THE MESSAGE OF THE RUNES.
The story must now come back to Norway. Though Estein had returned
with neither spoil nor captives, the tale of Liot's capture and
the combat on the holm added much to his renown, and no fewer than
six skalds composed lengthy poems on the adventure. There seemed
no reason why the hero of these lays should shrink from talking of
his expedition, and avoid, so far as he could, the company of men.
Gradually strange rumours began to spread. Helgi, who alone knew
the truth, held his peace for Estein's sake, even when the ale
flowed most freely. The others who had sailed with them laid no
such restraint on their tongues, and stories of a spell and an
Orkney witch, vague and contradictory, but none the less eagerly
listened to and often repeated, went the round of the country. The
king at last began to take alarm, and one day he called Earl
Sigvald to him and talked with him alone.
"What rede can you give, jarl?" he said; "a strange witchcraft I
fear has been at work. When a young man smiles but seldom, broods
often by himself, and shuns the flagon and the feast, there is
something more to be looked for than a loss of men and ships, or
the changefulness of youth."
"Get him a wife," replied the earl. "He has been single too long.
There is no cure for spells like a pair of bright eyes."
But when the king spoke to his son, he found him resolutely
opposed to marriage. Hakon loved him so dearly that he forbore to
press the matter, and again he consulted Earl Sigvald.
"If he will not marry, let him fight," answered the earl. "For a
prince of the race of Yngve, the clash of arms cures melancholy
better than a maid."
So with the coming of spring Estein cruised in the Baltic, and
carried the terror of his arms far into Finland and Russia. Yet he
returned as moody as before.
At feasts his spirits sometimes rose to an extraordinary pitch.
For the time he would be carried away as he had never been before.
He would sing, jest, and quarrel; but his jests were often bitter,
and his quarrels gave rise to more talk than his gloom, for before
he had been of an even and generous temper. And when the fit
passed away he was quieter than ever.
One day he was out hunting on the fells with Helgi. They were
oftener together than ever, and his foster-brother had far more
influence with him than any other man.
They stood on a desolate hillside a little above the highest pine
woods, examining the tracks of a bear, when Helgi suddenly turned
to him and said,--
"Do you not think, Estein, you have moped and mourned long
enough?"
"They whom the gods have cursed," replied Estein, "have little
cause for laughter. What is there left for me on this earth?"
"To prove yourself a man; to accept the destiny you cannot alter;
and in time, Estein, to be a king. Are these things nothing?"
Helgi seldom spoke so gravely, and Estein for a time stood silent.
Then he exclaimed,--
"You are right, Helgi; I have acted as a beaten child. Henceforth
I shall try to look on my fate, I cannot say merrily, but at least
with a steady eye."
As another winter passed, he gradually seemed to come to himself.
He was sadder and more reserved than of yore, but the king saw
with joy that the gloom was lifting. One day in the season when
spring and winter overlap, and the snow melts by day and hardens
again over-night, Earl Sigvald returned to Hakonstad from his seat
by a northern fiord. King Hakon greeted him cheerfully.
"The spell is lifting, jarl," he said; "Estein is becoming himself
again."
"That is well, sire," replied the earl; "and my old heart lightens
at the news. But I have other tidings that need your attention. I
have brought with me Arne the Slim, your scatt-gatherer in
Jemtland. The people there have slain some of his followers,
forced him to fly for his life, and refused to pay scatt to a
Norse king. There is work ahead for some of our young blades."
"They shall see that my arm is longer than they deem," replied the
king grimly.
Arne told his tale in the great hall before all the assembled
chiefs, and the king's face darkened with anger as he listened.
Every now and then, as he spoke of some particular act of
treachery, or of his hardships and hurried flight, an angry murmur
rose from his audience, and a weapon here and there clashed
sternly. Estein alone seemed unmoved. He stood listlessly at the
back, apparently hardly hearing what was going on, his thoughts
returning despite himself to their melancholy groove. All at once
he heard himself addressed, and turning round saw a stranger at
his side. The man was holding out something towards him, and when
he had caught Estein's eye, he said respectfully,--
"I was charged to give this token to you, sire." Estein looked at
him in surprise, and taking the token from his hand, glanced at it
curiously.
It was a stave of oak, about two feet long, and shaped with some
care. Along one side an inscription was carved in Runes, and as he
read the first words his expression changed and he spelt it keenly
through. The whole writing ran: "An old man, a maiden, and a
spell. Come hither to Jemtland."
He turned sharply to the man and asked,--
"How came you by this? Who sent it to me?"
"That last I cannot answer," replied the man. "This only I know,
that the night before the Jemtland people attacked us, a man came
to the door of the house where I lodged, and giving me this said,
'Fly, war is afoot,' and with that he left as suddenly as he came.
