CHAPTER IX.
THE MESSAGE OF THE RUNES.
The story must now come back to Norway. Though Estein had returned with neither spoil nor captives, the tale of Liot's capture and the combat on the holm added much to his renown, and no fewer than six skalds composed lengthy poems on the adventure. There seemed no reason why the hero of these lays should shrink from talking of his expedition, and avoid, so far as he could, the company of men. Gradually strange rumours began to spread. Helgi, who alone knew the truth, held his peace for Estein's sake, even when the ale flowed most freely. The others who had sailed with them laid no such restraint on their tongues, and stories of a spell and an Orkney witch, vague and contradictory, but none the less eagerly listened to and often repeated, went the round of the country. The king at last began to take alarm, and one day he called Earl Sigvald to him and talked with him alone.
"What rede can you give, jarl?" he said; "a strange witchcraft I fear has been at work. When a young man smiles but seldom, broods often by himself, and shuns the flagon and the feast, there is something more to be looked for than a loss of men and ships, or the changefulness of youth."
"Get him a wife," replied the earl. "He has been single too long.
There is no cure for spells like a pair of bright eyes."
But when the king spoke to his son, he found him resolutely opposed to marriage. Hakon loved him so dearly that he forbore to press the matter, and again he consulted Earl Sigvald.
"If he will not marry, let him fight," answered the earl. "For a prince of the race of Yngve, the clash of arms cures melancholy better than a maid."
So with the coming of spring Estein cruised in the Baltic, and carried the terror of his arms far into Finland and Russia. Yet he returned as moody as before.
At feasts his spirits sometimes rose to an extraordinary pitch. For the time he would be carried away as he had never been before. He would sing, jest, and quarrel; but his jests were often bitter, and his quarrels gave rise to more talk than his gloom, for before he had been of an even and generous temper. And when the fit passed away he was quieter than ever.
One day he was out hunting on the fells with Helgi. They were oftener together than ever, and his foster-brother had far more influence with him than any other man.
They stood on a desolate hillside a little above the highest pine woods, examining the tracks of a bear, when Helgi suddenly turned to him and said,—
"Do you not think, Estein, you have moped and mourned long enough?"
"They whom the gods have cursed," replied Estein, "have little cause for laughter. What is there left for me on this earth?"
"To prove yourself a man; to accept the destiny you cannot alter; and in time, Estein, to be a king. Are these things nothing?"
Helgi seldom spoke so gravely, and Estein for a time stood silent.
Then he exclaimed,—
"You are right, Helgi; I have acted as a beaten child. Henceforth I shall try to look on my fate, I cannot say merrily, but at least with a steady eye."
As another winter passed, he gradually seemed to come to himself. He was sadder and more reserved than of yore, but the king saw with joy that the gloom was lifting. One day in the season when spring and winter overlap, and the snow melts by day and hardens again over-night, Earl Sigvald returned to Hakonstad from his seat by a northern fiord. King Hakon greeted him cheerfully.
"The spell is lifting, jarl," he said; "Estein is becoming himself again."
"That is well, sire," replied the earl; "and my old heart lightens at the news. But I have other tidings that need your attention. I have brought with me Arne the Slim, your scatt-gatherer in Jemtland. The people there have slain some of his followers, forced him to fly for his life, and refused to pay scatt to a Norse king. There is work ahead for some of our young blades."
"They shall see that my arm is longer than they deem," replied the king grimly.
Arne told his tale in the great hall before all the assembled chiefs, and the king's face darkened with anger as he listened. Every now and then, as he spoke of some particular act of treachery, or of his hardships and hurried flight, an angry murmur rose from his audience, and a weapon here and there clashed sternly. Estein alone seemed unmoved. He stood listlessly at the back, apparently hardly hearing what was going on, his thoughts returning despite himself to their melancholy groove. All at once he heard himself addressed, and turning round saw a stranger at his side. The man was holding out something towards him, and when he had caught Estein's eye, he said respectfully,—
"I was charged to give this token to you, sire." Estein looked at him in surprise, and taking the token from his hand, glanced at it curiously.
It was a stave of oak, about two feet long, and shaped with some care. Along one side an inscription was carved in Runes, and as he read the first words his expression changed and he spelt it keenly through. The whole writing ran: "An old man, a maiden, and a spell. Come hither to Jemtland."
He turned sharply to the man and asked,—
"How came you by this? Who sent it to me?"
"That last I cannot answer," replied the man. "This only I know, that the night before the Jemtland people attacked us, a man came to the door of the house where I lodged, and giving me this said, 'Fly, war is afoot,' and with that he left as suddenly as he came. I aroused my master Arne, and one or two more, and thanks to the warning, we escaped the fate of our comrades. That is all I can tell you."
