Once we had settled down to that chase there was quiet on the
decks, and the ship was on an even keel. The ladies came out of
their cabin under the after deck and sat them down on a bench which
ran across under the shelter of the bulkhead, and I saw Gerda with
them. Thoralf's wife had cared for her, and had done it well, so
that she seemed to be a very queen as she sat there with those two
making much of her. The elder lady had known her as a child, for
she had been in Thorwald's hall with Thoralf the Tall on that visit
of which he spoke. The younger lady, whose name I knew afterward to
be Ortrud, was of Gerda's age.
Presently it was plain that Gerda would have us speak to them, and
we went and were made known to them, and after that we sat and told
of our doings for half an hour. Thoralf's wife had naught but
thanks to us for caring for Gerda, so that I was glad when Hakon
joined us for a little while.
He went forward soon, taking us with him, and sought Asbiorn, who
sat on the deck still scouring his wet arms and mail with the
cloths the men had lent him. Hakon asked if he could tell anything
of a large Norse ship which should have gone west some days ago. It
was that which we had seen on the day of our wreck.
"I have heard of a ship which has gone to trade at Sligo," said
Asbiorn. "It was in our minds to look for her ourselves presently.
That is far to the westward, and if you are in any hurry, you may
as well let my folk go, and follow her."
"No hurry at all," answered Hakon. "It seems that these ships of
yours are too well known for me to overlook. My men say that I am
sure to have to settle with Heidrek at some time, and I may as well
do so here as on the Norway shore next summer. I shall be busy
then, and Heidrek will have heard thereof. I am not busy just now."
"You will be when you overhaul the ships," said Asbiorn. "But they
are of less draught than yours, and you may miss them yet. Round
yon point is the Bann River, whence we came this morning."
Hakon turned away with a laugh, and watched the chase for a time.
Then he went aft and sat him down by the steersman, with Earl Osric
and Thoralf the Tall. Heidrek's ships were swift when before the
wind, and these great vessels might not overhaul them until they
had reached some shallow waters in the river mouth which Heidrek
had already entered. But there waited Dalfin and the Irish levies,
who would be gathered by this time in force.
Mayhap Heidrek would not chance being pent between two foes.
So that chase went on, and I wearied of watching it at last. Then
Bertric and I went to Asbiorn, for we would ask concerning some
things which had happened. Men were serving round the midday meal
at the time, and we ate and talked. The first thing I asked him was
what he had done with our ship.
"Sold her to one Arnkel in Norway, so to speak," he answered, with
a grin. "He was the man who had to do with this treasure ship you
picked up."
"Then you had some pact with Arnkel?"
"More or less," he said; "but there was a deal of chance in the
matter. In the gale I was outsailed, for your ship is not speedy,
as you know. The other two took refuge among the islands on the
Norse shore, and there heard of the great mound laying of Thorwald
which was to be. The ship had passed in the dawn of that morning,
and had not far to go. Whereon my father sent a message to Arnkel,
whom he knew, to say that he was at hand, and landed and fell on
him. As it turned out, he had better have taken his ships, for
Thorwald's folk set the ship adrift to save her from pillage. It
seems that they meant her to burn, but blundered that part. There
was nothing to fight for then, so they ceased. I came to the
islands and there had news of my father, and followed him. On the
way I passed Thorwald's ship at a distance, and was afraid of her,
she seeming to be a fully-armed war vessel. So I let her pass."
"Then you brought the news to Arnkel that she was not burning?"
"So it was. Whereon he would have us sail at once in chase of her
on his account. As we would not do that, and he would not let us go
on our own, there was a small fight. In the end Arnkel's men manned
your ship and we sailed in company, the bargain being that the
treasure was to fall to the finder. We thought we might have little
difficulty in overhauling the vessel, and should have had none if
it had not been for you. Had you picked up a crew of fishers?"
"No; we managed somehow by ourselves."
"I always told my father that Bertric was the best seaman we had in
all our crowd," Asbiorn said frankly. "You did well that time."
Then he told us how they had searched for us much in the way which
we had thought likely, and so at last had heard of a wreck when
they reached the river Bann.
"Asbiorn," I said, "did you know that there was a lady on board
this ship which was to be burnt?"
"No, on my word," he said, starting somewhat. "So that is where the
young queen was hidden, after all? There was wailing when her men
found that she was missing, and they said that she must have gone
distraught in her grief, and wandered to the mountains. How was she
left on board?"
"Arnkel put her there," I answered.
"So that explains his way somewhat. He seemed to want that ship
caught, and yet did not. When we did sail, he steered wide of the
course she took, and too far to the northward."