I aroused my master Arne, and one or two more, and thanks to the
warning, we escaped the fate of our comrades. That is all I can
tell you."
The message made a sharp impression on Estein's mind. "An old man,
a maiden, and a spell," he repeated to himself. He racked his
brains, but he could think of no one in that remote country who
would be likely to send such a message. It seemed to him to have
an almost supernatural import, and again he said to himself, "An
old man, a maiden, and a spell." Then suddenly he took a
resolution, and turning from the messenger stepped into the crowd
who surrounded the king.
Arne had just finished his tale. There was a moment's angry
silence, and then the king glanced round the host of weather-beaten
Vikings and high-born chiefs and cried,--
"Who will punish these cowardly rebels of mine?"
A dozen voices instantly claimed the service. Loudest of them all
was that of Ketill, now married to a wealthy widow and a person of
considerable importance, and the black-bearded Viking stepped
forward as he spoke.
"Give me this service, king," he said. "I have lived at mine ease
too long of late. Laziness begets fat."
There was a laugh at Ketill's words, for his person had never been
noted for its spareness.
The Viking frowned and exclaimed,--
"Let those laugh who have tested my steel."
"Well I know your bravery, Ketill," began the king, "and there is
no man--"
At that instant the ring of men round him suddenly opened and
Estein stood before his father. His face was more animated than
any had seen it for many a long day, and in a firm voice he said,--
"I will lead this expedition."
Steel rang on steel as every armed warrior there clashed his
approval. By all the gods whose names he could remember Earl
Sigvald swore that the true Estein was come back, and King Hakon
exclaimed joyfully,--
"There speaks my son at last. Prepare yourself then, Estein. Ill
tidings have been changed to good."
"And you, Ketill," said Estein, turning to his former companion,
"will you come with me?"
"That will I," answered Ketill. "I want no braver leader. But the
gods curse me if we roast not a few score men this time, Estein."
For two days there was a turmoil of preparation round Hakonstad,
and on the third Estein's two warships sailed down the fiord. He
had with him Helgi, Ketill, and a picked force; and as he stood on
deck and watched the towering precipices slip by, and the white
clouds drift over their rough rim of pines, his heart beat high.
The message of the Runes was ringing in his mind, and the spirit
of roving and adventure boiling up again.
They sailed far up the coast, and then, leaving their ship in a
northern fiord, struck inland across the mountains. The country
they were going to lay among the lakes of North Sweden. Its people
were more barbarous than the Norwegians, and had long been in a
state of half-subjection to the Norse kings. There was not likely
to be hard fighting; for small as Estein's force was, the natives
were badly armed and little esteemed as warriors. The country,
however, was difficult, so the men marched warily, their arms
ready for instant use, and a sharp watch kept all the time. The
sun came out hot by day, but at nights it felt very cold and
frosty. With all the haste they could make they pushed on by the
least frequented routes and the most desolate places. During the
first day after they had crossed the mountains, they only saw one
farmhouse, in a forest clearing, and that, when they came up to
it, was still and deserted. On the following day they passed a
small hamlet on the banks of a river, and a little later another
farm. In neither was there a sign of an inhabitant to be seen, and
they seemed for all the world like dwellings of the dead.
"This is passing strange," said Helgi. "Unless, perhaps, the
Jemtlanders spend the winter in holes and caves, like the bears
they resemble in all but courage."
"The alarm has spread, I fear," answered Estein. "We must make the
more haste."
"Ay," said Ketill; "on, on!"
Towards evening the head of the column emerged into a small
clearing, and the foster-brothers, who were marching in the
middle, heard a cry from the van. Then Ketill's gruff voice called
out,--
"After him! Nay, slay him not! Have you got him? Ay, bring the
knave to Estein."
The little army came to a halt, and a poor-looking man, clad in a
skin coat, and trembling violently as they dragged him along, was
brought before Estein.
"Spare my life, noble captain!" he pleaded, casting himself on his
knees. "I am but a poor man, I beseech you."
"Silence, rascal!" thundered Ketill, "or we will have your
coward's tongue out by the root."
"Tell me, if you value your life, what means this solitude?"
Estein demanded sternly. "Nay, shake not like an old man with
palsy, but speak the truth--if by chance a Jemtlander knows what
truth is. Where are the people?"
"Noble earl, they have heard of your coming, and fled. No man will
await you; you will see none in the country."
"Do none mean to fight?" asked Helgi.
"Great prince," replied the fellow, "the Jemtlanders were never a
warlike race. Even the king, I hear, is prepared to fly."
A contemptuous murmur rose from the Norsemen.
"Let us begin by hanging this man," said Ketill, "and then fire,
fire through the country!"
"I shall see first whether he has spoken the truth," answered
Estein. "Bind him, and bring him on."
The man was bound and guarded, and the march was continued. Early
the next morning two men were found together in a cottage, and
they told the same tale.
