The Sentimental Vikings

by R. V. Risley

My lord sat black, in the moonlight. After a while he got up and returned toward the shadowy hall.

He went in and took a great tankard of beer from my hand and drank, then turned toward me.

“The beer is warm—too warm,” he said. “What a beautiful night. The beer is too warm.” He waved his hand with one of his old indifferent gestures, his mouth trembling. I filled him another tankard of beer; he drank it at a drink and then asked for another, this he also drank and threw himself down on a bench. “Drink!” he said, “drink!” laughing loud.

I drink with him again and again. He leans back on his bench laughing. “Ah, old war-follower!” he cries, his voice ringing strange in the empty moonlit hall. “Dost thou remember our first cruise? We took the battleship! and that other; where we were caught in the ice. Dost thou remember Lord Raud? Ah! that was a grand time. And when we chased the bears in Lord Snorē’s forest. Through all our cruises; that old ship off Norway that we chased and frightened so? See the moonlight!” he said, suddenly, and stopped laughing. Then, with a wave of his long arm, he leaned back and called out again. “Jolly war-dog! Ah!—another tankard; Skaal! Skaal! to our old times! Skaal! Ah! Old war-dog! It is not good for men to put their hearts on women. They find them empty; there is no water in an unfilled pitcher—better the old sea-shells, like us, that are always filled. Do you know,” and he started up and shook his beer-tankard in the moonlight, a tall figure, “that, since I was a young man, I have loved that woman! She was a little —— Be silent! A ghost comes!” He grasped my arm.

There, gliding in all in white through the door at the side of the hall came Hildur like a spirit in the moonlight. She spoke from where she stood, and our delusion of a spirit was scattered. For she spoke cross, empty words, as she stood by the disorderly hearth complaining of neglect.

I stood by my lord’s bench, and I saw the old excitement come into his eyes. She went on complaining; beautiful in the moonlight. My lord raised his tankard and took a long drink, then with the same old cynical laugh, he stood there; and she stopped. Then my hands gripped the back of the bench, for my lord, still laughing, threw the empty tankard at her with all his force. I saw her lie white in the moonlight. So that is ended.

The next day we buried her, who had died from a fall from the hall-terrace to the rocks beneath. And in the after-mid-day, we sailed in our ship, past the green woods. We sailed north to young Lord Erik’s town, and found him married, and happy with kisses and things. So we sailed away again laughing at this easy consolement, and my lord was very gay at the pleasure of the sea.

Soon the men were brown, and the sun shone above level waters, and we sailed lazily past dense woods.

Thus one day, as we landed to cook our meat under the trees, one of the men thought he saw a glance of armour away off in the forest. But thinking it was only the sunlight on one of the beech-trunks, we cooked and sat down to our meat.

They came running out of the forest, trying to break past us to get to the ship. There was clank of swords on armour, and the smoke from the fire wavered from its straight column; then, they drew back. Their chief came from the beach-reaches now, and laughing said they had lost their ship, so, seeing ours, had tried to rush into it, and get away before we could beat them off.