by Henry Treece
At length they heard footsteps outside their door and an exclamation of surprise; then the feet running away, and others coming. A head looked in at the window-hole for an instant, then the great key turned in the lock again.
‘They have discovered the dead guard and have found that our comrades have escaped,’ said Horic. Aun only nodded. He sat holding Gnorre’s cold hand, speechless with grief.
No one came to bring them food that morning. Footsteps and quiet whispering voices sounded in the street. There was a strange tension everywhere. It seemed as though folk wanted to laugh uproariously, or cry out loudly, yet held back those sounds.
Thorkell stopped rocking backwards and forwards and said, ‘I do not like it. I thought they would have come to us here, to find out what they could about the escapers. They are leaving us alone, deliberately.’
The monk John kneeled in a corner and prayed quietly.
Harald, his nerves on edge with waiting, walked round the low dungeon, examining the walls, to give his mind something to bite on. He stopped by the archway at the back of the room; it was blocked in by thick planks of oak. Yet there were interstices between the boards. Harald felt a cold air sweep through them to his face. He peered through the cracks, but could see nothing. Yet it seemed to him that a distant low booming came up from behind that door. He told Horic, who said, after he too had listened, ‘That is the sea.’
The others came and listened and Thorkell said, ‘Doubtless there is a long tunnelway behind these planks, which comes out above the shore somewhere. It would need a giant’s strength to move these great pieces of wood, though, for they are sunk into the ground and wedged hard at the top of the archway. Could you move them, Aun?’
Aun Doorback let go Gnorre’s hand and moved slowly to the door. He tested it with all his strength, and said at last, ‘If I were rested and had good food inside me, I might move a plank or two. But my strength has gone from me since the wreck, Thorkell.’
He went back to his dead friend and sat silent. John knelt in the corner and prayed again. Harald began to bite at his fingernails. The time must have been midday.
‘They have great faith in their planks,’ said Thorkell.
‘Either that or the mouth of the tunnel is guarded,’ said Horic. ‘Or perhaps it comes out high above the sea.’
‘Are you hoping to escape, Thorkell?’ said Aun, moving his eyes slowly towards the leader.
Thorkell passed his hand across his eyes and said, ‘Perhaps. Perhaps I might not be a drag on you if we could get out from this place.’ He said no more, but sank his head again in his hands and brooded for a while.
Suddenly wild horns skirled in the village and skin drums began to throb in a strange savage rhythm. All in the cell looked up. Then Harald went to the high window and jumped up so as to see outside. He shrank back with a sudden cry for he had seen a hand, a white hand, resting at street level, just outside the window. He did not see the arm or the body – just the hand, and it was still.
He gave a gasp and turned to tell someone of this, when the door burst open and without warning the dungeon seemed to be full of wild-eyed villagers, who jostled with each other to get at the captive Vikings. In less time than it would take for a man to count twenty, the tribesmen had bound their prisoners by the wrists and were dragging them up the steps towards the street.
Outside, the Vikings blinked in the bright light. They saw the mud hovels, the thatched roofs, the small square teeming with shouting folk. Above them the seabirds shrieked as though to be in company with the savage inhabitants of Leire’s Dun.
Harald, who walked next to John, turned his head as soon as he got into the street towards the window of the cell. Sven was lying there, an arrow in his chest, his arm flung out so that his hand lay by the side of the window. The Vikings saw this and gasped. Then they looked towards the centre of the square where the greatest shouting was to be heard. A heap of bodies lay tumbled on each other – Kragge, Thurgeis, Rollo, and all the rest, man for man, each one pierced by an arrow. Ragnar lay on the top of the heap of dead. His eyes were rolled back and his teeth bared in a savage grin. In his right hand he still clutched a long thick tress of black hair. Three arrows pierced his breast, their broken shafts hanging down as though he had tried to tear them out.
Thorkell said, ‘Why are you so stricken, Vikings? What can you see?’
No one would tell him, but at last John whispered to him, ‘Thorkell, my son, your comrades who went from the dungeon have met disaster. They lie dead before us.’
