The Road to Miklagard

by Henry Treece

  ‘Why did you not tell the men, so that they could have driven them back into the flames?’ asked Harald, wondering.

  Grummoch shrugged his shoulders and took out his little flute. ‘I am a Christian myself, Harald,’ he said. ‘Though I have always been rather a poor one, I fear.’

  Then he began to play a restless little tune, and Harald could get no more out of him.

  They camped at the harbour side, and suffered no more hurt from the men of Murdea, who were impressed by their fierce faces and fine weapons. On the third day, the Danish ship sailed in, and after Harald had given the Dane’s message to Borg, the bargain was made, and the newcomers went on inland with half a sack of treasure and a full team of oxen and wagons.

  Then, by common accord, Harald Sigurdson was named the master of their new ship, which they joined in calling Arkil the Prince, after their dead leader.

  Harald said, ‘By Odin, I swear to deal fairly with you all, and as you deal fairly with me, so may we all prosper. Has any man a word to say to that?’

  As he waited for their answer, the gulls swirled over the heads of the men in the bobbing longship, and the smoke from the hovels at the waterside swept across the oily swell.

  All men were silent, save only Grummoch, who stretched and scratched himself noisily. ‘Yes, shipmaster,’ he said, with a little smile ‘I have a word to say.’

  They looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Say on, Grummoch, then,’ said Harald.

  And giant Grummoch yawned and said, ‘My word is this: let us set sail without any more talk! For I am anxious to see this village of yours!’

  Haro Once-only raised himself from his pallet of straw on the deck and said grimly, ‘That is well said, little giant; for if you had spoken a word against Harald, Radbard and I would have fed you to the seagulls.’

  ‘Yes, in little pieces,’ said Radbard in the high whistling voice that was his since his arrow-wound.

  Then they all laughed and Grummoch said, ‘Dear little ones, you had better think about yourselves, for if you do not get better soon, it is you who will go overboard to feed the white chickens!’

  Yet, in spite of the laughter and taunting, Radbard and Haro were well cared for by the sea-rovers, for they were brave comrades, and the first lesson a Viking learned was to stand by his shipmates through thick and thin.

  Haro’s arm had been broken in the cavern-fight, but was now set in splints and gave him little discomfort provided that he did not roll on to it in the night. When that happened, the other Vikings would clap their hands over their ears, in pretended horror at the things he would find to say.

  As for Radbard, his wound had been less dangerous than had at first appeared, for the arrow had passed through the muscle of the neck and not through his gullet. All the same, the wound gave him so much pain while it was healing that he could only speak softly and on a high note, like a little girl – which went comically with his great hairy beard and his fierce face.

  So it was, when they had stored their food and water under the afterdeck of the ship, and had packed the treasure down snugly below the maindeck, wrapping it round with sacking and sheepskins, that they prepared to set forth. The great weight of the gold they carried caused them to ride low in the water, and they needed no further ballast.

  ‘May Odin send us a safe crossing, without a storm,’ said Olaf Redeye, cousin to Haro, ‘for this is ballast which I would die for rather than fling overboard!’

  Giant Grummoch said pleasantly, ‘You are very concerned about my treasure, little Northman! What about me, the founder of the hoard, how do you think I feel about losing it to you?’

  Olaf said, ‘We have an old saying: “A clean shirt to a pig; gold to a Pict.” Neither of them understands the worth of such things, you see, Grummoch.’

  Grummoch said, ‘I cannot reach you, little Olaf, for these gyves stop my free movement; but if you will come here to me, I will take you by the hand and show you what a friend I can be to you.’

  He held out his massive hand, invitingly, but Olaf shook his head with a sly smile.

  ‘Nay, Grummoch,’ he said, ‘but I need this hand for rowing, I thank you! Perhaps we will shake hands when we land in my country, for then my six brothers will be there to see that you let go when I yell!’

  Grummoch nodded, reflectively, and said sadly, ‘That is the trouble, no one will ever be my hand-friend. I once shook hands with a German bear, but he howled so loudly, I could not make myself heard when I asked him what was the matter.’

