CHAPTER XVI.
KING ESTEIN.
It was on a breezy April morning that the mountains of Sogn came into view again. A strong slant of south-east wind had driven the two ships out to sea; and now, as they raced landwards before a favouring breeze, they saw low down on the horizon one glittering hill-top after another pierce the morning mist bank. Helgi for the time had charge of the tiller, while Estein leant against the weather bulwark, busy with his new resolves.
"A ship must cross the sea again," he repeated to himself. "The time for action is at hand, and we shall see what new freak fortune will play with me. Yet, after all," he reflected, "though she has pressed my head beneath the tide before, she has always suffered me to rise and gasp ere she drowned me quite. It all comes to this: the purposes of the gods are too deep for me to fathom, so I must e'en hold my peace and bide the passage of events."
Helgi had been watching him with a half-smile on his frank face, and at last he cried,—
"What counsel hold you with the seamews? Sometimes I see a smile, and sometimes I hear a sigh; and then, again, there is a look of the eye as if Liot Skulison were standing before you."
"I was filling twenty long ships with enough stout lads to man them, and sailing the western main again," replied Estein.
"And whither were you sailing?" asked Helgi.
"Westward first," said Estein.
"With perchance a point or so of south—such a direction as would bring us to the Hjaltland Isles, or, it may be, the Orkneys?"
"Aided by a wayward wind," replied Estein with a smile.
"Where, doubtless, it would be well to slay another sea-rover," Helgi went on, "since they cause much trouble to peaceable seafarers from Norway. Witches, too, and warlocks dwell in the isles, men say, and it were well to rid the land of such."
At this last speech Estein first frowned and flushed, and then meeting his foster-brother's look, all outward gaiety and lurking mirth, he laughed defiantly, and exclaimed,—
"It may be so, Helgi. Everything I do is ordained already, and it matters not whither I turn the prow of my ship or what I plan. To Orkney I go!"
"Then run your thoughts still on this maiden?"
"They have run, they are still running, and while I live I see not what is to stop their course."
"Remember, my brother, what stands between you," said Helgi, more gravely.
"I have not forgotten."
"And yet you sail to Orkney?"
"The gods have bidden me cross the seas," replied Estein, "and they will steer my ship, whatever haven I choose."
"Go, then," said Helgi, "and while that shrewd counsellor whom men call Helgi Sigvaldson sails with you, at least you will not lack sage advice."
Estein laughed.
"'Helgi hinn frode' [Footnote: The wise.] shall you be called henceforth, and Vandrad I shall be no longer."
They were silent for a time, and then Estein exclaimed,—
"We are well quit of that country of Jemtland! Saw you ever so many trees and so few true men before?"
"Yet was it not quite bare of good things," replied his friend.
"What, mean you the woodman's wife?"
"What else?" said Helgi, and then he fell silent again.
They reached Hernersfiord towards nightfall, and as they crept up the still, narrow waters darkness gathered fast. One by one, and then in tens and hundreds and myriads, the stars came out and hung like a gay awning between the pine-crowned walls. Ahead they saw lights and a looming bank of land, and hails passed from ship to shore and back again. Presently they were gently slipping by the stone pier, where one or two men stood awaiting them.
"What news?" asked Helgi.
The men made no reply, but seemed to whisper among themselves, and Helgi repeated his question. Just then a man came hurrying to the end of the pier and shouted,—
"Is it then Estein returned?"
"My father!" exclaimed Helgi.
"What can bring the jarl here at this hour?" said Estein, springing ashore.
He met Earl Sigvald on the pier, and by the light of a lantern he saw that the old man's face was grave and sad.
"Steel your heart to hear ill tidings, King Estein," he said.
The "King" smote upon Estein's ears like a knell, and he guessed the earl's news before he heard it.
"King Hakon joined his fathers three days past," said the earl. "Welcome indeed is your return, for the law says that the dead must not linger in the house more than five days, and it were ill seeming to hold the funeral rites with his son away."
