The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson (9 page)

‘That should hold until we come again to Barra and they can make a neater job of it in the ship-sheds,’ he said when he was satisfied, and began to buckle it on as another man might buckle on a piece of his war gear. He jerked the buckle tight on the last strap, the one that encircled his waist beneath his sword belt, and stood up to a cheer from the men about the fire.

‘Timbertoes is himself again.’

He looked round at Bjarni, who had risen also with an odd feeling that he was being left behind, and his mouth quirked into its rare, fierce and fleeting smile. ‘Not but what I’m minded to keep it as it is to mind me of a day well spent and in good company.’

THEY SPENT THREE
days lying close under the elbow of Bute, patching up their own ships and the captured reiving vessels, before they swung out the oars again for Barra. They met squally weather in the open waters beyond Arran, but on the third morning the southernmost islets of Barra rose like faint cloud shapes out of the sea; and before evening they were nosing in past Vatersay toward the main island harbour.

The sails had come rattling down and the crews had taken to the oars and Bjarni, pulling with the rest, saw only the tall graceful up-thrust of the stern post, and beyond,
Wave Rider
and
Red Wolf, Reindeer
and
Star Bear
and the three captives, with prize crews aboard them, following each in another’s wake, and beyond again the empty seaway that they had crossed. Onund was standing braced on his renewed wooden leg at the steering oar, bringing
Sea Witch
into harbour, leading home the fleet.

All along the rowing benches men were beginning to snatch glances over their shoulders as the coasts slid by. And Bjarni, glancing back also as he swung
to his oar, saw the high-pitched gables of the ship-sheds above the gull-grey shingle of the landing-beach that had been stranger-strand when first he came that way, but grown familiar as the months went by until the sight of it brought with it a sense of homecoming.

The next glance snatched over his shoulder showed him the whole landing-beach and the rough grass slopes beyond freckled with people. Clearly they had been seen from afar – a look-out on Vatersay maybe – and the whole of the mainland settlement had come crowding down to see them return in triumph. Eight war keels returning, where they had seen five away.

Onund’s voice quickened in the rowing chant, ‘Lift her! Lift her!’ and
Sea Witch
leapt forward like a mare that scents her own stable and is eager to be home. Onund put over the steering oar and she came round in a sea-swallow curve, the others following in the white oar-thresh of her wake. The water was green now in the steep shallows, and they were heading straight in through the broken water where the weed-grown jetty thrust out to give shelter from the storms and the swinging tides.

‘Now! In oars! Out rollers! Run her in, my heroes!’

They unshipped the oars and swung them on board and caught up their rollers from their places under the thwarts. They were out over the sides, belly-deep into the icy water, running her up through the shallows, the rest following after. The people at the settlement came plunging out to meet them, set their shoulders to the ship’s sides and helped with the rollers as they ran her up the sloping shingle, shouting and cheering as they went.

The whole settlement seemed to be there, old men and boys, women and bairns and the usual flurry of dogs. Bjarni was still shin-deep when the black and joyful shape of Hugin was thrashing about his legs,
trying to leap up on him, adding his frenzied showers of barks to the general tumult. Bjarni thrust him off with one foot; but only a few gasping moments later, with
Sea Witch
safely stranded, he was squatting on his heels to receive the loving onslaughts of the great black dog. All around him men were greeting their women, tossing up their bairns, joyful reunions all along the ship-strand, save where a woman here or there stood looking for her husband or son who had not come back with the rest. Here and there were girls who had kilted up their kirtle skirts and came running down to meet the returned ships; and among them, Thara Priestsdaughter. She passed close by Bjarni, slanting her eyes at him and holding her shoulders back to make the most of her little round apple breasts. But he never saw her, because his face was buried in Hugin’s neck and his hands were up, working into the warm hollows behind the great hound’s ears.

Later, when the longships had been run up the beach and tended like hard-worked horses brought back to their stables, when the reunions were over and the evening meal had been eaten, the captured booty was brought up to the broad garth before the Hearth Hall and the crews gathered to the share-out, with most of the rest of the settlement looking on. The harvest, by now gathered in by the thralls and the womenfolk, had been a poor one, thin in the ear and storm-battered, but this other kind of harvest would help to see them through the long lean winter. Daylight was fading, and torches had been brought out and here and there the flamelight through the smoky dust struck out blinks of coloured light from the growing piles of booty as the wicker sea-kists and the sail-cloth bundles were opened and their contents flung out on the beaten earth.

Bjarni, squatting among the rest of
Sea Witch’
s crew, watched the coming to light of the fruits of a whole summer’s raiding; fine weapons and rapiers of narwhal ivory that would be sold in the south as unicorn’s horn. Furs and enamels and good stout copper cooking pots. He saw a thick russet woollen cloak that might be a prosperous farmer’s best, and sea-spoiled striped silks from foreign parts; a hacked silver cross, and a painted picture of a woman with a golden straw hat on the back of her head and a babe in the crook of her arm, also damaged by sea water, which he knew by now probably came from a God-House of the White Christ. There were hangings worked with writhing dragon-knots that must have been torn down from a chieftain’s hall; horse harness and five hide ropes; bags that spewed gold and silver and copper coins and small broken-up bits of metal, whose value, like that of the coins, would be by weight. There was even a carved wooden manikin dressed in a wisp of soaked cloth and a string of blue beads, that must have been a bairn’s toy before it took the fancy of some freebooter with maybe a bairn of his own to take it home to.