Thorkell said, ‘Is Ragnar with them?’
John said, ‘Yes, Viking. He died a brave death. All his wounds are at the front.’
Thorkell said, ‘You speak well, John, for a priest. You would have made a good warrior with a little teaching.’
John said, ‘I am a warrior in my way, I thank God. I will say a prayer for our dead.’
Thorkell noticed that now he said ‘our’ as though he was one of the Viking band. Thorkell smiled and said, ‘I cannot think that your God would approve of your new alliance, John, but no doubt it will do no harm. At least they all know the answer now …’
He said no more, but allowed Leire’s tribesmen to lead him to the whipping-posts that were set where the crowd was thickest. Each Viking was bound to a stout pine stump, his hands above his head. Those who still wore shirts had them torn away. Even the monk’s vestment was ripped down. Harald saw that his back was hard and muscular. The crowd jeered and hooted them. Aun’s back was laid bare and the tattooed dragon was exposed to view.
‘I will make that beast writhe for mercy,’ said a great savage, whose matted hair almost hid his face. He twirled a heavy whip with many weighted thongs. It hissed in the air like a family of vipers, suddenly awakened from their sleep.
Aun said, ‘It would need a better man than you, ape-man.’
The whipman spat at Aun in his rage. Aun merely smiled and shrugged his broad shoulders.
John, bound next to Harald, whispered with a smile, ‘Have courage, boy. The pain of the body soon passes. It is the pain of the spirit that hurts. If your spirit is strong, then slave body will obey it and will bear the pain. I shall pray for you.’
Harald thanked him. Then Leire stood on the roof of a low hovel and taunted them. He told them that they must pay for the disobedience of their fellows. Especially must they pay for the death of Aurog, his dear friend, whom Ragnar had throttled while the arrows were still in him.
Thorkell spoke up then and said, ‘We are willing to pay Ragnar’s debt, then, pig-face, for he would have paid ours. Only I ask you to spare the boy and the priest. They are not to blame for anything.’
Leire said, ‘You must all taste the mercy of Leire, my friends.’ He was angry that Thorkell should have insulted him, for he could see that many among the crowd enjoyed the Viking’s taunt.
Thorkell said, ‘Stay, snout! I am the leader of this band. I will take the whipping for them all. Is that a good bargain?’
Aun said, ‘That you shall not, Fairhair. I am as good a man as you.’
Leire said, ‘Hark at them, these seacocks, they even quarrel about who shall die first! Nay, nay, blind one, all will be beaten.’
Thorkell said, ‘As well ask a mangy wolf for the bone he gnaws. Well, trough-grubber, I make you a last offer – do not let the bargain pass, it will not be offered again. Look, I am a blind man, but I will fight you, or any warrior you have that dares meet me, but let these others go back untouched to their prison.’
Aun shouted, ‘Why should you have the pleasure, Thorkell? Look, midden-grunter, I will fight any two men you have, yourself included, if you count yourself as a man!’
At this the crowd yelled with joy at the Viking’s bravado. Leire’s sullen face flushed. He shouted to the whippers, who rushed in and began to wield their vicious flails.
Aun was still yelling taunts at Leire when the man who whipped him staggered with exhaustion. Now the crowd was silent and breathless. The dragon that h
ad once circled the great Viking’s back had disappeared.
At last Leire said, ‘Enough! There is always another day.’
The whippers wiped the sweat from their faces and bodies, thankful to rest.
The square was empty now. Only the seabirds still wheeled above it as the afternoon sun began to sink in the west.
20
Aun Doorback
The dungeon was twilit when Harald came to his senses again. At first he wondered where he was. Then he saw Horic bending over him and he remembered. Horic said, ‘Your back – does it hurt, boy?’ Harald sat up and shrugged his shoulders. Then he gave a wry grimace but did not answer. Horic said, ‘You were lucky. They were merciful to you because of your youth. They dealt quite kindly with the priest too, though he begged them not to.’
