Swords From the Sea (31 page)

The men believed that Brand had worked their misfortune. The Berserk, they whispered, had laid a spell of magic upon the ship and all in it. He had led them to this country beyond the known world; he had gone off to make sacrifice to his strange gods. He alone had been able to pull out the ax that was fastened by magic in the trunk of the oak tree. And who but Brand would have use for a common ash plank?

"This much is true," assented Ranulf moodily. "While Brand abode with us fortune favored us, and since he went away these unknown gods have shown their enmity. Now it is to be seen what sacrifice they will require of us."

The snow ceased on the third day, and in the morning of the fourth day Ranulf understood how great the sacrifice would be.

During the storm Brand had worked in his bark hut, deep in a grove of giant pines near a height from which he could watch-on fair days-the distant lake with its camp. He worked by firelight, while the wind roared through the pines and fine snow drifted through the smoke hole. With his ax and knife he cut a small ash board into two lengths, pointed at one end, square at the other. He thinned these lengths of seasoned wood-each about as broad as his hand-rounded the edges, and made notches in the center to pass straps around. From time to time he stopped to cook venison steak or to bake meal cakes, or to sleep.

But it took him a long time to finish the lengths of wood, to polish them and grease them with fat so they would slide easily over the snow. It was noon of the fourth day before he was able to tie the skis to his feet and venture out into the forest, upon the deep covering of virgin snow. His skis, pressing down the soft surface, slid along bearing his weight easily and he was satisfied with them.

He crossed deer tracks and then he came to a broad trail that set the hair stirring on his scalp.

It was made by scores of feet. But these feet were as broad and as long as Brand's forearm; they left the crisscross mark of webbing in the snow. And they went toward the camp of the Norsemen. Brand sped along the packed trail, running where it was level, and shooting down the slope to the lake.

He came thus into the camp, and the first thing he saw was Ranulf and the seamen gathered about the body of Fighting Mord. The leader of the Vikings had arrows fast in his chest and another through his throat.

"Well," quoth Brand, "he did not belie his name." He caught Ranulf by the arm. "Where is Kristi?"

All the seamen were silent. They looked frightened as if they had seen spirits rise up out of the earth. Only Ranulf was able to relate what had befallen-how, after Kristi had gone out of the house before sunrise to look to the animals, a clamor as of human wolves had broken out. Running from the house he had seen in the faint light Fighting Mord struggling with strange shapes of men who yelped like fiends. These men had inhuman faces-white bones without flesh. They had long hair bristling with feathers, and they had wounded several of his companions before they had raced away on their round snowshoes. And they had borne Kristi away with them.

"Bring me an iron-ring shirt," Brand growled. "Bring me a horned helmet."

He slipped the mail shirt on beneath his cloak. It had pieces that came down over the thighs. He put the bright helmet with its two projecting horns on his red head. He wrapped the bearskin about his shoulders and took up his ax again.

"Nay," cried Ranulf, "do not follow. Thor himself could not get Kristi from the hands of the fiends in the forest. Do not give them another life."

The Vikings muttered assent. True, they had no snow skates such as Brand had made for himself and they could make no journey through the deep snow; but not one of them would willingly have faced again the warriors of this unknown land.

"I will follow," said Brand. "Do ye bide here, little men."

He said it over his shoulder. Already thrusting himself off, with the staff of his great ax, he was sliding out toward the forest on the trail left by the warband.

When the sun was down to the treetops he came to the end of the trail. First he heard the barking of dogs; then he saw a great cluster of huts with smoke rising from a fire in the midst of them, in a clear place.

The Berserk stopped to tighten his belt and to clean the snow from each of his skis. When he struck the ax shaft upon the ground, it jarred against a stone and the steel blade sang shrill.

"Aye," said Brand, "thou singest loud, for soon there will be smiting of weapons and the ravens and wolves will be fed by thee."

So saying he went forward, gliding fast. Scores of dark men came before the huts to look at him. They had bows and painted shields; white marks were painted on their faces so that they appeared to be bones. They were tall men, and they yelled with rage as their first arrows flew.

Some of the arrows struck against Brand's iron-ring shirt and bounced back, and the savages yelled in dread. They gave back when the giant Berserk swung his ax. But several arrows caught in the white bearskin and one slashed Brand's thigh.

At sight of the flowing blood the savages began to leap about him boldly. They surrounded him, throwing stone axes, and dodging the sweep of the ax.

Brand could not move swiftly because of his skis, and they were too fearful to come to grips with him as he pressed forward among the huts.

"Ho, Kristi!" he shouted.

And the girl's cry answered him.

Brand turned toward it when a net of woven vines was flung at him, falling over his head. He tore it, and lifted it off. But a dozen savages flung themselves upon him, gripping the ax fast. Brand swayed under their weight, while their clubs knocked the helmet from his head. He struck out with his fists, until more of them piled upon him, when he fell under the weight of bodies.

Then the savages yelled exultantly. They pulled the cloak and the iron shirt from his bare trunk. They cut the skis from his feet, and women ran from the huts to stare at him. They bound his wrists with withes in front of him and led him to the fire dancing about him.

Brand was bewildered by their nimbleness. He saw Kristi led out into the front of the crowd that gathered in a circle about him. The girl was pale; still, she did not weep.

