Horned Helmet

by Henry Treece

  Skallagrim said, ‘ I bound you by that oath, and I can release you from it. Now, say what is in your mind, without fear or favour.’

  Gauk said, ‘Then look you, Master Jarl; if I had sworn to follow you to the world’s edge where the mermaids play and the sea-horses snort on the waters, you would expect me to go with you, would you not? ’

  Skallagrim nodded. ‘ That is the law,’ he said.

  ‘Very well,’ said Gauk. ‘Now if a man came and offered to take my oath from me, would you not feel betrayed? ’

  The Jarl turned away and said, ‘Very well. What must be, must. But look at the rock which lies off their shore and see if you call it a good sign.’

  They looked. It was the tallest column of rock Beorn had ever seen, and reached upward like the end of a blunt sword, into the grey sky, olive-green and dusty brown, with sheer sides, and, here and there, narrow ledges covered with dry heather. On one ledge, a little wider than the rest, half-way down the pillar, a heap of bones lay silent and white.

  Beorn said to Gauk, ‘How did they get up there, friend? ’

  Gauk made little of it. He said, ‘Maybe the Homestead folk sacrifice to this rock and lay the offerings there. Or maybe these are the bones of silly goats that once climbed up and could never get down again.’

  Jarl Skallagrim came between them both and said, ‘Well you may ask, lad. Aye, well you may ask. Now look again, and see the cormorants, the black-backed gulls, and, at the highest tip, even the hawks, sitting still, waiting on that rock. And, look, on the landward side there is a family of seals, rolling in the lee, not foraging as they mostly do. That is a bad sign, for seals are stupid folk and will go anywhere to pick up scraps. But these seals know better than to go inshore, and it is my counsel that where seals will not go, vikings should not.’

  Starkad smiled and said, ‘ Master, I have sailed with you since I was a boy with no hair on my face. Have you ever known me go against your wish before? ’

  The Jarl said, ‘Have it as you will. But, one thing, Starkad, I have a whole ship’s company in my care, whose widows must be paid blood-money if they are lost. Reindeer is no small prize, either, and would buy me a palace in Novgorod. So, I am forced to tell you this: I cannot risk ship or men on this venture for a mere sword. I will set you ashore tonight and will wait for you a reasonable space. Then, when the time is up, I will sound three long blasts on the horn and that will mean we must be away. If you do not come after a count of three hundred, said slowly, then I must put off to sea again. Now are you set on going? ’

  Starkad smiled and nodded, ‘Jarl,’ he said, ‘when have you known me turn my hand away from work I have begun? ’

  Jarl Skallagrim grunted angrily and said, ‘Truly are you called a baresark. Where there is no sense, there is no reason. But never forget, my friend, that I asked you not to go.’

  Beorn felt sorry for the Jarl, for he could see that the man loved Starkad; but then the boy’s heart almost stopped, for Starkad said, ‘ I shall not forget, master. I shall not need to, for I shall come back with the sword, never fear. And, so that my luck holds, let me take the boy with me. He put the notion into my head, so it must be in the heart of Odin that he should come and help me get the sword.’

  Jarl Skallagrim was so angry then that he clenched his fist as though he meant to hit someone. ‘What do you say to that, Beorn?’ he asked, when he could speak.

  Beorn was like a man between two horses, being pulled two ways at once. He truly believed what the Jarl had said about this place - but in his hand he still held that lovely iron stag that Starkad had given him. And it ill became a man to desert a comrade.

  Beorn said, at last, ‘I will go with Starkad, Jarl.’

  Starkad did not seem to hear him, but Gauk patted him on the shoulder and whispered, ‘Well said, warrior. A man can die only once, after all.’

  So, that night, when the moon was behind a cloud, the three of them were put ashore, and waded, waist-deep, through the shallows towards Howestead cliffs.

  The burial mounds were not hard to find, even in the dim moonlight, for they stood like three domes, each higher than a king’s house, above the village on the landward side. Starkad stopped by the tallest of them. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is where the best swords should be, friends.’

  They clambered silently to the top, keeping on the far side away from the torchlit houses, and then Starkad and Gauk began to dig furiously with wooden mattocks, while Beorn kept watch.