The share-out was done in several stages and took a long time, so that long before the end the autumn night had closed round them, blotting out the world beyond the smoking wind-teased torches. First the tribute-share of Evynd the Easterner was set aside for him. Most of the church treasure was in that pile, seeing that though he was not exactly a follower of the White Christ himself, his queen and many of the household were. Then the ship chiefs made their choice. Onund took only one thing for his share, a splendid and beautiful ice-bear skin, yellow as old ivory, and flung it down before Aesa, who had come out with the other girls to look at the sea-harvest that
the men had brought home: ‘Here’s a bonnie thing for our marriage bed, that shall keep you warm when
Sea Witch
puts to sea.’ And there was a cheerful roar of laughter, while the girl, flushing in the torchlight, bent to gather the heavy folds against her.

The rest of the booty was divided into five; five steep piles stacked each on a spread cloak before one of the ship chiefs; and each from his own pile the ship chiefs began the gift-making among their own crews.

Most of the things would be used simply to trade – for what use is a silver-mounted drinking cup to a man who needs seed corn for his plot or a new pair of sea boots? That was understood. But there were things that would be kept and treasured as the gift to a carle from his chief; an enamelled arm-ring, a fine pattern-forged sword blade, a chain of silver and turquoise for a woman’s neck.

Bjarni, a mercenary who had sold his sword-service to the one-legged sea lord for one sea-faring summer and then one more and received steady pay for it as a mercenary should, had not had anything from the share-out before, and he did not expect it. But at the very end he heard his own name called, and when he scrambled to his feet and answered the call, Onund grinned up at him, saying, much as he had said once before, ‘For a good fight in good company,’ and tossed him something shapeless and bright. Bjarni caught it and, feeling it unexpectedly light and warm as loops of it tumbled through his fingers, saw that he was holding a string of massive amber beads that caught the torchlight like gobbets of clouded honey.

‘A good fight in good company,’ he agreed, and returned the grin. And turning away he met the eager gaze of Thara Priestsdaughter standing among a chattering cluster of girls nearby. He looked away quickly, pretending not to have seen, pretending not to know
that she wanted him to give her the string of amber. Quite a few of the longships’ crews were making gifts out of their share to the girls of their choice. He saw Sven Gunnarson on the fringe of the torchlight, with great care and concentration hanging a heavy coral and silver drop in his woman’s ear and following it up with a smacking kiss before they both disappeared into the darkness. He grinned again and put the fragile beauty round his own neck, squinting down at it and not heeding the angry whisk of a girl’s blue skirts as she swung away to become deeply interested in somebody else.

In the next days the interrupted ready-making for Onund’s wedding got under way again. There was a great baking and brewing; best clothes taken from storage kists, shaken out to air and mended if need be; a black ram and a milk-white ewe were chosen out of the bridegroom’s flock and set aside for sacrifice to Odin, the lord of all the Gods, and to Frigga, his wife, the lady of all things to do with marriage and in the home. Traders began coming in, too, for word of what was in the wind had spread out beyond Barra to the Island Seas and the coasts of Alba and Erin, and a chief’s bride-ale was always good for trade.

On the day that Aesa, in the midst of much advice from the older women of the settlement, was baking her great bride-cake, the broad-beamed serviceable shape of
Sea Cow
appeared, beating into harbour out of an autumn squall; and towards evening Bjarni, heading down to the boat-strand on some errand, met Heriolf Merchantman on the track up to the settlement. They greeted each other with much cheerful thumping on the shoulders, and turned aside into the lee of a peat-stack out of the wind for a few words before going their separate ways.

‘A fine beard you have grown yourself,’ Heriolf said.

And Bjarni laughed, but flushing to the roots of his hair; for his beard was not much more than chicken-down as yet, and he was well aware of it. He had not thought that Heriolf knew about that; but the little merchant had a way of knowing more than one expected. ‘They do say that the Hero Cuchulain must needs paint his down with bramble juice.’

‘Na, na, no need for that,’ the other said consolingly. ‘And you’ve a man’s shoulders on you.’

‘Two summers at the oar,’ Bjarni said.

‘Two summers? It seems not so long since you sold your sword-service to my Lord Timbertoes . . . Good summers they’ve been, have they?’

‘Aye, good enough.’ Hugin, who had been off about his own affairs, came up smelling strongly of fish guts, and nosed lovingly into his hand.

‘Not feeling the wind in your sails then?’

Bjarni shook his head. ‘Not as yet – tho’ there’s three years and more of my far-faring still before me and maybe I’ll get the itch for strange seas before they are all spent.’

And an eddy of the wind dipped round the shoulder of the peat-stack and blew a cold spatter of raindrops into his face.

Two days later came the appointed day for Onund Treefoot to take Aesa from her father’s hearth. Almost before daylight the whole settlement had begun gathering in the broad garth before the Hearth Hall. It was a day of thick yellow sunshine and sudden glooms under a sky of high-piled hurrying storm cloud threatening wild weather to come; but the harvest was in and the fleet home from the sea.

With the rest of
Sea Witch
’s crew, Bjarni had spent
the night in Onund’s house, and in the early morning, all clad in their best, they went up with him – Onund walking with his familiar sideways lurch and swagger on the fine new wooden leg which the shipwrights had made him from the one he had rough-cobbled from a captured oarloom on the shore of Bute – to demand the bride.

The women brought her out to him, clad in a kirtle of poppy-red merchant’s stuff, and with her hair bound back under the heavy silver-gilt bridal crown taken in some long-past raid. And Aflaeg set her hand in Onund’s over the fire, binding and unbinding them together three times with a supple sealskin thong. Then they drank together from the same cup in the sight of the whole settlement. ‘I take the woman from her father’s house to mine,’ Onund said. ‘Henceforth I am her man.’

And Aesa lifted her head stiffly under the weight and balance of her crown, and smiled at him. ‘I go with the man from my father’s house,’ she said. ‘Henceforth I am his woman.’