Travel Light

by Naomi Mitchison

  But once she came across a small basilisk dozing in the dry grass and woke it up by gently pulling its tail. It swiveled its eye round at once and gazed at her, but either it was not sufficiently powerful or for some reason Halla was unaffected. It complained of the weather and, when Halla advised it to fly south into the hot sun again, it complained still more that its old stamping-grounds were full of men and women who had no respect for basilisks. Even when they migrated into the Egyptian deserts, they had found hermits who exorcised them, most uncomfortably, and made their eyes useless for days. It stretched one of its wings, of such a familiar kind that Halla felt bound to ask it if it had seen any dragons while it was up in the north. “Not so much as a salamander,” answered the basilisk sadly, “nothing fiery.” However Halla paid little attention to this, since basilisks are well known to have bad sight for anything but enemies. Yet sometimes she felt she would like some dragon news.

  If she dropped behind too much, the men would turn and shout at her. When she told Tarkan Der about the basilisk, he was worried, almost angry with her. It was as though he did not want her to be the kind of woman who talked to basilisks. So after that she sat quiet at the end of the day’s march north. Every day brought them a little nearer Holmgard. Every evening they came to a new place, and unsaddled, watered and tethered the horses, made fires, heated water and cooked for themselves. Sometimes there would be some kind of shelter, built for the caravans, and sometimes only an open place.

  At night the wild beasts howled and yapped all round them, smelling food, saying: “Dare we? Dare we?” The men took it in turns to guard the camps; once Tarkan Der killed a wolf. But the travelers were yet more afraid of other men. It was against them that they watched, against that the arrows were ready beside bows.

  The days grew shorter and the nights colder. They hurried as much as they could, watching the sky. The winds seemed to come from some icy place, cutting on hands and faces, tearing at cloaks. The country was all flat and sometimes they went a difficult way through marshes, strung out singly. But the way was known to the leader of the caravan who had been through the marshes many times. And in the end they came on a river, almost like the river they had left, but flowing north, the same way that they were going. So they said good-bye to their horses and took to a boat again. By the time he had paid for their food on board for the days until they came to Holmgard, Tarkan Der had no money and had sold one of the two gold bosses from his belt.

  There had been some rainstorms and the river was swirling down in a brown heavy rush that swept the boat along; the water seemed solider than the planks. The banks were brown too, not high, but yet not so low that they could see the flat beyond them. At night they tied up, for it was dangerous to go on in the dark: but even so it would only be a few days before they were at Holmgard. “What will you do there?” asked Halla.

  “I will take service with the Prince of Holmgard,” he said, “and there will be a priest there, so we will be married.”

  “Why shall we be married?” asked Halla, watching the river water looping and spinning on its way north.

  “Because it is not right that we should travel together always and not be married,” said Tarkan Der.

  “Perhaps I will not travel with you always,” said Halla.

  “We will not always travel. I shall be paid for my service. We will find a house in Holmgard. A small warm house. I will buy you things for our house as soon as I have money. And things for yourself. You will like to live in a small house with me.”

  “I do not know at all,” whispered Halla, half to him and half to the crooked water. She thought that she could have liked a cave, a cave with a sparkle of treasure deep in its mossy windings. Did he mean he would bring treasure into the house? No, he did not mean that, he was no more a dragon that he was a hero. What was he, then, so close to her, but not herself? Why was he sure she would like living in a little house? She could have liked a den, safe under rocks and fir branches, the smell of one’s den coming richly over the snow and Matulli-bear, her nurse, waiting to lick her to sleep with a hot tickle of tongue. But would a house feel the same? Did All-Father mean her to live in a house? No one can travel light with a house on their back, not even a snail.