"Now that was poor sport, Kristi," he said moodily, "and I have done nothing for you."

Three tall savages wrapped in deerskin robes came and stood before him with folded arms. They had eagle feathers in their hair. They looked boldly into his face, while the circle pressed inward. Then a warrior who had been at the fire came up to Brand and thrust a pointed chip of wood into the side of his chest. It was as long as a finger and the outer end of it was smoking and burning.

"Now, little Kristi," Brand said, "they have pricked me with a splinter."

Another piece of wood was thrust into his other side, and the fire began to bite at his flesh. Anger smoldered in him, and he flung up his red head to chant the song of his kind-the song of shields clashing upon the long ships and steel smiting; and the cries of the kites and wolves that fed upon bodies of the slain, who had been caught up by the winged battle maidens, speeding aloft to Valhalla's hall.

So he sang, and the chieftains of the savages grunted in admiration. But tears came into Kristi's eyes, so that she covered her head with her cloak. Because of the pain in his sides and the sight of her tears, Brand's anger grew great. Still he sang on, because it was not time to end his death song yet. And suddenly one of the chiefs gave a shout and drew a knife. He stepped behind Brand and cut through the flesh between two of his ribs.

Brand's song ceased. The anger that was in him suddenly filled his brain. The snow and the yelling crowd became red before his eyes, and with the strength of frenzy, he jerked his bound wrists against his uplifted knee.

Some of the withes cracked and slipped. With his shoulder sinews cracking, the Berserk tore his hands free from the bonds. He leaped forward through the air, knocking the savages aside. And before they could grasp him well he had caught up his ax where it lay unheeded on the ground.

Leaping away from them, he swung it about his head and the steel whined. The curved blade crashed into the face of a man, shearing away part of the skull. It split open the skull of another.

When they scrambled away from him, Brand sprang back to the fire. The fit of the Berserk was upon him, and he did not think or plan anymore. He saw only the red mist before him and the darting bodies of his foes. Snatching from the fire a small log burning at one end, he ran at them, the blazing log and the bloodied ax making circles among them. His great arms heaved and slashed.

They could not use their bows in that press, and it must have seemed to them that the Berserk was a god dealing out destruction. They ran from him, through the huts, and he leaped after them. He broke the spine of a chief with a blow, and after that fear came upon them and they fled from the village, far into the forest. But they left behind the captive girl to appease this death-dealing god.

Under a red sunset, Brand stood leaning upon his ax, panting, the steam rising from his wounded body. But when Kristi came up to him, weep ing and wiping at his hurts with a coil of her long hair, the red mist faded from before his eyes, and he grinned his crooked grin.

"Now that," he said, "was but poor weapon-play, yet much good came of it."

"It is my doing, Brand," she said mournfully, "that thou art hurt. Because in my heart I prayed all this day thou wouldst come to find me."

He cleaned his hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "And I have found thee in such a way," he answered softly, "that nothing shall ever come between us again."

Kristi turned away so that he should not see her face; still she said nothing against it. With strips from her smock she bound fast the cut on his back, while he tied on his skis again with new thongs, and picked up his bearskin.

He lifted his ax to one shoulder, and he lifted the girl to the other. He set his foot forward and began to glide back along the trail through the twilight.

Over the treetops a star gleamed in the cold sky. Kristi looked at it and spoke suddenly: "If I asked for a star to put in my hair, could you get it for me?"

"Certainly," said Brand.

I

My brothers, it was a bad night when the order first came to me. True, in the North all nights are bad, with the mists from the swamps and the breath of the sea that is not warm but cold-cold as the wounds of a dead man.

But that night the bells were ringing all over St. Petersburg. They clashed and muttered as if imps were dancing on the bell ropes and a fog came up the river and rolled across the bridges.

I had a lantern tied to my sash-such a fog it was-when I made the rounds of the sentry boxes by the great cathedral. Although Easter was at hand snow still lay along the fronts of the stone houses.

Ekh, you, my brothers, turn loose your horses in the tall grass at such a season. You have not visited the cities of the Muscovites, the Moskyas we Cossacks call them, where the houses are built up out of stones and the roads between the houses are called streets-streets covered with hewn logs. So it was that night of the year 1788 after the Christ. And so it is now, for all I know.

The order came in this fashion. I was standing at one of the sentry posts listening to the bells, thinking that all this ringing was like a summons, when the little bells of a troika drew nearer in the fog, and a three-span sleigh came to a halt beside me.

"Is that the sotnik, Ivak? burn you! You are hard to find as a pig's bristle."

Lifting the lantern, I made out an under-ensign of the Preobrazhensky regiment, with his dark-green coat and red facings and brass buttons. He had few hairs in his beard.

"Are you Ivak, the sotnik, senior under-officer of the squadron of Don Cossacks quartered at the palace?" he asked again.

It was true that I was next in command to our ataman, our colonel who left matters pretty much to me, as he was always riding escort to the Empress. Her Majesty liked fine tall fellows who filled their uniforms and could sit a horse. She sent for us, out of the steppe fifteen hundred versts away, to see what we were like. We Cossacks of the Don are not bad-looking chaps, and we can ride better than anyone else in the world. Until my father's time we had always been our own masters and we came to St. Petersburg to see what the Empress was like.