The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga)

by Roberts, Judson

  As I raised my drinking horn to my lips, I whispered a private prayer to the old chieftain. "Give my greetings to my brother Harald, and to my mother, and to my father Hrorik. Tell them that one day I will hope to join them and you in Odin's great hall."

  One by one, Hastein called out the names of the dead. For each, he had kind words and praises, although in truth there was not a great deal that could be said about some who had died. Skuli, for instance—Bram's friend. He was but a young man from a small village. He had no history of grand deeds to recite. But he had been willing to join the hunt for Toke. The decision had cost him his life.

  I had expected the fire to be lit as soon as all the dead had been praised and drunk to, but Hastein continued to speak.

  "My comrades, you may believe that the blood-price has been paid in full for our brothers who died. We ourselves took the lives of most of the pirates who attacked us, for they were no match for our courage and our blades. And the folk of Oeland have put to death those who survived the battle. But the full blood-price has not yet been paid. Let me tell you now what I have but recently learned.

  "Sigvald and his band did not attack us by chance. They were but pirates, and we were clearly a formidable company. Have you not wondered why they did not just let us pass by?"

  Many nodded their heads, and some muttered, "Aye."

  "Sigvald was told that we would be sailing this way. He was told we were but recently returned from the war in Frankia, and that our sea chests would be filled with silver. He attacked because he believed us to be so rich a prize that the losses he would surely suffer would be well worth the treasure to be won. We sailed into a trap that had been set to kill us. Had we been lesser men, it would have succeeded. This was the work of Toke, the man we hunt. He set a very clever trap. He is a very dangerous foe. The blood of our comrades is on his hands."

  An angry growl spread through the men listening to Hastein speak.

  "This, too, I have learned," Hastein continued. "Toke sails for Birka. There he hopes to sell Sigrid, the sister of our comrade Halfdan, to slave traders. She is reputed to be a great beauty, who will be worth riches in the Araby kingdoms. And then he will sail for Ireland.

  "Toke must not reach Ireland. For now, he has but twenty-one men left in his war-band. We still outnumber him by more than two-to-one. If we can catch him now, he will be ours. But in Ireland, he has strong allies. Thorgils, the greatest chieftain among the Danes and Norse who are there, will support him, as will others.

  "This night we will feast. The Oelanders would honor us for our victory, and thank us for their deliverance. But on the morrow, as quickly as we can ready our ships, we will sail for Birka. On the morrow, we will take up our hunt again. And this I vow before you all. For the deaths of the twelve men we now honor, I count myself among those whom Toke has wronged. He now owes me a blood-debt, as well as those he owes for his past acts of treachery and murder. I will collect it."

  Slipping the golden ring off his arm, Hastein held it aloft in his fist and shouted, "Upon this unbroken ring, I make this oath before you all: I will not give up this hunt, even if it leads me to the very edge of the world."

  Our gathered warriors roared their approval. They held their cups high, and many shouted back, "To the edge of the world!" before they drank to Hastein's oath. I, too, drank, and repeated Hastein's words. But in my heart, I hoped they would not prove to be prophetic.

  * * *

  When Hastein finished speaking, the torches were lit and the wood stacked around the death ship set alight in multiple places. A steady breeze was blowing westward across the ridge out over the channel. It quickly whipped the points of flame into a blaze. As the fire began to engulf the ship itself, an osprey appeared high overhead and circled three times. Then it caught the wind and soared off, the smoke from the fire trailing below it. All agreed that it was a good omen. Einar suggested that the bird had been sent from Valhalla itself to guide the spirits of our comrades on their final journey.

  After the burning ship had collapsed in upon itself in a shower of sparks, I walked slowly back to the camp. The others around me were in high spirits, partly from the toasts we had drunk to honor our dead, and partly in anticipation of the evening's feast. Our company would be departing for it soon. The ruined fort was, Hastein explained, some distance farther up the island, and even if we left now, dusk would be falling by the time we reached it.