Then his face grew very black, and he growled: "Bad we are, but not
so bad as Arnkel, who would have men think him an honest man. Now,
if it were but to get in one fair blow at him for this, it were
worth joining Hakon. I take it that he will hear your tale--and
maybe mine."
"And the lady's also," Bertric answered. "Well--wait until you know
what befalls your ships."
"And my father," answered Asbiorn, getting up and looking ahead.
"To say the truth, I am not altogether sorry of an excuse to leave
that company, which is bad, though I say it. Yet he was driven out
of his own home by his foes, and thereafter his hand has been
against all men. It is the crew he has gathered which I would
leave, not him."
We had not gained on the two pirate ships. Now they were rounding
that headland whence they had come, and were altering their course.
Asbiorn said that they were making for the river mouth, and half an
hour thereafter we opened it out and saw that Heidrek was far
within it, heading landward. The beacon fires blazed up afresh as
the watchers knew that he had returned, and presently each fire had
a second alongside it. Men thought that Heidrek had brought us to
help him raid the land.
There were Norsemen on board, men from Dublin, who knew the mouth
of the river as well as need be, and better than Heidrek, who had
been into it but this once before. One of them piloted the ships
after him, for Hakon meant to end the business even as he had said,
here and now, if he could, and sent for Bertric that he might tell
him more of the enemy. He heard somewhat of our story at this time,
we sitting on the after deck with him, but he said little about it
then.
I suppose that we stood into the river over the falling tide for
five miles or more. Then Heidrek took to his oars, finding that he
was chased in earnest, and Hakon did so likewise at once. It was a
beautiful river, wide and clear, with great, green hills on either
side, and thick forests at their feet. But never a boat on its
waters, or man on its shores did we see. Only from each hilltop the
smoke of the war beacons rose and eddied.
The channel narrowed presently as we held on, going with all
caution. Then we opened out a wide valley, down which ran a fair
stream, and there we saw the Irish at last. High up they were,
crossing the valley in a column of black-garbed warriors which
seemed endless. There was no sparkle of mail among them, but here
and there a speck of light flashed from an axe blade or spear
point, to tell us that they were armed men. They were keeping pace
with Heidrek's ships by crossing from point to point, and how long
they may have watched him and us from the forests I cannot say.
Now the river took a sharp bend, and I heard the pilot say to his
mate that Heidrek had better have a care at this stage of tide,
while Asbiorn, forward, was watching intently. The tide was almost
at its lowest by this time, and Heidrek's hindmost ship was about
half a mile ahead of us. Hakon meant to pen them in some stretch of
the river which the pilot knew, and there deal with them. It was
said to be a deep reach with a bar at its head, beyond which no
ship might pass until high water.
Suddenly there came a shout from the men forward, and the pilot
cried to the oarsmen to cease rowing. Heidrek's second ship had
gone aground. We could see her crew trying to pole her off, and
Hakon asked if we could reach her.
"Not by five score yards," answered the pilot; "but see what
happens."
I suppose that he knew the Irish ways, for he had hardly spoken
when somewhat did happen. Out of the fringe of thicket and forest
along the bank of the river swarmed the Irish, with yells and howls
which reached us plainly, and flung themselves into the water to
wade out to the ship. The bank was black with them, and the light
from their axes overhead shimmered and sparkled in a wave of
brightness. The water was full shoulder deep round the ship, but
they did not heed that. Nor did they pay any attention to us, for
we could not reach them, and they knew it. They would deal with us
presently in one way or another. Meanwhile, this ship was at their
mercy.
Heidrek's other ship held on round the bend, and may have been out
of sight of her consort before she grounded, as the river bent with
its channel close under the banks. At all events, she did not
return to help.
"This affair is off our hands," said Hakon. "Best not meddle
therewith, even if we could. It is a great fight."
So it was, for the Danes fought well. The sides of the ship were
high above the wading men, and the spears flashed out between the
war boards, and the axe and sword were at work across the gunwales.
Yet the Irish never fell back from their swarming attack, and their
cries never ceased. One or two wounded men floated, paddling with
their hands, down past us, and hurled curses and defiance at us
also. Phelim and Fergus cried to them to forbear, for we were
friends, but they did not heed them, and passed, to reach the shore
below us as they might. We did not watch them.
For now the Irish had borne down the defence amidships, where the
run of the gunwales was lowest. The sheer weight of them as they
clambered, one over the other, on board, listed the ship over, and
made the boarding easier for those who followed. The wild Danish
war shout rose once or twice, and then it was drowned by the Irish
yell. After that there was a sudden silence, for the fighting was
over.