  By this time Harald Sigurdson was at the steerboard, and called to them to take their places at the benches with the oars, for, he said, if they did not get started soon, they would have the good men of Murdea aboard to burn them off the face of the seas.

  And certainly there was a nasty-looking crowd already assembled at the dockside, muttering and pointing angrily at the Vikings. But Grummoch merely yawned again and called out to them, ‘Would any of you brave souls like a little trip round the harbour before we start on our voyage? We will not charge you anything, and will set you safely ashore again when you have had enough!’

  The men at the harbour’s edge began to shout abuse at the Vikings, so Grummoch called again, this time to the one who seemed to be their leader, ‘You, good sir, with the bald head and the big nose, what about you? You look to be a rare sea-rover, will you not come with us?’

  But he got no polite reply, and so, with stones and refuse whistling round their ears, the Vikings set forth from Murdea, ten men in a little ship full of treasure, to make the long and tedious passage round the south coast of England, and up past the land of the Franks.

  They put in for food once more at the Isle of Wight, and were not dissatisfied with the treatment they received there, for some of the islanders spoke a dialect similar to their own, having themselves come from Jutland many generations before.

  So all went well for the first three days, but, early on the fourth, something happened which was to change the whole course of their lives.

  7. The Small Dark Men

  It was a grey grim dawning, with bursts of rain scudding down from the north and the whipped ocean rolling strongly against the prow of the Arkil. The high sail was useless since the change of wind, and Harald and Grummoch pulled it down together, being buffeted mercilessly as they clung to the writhing canvas with frozen hands.

  The other sea-rovers lay wrapped in their sheepskin cloaks, under the gunwales, sleeping as best they could, for their hands were already blistered with the rowing they had done the day before.

  But Grummoch said, ‘We shall have to waken them, shipmaster, for this is a wind that must be fought with more than snores!’

  Harald woke Olaf only and asked him if he thought they might put ashore in the land of the Franks, at some quiet village, for example; but he shook his head and said grimly, ‘Frank and Northman, fire and water! I had as soon jump overboard now – they killed my father and three of my cousins last summer, trying to teach them to be Christians!’

  So there was nothing for it but to wake the sleepers and set them rowing against the tide. Both Harald and Grummoch took turns at the oars, for with Radbard and Haro sick, they were short-handed.

  But by midday, the weather grew worse, and soon a great gale began to sweep out of the north, rendering the oarsmen as weak as kittens, drenching them through and filling their hearts with fear.

  Haro called Harald over to him and said gloomily, ‘It comes over me that we shall never get this treasure back to the fjord, shipmaster. It weighs the ship down, and soon we shall be foundering if these waves do not slacken. Besides, the boat is so heavy now that we need a crew of giants to move her through such a swell.’

  Harald nodded, thoughtfully, and said, ‘Let us have courage for a little while longer, Haro, and then, if we can do nothing better, we will lighten the load a little.’

  He went back to his oar, but did not say anything about this conversation to the others, for they were all anx
ious, to a man, to get this great hoard back to their village and live lives of comfort evermore.

  By early evening time, their next misfortune happened. Radbard went aft to broach a keg of water and came running back to say that it was all brackish and undrinkable. The men of the Isle of Wight had tricked them, it seemed, selling bad water for good gold, despite the similarity of the language they spoke.

  Harald and Grummoch went aft to taste the water, and agreed that it would poison a man.

  It was then that the gale caught them and drove them southwards like a leaf falling from a high oak tree, powerless, swirling hither and thither, out of control. Harald shrieked for the men to draw in their oars, but his words came too late; three oars were swept away, out of the weakened hands of the rowers.

  So, as night came on, the Arkil went her own way, far off the course Harald had set, until at last Radbard cried out that if the storm did not die away soon, they would eat their next meal in Africa.