The message made a sharp impression on Estein's mind. "An old man, a maiden, and a spell," he repeated to himself. He racked his brains, but he could think of no one in that remote country who would be likely to send such a message. It seemed to him to have an almost supernatural import, and again he said to himself, "An old man, a maiden, and a spell." Then suddenly he took a resolution, and turning from the messenger stepped into the crowd who surrounded the king.
Arne had just finished his tale. There was a moment's angry silence, and then the king glanced round the host of weather-beaten Vikings and high-born chiefs and cried,—
"Who will punish these cowardly rebels of mine?"
A dozen voices instantly claimed the service. Loudest of them all was that of Ketill, now married to a wealthy widow and a person of considerable importance, and the black-bearded Viking stepped forward as he spoke.
"Give me this service, king," he said. "I have lived at mine ease too long of late. Laziness begets fat."
There was a laugh at Ketill's words, for his person had never been noted for its spareness.
The Viking frowned and exclaimed,—
"Let those laugh who have tested my steel."
"Well I know your bravery, Ketill," began the king, "and there is no man—"
At that instant the ring of men round him suddenly opened and Estein stood before his father. His face was more animated than any had seen it for many a long day, and in a firm voice he said,—
"I will lead this expedition."
Steel rang on steel as every armed warrior there clashed his approval. By all the gods whose names he could remember Earl Sigvald swore that the true Estein was come back, and King Hakon exclaimed joyfully,—
"There speaks my son at last. Prepare yourself then, Estein. Ill tidings have been changed to good."
"And you, Ketill," said Estein, turning to his former companion, "will you come with me?"
"That will I," answered Ketill. "I want no braver leader. But the gods curse me if we roast not a few score men this time, Estein."
For two days there was a turmoil of preparation round Hakonstad, and on the third Estein's two warships sailed down the fiord. He had with him Helgi, Ketill, and a picked force; and as he stood on deck and watched the towering precipices slip by, and the white clouds drift over their rough rim of pines, his heart beat high. The message of the Runes was ringing in his mind, and the spirit of roving and adventure boiling up again.
They sailed far up the coast, and then, leaving their ship in a northern fiord, struck inland across the mountains. The country they were going to lay among the lakes of North Sweden. Its people were more barbarous than the Norwegians, and had long been in a state of half-subjection to the Norse kings. There was not likely to be hard fighting; for small as Estein's force was, the natives were badly armed and little esteemed as warriors. The country, however, was difficult, so the men marched warily, their arms ready for instant use, and a sharp watch kept all the time. The sun came out hot by day, but at nights it felt very cold and frosty. With all the haste they could make they pushed on by the least frequented routes and the most desolate places. During the first day after they had crossed the mountains, they only saw one farmhouse, in a forest clearing, and that, when they came up to it, was still and deserted. On the following day they passed a small hamlet on the banks of a river, and a little later another farm. In neither was there a sign of an inhabitant to be seen, and they seemed for all the world like dwellings of the dead.
"This is passing strange," said Helgi. "Unless, perhaps, the Jemtlanders spend the winter in holes and caves, like the bears they resemble in all but courage."
"The alarm has spread, I fear," answered Estein. "We must make the more haste."
"Ay," said Ketill; "on, on!"
Towards evening the head of the column emerged into a small clearing, and the foster-brothers, who were marching in the middle, heard a cry from the van. Then Ketill's gruff voice called out,—
"After him! Nay, slay him not! Have you got him? Ay, bring the knave to Estein."
The little army came to a halt, and a poor-looking man, clad in a skin coat, and trembling violently as they dragged him along, was brought before Estein.
"Spare my life, noble captain!" he pleaded, casting himself on his knees. "I am but a poor man, I beseech you."
"Silence, rascal!" thundered Ketill, "or we will have your coward's tongue out by the root."
"Tell me, if you value your life, what means this solitude?" Estein demanded sternly. "Nay, shake not like an old man with palsy, but speak the truth—if by chance a Jemtlander knows what truth is. Where are the people?"
"Noble earl, they have heard of your coming, and fled. No man will await you; you will see none in the country."
"Do none mean to fight?" asked Helgi.
"Great prince," replied the fellow, "the Jemtlanders were never a warlike race. Even the king, I hear, is prepared to fly."
A contemptuous murmur rose from the Norsemen.
"Let us begin by hanging this man," said Ketill, "and then fire, fire through the country!"
"I shall see first whether he has spoken the truth," answered
Estein. "Bind him, and bring him on."
The man was bound and guarded, and the march was continued. Early the next morning two men were found together in a cottage, and they told the same tale.