  I realized what Hastein had told me earlier was right. If we were to leave on the morrow, I needed to decide what to do with the girl. I must speak to her now, quickly, before we left for the feast.

  I did not intend to take my drinking horn with me to the feast. I would tuck my wooden spoon in my belt pouch, but Nori had assured Hastein that our hosts, the Oelanders, would provide us bowls for our food and cups to drink from. Boarding the Gull, I went to my sea chest to put the horn inside. When I opened it, the Finn's ornate leather quiver caught my eye.

  The girl had seemed moved when she had seen it. On impulse, I emptied the arrows out and took it with me.

  As in the morning, when I reached her tent she was nowhere in sight, and the flap covering the entrance was down. "Rauna," I called out. "It is Halfdan. We must speak."

  I heard a rustling sound of her moving inside, but she did not answer. Sighing in exasperation, I added, "I have brought something for you. Your father's quiver."

  After a few moments, she said, in a low voice which I had to strain to understand, "What is…quiver? I do not know that word."

  "The leather bag to hold arrows. You said your mother made it for your father."

  She pulled the flap aside and looked out. She was on her knees, her legs tucked underneath her, just inside the door opening. She looked for a moment at the quiver in my hand, then up at my face. When she did, I could see that her cheeks were streaked with the tracks of tears. She had been weeping.

  Seeing me staring, she sniffed and wiped her cheeks with her hands, then reached out and took the quiver.

  "We must speak," I said again, in a softer voice this time. "My people sail on the morrow. We are leaving Oeland. We must decide what to do with you."

  A look of despair washed over her face and she hung her head.

  "You could stay here, on Oeland. Do you wish to do that?" It would be easiest for me if she would. I was eager to have her off my hands.

  At the suggestion, she looked up at me with fear showing in her eyes and shook her head. "I am afraid of them," she whispered. I did not blame her for that.

  "Where are your people?" I asked. "Where do they live?"

  She pointed vaguely to the northwest. "There," she said. "Far away. Very far away."

  I wondered again how she and her father had ended up here, among Sigvald's company of pirates.

  "We are sailing for Birka," I told her. "Do you know Birka? Have you heard of it?"

  She looked, if possible, even more fearful than before, but nodded. "I have been there. Once. With my father and mother."

  That, at least, was helpful. If her people sometimes traveled to Birka, perhaps some of them would be there when we arrived. If so, I could leave her there, with someone who could help her find her way back to her home.

  "Good," I told her. "Then it is settled. You will travel with us to Birka."

  I had expected her to be pleased. Instead, she began trembling. Without another word, she lowered the door covering and retreated deeper into her tent.

  * * *

  We marched together as a company to the feast, cutting first across the grassy pastureland behind the beach, then climbing the slope beyond. When we reached its crest, I realized that what I'd thought to be a narrow ridge was far broader than I had imagined—it spanned the entire center of the island. The ground atop the ridge was rocky, far less fertile than the flat lands that lined the shore, and much of the center of the island was covered with patches of short, twisted trees.

  A road of sorts—a hard-packed earthen track, wide enough for several men to r
ide abreast, or for large carts to travel on—ran along the edge of the crest, overlooking the wide apron of fertile pastures and fields below. We headed north along the road as the sun sank lower and lower and shadows grew long.

  The sun had left the sky and the moon was not yet risen when we reached the fort. The side of the ridge fell sharply away here in a steep, sloping cliff face. A wall built of stacked stones, taller than the height of a man, began at the cliff's edge and ran for almost the length of a bow shot before curving around in a broad half circle, to meet the precipice again on the far side. As we drew closer, I could see that the fort was in disrepair. The top of the wall was jagged and uneven, and stones that had fallen from it lay along its base.

  The road curved to pass across the front of the fort, where an opening was located. Presumably it had once been secured by a gate, but now it was nothing more than a wide gap in the wall. Torches had been wedged in the stones on either side to serve as beacons to guide us, and when we reached the opening, Nori was standing in it, a group of men and women gathered behind him, all singing a song of welcome. At its conclusion, they turned and led us inside.

