The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘There will always be some who forget a custom that was not of their own making,’ Bjarni said, hopefully.

  ‘Just as there are some who forget an oath that was not of their swearing.’ The shipmaster shrugged. ‘Nay then, we can all make mistakes. Tell me, what do you plan to do when you come to Dublin?’

  Bjarni had not had time to think of that. He knew only that Dublin was a fine rich town with the world from Iceland to Byzantium flowing through its streets. Plenty of chances there. ‘Join the war-band of Halfdan the King,’ he said on the spur of the moment. He did not think that Heriolf was listening to him, for he had turned aside to watch the stowing of some particularly precious bale; but he turned back, saying, ‘The man who sells his sword-service should have a care who he sells it to. Halfdan is not such a king as was Olaf the White. Wolf that he is, he sits uneasy in the King Seat, and has been toppled out of it once already.’

  ‘That might make for an interesting life for the men who follow him,’ Bjarni said.

  ‘Or a short one.’

  Thigh deep in sea water, Bjarni was growing uncomfortably cold. ‘Dublin first, any road. After that, wherever wind and tide may take me. Do I come aboard?’

  The merchant laughed. ‘Throw up your bundle.’

  Bjarni threw up his bundle and the man caught it, and reached down a hand. He grabbed it, and sprang like a salmon out of the shallows; and next instant was scrambling over the side to land on the rising and dipping foredeck of the merchant vessel.

  When the tide turned seaward on the dark edge of day-spring with the shore birds crying, the Sea Cow went with it, her crew swinging to the oars in time to the chant of ‘Lift her! Lift her!’ from Heriolf at the steering oar. And Bjarni squatted at the feet of the merchant shipmaster, with his naked sword laid across his knees.

  2

  The Streets of Dublin

  BJARNI HAD NEVER imagined that there could be a town like Dublin in all the wide world. Even Miklagard, that some men called Byzantium and others Constantinople, whose streets, as he had heard, were paved with gold, could hardly surpass it; though the narrow winding streets of Dublin seemed to be paved for the most part with split logs half sunk in springtime mud, where they were paved with anything at all. But the size of the place, and the close-huddled buildings and the shifting crowd . . .

  It had taken him the best part of the day, hanging around the High King’s Hall, among the fighting men and merchants, craftsmen and harpers and sea-captains already crowding the royal garth, to get word with the captain of Halfdan’s bodyguard. And when he did, the captain had stood with his hands on his hips and laughed at him. ‘What makes you think that Halfdan Ragnarson needs green striplings among his house-carles? Go you and sprout yourself a beard, and come back in two years’ time.’

  ‘I will go and sprout myself a beard. But I shall have better things to do than come back here in two years’ time!’ Bjarni had told him furiously.

  And someone among the onlookers had laughed. ‘Hark to the cockerel crowing!’

  So here he was, loose and lonely like a hound that has slipped his leash, in the winding ways of Dublin. The day was on the edge of dusk, that turned the passers-by shadowy about him, and no idea of what he should do next, and rage still twisted with the hunger in his belly. Well, he could do something about the hunger, at all events. Heriolf had changed the silver arm-ring for him for its weight in coins and precious metal shards and several links of a broken silver chain, so that he had usable buying-money to jingle in a greasy leather pouch tied to his belt. And wine shops and ale-houses seemed to be as thick on the ground as leaves in autumn.

  From one open doorway a particularly rich smell of stew spilled out with the glow of torchlight into the narrow wynd, and he went in.

  Inside there was peat-reek and the smoky light of a couple of torches, and a snotty-nosed boy tending to the needs of a knot of men at one end of a rough trestle table. Bjarni hitched out a stool and sat down at the other end of the table, the end nearest the door. He hadn’t bothered to remember most of the advice Heriolf had given him that morning – he was not a bairn to need such warnings – but he did remember that this was the best place to be in a strange ale-house. He called for ale and something to eat. The boy brought him ale in a leather jack, and a bowl of stew swimming in fat and a hunk of hard brown bread. And the men at the far end glanced round at him and then returned to the game of dice that they were playing among the platters and ale-pots of their own supper.