Harald looked round the cell. Aun was lying in the corner, muttering terribly to himself. His face was drawn and horrible to see. He looked more like a vengeful fury than a man. The others did not go near him at that time. John came across to the boy when he saw that he had awakened. He smiled down and put his hand on Harald’s shoulder gently. ‘God be praised,’ he said, ‘for He has given Thorkell back his sight. When the first lash fell, so great was Thorkell’s rage that he went berserk, and the scales fell from his eyes with wrath, and he sees again now! Look at him!’
Thorkell was standing, his back all bloody, but his head erect, by the high window. Wolf was by his side. They were talking in an undertone together. Now they seemed as they were when Harald first met them on the shores of the fjord, two close friends, with no Ragnar to come between them. Wolf seemed happy, as though even his tortured back was worth having if it brought Thorkell’s friendship with it.
Horic said, ‘Sometimes suffering brings a reward with it.’
Aun looked at him, then at poor Gnorre’s body which still lay in the corner, and growled menacingly. John said, ‘Aun is taking it all very hard. But he will recover. He is as resilient as a tough old oak tree.’
Thorkell turned then, and though Harald saw that his young face was lined and begrimed, he was smiling. He came across to the boy and said, ‘Well borne, Viking! I will give you another sword one day, if we ever reach our fjord again.’
Then he went across the cell and spoke to Aun, at first gently, then almost harshly. Aun recognized the voice of his master and stopped growling like a wild beast. Wolf joined them. Harald sensed that they were planning to escape, and now the heart of each of them was bitter against his captivity. Better to die, thought Harald, than live such a life. The face of the monk, John, had lost some of its gentleness and was set in firmer, more warrior-like lines. But for his cropped hair, it would have been hard to recognize him as a religious man, for his habit was now torn and hanging about him, only held to his body by its stout rope girdle.
That night no food was put into their cell. They had therefore been almost twenty-four hours without breaking their fast. Nor were they given lamps that night.
Thorkell said grimly, ‘Well, we can work as well in the dark, can we not, Aun?’
Aun said, ‘We must find a flint or two from the floor of the cell, if we are to dig, then it matters not whether we have light or not. We can feel to dig, like the mole.’
Thorkell said, ‘I have become so used to the dark that I am not troubled.’
So, while they could still see in the twilight, they grubbed up a few long flints from the earthen floor of the dungeon, and having chosen the sharpest, sat down to wait for night to come. There was much to do and they knew they must waste no time.
When it became so dusk that none could see into the dungeon from the street, they began to scrape away the hard-trodden earth at the base of the arched doorway. It was a mighty task for men whose strength had been sapped by privation and punishment, yet they worked on and on, for they knew that their lives hung on this effort.
As one tired, so another took his place, Harald working as hard as the rest of them, until after two hours of scraping and digging, they had got down almost to the base of the deep-sunk planks that blocked the archway. Once, as they dug, footsteps had sounded outside their door, and for a while they had lain silent, until the steps had gone away again. Then they worked more feverishly than before, to make up for the time they had lost.
At length, when the first of the grey flickers of dawn began to creep over the eastern seas, they had moved the earth away so that the planks might be swung outwards into the dungeon to let them pass into the far tunnel. Then they stopped and each shook hands with the other solemnly.
‘We must keep together while we can,’ said Thorkell, ‘yet if one of us lags, the others must leave him, or we shall all die. Leire would not tolerate another escape.’
John kneeled down in his corner and said a prayer for them all. He stayed a while by Gnorre’s body, though Aun pushed him away a little too roughly. ‘This is not your concern, Christ-man,’ he said, ‘let Gnorre go to his own gods. Do not meddle.’ John forgave Aun, for he knew how much the great Viking had loved the dead outlaw. He smiled up at Aun’s wrathful face and went to join Thorkell.
Then they began to move the planks, each man straining with all his might, for it seemed that they had been sunk in the earth for many years. When they moved the first, a small trickle of earth and stones began to fall into the dungeon. When they had moved the second, that trickle became a stream, and now the very archway began to tremble.
Thorkell said, ‘Stand back, or we shall be buried. That archway is ready to fall. Those planks have held up the whole side of this dungeon.’