  Now they were tied up again to the bank, where there was a creek coming down. In the dusk they could see the lights of a few houses at the head of the creek. Someone in the boat said it was a well-doing settlement with a big house and some smaller ones, crops and cattle. They were hospitable folk there, especially Modolf, Otkell’s son, who had the big house; his people had come from the north to Holmgard, like many others, and he had settled on the rich land by the river bank, a day’s ride from Holmgard. If this had been day time they would have gone up to Modolf’s hall and asked for milk, and most likely got meat and bread with it. For this was the manner of folk they were.

  So all in the boat were talking of this and that and wrapping themselves in cloaks and blankets, ready for sleep. It was a dark night. And in the dark night was suddenly screaming like a knife in the ear. Everyone in the boat woke and listened. Someone said this must surely be an attack on the settlement and the pity it was since these were kindly people and Modolf the best of men, but it was no use at all to be good unless you could defend yourself. And now came the red of fire leaping into the dark sky and a black roof against it, and the boat’s crew thinking it might be better to cast off and not risk being seen by the raiders. But Tarkan Der said: “I am going up to help these folk and perhaps if I do it will stand in well for me with the Prince of Holmgard. Who else comes?” So at that a dozen other of the men said yes, they would come. Halla did not say so, but she came all the same, following after the men.

  They jumped out into the mud of the creek, as quietly as they could and up the bank, and ran towards the fire with their swords drawn. The first man they saw had a reaping hook in his hand and a bleeding gash all down his face, and he could hardly stand, but he pointed to where a man with a great beard and a mail coat that shone in the flame-light was dragging a girl along by her wrists, and she was screaming and her long hair was trailing after her. The girl arched herself forward and bit the man’s hand, and as he turned to smash her teeth in Tarkan Der stabbed him in the throat and he fell over in a great mess of blood. Tarkan Der picked up the girl and she was on her knees in front of him, crying bitterly and pointing to the great house. They had tied her father Modolf to his own hall pillar and fired the house round him.

  There was fighting for a short time everywhere, but the followers of the bearded man began to break and run, for they could not tell how many were against them. With the tail of her eye Halla saw a Valkyrie plunge out of the night like a shooting star and pick up the bearded one and carry him off on her horse, so she knew he must have been a hero. Then she was standing by Tarkan Der and the men from the boat and the men and women from the settlement and they were all staring at the big house and horribly quiet, and Tarkan Der was holding back the girl who wanted to run in. But it was too late. The flames had taken everywhere and the women of the settlement were beginning to wail, for they had all loved the old man, who had been so just and kindly, and the girl’s face was smeared with tears as she tried to tear herself away from the hands that held her.

  But Halla was afraid of no flames. Had not the dragons licked her with their forked-flame tongues, dancing in triumph above her through the star-flamed night? Lightly she ran to where the door-beam had crashed down among lumps of blazing straw, streaming with white-hot flames, wriggling heat of a familiar kind. She jumped it, hearing behind her Tarkan Der yelling her own name desperately. But he would not have understood if there had been time to tell him.

  At the far end she saw what she wanted, an old man tied to the pillar of his own high seat, his mouth bleeding where his enemies had struck him, his body huddled forward a little, coughing in the smoke, his mind blurring so that he hardly knew if it was a human who cut the thongs at his back. Halla had been thinking quickly. All very well
for herself, but how to get this one out? But as he came into better air he pointed to one corner where the house seemed not to have caught; he leant on her, gasping, as she pulled him over to it. There was a small window, high up. She pushed a table under it and they climbed. But, looking out, there was thatch blazing just where he must fall.

  She was not giving up, all the same. She saw two pails of buttermilk standing where they had been left, ran for them and threw them one after another on to the blaze, then in the moment of quieted flame threw down her cloak and pushed the old man through. Then she jumped herself and tugged him clear, pulling the cloak after her. But now there were other hands helping. She saw the girl and Tarkan Der and they were kneeling at her feet and Tarkan Der calling her by the old name, Halla Godsgift. But she began to cry, leaning on his shoulder. Fireproofed she was, surely, but she had sprained her ankle jumping out of the window and now it had started hurting her.