  He was not far wrong. The storm grew from fury to fury, throughout the night, and all through the next day, lashing the little longship as though it was a hated thing, almost turning it turtle a hundred times, snapping off the mast, breaking in the gunwales on one side, and straining the stout oak strakes to the utmost of their strength.

  Now the battered Vikings had no heart left for anything but to huddle close to each other, in whatever shelter they could find, which was little enough. Even the stoutest stomached of them had been sick, and not a man but was frozen until he could hardly speak.

  Then, as the utterly chill dawn of the third day struck across their ravaged deck, the wind fell and the seas rolled back to their accustomed places. And far on the steerboard bow, Harald at last sighted a thin grey shape low on the horizon.

  ‘Yes, that is land,’ said Grummoch, ‘though who should know which land it is, we have been so buffeted! And I for one do not care which land it is, for if we can only reach it, I will never set foot on a ship’s deck again.’

  And others, even the hardiest of the Vikings, said the same thing.

  Then the problem was taken out of their hands, for on the larboard beam and bow suddenly appeared three ships, long and low in the water, gliding towards them like sea snakes, catching the morning wind in their triangular red sails.

  Harald rubbed his eyes and said, ‘I have never seen such ships before; they are built for speed and even if we had our sail and our oars, we could not escape them.’

  Radbard, who stood with him at the gunwales said in his high voice, ‘It is not the ships which worry me, it is their crews. Look, they are little dark men, not sea-rovers at all.’

  Grummoch shaded his eyes and there was fear in his voice as he spoke. ‘We can expect no mercy from them, my friends,’ he said. ‘I know their like. For the love of god, strike off these gyves so that I can at least defend myself when they draw alongside.’

  Then, to the horror of all the Vikings, Harald said, ‘We have no hammer, Grummoch. It went overboard in the night and I could not save it.’

  At this, Grummoch gave a great cry and jumped overboard. Radbard tried to stop him, putting out his hand, but it would have been as easy to hold back an oak, falling in a high wind.

  ‘He will drown, with those leg-gyves on,’ groaned Radbard. ‘His ghost will never let me rest for what I did to him.’

  But Haro said, ‘You should be worrying about your own ghost, my friend, not Grummoch’s, for the men who are coming to board us do not carry bunches of flowers in their hands!’

  Now Grummoch had disappeared among the breakers, and the Vikings turned, to sell their lives as dearly as their failing strength would let them, each armed with a weapon from the store they had taken from the cave.

  And as the sharp-prowed ships cut in at them from all directions, their gunwales lined with dark-faced men, Radbard shouted suddenly, ‘They may take our heads, but they shall not take our gold!’

  Then, before anyone could stop him, he had torn back the plank that led beneath the deck, and all men saw him give a great heave at the oak bung in the ship’s bottom.

  The green sea rushed in, ice-cold and hungry, about the waists of the Vikings in a flash.

  ‘Radbard, you fool!’ shouted Harald, as he saw the man flung down beneath the deck planks by the onrush of water.

  Then they were in the sea, with the Arkil sucking at them as she sank, and the three cruel-looking ships above them, treading them down into the waters it seemed, and the little dark men grinning above them, their white teeth gleaming in the early morning sunlight.

  8. Slave Market

  For years afterwards, the events which followed came to Harald like a strange dream; first someone leaning down and trying to pull him up into the boat, then the sensation of falling again, clutching out and missing his hold, and then the green swirl of waters above him while the harsh keel of the boat rolled over him, forcing him down and down, until he thought that his lungs would burst. Then, at last, coming back from a dark and rushing nightmare to find himself lying on a white-scrubbed deck in the sunshine, between two rows of black-legged rowers and the taut red sail above him, bellying in a following wind … And, best of all, Radbard and Haro lying beside him.

  It was some time before Harald discovered that his legs were bound – and that none of the rest of his crew besides Radbard and Haro had been picked up. When he knew that, his sunlit mood turned to one of black despair.

  Radbard, who had miraculously shot up to the surface when the Arkil sank, was grim and tongue-tied; Haro sat nursing his aching arm, too deep in despair to speak, even to his dear friends.