  The interior of the fort held only a flat, grassy field. Three large bonfires had been built in its center to provide light, and a long, low cook-fire had been laid in the middle of the area lit by them. While Nori addressed a long and rambling speech to Hastein, Einar and I wandered around the interior. I wondered what this place had looked like in times past. Who had built it, and where had they gone?

  "In Frankia," I told Einar, "when we were out scouting for the Frankish army, I found an old, ruined fort deep in the forest. Do you not wonder, if the stones in such places could talk, what tales they might tell us?"

  Einar shook his head. "No," he said, "I do not." He looked at me as if he felt it was a strange thought to have. "Come this way," he told me.

  He led me to the back of the fort, along the cliff, at the midpoint between where the long, curved wall touched its edge on either side. "This is where they held the sacrifice this morning," he said. "And it must be where they killed the prisoners, too. Look, there are their heads. I wonder where Skjold's is."

  The Oelanders had built two tall tripods of long wooden poles, lashed together in a point at their top ends, with their bottom ends spread wide. The skin of a horse had been draped over each tripod so that it hung as if some gaunt, bloody ghost beast was rearing up on its hind legs. The horses' heads, which were still attached to the skins, were propped atop the tripods so they seemed to be staring out toward the distant sea.

  On either side of the horse offerings, poles had been driven into the ground along the edge of the cliff, spaced so that they reached almost to the wall on either side. A human head was impaled on each pole. They, too, were facing out toward the sea. It made a grim sight. I felt glad they had not been turned the other way. I would not have liked to have their dead eyes staring at me during the feast.

  Two short tables, with a bench for each, had been hauled to the fort and set up side by side, facing the cook-fire. Together, they formed the high table for the feast. Nori and three other village headmen sat at one, Nori taking the seat in the center, closest to the other table. "And you," he said to Hastein, pointing to the neighboring table, "will sit here, beside me. Please choose three of your captains to join us."

  Torvald, of course, sat at Hastein's side. As the new captain of the archers, I took the place beside him. Hastein selected Hroald, the headman from the village near the estate in Jutland, to be our fourth at the high table. I thought it a generous gesture on his part. Had the villagers not joined our company, we would not have had enough men to undertake this voyage. They'd had no duty to avenge Harald, as the men of the estate did. And they were more farmers than warriors. Yet they had come out of respect for Hrorik, my father, and for his murdered son. Now three of their eight were dead. Their honor and loyalty had cost them dearly.

  I did not enjoy the feast. First Nori, then each of the other headmen at the high table felt compelled to give repeated and lengthy toasts thanking the gods for sending us to free them from the oppression the pirates had inflicted. I did not believe the gods had sent us. We had come this way for our own reasons. If the Norns had chosen to cross our threads with those of the pirates and the Oelanders, they, too had their own reasons, which we as mortal men could not see. But it was not the Oelanders' prayers that had brought us here.

  I found my thoughts carrying me back time and again to my conversation that afternoon with Rauna. Why had she looked so afraid? What had occurred in Birka? Again I could not help but wonder how she and her father had come to be a part of Sigvald's pirate band.

  Torvald, unlike me, was enjoying himself immensely. Although I found the horsemeat in the stew the Oelanders had prepared to be rather tough and stringy, for Torvald it was enough that it was fresh meat. And of course, the fact that there was ale—as much as we could drink—only served to cinch the feast's success in his eyes.

  He nudged me with his elbow, almost knocking me off the bench. "You have a strange look on your face," he said. "You look troubled."

  "It is nothing," I told him. "My thoughts are just elsewhere."

  "There are times," Torvald suggested, "when it is a good thing to have no thoughts at all. You should drink more ale."

  I took his advice. Later, I wished that I had not.

  * * *

  Many cups later—more than I could count—I was standing at the edge of the cliff, swaying dangerously, releasing the ale pressure that had built up within me. I no longer cared whether the dead eyes of the horses and executed pirates might be watching.