  Chapter Four

  The Story

  There was no going back to the boat that night. All crowded into an unburnt house: there was bread and meat and milk and honeycombs. Some of the people in the settlement had been killed and wounded, and the raiders had destroyed plenty. But they had been beaten off, the houses would be rebuilt, the cows would calve again. There was enough meal and grain left to see them through winter and the spring sowing. And above all they had back Modolf, the man they loved and honoured, and the girl Alfeida, shaken and still sometimes sobbing, but unhurt. None of the men from the boat had been wounded to speak of, and now the rest of the crew came up. It was decided that they should go on the next day to Holmgard and tell the prince how his laws had been broken and his subjects injured, only a day’s ride from the city. There were all too many wandering heroes and raiders, looking for whatever they could lay hands on, younger sons of the great men, with good blood in them, doubtless, but without patience or honesty, and turning quickly to wickedness and violence if they did not get all they wanted.

  Most of the folk in the settlement were signed Christians, and would go to Holmgard at Easter for the three days of sorrow and then gladness. So, when Tarkan Der told them that Halla was a kind of angel who had been sent to him and his friends when they were in trouble, and who could speak all tongues, they believed him. He had to make do at speaking their tongue himself, because Halla had fallen asleep after the women had bandaged her ankle and given her hot milk with some herbs in it. But Modolf and Alfeida and one or two others could speak Greek, and if he and they all spoke slowly they could make do. Everyone was looking at Halla now. While she slept the women combed back her hair, miraculously unsigned, and cut a small secret lock of it here or there to keep for their children’s children, who would hear the story told, winter after winter.

  But, before he too slept, Tarkan Der thought to himself that now he would surely be able to take honourable service with the Prince of Holmgard. And he thought also that Halla had become different again. How could he have thought of marrying a Godsgift? And yet he had seen her cook and clean; she had washed his shirts for him, after the way of women. She did not do any of these things well, as a girl should who had been brought up in a careful household by a good mother, and he knew all that, and when he was going to marry her he had weighed it and found it did not matter to him at all. What was she then? He knew the smell of her hair and body as well as he knew the smell of his own clothes. He knew the feel of her small shoulders with his arm round them. And yet, yet, he had thought of her in a different way from the way he had been used to think of Sweetfeather, his own. It would have been a different future from the one he had known he would have with Sweetfeather. And both—both were lost. But the future with Halla, had it ever been real? Oh, what was she then, what at all was she, Halla, his travelling friend, his helper, what was she? And he fell on sleep turning this over in his mind and no answer getting.

  Halla herself slept on until late the next day, and when she woke her ankle was less swollen. The people in the settlement had begun to get things redded up. Only the smell of burnt wood and thatch hung nastily in the air, clogging the breath. As they pulled out beams which were only half burnt and might serve again for something, or scraped away the hot ashes to see if there was anything left under them, the smoke rose again. Most metal had been spoiled by the heat, would break, but might be taken into Holmgard, melted down again and re-tempered by the smiths there who had great skill. Cattle and horses had their burns dressed as well as men and women. A woman whose labour had come on before time in the middle of the fighting, gave birth safely to a boy. A house of wattles and mud was planned to take the place of the big hall, for this winter at least. Already some of the men had brought back bundles of willows from the river bank. In the evening all gathered again, and work went on at the making of these hurdles by the smoky light of resin torches.

  The girl Alfeida had slept too, and now what had happened was beginning to fade into a past nightmare, as the bruises on her scalp and body would fade. All that mattered was the ending of it. She was young. She sat looking at Tarkan Der as he sat cleaning his sword slowly and carefully; she looked at the embroidered pattern of shells on his Marob coat; there was a bit coming loose. Could she ask to mend it, could she take the warm coat off his body and have it in her hands? Halla Godsgift, Halla the angel, she would not want to mend that coat?

  Now and then Tarkan Der looked at Alfeida. She was a golden-haired girl and the bruises stood out sharply blue on her white arms and neck; the blood came and went hotly on her cheeks. But the thought of Sweetfeather was on him heavily again. He fell into long, sore silences. It was nothing to him then what he had done at this place.