But as yet the space was only big enough to let Harald pass through into the tunnel. Suddenly Aun pushed forward and stood in the archway, holding up his hands and taking the weight of the structure on his broad and mutilated shoulders. Harald saw the pain it caused him to touch the rough stonework, but the Viking’s face was set. His voice was now hoarse and commanding. ‘Move the third plank, you fools,’ he said. ‘I cannot wait here for ever. Move it and pass through. I will follow.’
Thorkell said, ‘It is madness, Aun, for once the third support has gone, you will be left with the whole weight of the rock wall on your back.’
Aun stared into his master’s eyes sternly. ‘Do as I say, young man,’ he commanded. ‘Do you not recall my eke-name?’
‘Aun Doorback,’ said Horic; ‘but you are truly named.’ Then they swung the third plank away and passed through into the tunnel as fast as they might. As Thorkell went through last, a shower of big stones fell about his head, and above them there was the awful sound of rock, straining against rock, an immense subterranean tension, like the creaking of a gigantic door of stone.
Thorkell heard this. He heard Aun’s deep and laboured breathing as his great thews and sinews stretched and almost broke beneath the titanic strain.
‘Come with us now, Aun, or it will be too late,’ he said.
Aun only cursed at him, telling him to go away. Harald saw that the man’s eyes were closed and that his face worked with a dreadful spasm. The priest, John, went to Aun and prayed beside him. Aun’s eyes opened wide and rolled horribly. The foam was now flecking his lips. He used his last breath to shout, ‘Go, all of you, or may Odin’s ravens peck out your eyes! I can hold it no longer.’
Thorkell said, weeping, ‘Aun, beloved warrior, come with us. We will all hold up the roof while you get from under it.’
Aun spat at him and whispered, ‘I stay with Gnorre.’
Then there was a fearful grinding of rock above them and the very floor beneath their feet seemed to shake in sympathy. Thorkell led them away from the doorway and into the passageway. As they stepped back the rock fell, massive, stirring up clouds of dry dust. Aun’s great scarred hand stuck out from between the immense boulders that fell. Nothing more of him could be seen. The great hand clenched and then unclenched. It lay still. Thorkell bent and kissed the gnarled fingers. Then as other rocks began to fall about them, they turned and made off, bent double, along the passage, towards t
he sound of the booming surf.
21
The Nameless
As they ran on that nightmare journey along the twisting tunnel, the light filtered through to them gradually and the sound of the sea became clearer and clearer. Once they passed through a great cavern, where the tunnel widened out suddenly, to give on to this broad space, from the roof of which hung strange growths of weed, and the floor of which was deep in ancient shells, the fossilized remains of a much earlier world. Then they had passed through the green gloom of the cave to the tunnel again, though now it became much wider and higher, and they were able to run without bending low.
Harald gasped, ‘That would be a fine place to hide one’s treasure.’
They all laughed, in spite of themselves, that the boy should be thinking of treasure at such a time.
‘Perhaps Leire does,’ said Wolf Waterhater, stumbling on, his hand clapped to his side, for he suffered from a painful stitch.
Then, suddenly the light came full into their faces as they turned a sharp corner, and they stood out on a platform of rock above the sea.
As Thorkell came to the entrance of the passageway, he stopped short and gave a great gasp, his finger pointing below them and to their right. They all followed his gaze.
On a rocky shoal, between two long, dog-toothed ridges on which the sea broke in a foamy spray, lay the Nameless. Her mast was shattered and her mainsail dragged with the tides. She lay on her side, the waves breaking over her, the currents flowing through her broken sides. The Vikings drew in their breath, in compassion for their ruined longship.
Thorkell wiped his hand across his face. ‘Well, at least we know the end of her,’ he said sadly. ‘None of those land rats will ever sail in her now!’
Then he turned his head and they all looked below them. The rock fell steeply from the cavern, but not too steeply for men who had already braved so much. Far beneath them lay a strip of sand, and pulled up on to it, three or four curraghs of different sizes.
