THE GOING OUT OF THE ICE.
Wulf the Skater brought true tidings to the house of Ulric, the son of
Brander the Brave, on the day of Saturn. Winter was ending. The word
passed on from house to house until all in the village came out and
looked upward, seeking for the blue rift in the sky. The wind blew not
now as in the morning. The north wind had gone elsewhere, and instead
there came up from the south a breathing which was fitful and faint at
first. It was cool, also, from having touched the frost faces on its
way. Only one more hour went by and the sky was almost clear, so that
the sun shone down unhindered and his heat was surprisingly strong.
The south wind grew warmer and more vigorous toward sunset, but with
him now came a fog so dense that no man cared to go out into it; for if
he did, it was as though darkness touched him. All through the evening
the south wind sighed softly among the homes of the vikings, and went
wandering up the fiords, and felt its way, shivering, across the flinty
levels of the frozen sea, but toward the morning of the day of the sun
the breeze brought with it, also, to help it, a copious warm rain.
Before the noon torrents were leaping down the sides of the mountains
and the sea was beginning to groan and heave and struggle in its effort
to take off and put away its winter mail.
"Harken!" said Oswald, the harper, as he sat by the now smoldering fire
in the hall of Ulric's house.
"I hear," said Hilda from her place on the other side of the ash heap.
"It is the last time that I shall listen to the song of the outing ice,
but I shall feel the wind from the sun land and I shall see the grass
green in the valley before I go. There will be buds on the trees when
I pass down into the earth to meet my kindred. O what a realm is that!
The land of shadows. The under world which has the sod for a roof. But
the old runes on the rocks tell of wide places. One may travel far in
that land, and where I may go I know not."
The gnarled fingers of Oswald were searching among the strings of his
harp, but only discords answered his touches.
"I have heard," he said, "that they hang their shields on the roots of
the trees, and they see as we see in a twilight. I think I have heard
them harping in the summer nights, when the moon was full and the wind
was in the pines. I would that my own harp might be buried with me."
"No need," said Hilda. "They have better harps than thine. They will
give thee one. It is well that the weapons of a warrior should be
placed beside him in his tomb, but they must be marred in token that he
useth them no more. He hath left others for his kinsmen. There are many
good swords in the old tombs. One day they will all be opened and the
blades will be found."
"And also much treasure," grumbled Oswald; but his harp twanged angrily
as he said it, for he had ever been a man to hold fast anything in
the shape of coined money or of precious metal. Many were said to be
the outland coins in his leather bag in his room at the southerly
end of the house. He had sometimes shown them to inquiring folk, but
grudgingly, and he had always tied them up again tightly, as if he
feared that there might be a thief even among the vikings.
Hilda arose and walked slowly across the room to the open door. She
looked toward the sea, but the mist and the rain were a curtain.
"Hammers!" she said. "I can hear them. Ulric and his men are at work
upon the ship. She will be ready to launch when the ice goeth out. She
will sail to the Middle Sea, but when I look for her I cannot see her
come again."
Once more she turned, and this time her slow and stately march carried
her to the farther end of the hall, on the dais, where many suits of
armor were hanging. She went straight to one of these and she touched
it, piece by piece, while Oswald leaned upon his harp and watched her.
"When the hour was upon me," she said, "I saw the son of Brander in
battle, and the men upon whom his ax was falling bore shields like
this. There were dark men with them, wearing turbans. It is well. I
think that at the end of this cruise he will come to me where I am. It
were no shame to his father's son that the valkyrias, when they come to
call the hero to Valhalla, should find him circled with slain Romans.
Brander the Sea King took these arms for his trophies in the great
fight off the coast of Britain. He drove the Roman galley ashore. He
burned it with fire. Not one Roman escaped."
"I have seen Britain," muttered Oswald.
"Brander the Brave liked Britain well," continued Hilda. "It is a fair
land, he said. If he could take more men with him, he would drive out
of it the Romans and the Britons and keep it. But he said they have no
good winters there, and the summers are all too long. It would be no
land for me. What would I do in an island where the fiords do not shut
up at the right season? I should perish!"
Very thoughtful was the face of the tall daughter of the Northland as
she passed along, inspecting the armor and talking to herself about its
varied history. Some of it had been won in fights with far-away peoples
before she was born, but more of it had been brought into that hall
before her eyes, and she had heard the bringers tell the tales which
belonged to its pieces and to the swords and spears. Now, therefore,
hanging there on the wall, the war treasures of the house of Brander
were page-marks for her memory, and she also was a book of the old
history of the Northmen from the days of the gods to this hour of her
own closing.
Swiftly went by the day of rain and thaw, but their work was tenfold in
the night which followed it. The rain fell on the roof in increasing
abundance, and the wind threw it with force against the sides of the
house. The torrents on the mountains grew into small swift rivers, and
they made a continual loud sound of rushing water; but that was not the
tumult which so filled the air and smote upon the ear. All other sounds
were overborne by the booming and groaning of the ice and by the roar
with which its loosened edges ground against the granite cliffs in the
fiords.
The day of Saturn had been a day of frost and snow and storm until near
its close. The day of the sun had brought the sun's breath from his
own land and his smile into the sky, and he had slain the winter at a
blow. The morrow would be the day of the moon, and before its arrival
came now this night of such uproar that Oswald did not care to touch
his harp, and the vikings mended their armor and sharpened their swords
in silence. Hilda also was long silent, nor had Ulric the Jarl spoken
aught that could be heard by all. When at last his voice arose, and men
put by their work to hear, he gave answer to a question of Tostig the
Red.
"Aye!" he said loudly, "the ship is ready from stem to stern. We will
launch her behind the ice as it leaveth the shore. We will follow the
floes as the tides bear them southward; ever do they melt as they go.
So shall no other ship sail before us, and we shall be the first of all
keels from the Northland, this year, among the islands of the Middle
Sea."
Fiercely twanged the harp of Oswald and loud rang the shouts of the men
who heard the young jarl speak his purpose, but before the harp could
sound again Hilda arose in her place.
"Son of Brander," she said, "thou wilt go. Thou wilt see many things.
All day have I been watching thy path, and the clouds are over it. In
this thing that I now tell thee, do thou as did thy father: crush the
keels of Rome in the seas of Britain and smite the men of Rome on the
British island. And in the end of all thou wilt die, as did thy father,
at the hand of a spearman of Cæsar."
"So be it," shouted Ulric, with a laugh on his lips and a flash of fire
in his bold, bright eyes; "I ask no better!"
He said no more, but seated himself and began to sharpen his seax on a
smooth, hard stone.