Hrolf Kraki's Saga Page 3

  At length Frodhi decided a magic must lie in this, and sent for those who had knowledge of darknesses.

  III

  For a time the great hall at Leidhra guested one spaewife and wiseman after another. Frodhi told them to use their farsight and scan Denmark up and down, islands and skerries as well as mainland. But they saw nothing.

  Thereafter he had wizards sought out, not merely those with a little spellcraft or forecasting dreams, but men who seethed witchy brews in cauldrons and were said to ride on the night wind or raise the dead or call upon beings more fearsome than that. These were most often wanderers, shunned by all goodfolk. The household hirelings and thralls shrank from them and drew signs to ward off a curse; the burliest guardsman could not wholly hide a shudder.

  Three came at last whom Frodhi received well, seating them straight across the longfire from him and bidding the queen bring them meat and drink with her own hands. "The days are changed from when I served kings and warriors," said the tall ruddy-braided woman sadly. "Never did I look to play hostess to those who would ferret out the sons of my body."

  Her new husband gave her a cool regard. "Serve them you shall, my Sigridh," he answered; and she yielded. It was whispered among the workers, who sometimes overheard what went on in the royal bower, that Frodhi was fast taming her, not by beatings which would have aroused rage, but by skilled lust and unbending will. He was one of the short Skjoldungs, yet quick on his feet, quicker with a blade, swiftest and deadliest in his cunning. Sleek brown hair and close-trimmed beard lay around a face lean, hook-nosed, and wintry-eyed. He dressed well: on this evening, a gold headband and arm-ring, a green kirtle trimmed with marten, red trews cross-gaitered in white kid.

  With Sigridh he had made a lawful settlement, paying her weregild for Halfdan's killing and a costly morning gift after he wed her. She spoke little and laughed never, but doubtless she hoped to work on him enough to save something from the wreck. As for the rest of the Danes, mostly they disliked him because of his laying heavy scot on them and making judgments which went harshly to his own advantage. But no other Skjoldung was in sight, and surely Odin would lay wrath on this land, did it not go beneath a man of his own house.

  The wizards were an unkempt gang in musty black robes; Finnish blood showed in them. After the tables had been cleared away, they trod forth, set up their kettles above the fire, cast their runes and cried their jagged chants before the pillars of the high seat. The right-hand post was carved to show Odin, father of magic; the left showed Thor, but it was as if that night a murk lay across the Hammerswinger. Somewhere a wolf howled and a wildcat squalled, sounds which had not been heard near Leidhra for many years. Men huddled back on the benches. Frodhi sat moveless, waiting.

  At last the gray and wrinkled spokesman of the three said: "Lord, we can only learn that the boys are not on land-earth; yet they are not far away from you."

  The king stroked his beard and spoke slowly: "We have sought them far and wide. I hardly think they're nearby. Still, I remember now that islands do lie close offshore from the house of their fosterfather."

  "Then seek the nearest of those first, lord," said the wizard. "Nobody lives there save a poor smallholder. However, such a fog was around the island, we could not peer into his home. We think he must be very wise and not all that he seems."

  "Well, we'll try," said the king. "Strange would it be if a wretched fisherman could hide those fellows and dare hold them back from me."

  Indeed a thick mist had arisen on the Isefjord that night. Early in the morning, Vifil awoke and told his charges: "Much strangeness is in flight, and mighty fetches have come hither to us. I heard them whisper in the dark, I hear them still in the gray. Rise up, Hroar and Helgi Halfdansson, and keep to my woods this day!"

  They sprang to do his bidding.

  Before noon, a troop of royal guardsmen rode to the water's edge and told Regin he must furnish them boats. By then the fog had lifted, and sunlight flared off their helmets and spears. Vifil greeted them as sullenly as he watched them while they searched. After hours, they had found nothing. At night Regin must needs guest them, though he did so in stingy wise.

  Next day they returned to Leidhra and told of their failure. "Ill must you have hunted," snapped the king. "That yeoman is a master of witchcraft. Go back the same way and see if you can't take him by surprise."

  Again the king's men landed to ransack the place. Though Vifil opened everything for them that they asked, never did they see trace of their prey. Again they must go home draggle-tailed.

