IN WHICH THE CHAMPIONS FEEL THEIR IMPORTANCE
Smiling, Gudrid drew out the head she had thrust through the booth door
at Erlend's urgent invitation. "It is as splendid as can be in every
way. I do not wonder that you want to give a feast to display it."
A little consciousness was in Erlend's laugh as he shut the door and
walked beside her through the grove. "It is not altogether to display
it," he protested. "In a few weeks the spring games will be held; it is
the custom of every one to give a feast at that season. I tell you we
are going to show some great feats. We exercise ourselves every
afternoon. They are practising now in an open place which the chief
found in the woods. That is where I am going."
Pausing, Gudrid drew higher on her hip her accustomed burden, a bundle
wrapped in white rabbit-skins from which looked forth a little rosy
face. "Is Alrek there?" she asked. "Then I think I will try my luck in
that direction, if so be they will allow a woman to come near?"
"I think they will not mind your coming if you go right away again,"
Erlend concluded after some consideration.
Apparently she felt equal to the risk, for she entered with him the
broad trough-like path trodden through the snow of the grove. "I go only
for a walk," she said. "We have been too much shut in the house, the
child and I, since that frightful trading day."
It seemed to the Amiable One that she shivered as she spoke, so he
observed politely: "It is a bad thing that you were made sick by it.
Melkorka says that you even saw a ghost."
"Melkorka blunders much in her speaking and blundered twice as much in
her hearing," Gudrid answered. "I said only that I got so full of fear
that I expected to see ghosts. Sitting alone in the house with the
child, it came into my head what might happen if the Skraellings should
turn an evil side, with Karlsefne away and that good-natured Biorn not
expecting evil. And the more I thought, the stranger the noises outside
seemed to me and the stranger shapes the shadows took, until once I was
so sure that one was a Skraelling stealing in upon me that I bent over
and covered the cradle with my body,--and just then came that cry!" She
pressed her hand to her ear at the recollection.
Erlend smiled indulgently. "Now did you think it so terrible? It is
likely that one of them looked into the cattle-shed and saw the bull--"
The glance her blue eyes sent over her shoulder silenced him even before
her words. "It would be a strange wonder if you could tell me news about
it! Was I not here at the time the bull frightened them? I heard how
they screamed then, and it was as different from this screech as day
from night. In this cry there were death-sounds and no life-sounds. My
foster-mother, Halldis, was knowing in weird matters. I know of what I
speak, though all men think otherwise. And I know enough to wish to
forget the mishap. Let us not talk of it any more. I wish to enjoy this
fine weather."
It was a day to be enjoyed. Beyond the network of brown branches the sky
was dazzling blue, with here and there a fleecy cloud. Dazzling white,
snow lay in the curves of the boughs and filled the hollows of the
ground; though on the ridges where the bright sun touched, the brown
earth showed through. Everywhere, the wind was moistly, sweetly fresh.
"I do not wonder that it makes you kick up your heels like young
horses," Gudrid laughed, when she came at last to the level treeless
space in whose middle six Champions leaped and wrestled, while ten more
lounged at one side, applauding or hissing the wrestlers as their
critical judgment decided.
At sight of Erlend, the ten waved their hands in careless greeting; at
sight of the kirtled figure of Gudrid, they sat up in unmistakable
disapproval; and a long lean wrestler with a mane of red hair stamped
petulantly when he was obliged to retire from the field to the bordering
trees where his tunic and cloak awaited him.
"Though no more than seven women are in Vinland, a man can not get away
from them though he go into the heart of a wood," he sputtered.
"Hush! She will hear you," muttered Gard, who stood beside him;
whereupon the Red One's voice rose in exasperation:
"I do not care whether she hears me or not! Will you keep to what
concerns you? I have told you before this that I am able to pay the
price of my deeds."
From under the tunic he was about to pull down over his head, Gard
looked at him irefully. "And I have told you," he retorted, "that one
can not always tell what the price of his deed will be."
"I do not care _what_ it is!" bellowed Brand.
Harald Grettirsson turned on them with a grin. "What ails you two that
you have done nothing but quarrel since the trading day? Cool off a
little," he jeered, and suddenly ran into them so that they were jostled
off the high ground into a hollow and sank in snow up to their waists.
Foreseeing vengeance, Grettirsson took promptly to his heels, and the
desertion of the three completed the interruption begun by the
appearance of Gudrid's blue hood.