  The earth on the mound was thin, for wind had blown it away and rain had punished it, since that howe was made. No turf grew on it, to make the digging harder with its tangled roots. Soon Starkad’s mattock hit hard on a wood baulk.

  He said softly, ‘ We are at the roof already, friends! ’

  Though he whispered, Beorn could hear the trembling joy in his voice, deep in his throat. Then Starkad and Gauk went at the timbers like wolves scratching a cottage door in winter. And soon they began to grunt and groan as they hoisted up a gnarled oak timber; then another; then another.

  Gauk stood back and said, ‘Pah! the air down there has not been breathed for a hundred years. You could slice it with a knife.’

  Starkad laughed quietly and answered, ‘ It is a sword, not air, that we come for, Guardian. Come, tie the rope round me and let me down. I must do the best I can in the dark, for we dare not strike flint on iron and light a torch, or they would see us from the steading.’

  So Starkad went down into the howe, with Gauk and Beorn holding hard on the plaited hide rope above. It was not easy, for Starkad was a heavy man and began to swing this way and that, once four yards of rope had been paid out. Beorn was afraid that he might be dragged into that musty dark hole himself, into the place where the dead king lay. Not even for Starkad would he have gone down there. Not even for that iron stag.

  But at last the rope went slack, and Gauk whispered, ‘He has reached the ground. Now we must rest, for it will be twice as hard to get him up again, lad.’

  Beorn lay on the howe-top, shivering in the night breeze, and trying to listen for any sound of struggle down below. He remembered Grettir wrestling with his dead king, and expected to hear shouting and the thud of blows at any minute. But all he heard was an owl crying in the distance, and a muffled curse from Starkad, as though he had barked his shins on something in the dark.

  At last there came a tug on the rope, and Starkad’s voice saying, ‘Hoist me up! I’ve got what I came for, and more!’

  Truly, it was hard-pulling to get him back again, but they did it, and Starkad helped them by setting his feet on the howe side whenever he could, and using his legs as a lever. The moonlight gave them benefit once he was out, and they saw that his journey into the darkness had been repaid. Under his arm he carried two swords -one a gold-hilted beauty in a calfskin scabbard decorated at the end with a silver chape; the other a short sax, single-edged, but as light as an alder stick in the hand, and as whippy, too.

  He handed this to Beorn. ‘Here, lad,’ he said, ‘it is time you had a blade of your own. Do not refuse: you helped as much as any. Now you can always brag you robbed a king’s howe, like your kinsman from Iceland! ’

  He turned to Gauk then and held out a helmet towards him. ‘You have a sword, friend,’ he said, ‘but I’ve noticed lately that your old war-helm has seen better days, and needs replacing before a sword finds its weak spot and sends you home! ’

  Gauk was as pleased as Beorn with the gift, for the helmet was unlike anything he had seen before. It was all of bronze, and two horns stood out straight from its sides, covered with fine chiselling and moulding, of oak-leaves and hunting-dogs. He set it on his head and it was as though the smith had made it for him.

  Starkad said, ‘ It is hard to tell, in this dim light, but I would guess that the man who made that had a sharp word or two to say to the Romans when they came here first. It is very old, and a bit green with bronze-rust, but a rub or two with a rag will get it clean again.’

  The two w
ere speechless. ‘Come,’ said Starkad, ‘a gift for a gift, that is the law. We have taken the dead king’s gear, so fling our rope down into the dark for him - and the debt is paid.’

  This Gauk did, although he hated losing that rope. It had been his father’s and was made of ten reindeer hides, got from a tent-steading in Lappland. But he did it, because what they had got from the howe that night was beyond price.

  He whispered, ‘ Starkad, if I were a skald, I would make a great gay song, I am so happy.’

  Beorn whispered also, ‘ If we were clear of this place, I would sing the song about the pig, with all my heart.’ Starkad said, ‘ Both of you can wait till we are back aboard, then I will join you in a song - and I promise you, it will be such a song as no man has ever heard before. They will think we are mad, I can tell you, but little shall we care!’