  One of the women was talking to Halla, shyly at first, and then, when she forgot that Halla might be an angel, with all the pleasure that one has at telling old news to a new face. She told her about Alfeida, how she was the old man’s only child. Yes, there had been two sons, but one had been killed in a hunting accident and the other had been drowned during the spring floods one year. In spite of the goodness of Modolf, there had been bad luck on the family. It went back far, far, and God in His goodness and wisdom had not seen fit to lift it. The girl Alfeida, too, was a good and kind one, clever at healing, quick at the loom, a lucky hand for butter, a good housewife. It had been most terrible for them all to see her being dragged off by the raiders, they knew for what. Two men had been killed trying to save her. And this one who had rescued her—what kind was he? Where did he come from? What was he thinking to do now? So Halla and the woman spoke away together through the busy, smoky-smelling evening, and it seemed altogether good to Halla if Tarkan Der would want to marry the girl Alfeida instead of herself.

  They went the next day to see the laying out of the new house. Alfeida had gone down with the men, was pacing out the walls, marking the corners; she had a straight eye and she knew what was wanted. After a time Tarkan Der had gone down to look and then got interested, and now was helping her. It had taken longer for Modolf to pull himself together, but by the second day he too was rested. He sat down on a hillock, a stick in his hand which he had leant on heavily, coming even this short distance, and a bandage round his wrist where it had been scorched. This strange one, Halla Godsgift, had said she would come out here later, but she too needed to walk with a stick. Was she or was she not a woman? Whose daughter could she be? He watched his own daughter now; she was holding one end of a rope and this man from the south the other; the pegs were hammered in. Then the man looked round, gave the end of the rope to a man from the settlement and walked back to where Halla was making her way over from the hut. He picked her up and carried her up the little hill, the plaits of her unsinged hair falling over his arm. Now she was sitting beside Modolf and Tarkan Der standing by her.

  “We had lived in peace for five years,” Modolf said. “I thought the arm of the prince was long enough. I thought the luck had turned.”

  “They were speaking to us, below in the huts, of old ill luck hat had been with your folk,” s
aid Halla. She too was watching the laying out of the building hurdles, and how the girl Alfeida was showing the men just how things should go.

  “It comes from a great way back,” said Modolf, and sighed and fretted in the dust with the point of his stick. “In those days my fathers were kings of a kind up north. It is said that there were giants in the world then, giants and dragons.”

  “But dragons there are, yes, and giants!” said Halla, and she was beginning to feel an odd kind of anxiety, as though this hillock above the river were not a real place at all. She caught Tarkan Der round the ankle and held on to him tight; his hand came down in a friendly and familiar way on to her head.

  “In the same way, perhaps, that there are angels and other good spirits, my child,” said Modolf, “but as seldom seen. Though now—none of us know what we have seen.” He fell silent for a moment, then he went on: “Great wickedness would be done in those days and the white Christ had not come to the north. Men went by ways of old Gods or not of any Gods, but by the violent wills of kings who were their own law. And it is said that a certain king had a wife who died, and he married again. And there was a child of the first wife, a baby girl, and the second wife said that it must be cast out into the forest and die. And so it was done. And my forefathers and I, God help us, through no fault of our own, are children of that king and that wicked queen. But there has been a continuous punishment and the sins of the fathers visited upon the children. Time and again death and destruction have come, lightning has struck, ships have been lost, the enemy has come in the night. First the kingdom was lost, though it was only a little kingdom between mountains and deep woods. And my forefathers came south and east, sometimes setting up a hall and settlement and all going well for a matter of years, sometimes serving as captains to greater kings and princes, such as the Prince of Holmgard, whom my father Otkell served and whom I served as a young man. My father’s father was baptized; surely the curse might have lifted then! But always the end was bad and now Alfeida, my daughter, is the last, the very last of the line.”