Estein stood like a man struck dumb, and then muttering, "I will join you again," he started quickly up the pier, and was shortly lost to view in the darkness.
"Dear was Estein to his father, and dear the old king to his son.
Deep and burning, I fear, will his sorrow be," said the earl.
"Fain would I comfort him," replied Helgi. "But I know well
Estein's humours, and now he is best alone for a time."
They walked slowly up to Hakonstad, the old earl leaning upon his son's arm, and as they went Helgi told him the tale of the Jemtland journey. In his interest the earl forgot even the present gloom, and swore lustily or roared loudly and heartily as the story went on.
"May they lie in darkness for ever as dastards and traitors!" he would cry, or "A shrewd scheme, by the hammer of Thor! An I were fifty years younger I would have done the same myself, Helgi!" and then again, "Trolls take me, if this be not enough to make a bear laugh! What next, Helgi?"
When his son had finished his relation of the visit to the old seer, he seemed lost in thought.
"Atli, Atli," he repeated. "Call you him Atli? I cannot remember the name. A friend of Olaf Hakonson, said he? I knew of no such friend. Yet it seems that he spoke indeed as one who had taken counsel with the gods; and if his words acted, as you say, like medicine on Estein, his name matters little. Yet it is passing strange."
When they reached Hakonstad, Helgi found that many chiefs had already arrived to take part in the funeral rites and, more particularly, in the feast with which they always ended. It was not till almost all had gone to rest that Estein returned, and then he went straight to his bed-chamber without exchanging more than the barest greetings with those he found still talking low over their ale around the fires.
The next day was spent in preparations for the solemn ceremonies of pyre and mound, and the great feast which should mark the reigning of another king in Sogn. The young king himself went about bravely, seeing to everything but speaking little. Helgi watched him anxiously, for he feared greatly that this new sorrow might cloud his mind afresh. In the evening he noticed him slip from the hall by himself, and rising at once he followed him out and came to his side as he paced slowly up the night-hushed valley.
"Is my company unwelcome?" he asked.
"More welcome than my thoughts," said Estein, taking his arm.
"Have the black thoughts returned?"
"Do what I will, they are with me again," replied Estein. "My father has died with Olaf unavenged, and now it is too late to keep my sacred word to him that I would ever follow up the feud. King Hakon already sits in Valhalla, and knows his son for a dastard and a breaker of his oaths. While he lived I always told myself that I would find some way even yet by which I might fulfil my promise, but now it is too late. It is hard, Helgi, to lose at once both a father and a father's regard."
"King Hakon is with Odin," said Helgi, "and knows what he has ordained. Odin has not told you to cross the seas for naught, and doubtless King Hakon even now awaits the issue. Never did man do much with a downcast mind; so first dismiss your thoughts, and then for the Viking path again."
"Helgi hinn frode," said Estein, pressing his arm, "you are indeed a good counsellor. As soon as I can gather force enough we start."
"And now for a horn of ale, and then to bed," responded Helgi, cheerful as ever again.
Ever since the first wild Northmen, pushing westwards to the sea, had settled in the land of Sogn, its kings had been interred on a certain barren islet hard by the mouth of Hernersfiord, and on the morning of the fifth day after King Hakon's death they bore him out to his last resting-place by the surge of the northern ocean. His body, clad in full armour and decked in robes of state, was laid upon a bier on the poop of the long ship that had last carried him to battle. A picked crew of chiefs and highborn vassals rowed him slowly down the fiord, while in their wake a fleet of vessels followed. Estein, arrayed in the full panoply of war, as though he were sailing to meet his foes, stood out alone upon the poop like a graven figure, only the hand that held the tiller ever moving. When they reached the little holm looking out over the sea, they discovered the foundations of a mound already prepared, and great heaps of earth beside them, ready to be built upon the top. All the chiefs and greater men landed with a sufficient number of spademen to assist them with the work, while the others lay off in the ships and watched in silence. First, the vessel in which the dead king lay was drawn up and laid upon the mound; each chief who had taken an oar hung his shield in turn upon the bulwarks; the sail, gay with coloured cloths, was hoisted; the king's standard raised and set in the bows; and then Estein lit a torch and held it to a heap of fagots underneath. As the flames mounted higher and the smoke streamed out to sea the chiefs cast gifts aboard—rings and bracelets of gold and silver, sharp swords and inlaid axes—that the king in his far-off home among the gods of the North might think kindly of his friends on earth. One after another they wished his soul fair speed. Estein's words were few and unsteady with emotion, and those who heard them wondered at their meaning.