Then the victors leapt out of the ship and went ashore as swiftly
as they had come, and the forest hid them. The ship was hard and
fast aground now, and we pulled up abreast of her slowly, having no
mind to share her fate. Whether the Irish took any of her crew with
them as captives I do not know, but I saw her decks, and it seemed
hardly possible. So terrible a sight were they, that I feared lest
Gerda should in any way see it. But the doors of the cabin had been
shut, doubtless lest the fighting should fray the ladies.
"Will you venture farther, King Hakon?" asked the pilot.
"We will take one ship farther," he said. "The other shall bide
here, and see that this ship is not burnt by these wild folk.
Mayhap we shall want her."
Thoralf laughed at that. "We have no men to man her withal," he
said.
"We have men to sail her to Norway, and there wait the men to fight
for us," Hakon answered gaily. "We shall meet no foes on the high
seas, and we have met a queen whose men will hail us as their best
friends."
Thoralf shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "None can say that you
fare forward sadly, Hakon."
"This is the worse of the two ships," Bertric said. "The other is
Heidrek's own. He is not here. Asbiorn yonder commanded this."
"Asbiorn is in luck today," Earl Osric said, nodding toward those
terrible decks.
But Asbiorn stood on the foredeck with his back to that which he
had looked on, biting the ends of his long moustache, and pale with
rage. I did not wonder thereat.
Now Osric hailed the other ship and bade her anchor in the stream
while we went on. The pilot said that we could safely do so, and
that the next reach was the one of which he had spoken as a trap.
Then his comrade went into the bows with a long pole, sounding, and
so we crept past the stranded vessel, and into the most lovely
reach of river I had ever seen. It was well nigh a lake, long and
broad, between the soft hills and forest-clad shores, and the water
was bright and clear as glass beneath our keel, so that I saw a
great silver salmon flash like an arrow past the ship as we held
on. There was a village at the head of the reach, and men swarmed
in it like angry bees round a hive's mouth. Only the long black ship,
which still pulled slowly away from us, and the fiercely-burning
fires on every hilltop spoilt the quiet of the place.
"Now it is a question whether the Irish or we take Heidrek," said
Hakon. "It is plain that his time has come, one way or the other.
On my word, I am almost in the mind to hail him and bid him yield
to us to save himself from these axes."
I believe that so Hakon would have done, but that the chance never
came. And that was the doing of Heidrek himself, or of his crew.
What madness of despair fell on those pirates I cannot say, but
Asbiorn has it that they went berserk as one man at the last, as
the wilder Vikings will, when the worst has to be faced.
The Irish swarmed at the upper end of this reach, as I have said,
and those who had dealt with the other ship were coming fast along
the shore to join them. There must have been five hundred of them
in all, if not more. The river beyond the broad reach narrowed
fast, and one could see by the broken water that there was no
passing upward any farther until the tide was at its height. But
before the village was a long sloping beach, on which lay two or
three shapeless black skin boats, as if it was a good landing place
with deep water up to the shore. Above the village, on the shoulder
of the near hill, was an earthwork, and some tents were pitched
within its ring. It was the gathering-place to which Dalfin had
gone this morning, and no doubt his father, Myrkiartan the King,
was there.
There came a hoarse roar across the water to us, which rose and
fell, and shaped itself into a song, so terrible that I saw Hakon's
men grow restless as they heard it. The pirates were singing their
war song for the last time.
Their ship swung round and headed for the village, and with all her
oars going, and the white foam flying from her bows, and boiling
round the oar blades, she charged the beach and hurled herself half
out of the water as she reached it.
Over her bows went her men with a shout. Before the Irish knew that
anything had happened, the last of the Danes were halfway up the
little beach, and were forming up into a close-locked wedge, which
moved swiftly toward the village even as it grew into shape.
"What are they about?" asked men of one another as they watched,
breathless, from our decks.
"They will try to win to yonder camp," one said in answer, and that
was likely, though what hope could lie in that none could say.
Now the wedge had reached the little green which was between the
village and the shore. Before it lay the road hillward, steep and
rough, and that was full of Irish.
Still the Irish held back. They looked to see our ship follow, no
doubt, and would have all their foes ashore at once, lest we should
make some flank attack in the heat of the fight. But the Danes
moved onward steadily.