  Bjarni reckoned that they were Irishmen by their checkered cloaks and the meaningless tongue that they spoke, and then lost interest in them altogether.

  He had matters of his own to think about, such as what he was going to do next. There was an old ale stain on the table that looked like a grotesque face looking up at him, seeming to ask jeeringly, ‘Well? What now, Bjarni Sigurdson? Go back to Heriolf, squealing that they wouldn’t take you? Asking to be taken on to the next port of call?’

  He could do that, he knew. Heriolf was heading up the coast with dressed furs and amber and a fine foreign saddle for Evynd the Easterner, who held the North Irish coast-lands clear of raiders from his base on Belfast Lough. Maybe Evynd would take him on, even without a beard. At the worst he could work among the ship-sheds for a year or so whilst it grew. But how they would laugh at him, Sea Cow’s crew! His belly curdled at the thought of their laughter. He took a gulp of the sour ale and slammed the pot down in the middle of the leering face on the table, so that a few drops flew out to add to the stains on the boards.

  A stray dog which had just wandered in out of the dusk flinched aside at the sudden clatter. The dark flash of movement caught Bjarni’s eye, and he looked round and met the half-fearful, half-hopeful gaze of a pair of amber eyes. A half-grown black cur, lean as a wolf at the end of a famine winter, looked back at him, crouching and ready to spring away at the first sign of danger, but with a faint hopeful flickering at the end of its disreputable tail. Bjarni threw it a gobbet of bread, and it snapped it up and came nearer; he tossed it a bit of gristle from his stew bowl; and presently it was within arm’s length, sniffing at the fist he held out to it. It was the first thing that had seemed friendly in all Dublin, and half unwittingly Bjarni turned his hand over and began to rub behind its lop ears in the warm hollows where Astrid had liked to be rubbed. The dog leaned against his hand, eyes half closed in bliss.

  In the end, it had a reasonable share of his supper, and when there was no more to eat, sighed and lay down under the trestle. And busy with his own problems, Bjarni forgot about it.

  Presently he got up, paid for his supper after some haggling with two links from the broken silver chain, and heaving his bundle onto his shoulder drifted out into the dark wynd.

  The next thing was to find somewhere to spend the night. Maybe somewhere down toward the harbour, among the wharves and ship-sheds – though he would not be going anywhere near Sea Cow. So he turned downhill into the faint mist creeping up from the river. He did not notice that the black dog, sleeping with one ear and one eye open, had gathered itself together and come padding after him. Nor did he notice that one of the men playing dice at the other end of the table had risen and with a silent gesture to his fellows had also followed him out.

  Dublin was quietening from the crowding bustle of its daytime self. From every ale-house doorway cheerful uproar spilled into the street and stray knots of men from the ships or the garrison went roistering by from one to another; but between them the streets seemed filled with a quieter coming and going as of shadows. In one such patch of stealthy quiet between ale-house and ale-house, Bjarni caught a faint pattering behind him and, looking round, saw by the light of the May moon coming toward the full that the black dog was coming after him. He cursed it, and it gave back a little, but when he walked on again the sound of four feet was still behind him. A knot of shadows jostled past him, but when they were gone, the padding was still there. Fiends take the dog! As though he had not enough problems of his ow
n to handle! He stopped and grubbed up a loose billet of wood from the walk-way, and threw it at the animal, just to let it know that it was not wanted. It dodged, and came on. Maybe if he kept on walking for a while before he tried for somewhere to sleep, and simply took no more notice of it, it would give up in the end . . .

  He strode on, resolutely not checking or looking back. The streets seemed more crowded down here toward the harbour, and in a while he lost the sound of padding paws in the general surf-sound of voices and feet, lapping water and creaking timbers all around him. He never heard at all the light prowling feet of the dice-player behind him.

  But he felt the light tug at his belt, and swung round to find a dark figure almost pressed against him. He was aware of an up-reared arm that sent something free and arching across the face of the moon, into the midst of a ragged knot of revellers that had just emerged singing from a side alley, where a hand was up-flung to receive it. In the same splinter of time he caught the white blink of moonlight on a knife blade, and the next instant his own knife was in his hand. He felt the ringing jar of blade on blade, and then a slash of pain bright across his knuckles.