  Nori suddenly appeared at my side. Lifting his tunic and sliding his trousers down his thighs, he too began to relieve himself.

  "We offered it to each of them," he said.

  "What?" I mumbled. I had no idea what he was speaking about.

  "Killing the pirates. We offered each man who had a woman stolen from him the chance to kill one of these pirates. We lined them up here, and one by one, laid their necks across a log. We gave the right to strike off their heads to those who had a woman taken by them."

  I did not wish to hear this. I did not know why he was telling it to me.

  "There were nine," Nori continued. "Seven who had women taken, but they are now returned to them. And two—Osten and Serck—whose women died. Four did it. They took the axe and killed a man. But the last one did not strike true. His first blow did not even kill the pirate, and it took him three blows in all to cut off his head. After that, most of the others said they did not wish to kill another man. So then Osten and Serck killed the rest of the pirates. They chopped off their heads and threw their bodies down the cliff."

  I wished the old man would stop talking and leave me alone. I did not care. It was not my concern. Skjold had chosen the path he'd followed. His death was his own doing, not mine.

  "Osten is not the man he once was," Nori said. The old man was a prattler. It tired me to listen to him. I pulled up my trousers and turned unsteadily to rejoin the feast.

  "His anger consumes him," Nori continued. He paused for a moment, then added. "I do not know where he has gone."

  I stopped and shook my head, trying to clear the ale fog from it.

  "What are you saying?"

  "Osten, and Serck, too. They left the feast a short time ago. I do not know where they have gone—but I am concerned."

  "Why are you telling me this?" I demanded. But in my heart, I knew.

  "Your jarl, your people, you have saved us," he replied. "I do not wish there to be trouble between us."

  I had left my sword lying on the table at my seat. I sprinted to it, wobbling a little as I did, slung its baldric over my shoulder, then headed at a slow run toward the gate. Behind me, I heard Hastein calling, "Halfdan! Where are you going?" I did not take the time to answer.

  The route back to our encampment seemed much further than it had when we'd traveled it that afternoon. My sword's scabbard kept
bouncing between my legs and almost tripping me, until I finally unslung it and carried it in my left hand. And I seemed to have no wind to run with—the amount of ale I'd drunk no doubt was to blame for that. I kept having to stop, catch my breath, and walk for a time before I could run again.

  The night sky was clear, but was lit by only a half moon. Once I thought I saw in the distance a figure, possibly two, far ahead on the road.

  Just as I reached the point where the ridge overlooked our encampment, I heard a woman's scream from somewhere down below. There was no other woman save Rauna down there. I headed down the slope at a run, and almost immediately lost my footing and fell headlong, hitting my head on a rock and bruising my shoulder badly.

  I lay stunned for a few moments, then staggered to my feet. I realized I did not know where my sword was. I had lost it in the fall.

  Rauna screamed again. I headed downhill, more cautiously this time. Once I reached level ground I ran as fast as my leaden legs would carry me toward her tent.

  The flap covering the door opening had been torn off. Inside, a man with black hair and a short-trimmed beard—he must have been the one Nori had called Serck—was kneeling at Rauna's head, holding her arms and keeping her pinned, helpless, on her back. Osten was squatting astride her.

  I crouched and stepped through the opening into the tent. Inside, I grabbed Osten's long brown beard just below his jaw with my left hand. I jerked it hard, twisting his head back and to the side as I pulled him up off of Rauna, then I drew my dagger with my right hand and sliced the blade across his throat. As his blood sprayed out, I twisted and heaved his body out of the tent.

  Behind me, Serck released Rauna and leapt to his feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him sweep something up in his hand from the floor of the tent as he did. Just as I turned back to face him, he swung his arm and a heavy weight crashed against the side of my head. My knees buckled under me and I toppled over sideways. The last thing I saw as everything went black was the look of triumph on Serck's face.