Then into the opening of the lane rode a man on a tall chestnut
horse, and the Irish yelled and thronged to him as he leaped off
it. It was Dalfin himself, as I saw when he was on foot. I suppose
that he had managed to find this steed somewhere on the way,
meeting with mounted men hurrying to the levy like himself most
likely. If the fishers were yet with him I could not see. They were
lost in the crowd round him.
Now Dalfin's sword went up, and the men shook themselves into some
sort of order. A slogan rose, wild and shrill, and with the prince
at their head they flung themselves on the Danes, lapping round
them, so that they hid them from our sight. Only in the midst of
the leaping throng there was a steady, bright cluster of helms,
above which rose and fell the weapons unceasingly.
The Irish could not stay that wedge. It went on, cleaving its way
through the press as a ship cleaves its way to windward through the
waves, and after it had passed, there was a track of fallen men to
tell of how it had fared. There were mail-clad men among that line
of fallen, and those, of course, were not Irish. They, like Dalfin,
would wear neither helm nor byrnie.
Slowly the Danes fought their way, uselessly to all seeming, away
from the water and hillward. Without heeding the depth of the lane
from the village, though the darts rained on them from its banks,
they went on, and we lost sight of the fighting, though the black
throng of warriors who could not reach their foe still swarmed
between them and the village. Some of them came back and yelled at
us from the shore, and once they seemed as if they were about to
launch the two boats which lay on the strand for an attack on us.
We had dropped a small anchor at this time.
Father Phelim saw that and came to me.
"Let me go to the young prince," he said; "I may be of use here.
There will be trouble, unless someone tells the poor folk that
these ships are friendly in very deed."
So we went to Hakon, and I told him what Phelim thought.
"The good father is right enough," he answered. "But how is he to
get ashore unharmed? To send a boat would mean that it would be
fallen on before it was seen who was in it."
"Let me swim," said Phelim stoutly.
"Maybe your tonsure might save you, father," said Hakon; "but I
would not risk it. One cannot see much of a man in the water."
"Let me have one of the small boats--it can be launched from the
far side of the ship--and I will row him ashore," I said. "I can
speak the Gaelic."
Hakon considered. "Well," he said, "it may save endless trouble,
and I do not see why you should not go. Phelim must stand up, and
they will see him."
Thoralf would have us bide on board, letting Phelim stand on the
bows and hail the shore. But that would have made trouble at once,
for he would have been thought to be a captive. Then Earl Osric
said that we might as well wait until we must, but Hakon and I and
Phelim thought it easier to deal with the few men here than to wait
until the rest returned, most likely flushed with the victory their
numbers must needs give them. So in the end the small quarterboat
was got over the side away from the village, and we took our place.
Phelim was in the bows, and I set my helm at my feet, and had a
dark cloak over my mail.
I pulled away from the ship and came round her stern in a wide
sweep, in order not to seem at once as if we came from her. Then we
went swiftly to the beach, and Phelim stood in the bows and signed
to the men who stood along it. They saw what he was, and ran
together to meet him, ceasing their cries to hear him. But I was
not going to run more risk than I could help. So soon as we were
twenty yards from the beach, I stopped pulling, and bade Phelim say
his say.
He told them what was needful, and they growled at first, as if
they could not believe him. Then he pointed to Fergus, who could be
seen on board the ship, and they grew more satisfied. At last he
told them that they must fetch Dalfin the Prince as soon as
possible, for that we of the ship, or some of us, were those who
had brought him back. And at last he told how there was a queen on
board who had avenged the death of Dubhtach of the Spearshafts, and
given back the torque which was lost.
That was all they needed to hear, for the torque had been seen, and
word had passed round concerning it. The black looks faded, and
there was naught but friendliness thereafter. Phelim asked for some
leader, and a man stepped forward, and so took messages for Dalfin,
and went across the green and up the lane with its terrible token
of the fighting, that he might give them as soon as it was
possible. Then we rowed back slowly, for it was not worthwhile to
go ashore.
"Thanks," said Hakon, meeting us at the gangway. "That is well
done. I will own that we had nearly run ourselves into a trap, and
you have taken a load off my mind."
"No need to have stayed here," said Thoralf.
"Nay, but I want that ship, and now I think we may get her. I did
but stay to see if it might be done."
I went and found Asbiorn, for somewhat was troubling me. The
thought of the men who had been taken at the same time as myself,
and must needs be in one or other of these ships.
"We took seven in all," he said. "Well, I had five. Two got away in
Norway as soon as we fell out with Arnkel. One was too much hurt to
be of use, and we left him there. My father took the other two, and
they are yonder with him, I suppose. Those two who joined us of
their own free will were in my ship. They were good men."