  But, as the three of them turned to slither down the howe, a harsh voice came up at them from below and said, ‘There is no need to whisper any more, grave-thieves. You will not rouse the village, for the village is already waiting for you, and has been, for the past hour.’

  They looked down and, as the moon came from behind a cloud, they saw a hundred men with spears about the howe, standing in silence.

  Starkad turned and laughed to Gauk. ‘ The Jarl was right,’ he said. ‘His mother must have been a Finland witch! Well, we will go down the howe fighting. Lend Gauk your sword, Beorn, and keep between us. If we get a good run on, we can break through this flock of sheep, and it’s hardly more than half a mile to the ship. These fat catde will never catch us, once we are away.’ But that run was never even started, for a shower of rocks came up at them from the darkness below, tumbling them to the ground.

  9 Two Vikings and a Log

  Beorn felt himself being carried along roughly, like a captured bear on a stick. Distantly he heard the three blasts on the horn, as Jarl Skallagrim had promised; then he lost his senses again.

  It was dawn when he woke. He was sitting on the ground in a cleared space between the grey huts of Howestead, and his feet were lashed to a long thick oak-log. On one side of him sat Starkad, and on the other, Gauk. They were both rubbing their eyes, and groaning when they touched their heads where the stones had struck. But, worn as they were, and weary, they were laughing. Starkad said, ‘We thought you would never wake, Beorn! What a thing it is to be young and carefree!’

  On the other side of the oak trunk Beorn could see the two swords and the horned helmet, lying together, as though they were witnesses of the theft. He said, ‘Jarl Skallagrim will have gone with Reindeer, now, Starkad. What shall we do?’

  Starkad said, ‘Never think that you are the first to ask yourself that question, lad. Gauk and I have been chewing it over for an hour, while you were snoring your head off in your warm bed! ’

  Gauk said, ‘Do not worry, Beorn lad. I have a feeling that we shall go on many journeys together after all this is over. Look, when their’headman comes, I will talk to him and make him see sense. We will give back what we have stolen, and a few other things besides, and so all will be well.’

  But Beorn was not sure of this, and, as it turned out, he was right. For an hour later, when the sun was up and about, warming the ground, the headman came out with ten spearmen and a big fellow carrying a double-handed axe. The headman stood beside the helmet and swords and said, ‘This is a bad business, wanderers. Little joy lies in putting an end to such as you, but what is a man to do if he wants to keep the respect of his folk?’

  Gauk answered, ‘From your speech, headman, you are a Danishman, out of Roeskilde, I would guess. And we are vikings out of Jomsburg - so, it is like a family gathering, no more.’

  The headman put on a sorrowful face and said, ‘You and I are Danishmen, true enough, but my folic here are not. They are stubborn Caledonians, and will not forgive you for stripping their old king.’

  Starkad laughed and said, ‘ Come, come, friend, we did not strip him! He still wears his byrnie and leggings. We only took what you see. Why, we even left him his spear and his buckler. I could have brought those up, too.’

  The headman said, ‘ Little good would it have done you, Jomsviking. They would have lain before you now as witnesses, just as the swords and helmet do. So, why argue? ’

  Beorn had never heard men in such a plight talking like this before. He suddenly wondered if all Northmen were not a little soft in the head.

  At last the headman said, ‘ Look you, sailormen, what I have to do, I have to do, and there is no getting away from it. The doom was passed on you by my Council while you were still asleep. If I let you go, they would turn on me and say I was no true leader. Then I should feel the axe-kiss; and I have a wife and family to care for. I did not come all the way from Roeskilde to have my head set on a pole, I can tell you. But I will do what I can - I will have a good breakfast set before you, so that you will make the journey to Valhalla on a full stomach.’

  Starkad shook his head and said, ‘Do not put the cook to the trouble, friend. We have caused you enough work as it is, and to waste good food would be a crime.’