  Meanwhile the wizards had told Frodhi more about eeriness lurking on yonder island, blindnesses which neither they nor those which they sent to spy for them could pierce. When he heard the marshal of his guard, Frodhi grew red and white by turns. He slapped the high seat and shouted: "We've taken enough from that yokel! Tomorrow morning, I myself will seek him out."

  Vifil awoke at dawn from a heavy sleep. Troubled, he roused Hroar and Helgi and said to them: "Now it goes ill, for your kinsman Frodhi is himself afoot, and he'll seek your lives with every kind of trick and ill-doing. I'm no longer sure I can save you." He tugged his beard and brooded. "If you try to sit the whole while in the storehouse like before, his kind of search may well turn you up. Best you keep flitting amongst brush and trees. Yet they'll beat the woods for you, so you'll need that lair at the right time. . . . Well, stay in earshot. And when you hear me shout for the hounds, Hopp and Ho, remember it'll be you two I mean, and go to earth."

  Hroar nodded grimly, sweat on his cheeks. Helgi grinned; to him, this had been a great game.

  The king arrived, not on horseback but in a ship which had sailed from what we today call Roskilde Fjord. The hull bore far more men than Regin's boats might readily carry over. They ran her onto a sandbar, dropped anchor, and waded ashore. Vifil stood leaning on a stall, beneath trees which had begun faintly to turn color. A wind blew cold and shrill, fluttering cloaks. Spearheads blinked, ring-mail rattled.

  "Grab him!" Frodhi cried. Hard hands pushed the yeoman forward to meet the king.

  Frodhi glowered at him and said word by word: "You're a foul, sly one, aren't you? Tell me at once where my nephews are—for I know that you know!"

  Vifil shrugged. "Hail to you, lord," he answered. "How can I ward myself against that kind of charge? Why, if you keep me here, I can't even hold the wolf off my little flock." The guardsmen were spreading out over the cleared patches, headed for the woods. Vifil filled his lungs and yelled, "Hopp and Ho, help out the beasts!"

  "What's that you're calling?" asked Frodhi.

  "The names of my hounds," said the yeoman blandly. "Look as hard as you want. I don't think you'll be a-finding of any king's sons hereabouts. And really, I don't understand what makes you think I'd hide aught from you, a poor old fisher like me."

  Frodhi growled, told off a warrior to watch the islander, and himself took command of the chase. Today they uncovered the storehouse. However, by then the brothers had slipped from it—after the beaters went past—and were in treetops well back of the onward-moving troop.

  At eventide the men returned to the hut. Vifil waited. Dithering with rage, the king told him: "Indeed you're a sly one, and I ought to have you killed."

  The yeoman met his eyes and said, "That stands within your might, if not your right. Then you'll at least have gotten somewhat for your trek here. Otherwise you'll go home bootless, eh?"

  Frodhi clamped fists together and stared around the crowding ring of his warriors. His slaying of bound Halfdan had not really sat well with them. To order death for a helpless gaffer against whom naught could be shown would truly brand him unmanly. No few would forsake him on that account alone, should a foeman arise.

  "I cannot let you be slain," said Frodhi between his teeth; "but I do think it's unwise to let you live."

  He turned and stalked to his ship.

  The crew rowed him to Regin's garth, where he spent the night. And here he demanded the sheriff swear him troth, as t
he rest of the Danish headmen had already done.

  "You give me a thin choice," said Regin. "Besides my holdings, I have wife, children, and grandchildren. So be it, then. As for your unasked question, I tell you as I earlier told your men, I do not know where Hroar and Helgi Halfdansson are."

  "No," sneered the king. "Not within a foot or two." Nevertheless he kept from pressing the matter. He could not afford to goad those folk who looked upon Regin as their leader.

  Vifil saw where the ship went, and either guessed or foreknew what happened. He called the boys to him and said: "Here you can bide no longer. We'll be under too narrow a watch, the more so when men of the neighborhood will've given up hope of overthrowing Frodhi. Tonight I’ll ferry you over. Stay off the highroads while you get out of this shire."

  "Where should we go?" wondered Hroar.

