Havelok the Dane: A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln

by Charles W. Whistler

My father shook his head.

“The birds cry to one another, as I think, and say when the feast is but enough for those that have gathered. They have cried now that there is room for all at some great feasting. Once have I seen the like before, and that was when I was with the ship guard when the jarl fought his great battle in the Orkneys; we knew that he had fought by the same token.”

But my mother said that I was surely right. There was no fear of battle here, and indeed with Gunnar and Sigurd to guard the land we had had peace for many a long year on our own coasts, if other lands had had to fear them. My father laughed a little, saying that perhaps it was so, and then my mother took the two little ones and went with them into the sleeping room to put them to rest, while I and my two brothers went out to the cattle garth to see that all was well for the night.

Then, when our eyes were used to the moonlight, which was not very bright, away to the northward we saw a red glow that was not that of the sunset or of the northern lights, dying down now and then, and then again flaring up as will a far-off fire; and even as we looked we heard the croak of an unseen raven flying thitherward overhead.

“Call father,” I said to Withelm, who was the youngest of us three. The boy ran in, and presently my father came out and looked long at the glow in the sky.

“Even as I thought,” he said. “The king’s town is burning, and I must go to tell the jarl. Strange that we have had no message. Surely the king’s men must be hard pressed if this is a foe’s work.”

So he went at once, leaving us full of wonder and excited, as boys will be at anything that is new and has a touch of fear in it. But he had hardly gone beyond the outbuildings when one came running and calling him. The jarl had sent for him, for there was strange news from the king. Then he and this messenger hastened off together.

In half an hour the war horns were blowing fiercely, and all the quiet town was awake, for my father’s forebodings were true, and the foe was on us. In our house my mother was preparing the food that her husband should carry with him, and I was putting a last polish on the arms that should keep him, while the tramp of men who went to the gathering rang down the street, one by one at first, and then in twos and threes. My mother neither wept nor trembled, but worked with a set face that would not show fear.

Then came in my father, and I armed him, begging at the same time that I might go also, for I could use my weapons well enough; but he told me that some must needs bide at home as a guard, and that I was as much wanted there as at the king’s place, wherewith I had to be content. It was by no means unlikely that we also might be attacked, if it was true that the king’s men were outnumbered, as was said.

Now when my father went to say farewell to us, nowhere could be found my brother Withelm.