  Shortly after Harald’s senses had returned to him, a tall man dressed in a long white robe and wearing a red turban came down between the sweating oarsmen and kneeled beside him. Harald noted that his long brown fingers were covered with gold rings and that his curved sword had an exquisite hilt of chiselled steel, set with amethysts.

  The man smiled at him, showing his perfectly white teeth, and began to speak to him in a soft and musical voice. But his words were strange and Harald could not understand him. The man made several attempts to make his meaning clear, but Harald shook his head.

  At last the man shrugged his shoulders and began to make signs. He pointed to the hide bonds which fastened Harald’s ankles, then he made the motion of counting out money from one hand to the other. Harald understood. ‘You want us to pay you to let us free?’ he asked.

  But the other did not understand and smiled, nodding his head.

  Then, with a cold shudder, Harald said, ‘Are we slaves?’

  The man heard the one word, and nodded happily, ‘Slaves,’ he said, recognizing that single word, ‘Slaves, you slaves!’

  Radbard heard this and turned away with a groan. Haro put up his good hand to his eyes for they had filled with tears.

  Harald clenched his teeth and said to the man, ‘If I had a sword I would give you the payment you deserve.’

  But the man still smiled and shook his head, not understanding. Then, seeing that he would get no further with these three rough bears of the north, he shrugged his shoulders as though he had done all he could and went back to the helm, swinging the long narrow ship towards the shore, which rapidly grew nearer and nearer, until Harald could actually distinguish the shapes of gaily clothed men and women moving in the sunshine before the white houses.

  Soon after that they were running in alongside a low jetty, and then that same man with the red turban came to them and indicated with his long white staff that they were to disembark. But this time he did not smile, and when Radbard rose slowly, he felt the weight of that white stick, suddenly and viciously. Harald stopped, aghast, and then, with a slow cold anger, turned and struck the man a blow with his clenched fist between the eyes.

  ‘No man shall treat my crew like that while I am here to prevent it,’ said Harald, glaring round him. But Radbard shook his head gravely. ‘That was a daring thing to do, Harald,’ he said. ‘Now look what the results may b
e.’

  The tall man sprawled on the sun-dried planking of the jetty, holding his head and speaking to his followers in a vicious tone of voice. These followers ran immediately to do his bidding, and soon came back from a shed with a smouldering brazier.

  Haro said listlessly, ‘It would seem to be their custom to brand rebellious slaves. I had not thought to be branded when I set out from Murdea with my share of the treasure glittering in my dreams. Alas, but a man’s life is quite unpredictable!’

  Radbard said, ‘I have a dragon tattooed in the middle of my chest. I hope these fellows do not mar the design with their clumsy botching. What do you say if we offer to brand each other, to see that the job is done properly?’

  Then they were dragged forward, towards the brazier. A thick-armed man bent over it, blowing the coals to white heat with a little sheepskin bellows. They saw that an iron lay in the fire, getting hotter and hotter. A small crowd of men and women had gathered now, anxious not to miss any entertainment that might be offered by the slaves, and the man in the red turban, who had now regained his former air of authority after his blow on the head, was talking excitedly to the crowd, explaining some point or other, which necessitated his waving his hands violently up and down.

  Harald said, ‘I think he is telling them that we deserve the punishment. He wishes them to think him a just man, doubtless.’

  Radbard said, ‘It comes to me, from the look of these folk and the shape of their houses, that we must be in that part of Spain where the Moors have come to live. And if that is so, then we must expect to find them a very just people, for their Caliphs make strict laws, causing them to be respected in this part of the world. We can look for justice, no doubt.’

  Haro grinned and pushed away a man who had gripped him too strongly by the shoulder of his injured arm. ‘Yes, but what if we do not care for their justice, friend?’

  Harald said, ‘We are Northmen, not Moors, Radbard. Our justice is what I would go by, not theirs. Besides, he deserved the blow I gave him, according to any man’s justice, for he struck you when you were unable to move any faster.’