"Little glory is there in marching against such a people," said
Estein. "Bind them, and hasten on."
About an hour later the little army emerged from a hillside forest, and saw below them a small merchant town. The rude wooden houses straggled along the edge of a great frozen lake, whose snow-powdered surface stretched for miles and miles in an unbroken sheet of dazzling whiteness. Between the shores and the outskirts of the woodlands lay a wide sweep of cultivated country. Everywhere a thin coating of snow covered the ground, and the air was sharp enough to make the breath of the men rise like a cloud of steam as they marched in battle order down the slope.
"There are men in the town!" cried Helgi suddenly. "I see the glint of the sun on weapons. Thanks be to the gods, we shall have a fight!"
"Ay, they are coming out," said Estein. "Halt! we shall take advantage of the slope, and await them here."
The men halted, and grasped their weapons, and in expectant silence their leaders watched a small troop defile out of the town.
"Call you that an army?" growled Ketill. "There are barely a score of them."
"Ay," said Helgi, with a sigh, "there will be no fighting to-day."
About twenty men, dressed in skins and fur coats and wooden helmets, and slenderly armed, had left the town, and now came slowly up the hill. Their leader alone wore a burnished steel helmet, and carried a long halberd over his shoulder. Immediately behind him walked two boys, and at the sight of them Helgi asked,—
"What mean they by bringing boys against us?"
"Hostages," suggested Estein laconically.
When this motley company had come within a hundred yards of them, they stopped, and their leader advanced alone.
As he drew near to the Norsemen, Estein stepped out a pace or two to meet him, but they stood so close that Helgi and Ketill could hear all that passed. They saw that the stranger was a tall, elderly man with a clever face and a dignified bearing.
"Hail, Estein Hakonson!" he said.
"You know my name, it seems," replied Estein, "and therein have the advantage of me."
"My name is Thorar," said the chief, speaking gravely and very courteously, "lawman of this region of Jemtland"—he made a sweeping gesture with his hand as he said this—"and a friend hitherto to the Northmen."
"I know you by repute as a chief of high birth, and one who has long been faithful to my father. Yet, methinks, it was something less than faithful to drive his scatt-gatherer from the country and slay his followers."
"Blame not me for that, Estein," answered Thorar. "It was done with neither my knowledge nor consent, and none grieved at such an outrage more than I. Now, as you see, you have the land at your mercy; and as an ancient friend of your family and a faithful servant of my master King Bue, I am come to intercede between King Hakon and him. Give us peace, Estein; and as you have a grey-haired father, spare my master the sorrow and the shame you would bring upon him. What can he do against you? The old spirit of my countrymen has died out," he added sadly, "and no man dare meet your force in the field."
"Is King Bue in the town?" Estein asked.
"Nay, he could not travel so far; but in his name I bid you welcome to his feast, if you will accept peace instead of war. If you will not, then I can only mourn the devastation of my country. It will be a bloodless victory, Estein."
"And what compensation does the king intend to make?"
"What you will; he is powerless."
"Shall we then march to King Bue?"
"Alas!" said Thorar, "in these evil days he cannot entertain you all. Many of his people have fled to the woods already, and—to tell the truth—he, too, would feel ill at ease if he saw so brave a force come nigh him; for he is old, and his spirit is broken. But a following of twenty men or so he will gladly entertain. The others I shall have feasted here in the town at my own cost, and with them I shall leave my two young sons"—he indicated, as he spoke, the two lads. "They are my only children, and them I shall willingly give you as hostages till your return, that I may save my country from fire and sword. Though," he added, with a grave smile, "if men speak truth, Estein Hakonson can make good his coming or going against most."
"Be it as you will," replied Estein; "but if—" He paused, and looked sternly at Thorar.
"If a king's word and mine are not sufficient, and my only sons satisfy you not, I can but add my oath—though most men would deem it needless."
Thorar spoke with dignity and a touch of haughtiness, and Estein replied simply and courteously,—
"I shall come."
He turned to Helgi and said,—
"No fighting will there be, Helgi; but I have known you welcome even a feast. What say you?"
"This snow work and marching call for feasting," replied Helgi, with a laugh.
"Then Ketill shall stay here with the rest of our troop, and you and I, with twenty more, will to the king. Forward, men!"
"Spare not the ale," added Ketill.
"A courteous and gallant man is Thorar, for a Jemtlander," said
Helgi to Ketill, as they marched down to the town.
"Dogs and women are his people," replied Ketill. "They are fit neither to be friends nor enemies."
Estein liberated the prisoners they had taken on the march, and leaving Ketill in charge of the main force and the hostages, he and Helgi set forth about noon for the seat of King Bue.