth beneath the ragged scurry of wind-cloud flying low.

  The sea began to get up almost while they looked at it.

  After five sea-faring summers among the Islands, Bjarni had come to know well enough the weather signs of clouds and flying birds sounding strange and the indefinable smell of coming tempest, but this was one of those rare storms that come up without any warning, taking even the most experienced of seamen unawares, as though the storm gods had opened a hand and loosed the winds on an instant’s whim, chancing, for the moment, to have nothing else to do.

  ‘Put the dog below and tie him up,’ Heriolf said. ‘We’re in for some ugly weather.’

  Bjarni twisted a hand in Hugin’s collar and hauled him down under the loose deck planking, and tied him up to a spar with a bit of free rope, not too far in in case the bales began to shift, the dog barking and protesting. The movement of the ship was growing uneasy even as he did so, and when he came back on the deck he found that even in the few moments that he had been away, the world had changed. It had grown darker and wilder, the sea had turned a bad colour, the waves torn into ragged white along their crests. They were shortening sail, the wind whining in the rigging above the sails as they flapped like huge ungainly wings, and the spindrift dashed across the heaving deck.

  ‘We’ll not make Rafnglas this tide,’ someone shouted.

  Presently the light began to go, though it was not yet time for sunset. And the shape of Heriolf, standing poised and braced at the steering oar, began to fade into the general murk, and only his voice came to them out of the dark, shouting orders. Presently they furled the sails and she was running before the wind under bare spars.

  Far into the night they fought the sea, Heriolf feeling for the sides and crests of waves which with a less skilled ship chief must have swamped them. Whole hills of water came at them with great valleys between. Now and then Sea Cow checked and staggered on the climb, but always she reached the crest, hung there an instant as the wind that had been shut out in the troughs caught her, then slipped down on the far side.

  On they drove, before the great following seas, their trust in the unseen man at the steering oar. Once, when the moon rode free of the clouds, far off to the west something briefly showed that must have been the southern tip of Man, and then all was lost once more in the trough of the next wave and the next, and the next . . .

  There was no time, no distance, no possible knowledge of distance or direction, nothing to do but keep the bailing going, crouch with their hunched backs to the lashing spray, eyes searching the turmoil ahead for any sight of land, trust to the man at the steering oar to keep them from being broached by the next following wave – and always the mad stampede of whitecaps racing alongside – crouch ready for whatever might happen next, pray to the White Christ and to Thor, that he had been able to keep them far enough out to clear the thrusting coast of Wales to ride the storm out on the open sea.

  Presently there began to be a new note in the turmoil all about them, a deeper booming menace that could only mean one thing, waves pounding on an open shore. Bjarni, crouching in his place in the stern, was aware of Heriolf’s figure beside him leaning his full weight against the steering oar, struggling for a further westing in their course. A tension was added even to the tension of that night, and then almost in the same instant, as it seemed, two things happened. Hugin came scrambling out from the hold with the chewed end of his rope hanging from his collar – it was as if he knew, Bjarni said later, telling the story of that night – and came skidding and sprawling to crouch at Bjarni’s feet; and the moon, sliding suddenly free into a ragged lake of clear sky, showed from the next wave-top the white fury of great rollers pounding onto a rocky shore, a great headland thrusting to catch them like the jaw of a trap.

  ‘Out oars,’ Heriolf shouted above the wind. ‘If we can keep her off the rocks, there’s sheltered water westward of the Ness!’

  And almost before the order could be obeyed, a great cross sea came charging down upon them, sweeping before it all that was not tied down or clinging to something. For a horrific moment Bjarni saw the dark shape of Hugin trying desperately to swim against the great sluice in mid-air, and then the wave was past, leaving Sea Cow waterlogged and staggering behind it. And of Hugin, no sign. ‘Bail!’ the shout went up, and men staggered into desperate action. But Bjarni saw only the black head of Hugin, like a seal’s on the wild moon-bright water. He was up on the side. ‘Leave the dog, you fool!’ Heriolf shouted behind him. He leapt clear.

  Spray-drenched as he was already, he scarcely felt the shock of the cold, only the immense power of the great swinging seas. He tried to call, ‘Hugin! Hugin!’ but his mouth filled with sea-water. Hugin was trying desperately to follow the ship. And Bjarni headed the same way. He reached the thrashing dog and got a hand twisted in the chewed rope. ‘Come!’ he shouted, and dragged the dog round, striking out to where he had seen the waves on the distant shore. Maybe there was an ugly death waiting for them both on such a coast in such a sea, but maybe not, and they had no other chance. The ship could do nothing for them.

  Swimming one-armed with his hand on Hugin’s collar now, he struck out for the white menace of the shore. But the current within the storm took them and swung them eastward away from the great headland and towards a lower shore. And when, it seemed a life-time later, Bjarni was suddenly aware of land almost under his feet, and a great wave swept him and the black dog shoreward, it was onto smooth sand.

  18

  Angharad

  THE NEXT WAVE all but dragged him out again, but before the third came creaming in, he had got somehow to his feet and staggered up clear of the high-water mark, dragging Hugin after him. The tide had only just turned, the amber sea-wrack was behind him, and the sand dry and soft under his feet. Dimly he was aware of great dunes rising to meet them. Then he had collapsed onto his face and was being direly sick. Hugin was lying all along his length against him, limp and cold and motionless as a swath of seaweed. He thought the dog was drowned, and then as the world began to swim and darken, and what felt like half the sea came rushing salt and cold up out of his belly, he thought he was. Lying on his face with one arm over the dog’s sodden body, he simply let go and the darkness took him.

  The next time he knew anything, he was lying on his back and Hugin was standing on him, licking his face from ear to ear. The gale had died down a little, and it was raining, but in the shelter of the dunes there was some shelter, and he lay looking
up at the tall hillocks crested with marram grass that was half torn from the sand. He could not tell what time of day it was, for the sun was hidden behind moving cloud. But something in the light told him that it was well past noon, and with no knowing how far they were from food and shelter, it was time that he and Hugin stopped lying here above the tide, and set out to find it.

  He felt quite strong as long as he was lying down, but when he sat up, every muscle in his body hurt, and the dunes swam around him, and just for a moment the fragile yellow flowers of a half-uprooted horned poppy in the dune slope seemed the most important thing in the world.

  He shook his head to clear it and struggled to his feet. The world was still swimming, but he could walk, and Hugin was shaking himself so that sand and sea-water flew in all directions. And so he turned inland, unaware of what they were doing, only that he was heading away from the waves behind them.

  Beyond the dunes was rough grass islanded with gorse, and then higher ground, a rolling country of low hills. Ahead, to the east, half seen and then lost again in the driving rain – outside the shelter of the dunes the wind was still blowing hard in long weary gusts – rose the great shapes of mountain country, bloomed with darkness and still streaked with the white of last winter’s snow. But Bjarni, his head down against the rain, his feet seeming not really to belong to him, and the black dog trailing miserably at his heels, was scarcely aware of these things.

  How long he stumbled on through a land that had no sign of any human settlement, he did not know. He knew presently that he was in wooded country but that half the trees were down, so that he stumbled on a fallen branch and fell, hitting his head on something, and staggered up again with blood running into his eyes. But it all seemed oddly dreamlike and he did not even curse. In a little he came out on the far side of the trees – it was only a thin belt of woodland – and wiping the blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand, saw a shallow valley opening before him, and at the head of it, a small huddle of roofs that spoke of shelter.