  "Well," said Vifil, "I've heard as how Sævil Jarl is your brother-in-law. He'll have a big household, where none'll much mark a couple of newcomers. But he too is now the king's handfast man, so don't you go straight off giving yourselves away to him, or to anybody. Lynx cubs got to fare wary."

  IV

  Sævil and Signy dwelt near Haven. Each year when the herring ran, this hamlet came aswarm with fishermen who had beaten their way south down the Kattegat or north out of Baltic waters; merchants joined them, and it roared among the booths ashore. In other seasons Haven was a base for warcraft which lay out on watch lest vikings slip by to harry the Danish coasts. Thus it was no small charge which Sasvil had and he was not a man to whom Frodhi would willingly give grave offense. Maybe one reason the king married Signy's mother was to try to make a bond between himself and the strand-jarl.

  When the English first came hither, their great men doubtless built halls like those in the Northlands. They do no more. Let me therefore tell about such a house. It is a long wooden building, with a roof of sod or of shakes, oft-times a clerestory; the beam-ends are apt to be carved in fanciful shapes. If there are two floors, a gallery runs around the walls. Windows are shuttered in bad weather, and belike covered by thin-scraped skins. Inside, one enters through a foreroom, where feet are wiped and outer garments left hanging. Unless the lord is suspicious and commands his guests to leave their weapons here as well, these are brought into the main room and hung up, that the luster of metal and of the painted leather on shields help brighten its gloom.

  The ground floor of the hall is hard-packed earth, thickly strewn with rushes, juniper boughs, or other sweet things, often changed. Down the middle run two or three trenches, or sometimes only one, wherein roar the long-fires, that servants feed with wood taken from stacks at the far end. Flanking them goes a double row of great wooden pillars, upbearing the top floor, or the rafters if there is none. They too are graven and colored, to show gods or heroes or beasts and intertwining vines. Against the wainscoted walls, earthern platforms raise the benches a foot or two above the floor. In the middle of one wall, commonly the north, stands the high seat of the master and his lady, held by two lesser posts which are especially holy. Straight across the chamber is a slightly lower seat for the most honored guest. Between the weapons ablink behind the benches are other carvings, skins, horns, torches or rushlights flaring in their sconces.

  At mealtimes the women and servants set trestles in front of the benches and lay boards across them. On these go meat and drink, prepared usually in a separate cookhouse for dread of wildfire. Later the tables are removed, and when men have drunk enough, those of higher standing stretch out on the benches to sleep; their followers use the floor.

  Shut-beds for the master, mistress, and chief guests may be at either end; or there may be upper rooms; or there may be a bower standing aside from the hall, a narrow building of one or two floors where women spin and weave by day in well-lighted airiness, and at night the well-born sleep free from snoring and eavesdropping.

  Around a courtyard cluster the outbuildings. Beyond them may lie the homes, byres, and worksteads of humbler families; and a stockade may enclose everything. Thus many a hall and its attendants make up a whole small town, always abustle with men and women, children and beasts, always alive with talk, song, shouts, smithing, baking, brewing, gaming, jesting, courting, weeping, whatever it is that living beings do.

  Besides the dwellers—lord, lady, children, and kin; warriors; yeomen; artisans; craftsmen; free hirelings; thralls—there are sure to be visitors. Some are neighborhood men, come for a bit of trade or gossip or talk about deeper matters. Some are guests invited from further off, as to a wedding or a Yuletide feast. Some are travelers passing through. And some are footloose, fallen on ill days if ever they knew good ones, given food and a strawheap in a stable for the sake of the lord's honor and for whatever tales they can tell from elsewhere.

  To this kind of steading did Hroar and Helgi make their way. Vifil had given them food to pack along, and they found no dearth of brooks to drink from. Nonetheless that was a stiff and dangerous trek. He had likewise patched together a pair of hooded cloaks for them, and sent them off with keen redes.

  They drew little heed when they limped into Sævil's garth and begged shelter. Many were tramping that year, after Frodhi's host had cast them out and taken their land for its pay. These two sat quietly in dimness, and next day lent a hand with feeding the kine and cleaning the stalls. "Bide your time," Vifil had said, over and over. "Get your growth first, then your revenge."