  Gauk put in his word and said, ‘Before we go any further, let me remind you of something. There was a rover once, called Ragnar Sheepbreeches. You have heard of him - all the world has, even the Emperor down at Miklagard. Now this Ragnar was thrown intothe snake-pit when the English caught him at York, although he hinted to them that it was hardly wise to treat him that way. Do not fidget, headman, I shall tell you the tale whether you have heard it or not! Now this Ragnar told the English king plainly enough that one day his three sons would come looking for him - and they did. And when they found that king, they laid him down and cut the Blood Eagle on his back. Then they carried him round his own town of York, for all other folk to see what it was like to kill a viking. So, now you know.’

  The headman shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I have known that tale since I was as old as this boy here. It is not new to me, my friend. But, mark this, there are two differences between you and Ragnar; first, we mean to put a swift end to you, with all mercy; and second, you are not kings to have young princes comb revenging you. You are shipmen, no more. And I would remind you that if they had caught you at this business down in England, they would have skinned you like deer and hung your hides on the church door. So, taking it all in all, your bargain is not a bad one.’

  Starkad nodded and said, ‘Every man must do as he may; what more is there? But one thing I will ask of you: turn this lad loose and let him go free. It was not his fault that we brought him here to the howe.’

  The headman nodded in return and said, ‘I am no ogre, friend. I have a brace of boys of my own, and I know that they will always be getting into mischief, though they mean no harm in the world. That is what boys are like, and they cannot help it. So this lad shall

  be untied - but I cannot turn him loose, viking. The law of this place is that he shall be a slave, and I must abide by the law. You know, as well as I do, that a Danishman keeps the law, wherever he is.’

  Starkad said, ‘Thank you, headman. He will serve you well.’ Then he turned to Beorn and whispered, ‘Don’t look so hangdog, lad. Life is the thing - and one day you’ll find a way to slip out and off again. You had wit enough to get out of Glam’s clutches, didn’t you?’

  Beorn felt like weeping when the villagers cut his thongs, but he did not want to dishonour his two friends, so he held back his tears and sat down by the horned helmet and swords, to keep his shipmates company as long as they needed him.

  At last Starkad said, * For the love of Odin, lad, put a smile on your face, and sing us that song about the pig to cheer the time up a little.’

  Beorn sang, but his heart was not in it. The Caledonians stood glowering while he did it, wondering what strange folk these Northmen were, and shaking their dark heads, bewildered. At last Starkad said, ‘ That’s enough, Beorn. If you can’t sing more briskly than that, then be silent. You make it sound like a funeral dirge in one of these Chris
tian churches. I don’t know what has come over you.’

  Then Gauk called out to the headman and said, ‘ I’m getting hungry, friend. Tell your axe-man to get on with it, or I shall have to put your cook to some trouble after all.’

  The headman smiled and nodded to the axe-man, who took out a whetstone and started to put a good edge on the blade. While he was doing this, Gauk ignored him and said to Starkad, ‘Friend, every day brings us something to learn. For years I have wondered how it feels to be dead, now I am going to find out - and that without any trouble to myself. That is the wonderful thing about it! ’

  Starkad said thoughtfully, ‘ I have wondered, as well. What puzzles me is - when the head is off, and lying on the ground, can it still think? ’

  Gauk scratched his own shaggy head at this, then said, ‘ Look, baresark, I have an idea; you see this cloak-pin in my hand? Well, after the axe-man has done his work, I will stick this pin into the oak-log if I still know anything. Will that answer your question? ’

  Starkad nodded and said, ‘Aye, well enough, comrade. At least, if worst comes to worst, Beorn and I will know the answer, though you may not.’

  Gauk smiled and said, ‘Very well, so be it. I am ready with the pin. Strike now, axe-man! ’

  Beorn shut his eyes when the axe came down. He heard the thud and hated to look, though he was as anxious as Starkad to see what Gauk did with the cloak-pin.

  But he did nothing; it lay, glimmering in the morning sun, beside the log. Starkad said, ‘Well, that is another riddle answered, lad.’

  Then he smiled, and turned his head towards the axe-man. ‘Be about it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a cramp starting in my right leg.’

  10 Rescue

  Beorn covered his face with his hands, but before he did this, Starkad nodded to him and winked as merrily as if they shared a great joke. He heard the viking say softly, ‘Wait on, Gauk! I’m almost with you now, friend.’