"Little glory is there in marching against such a people," said
Estein. "Bind them, and hasten on."
About an hour later the little army emerged from a hillside
forest, and saw below them a small merchant town. The rude wooden
houses straggled along the edge of a great frozen lake, whose
snow-powdered surface stretched for miles and miles in an unbroken
sheet of dazzling whiteness. Between the shores and the outskirts
of the woodlands lay a wide sweep of cultivated country.
Everywhere a thin coating of snow covered the ground, and the air
was sharp enough to make the breath of the men rise like a cloud
of steam as they marched in battle order down the slope.
"There are men in the town!" cried Helgi suddenly. "I see the
glint of the sun on weapons. Thanks be to the gods, we shall have
a fight!"
"Ay, they are coming out," said Estein. "Halt! we shall take
advantage of the slope, and await them here."
The men halted, and grasped their weapons, and in expectant
silence their leaders watched a small troop defile out of the
town.
"Call you that an army?" growled Ketill. "There are barely a score
of them."
"Ay," said Helgi, with a sigh, "there will be no fighting to-day."
About twenty men, dressed in skins and fur coats and wooden
helmets, and slenderly armed, had left the town, and now came
slowly up the hill. Their leader alone wore a burnished steel
helmet, and carried a long halberd over his shoulder. Immediately
behind him walked two boys, and at the sight of them Helgi asked,--
"What mean they by bringing boys against us?"
"Hostages," suggested Estein laconically.
When this motley company had come within a hundred yards of them,
they stopped, and their leader advanced alone.
As he drew near to the Norsemen, Estein stepped out a pace or two
to meet him, but they stood so close that Helgi and Ketill could
hear all that passed. They saw that the stranger was a tall,
elderly man with a clever face and a dignified bearing.
"Hail, Estein Hakonson!" he said.
"You know my name, it seems," replied Estein, "and therein have
the advantage of me."
"My name is Thorar," said the chief, speaking gravely and very
courteously, "lawman of this region of Jemtland"--he made a
sweeping gesture with his hand as he said this--"and a friend
hitherto to the Northmen."
"I know you by repute as a chief of high birth, and one who has
long been faithful to my father. Yet, methinks, it was something
less than faithful to drive his scatt-gatherer from the country
and slay his followers."
"Blame not me for that, Estein," answered Thorar. "It was done
with neither my knowledge nor consent, and none grieved at such an
outrage more than I. Now, as you see, you have the land at your
mercy; and as an ancient friend of your family and a faithful
servant of my master King Bue, I am come to intercede between King
Hakon and him. Give us peace, Estein; and as you have a grey-haired
father, spare my master the sorrow and the shame you would
bring upon him. What can he do against you? The old spirit of my
countrymen has died out," he added sadly, "and no man dare meet
your force in the field."
"Is King Bue in the town?" Estein asked.
"Nay, he could not travel so far; but in his name I bid you
welcome to his feast, if you will accept peace instead of war. If
you will not, then I can only mourn the devastation of my country.
It will be a bloodless victory, Estein."
"And what compensation does the king intend to make?"
"What you will; he is powerless."
"Shall we then march to King Bue?"
"Alas!" said Thorar, "in these evil days he cannot entertain you
all. Many of his people have fled to the woods already, and--to
tell the truth--he, too, would feel ill at ease if he saw so brave
a force come nigh him; for he is old, and his spirit is broken.
But a following of twenty men or so he will gladly entertain. The
others I shall have feasted here in the town at my own cost, and
with them I shall leave my two young sons"--he indicated, as he
spoke, the two lads. "They are my only children, and them I shall
willingly give you as hostages till your return, that I may save
my country from fire and sword. Though," he added, with a grave
smile, "if men speak truth, Estein Hakonson can make good his
coming or going against most."
"Be it as you will," replied Estein; "but if--" He paused, and
looked sternly at Thorar.
"If a king's word and mine are not sufficient, and my only sons
satisfy you not, I can but add my oath--though most men would deem
it needless."
Thorar spoke with dignity and a touch of haughtiness, and Estein
replied simply and courteously,--
"I shall come."
He turned to Helgi and said,--
"No fighting will there be, Helgi; but I have known you welcome
even a feast. What say you?"
"This snow work and marching call for feasting," replied Helgi,
with a laugh.
"Then Ketill shall stay here with the rest of our troop, and you
and I, with twenty more, will to the king. Forward, men!"
"Spare not the ale," added Ketill.
"A courteous and gallant man is Thorar, for a Jemtlander," said
Helgi to Ketill, as they marched down to the town.
"Dogs and women are his people," replied Ketill. "They are fit
neither to be friends nor enemies."
Estein liberated the prisoners they had taken on the march, and
leaving Ketill in charge of the main force and the hostages, he
and Helgi set forth about noon for the seat of King Bue.