  After a week the cowherd foreman felt they had better speak to the jarl if they wished to stay on. They neared him toward evening, when he had had several horns of beer before he ate and was feeling cheery. They kept the cowls on their heads and the mantles drawn around their shoulders. In the dull unrestful light, neither Sævil nor their busy sister Signy knew them. These kin had seldom been together anyway after Regin took in the boys. The jarl shrugged and said, "Small help do I think there is in you; but I shan't refuse you food for a while longer."

  Helgi flushed and might have spoken hotly, save that Hroar gave his hand a warning squeeze. They muttered thanks, louted low, and withdrew.

  And now through three winters they abode with Sævil.

  They hardly saw him or his wife, save as grandness on the high seat or on horseback. For the most part, they were off doing the meanest work of herding, harvesting, and barnyard chores—more apt to sleep in a haymow or a meadow than in any house. Ever they kept the secret of who they were. Hroar called himself Hrani, while Helgi was Ham, and they said in a few words that they were sons of a smallholder killed in battle, themselves driven off his land. To this same end, they always wore their coverings when in sight of anyone else.

  A number of carls teased them, saying they must have misformed skulls or breasts like women. They bit their mouths shut and endured. Alone, they could yarn about that which would someday be theirs, or take out their blood-anger on fowl and hare, or spend hour upon bruising hour in weapon-practice, staves for swords and shields made from stolen planks.

  But after the three years, Helgi was thirteen and really starting to shoot up. Hroar, fifteen, was smaller, though lean and lightfooted; he was the thoughtful one of them.

  King Frodhi had dwelt in peace all this while, and thus his fears had eased a good deal. He sent word, asking Sævil and Signy to a midwinter feast. When Helgi heard, he smote the frozen ground and said, "Hroar, we're going along." Nor could his brother talk him out of that. Instead, it was the other way around, until both were eagerly busking themselves to seek their revenge.

  V

  Sævil rode off with his lady and twoscore men. The urchins Ham and Hrani plucked at his arm and asked leave to come along. He barked a laugh and told them, "Of course not."

  Little snow had fallen thus far. The air lay cold beneath a sky low and heavy as a slab of slate. Fields reached brown, trees stood leafless, farmsteads crouched inward. Here and there a flock of crows jeered "Ha-kra-kra!" Hoofs and wheels rang on the road. Against this, the jarl's troop splashed brightness. All his warriors owned helmets, more tha
n half had byrnies, which gleamed; the blues and greens, yellows and reds of cloaks fluttered back from their shoulders; they were mostly young men, whose merriment stood forth in steam-puffs. Their shaggy pomes trotted briskly ahead.

  Signy rode in a wagon carved and painted, trimmed with gold and silver, drawn by four horses of the big Southland stock. With her were a driver, two serving wenches, and supplies of food and gifts. She was a tall woman, the Skjoldung handsomeness in her face and amber-hued braids. Inside a fur coat she wore gaily dyed clothes and lovely ornaments. But no mirth was in her eyes.

  Jouncing slowly over the ruts, her cart went at the end of the train. Hence she heard the racket at her back before her husband or his men did. Turning about, she saw two ragged, dirty shapes in hooded cloaks, overhauling.

  Because those beasts fit to ride were gone from the hall, Ham and Hrani had caught a pair of unbroken foals in a paddock. With bridles of rope and sticks broken off thornbushes, they somewhat made these mounts carry them. The bucking, plunging, and shying were wild to behold. Ham sat backwards, yelled, flapped his arms, and behaved in every way like a fool. Hrani rode more soberly. Even so, it was his horse which made such a leap as he drew nigh that his cowl fell off.

  Signy saw fair locks fly around a face whereon, through grime and gauntness and untrimmed fuzz of beard, she knew her father's looks. She remembered—and had she maybe, during these past three years, begun to suspect? "Hroar!" she gasped as if he had stabbed her. "Then ... then your mate must be Helgi—"

  Hroar fought his steed till he mastered it. He covered himself anew and sought back to his lolloping brother. Signy buried her head in her hands and wept.