  No one among the shifting street-crowd took any notice of the small vicious knife-fight that had flared up in their midst. Nothing unusual in a knife-fight, and if it was not one’s own, better to keep well clear of it. A fist fight would have been another matter –

  For Bjarni, the seeming lack of all reason for the attack made it like something leaping at him out of a nightmare. His hand was growing slippery with his own blood, or his attacker’s, and trampling to and fro he knew one moment of cold fear; the fear that he was going to die here in the dark street of a strange town and no one of his own would ever know what had happened to him.

  And then a snarling blackness with the speed and force of Thor’s thunderbolt hurled itself upon the other man. The fight, which had been almost silent before, flared into a yowling and worrying and shouted curses. And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and the man was running, with the black dog baying in pursuit.

  Bjarni snatched a gasping breath and was after them, not caring about the man, but remembering all too clearly the glint of the moon on the knife blade. He tried to whistle but his mouth was dry; he tried to call the fool-dog off his hunting, but he had no name to call him by . . . Then the baying became a string of yelps drawing nearer, and as he ran, a black shape come streaking back to meet him out of the crowding shadows ahead, and the next instant the dog was panting and quivering against his legs. He stooped to fondle and reassure the creature, and his hand came away sticky. He hauled it over into the light of a nearby ale-house doorway, and saw a long shallow gash in its shoulder; a blow that had gone astray and done little damage, but was bleeding all the same.

  ‘Why me?’ he thought, cupping the creature’s muzzle consolingly in his free hand. He could not be the first who had ever thrown the brute a scrap of bread. Maybe he was the first who had ever rubbed it behind the ears. Clearly it was as masterless as he was, it had taken a knife-gash for his sake, and he could not abandon it to fend for itself in this howling wilderness of the streets of Dublin. Well, he had enough silver to feed them both for a while. He slid his knife back into its sheath, his hand expecting the feel of his pouch beside it. It was not there. And glancing down he saw the pouch strings neatly cut through, and remembered the faint tug at his belt, the dark thing arching across the moon on its way to be caught by someone else in the crowd. The knife had not been meant for him, only to separate him from his pouch. The fight had grown from that only because he had felt the tug and turned before the thief had a chance to get clear.

  What now? It was not only his silver that had gone, but the time it would have bought him. Time to work out what to do next, find someone to sell his sword-service to. Everything in him shied away from the thought of going back to Heriolf and Sea Cow, telling him how he had fared in the King’s garth. ‘The captain told me to go and grow myself a beard.’ Now he would have to add, ‘And some cursed bog-brother has stolen my pouch.’ He did not think that he could do it.

  The dog looked up at him hopefully, wagging its tail.

  ‘I haven’t anything more,’ Bjarni said. Already he seemed to hear the jeering, the rough, good-humoured laughter. Well, that would be the price to be paid; there was generally a price to be paid for things.

  ‘Come,’ he said with a small slap to his thigh; and the dog gave a little bounce and came, willing and eager. Bjarni would have slipped a strap round its neck if he had had one to spare, but all he had was his belt, without which both his sword and his breeks would fall down. But when, twisting his bleeding knuckles in one corner of his cloak, he turned and walked on, the creature paced at his knee with the proud submission of a good hound.

  There was a gaggle of ale-houses strung out along the keel-strand; and Heriolf and several of the Sea Cow’s crew were taking their ease in the third he looked into.

  The merchant master looked round from the bench on which he was sprawling, and saw them in the doorway, and waved a greeting with the ale-pot in his hand.

  And Bjarni jostled his way into the crowded peat-reek of the place, the black dog still at his knee.

  ‘And what brings you down this way from the High King’s Hall?’ Heriolf demanded.

  ‘I was thinking you’ll be needing a bodyguard up north to Evynd’s keel-strand,’ Bjarni said.

  ‘Will I so? And what of the King’s house-carles?’

  ‘I changed my mind! I have no wish for the King’s house-carles, nor for his town.’ Bjarni grinned, standing with his feet apart.

  ‘Which, it seems, has lightened you of your silver.’ Heriolf’s brows were up and his small dark eyes flickering with amusement along Bjarni’s belt where his pouch had been knotted.

