He turned to his way which asked him to cross a mountain shoulder deep in snow. That was heavy going, for it was soft in the sun. From the top he saw his work before him, fold within fold of snow, brown valley-bottoms, and over all the great ridge of white with pines like scars upon it, which was the boundary between Norway and Sweden. Heavens! What a job he had got. But he went on, nothing doubting, and kept a stout heart. "A lonely place to be hanged in, and few trees fit for it. But I doubt I should have a fight for it here."
I need not delay over his journey, which took him two days longer, and two nights. By the time he had climbed the great ridge he had come near the end of his strength and his provisions for it. Yet he must go on; for that was no place in which to spend the night, a waste of snow and a line of torn pines driven everlastingly by a cruel wind. When he saw what was now in front of him and below, his heart might sink, though it did not. So far as eye could range all was forest. It was like looking upon a dark sea, featureless except for the lines of light and shadow which ran over it when wind and sun played together. He saw no ways, no clearings; there rose no chimney-smoke anywhere. Not a bird sailed above, not a wolf grieved, not a fox stirred. "And is that Sweden then? And are there people dwelling in the dark beneath? There are two worlds there, and there might be dwellers in the tree-tops who know nothing of the inhabitants of the deep, and are themselves unknown. How am I to guide myself through that thicket, and who is going to feed me or give me drink?" Looking into it, he shivered in the wind. "Outlandish country, you must do better for me than this," he said. He had a traverse of a league of snow-slope before he could enter the forest. To that he addressed himself now, with a prayer to all the Gods in Valhall.
GUNNAR IN THE FOREST HEARS TELL OF FREY AND HIS WONDERS
CHAPTER VIII GUNNAR IN THE FOREST HEARS TELL OF FREY AND HIS WONDERS
The course of the snow-slope brought Gunnar to rocks and a precipice from a gorge in which descended a river of ice. Far below him he heard the thunderous crash of water, and judged that in following that, if it could be done, he would find his best chance of guiding his way through the forest. The river would join another; that other must in time reach the sea. So he determined to do; but it was easy talking. It took him the best part of a day to get down the cliff. He spent a miserable night crouched under a rock, and started off again in the morning almost fasting. There was coarse grass now growing wherever there was hold for it. In one of these he saw a white hare lying flat, and by a trick he knew he fell his length upon her and secured her. He had no fire, and made what he could of her raw and sinewy flesh. So replenished, he went on his downward course, reached the waterfall bathed in sweat, and followed it as nearly as might be down into the chill and silence and darkness of the forest.
Day and night were alike to him now; for a time whose duration he took no pains to guess at, he worked his way downwards, a more fearful toil, with more of peril in it than any he had spent in climbing the ridge. This great forest was untouched by the hand, unvisited by the foot of man so far as he could understand. He saw no living thing, though high above him he sometimes heard the battling of wings, and once or twice hoarse cries which he judged must come from the air. He listened for wolves or foxes, but heard none; he kept his eyes aware for the track of roe-deer or bear, but vainly. All was silent and accursed. Except on the banks of the torrent there was little vegetation to be seen, for among the pine stems the needles lay close and deep upon the ground, and nothing could live in such a soil or in such a chill and dank air. Whither he went, or how far he had come, he knew not; for all his steadiness of heart, the conviction turned him sick that if he did not soon meet with men there would be one man less in the world.