Gudrid took her departure with tactful promptness. "Now you need not
trouble yourself to hunt for fine words," she forestalled the somewhat
embarrassed greeting of her young kinsman. "I am well versed in the
Viking laws about keeping women out; we have no other intention than to
go directly back, the Frowner and I."
Cordial as his relations with his kinswoman were, the chief could not
ask her to alter her decision; but he reached out and took the bundle
off her hip. "The Frowner is not a woman," he corrected. "I think he
will like the noise better than the rattling of his string of shark's
teeth. I will see to it that he comes to no harm."
The mother yielded him doubtfully. "But do you know for certain that you
will?" she demurred. "If he should get his hand on the hatchet in your
belt--"
"Why, he would be able to do more than I can," Alrek finished for her.
"I have been unable to find my hatchet for weeks."
Gudrid consented to smile. "I took for granted it was there. Then I will
certainly leave him, for I should like him to be outdoors some while
longer. I will send a thrall--a man-thrall--to fetch him."
But it came about that small Snorri Thorfinnsson was returned to his
mother by no such humble individual. With the shortening of the light
and the lengthening of the shadows, Karlsefne the Lawman came through
the wood on his way campward from a day's outing. Coming out in the open
where a dozen Champions were fencing with a mighty clash and clatter, he
would have apologized for the intrusion and kept on his way; but
reaching the tree before which the red-cloaked chief sprawled on a great
rug, drawling comment, he heard from the rabbit-skin bundle at the
chiefs side a squeal of laughter which brought him to a standstill.
"What have we here?" he asked in surprise.
Rising to greet him, Alrek looked down at the bundle with a laugh. "It
is likely that your son is going to make a Berserker, Karlsefne," he
answered. "The more noise the swords make, the louder he laughs."
The smile dawning on the Lawman's lips faded as his glance passed from
the rabbit-skin bundle to the rug on which it lay. After a little he
said gravely: "This is an unusually fine bearskin which you have, my
young kinsman. I want to ask if it is the one the Skraellings brought,
on that last trading day of which so much has been told?"
It was so plain that the same misgiving was in his mind which had first
risen to Alrek's, that the Sword-Bearer breathed a prayer of
thankfulness that he had lost no time in making sure of Gard's good
faith. He replied readily: "It is the same one, Karlsefne. One of my men
had such luck in trading that he bought it when the price was lower than
it had been."
"Nevertheless, I should like much to know what he paid for it," said the
Lawman.
"Willingly," answered Alrek the Chief. "He paid a large piece of the red
cloth which we had been trading with, and a ring with a red stone. The
Skraelling liked the ring so well that he put it on as soon as he bought
it."
The Lawman's gaze became less unswervingly direct; presently its
sharpness was softened by a twinkle. "Now if all the Northmen of the new
lands continue to show such merchant talent, Vinland will soon be as
great a trading place as Iceland," he laughed.
Then, as if to remove any lingering doubt of his friendliness, he added
that their taste in selecting a practising place was excellent; and that
it appeared that they were doing good work in it; and that, if they
would allow it, he should be glad to remain a while and look on. When
permission had been graciously accorded, he sat down on the rug between
the chief and the rabbit-skin bundle and showed himself the most
inspiring audience the band had ever performed before.
Under the stimulus of his applause, Njal the Jumper achieved a mark a
finger's length higher than any he had made before; while Brand the
Wrestler felt such power swell in his great limbs that for a time he
seriously considered the idea of challenging Karlsefne himself. Later,
he was glad that he had not, for when they stopped to rest and came and
stood around the bearskin, Karlsefne borrowed Alrek's dwarf-made sword
and rose up, towering and sinewy and straight as a pine, and showed them
some feats that he had learned in the East,--the real East where the sun
is so hot that all people are as brown as roasted fowls, and the rich
eat snow for a luxury. Baring a knotted arm as lean as a spear-shaft, he
did things that furnished them fireside gossip for the rest of the cold
weather.
When at last he had set the Frowner on his shoulder, and he and the
Champions had parted in a glow of good-fellowship, Erlend said warmly:
"Biorn Gudbrandsson is an open-handed chief, and Snorri of Iceland is
shrewder than most men; but the one surpassing others in high-mindedness
and knowing everything is Thorfinn Karlsefne. I think it an honor to our
feast that he has consented to come to it."