  ‘I exchanged it for the dog,’ Bjarni told him, and all the weather-burned grinning faces along the table. It was true in a way.

  There was a splurge of laughter, good-natured enough, and every eye was on the gangling black creature standing pressed against his leg.

  ‘What?’ said Heriolf. ‘For that half-grown, half-starved gutter-cur?’

  Their laughter twisted in Bjarni’s gut. But he answered steadily, ‘He’ll be a fine hound by and by, fed up a bit, and when he’s grown to match his legs.’

  ‘And you so eager to get him that you paid the pouch along with the silver, cutting the purse strings rather than waiting to untie them?’ Heriolf jerked a thumb at the end of knotted thong still fastened to Bjarni’s belt.

  ‘Yes,’ Bjarni said, and looked him eye into eye, knowing that the man did not believe a word of the story, but sticking to it all the same.

  ‘And your bundle too? Was that part of the bargain?’

  Until that moment, Bjarni had forgotten all about his bundle, abandoned, presumably, when he needed both hands for other matters. Still, what was an old cloak and a spare sark? ‘Yes,’ he said again.

  ‘And having just bought him at such a princely price, I am thinking you will not be minded to leave him behind in Dublin.’

  Bjarni shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘Ach well –’ Heriolf took a long reflective pull at the ale-jack, then held it out to him. ‘Have a swallow, you look as though you could do with one . . . It is not the first time that I have carried hounds among the Sea Cow’s cargo. You had best go down to her now. I have kept a guard on board. Tell him I sent you, and get your head down; we’ll be loading a fresh cargo in the morning.’

  3

  Sword for Sale

  THE GREAT SEA-LOUGH ran for half a day’s rowing into the heart of the land; and on its north shore, far enough from the open sea to gain shelter from the mountains behind it, near enough to have its longships quickly out into the open water in time of need, the fleet base of Evynd the Easterner lay clear in late sunlight under a great over-arching bank of cloud.

  ‘Weather brewing,’ said Heriolf, sniffing the wind like a hound, one eye on the threaten
ing cloud bank as the sail came rattling down and the oars were run out; and Sea Cow came about in answer to his hand on the steering oar, and headed for the long keel-strand. ‘Well, we shall be snug enough out of storm’s reach tonight.’

  Bjarni, squatting at the master’s feet with his sword across his knees, his free hand twisted in the bit of old rope round Hugin’s neck – the black hound had a name by now, taken from that of one of the god Odin’s ravens – looked along the straining backs of the rowers and out past Sea Cow’s up-reared prow as the distance narrowed between ship and shore.

  He saw long turf-thatched buildings, high-gabled ship-sheds, the long dark shapes, like basking seals, of galleys lying on the slipways or on the open beach. And mingled with the land scents of sun-warmed grass and heather, the sea-reek of pitch and rope and timber came to his questing nose.

  Along the strand, men were making all secure for foul weather; and some among the nearest came wading out to add their strength to that of Sea Cow’s crew as they sprang overboard into the shallows; and so they ran her ashore and well up the beach above the tide-line, where they set to work to rig the storm covers and drive in the chocks that kept her on an even keel.

  Scarce a couple of oars’ lengths further along the strand two slim war-galleys were being made ready for the waiting timber rollers to take them up to a nearby ship-shed. Bjarni, who had splashed ashore with a hand still twisted in Hugin’s makeshift collar, looked up from the rope’s end which somebody had tossed to him with orders to hang on to it, to see the tall dragon-prow of the nearest up-reared against the gathering storm clouds and the wheeling gulls.

  Coming as he did of a sea-going people, he had seen a good few carved wooden dragon-prows before now; but none the like of this one for beauty or for a kind of shining wickedry that lifted the hair a little on the back of his neck. Like many of its kind, it was not all dragon, but held within it traces of some other beast, and looking up at it, letting his eyes follow the long wave-break curves of carving that almost broke into leaves and blossom but never quite, Bjarni realised that this one was part vixen, long-necked, slender and savage, the same curve from throat to chin, the same laid-back ears, the same snarling mask . . .