"Fare thee well, my father! I will yet keep my promise to thee!"
Loudest of all cried Earl Sigvald,—
"May Odin be as good a friend to thee as thou hast been to me! Keep me a place beside thee, Hakon. All through life I have been at thy side, in sunshine and frost, feast and battle-storm, and soon I hope to follow thee home!"
At last the flames died down and left but the blackened remnants of the ship and the ashes of its royal captain. The ashes they reverently gathered up and placed within a copper bowl, a lid they made of twelve shield bosses, the gifts were gathered and placed all round, and then the spademen heaped the mound above Hakon, King of Sogn.
With a quicker stroke and tongues unloosed the fleet returned to
Hakonstad.
"A noble funeral, Ketill," said one chief to the black-bearded
Viking.
"Ay," replied Ketill, "a burial worthy of King Estein, and a royal feast we shall have to follow it."
"Men say he means to set out on a Viking foray, and that before many days are past," said the other.
"They speak truth," answered Ketill. "Many a man will he give to the wolves, and eager am I to sail with him. There never was a bolder captain than Estein."
For the next two days the talk was all of the voyage to the south. Guests were coming in all the time for Estein's inheritance feast, and many of them—warriors thirsting for adventure and sea-roving—declared their intention of following his banner. A braver force men said had never followed a king of Sogn to war. For three days the feasting was to reign, and then, so soon as they were ready to sail, the host should take the Viking path.
The first night of the feast arrived. The hall was brightly lit and gaily hung with tapestries and cloths, rich and many-coloured, and men bravely dressed poured into their places all down the long rows of benches. The young king sat in his father's high seat, the highest-born and most honoured guests ranged beside him, and those of humbler standing in the farther places. First, they drank to the dead King Hakon, to his various great kinsmen in Valhalla, and to each of the gods in turn. Then as horns emptied faster toast after toast was called across the fires, and honoured with shouts of "Skoal!" that reached far into the night outside.
Estein, as was his usual custom, drank lightly, and often he would find his thoughts wandering among the most incongruous events—starlight nights in a far-off islet, tossings on distant seas, and over and over again they would stray to that glimpse of a maiden in the Jemtland forests. Helgi, in whose blue eyes there danced a light that was never kindled by water, rallied him on his absence of mind.
"Drink deeper, Estein!" he cried. "Laugh, O king! Look, there sits Ketill, the married man; methinks he looks thirsty. Ketill! drink with me to your wife."
"The trolls take my wife!" thundered Ketill, who, it may be remembered, had espoused a wealthy widow. "That is only a toast for single men!"
When the shout of laughter that greeted this speech had subsided,
Helgi turned again to Estein, and exclaimed,—
"Then that is the toast for us, King Estein. I drink to your bride!"
"Who is she, Helgi?" cried his father jovially. "Name her. I would that I might see another king married before I die. I saw your mother married, Estein, and a fair maid she was. The girls must be less fair now, or a gallant king will not stay single long."
"I could name one fair maid," said Helgi, glancing at the king, but in Estein's eye he saw a warning look.
"I have sterner things to think of, jarl," said Estein. "Five days from this I hope to be upon the sea."
As he spoke, one of his hird-men came up to the high seat and stopped close beside him.
"What ho, Kari!" cried Helgi, "you are strangely sober."
"I have a message for the king," replied the man.