Where Wolves Thrive Better than Lambs
CHAPTER II
The Maid in the Silver Helmet
CHAPTER III
A Gallant Outlaw
CHAPTER IV
In a Viking Lair
CHAPTER V
The Ire of a Shield-Maiden
CHAPTER VI
The Song of Smiting Steel
CHAPTER VII
The King's Guardsman
CHAPTER VIII
Leif the Cross-Bearer
CHAPTER IX
Before the Chieftain
CHAPTER X
The Royal Blood of Alfred
CHAPTER XI
The Passing of the Scar
CHAPTER XII
Through Bars of Ice
CHAPTER XIII
Eric the Red in His Domain
CHAPTER XIV
For the Sake of the Cross
CHAPTER XV
A Wolf-Pack in Leash
CHAPTER XVI
A Courtier of the King
CHAPTER XVII
The Wooing of Helga
CHAPTER XVIII
The Witch's Den
CHAPTER XIX
Tales of the Unknown West
CHAPTER XX
Alwin's Bane
CHAPTER XXI
The Heart of a Shield-Maiden
CHAPTER XXII
In the Shadow of the Sword
CHAPTER XXIII
A Familiar Blade in a Strange Sheath
CHAPTER XXIV
For Dear Love's Sake
CHAPTER XXV
"Where Never Man Stood Before"
CHAPTER XXVI
Vinland the Good
CHAPTER XXVII
Mightier than the Sword
CHAPTER XXVIII
"Things that are Fated"
CHAPTER XXIX
The Battle to the Strong
CHAPTER XXX
From Over the Sea
CONCLUSION
FOREWORD
THE Anglo-Saxon race was in its boyhood in the days when the Vikings
lived. Youth's fresh fires burned in men's blood; the unchastened
turbulence of youth prompted their crimes, and their good deeds were
inspired by the purity and whole-heartedness and divine simplicity of
youth. For every heroic vice, the Vikings laid upon the opposite scale
an heroic virtue. If they plundered and robbed, as most men did in the
times when Might made Right, yet the heaven-sent instinct of hospitality
was as the marrow of their bones. No beggar went from their doors
without alms; no traveller asked in vain for shelter; no guest but was
welcomed with holiday cheer and sped on his way with a gift. As
cunningly false as they were to their foes, just so superbly true were
they to their friends. The man who took his enemy's last blood-drop with
relentless hate, gave his own blood with an equally unsparing hand if in
so doing he might aid the cause of some sworn brother. Above all, they
were a race of conquerors, whose knee bent only to its proved superior.
Not to the man who was king-born merely, did their allegiance go, but to
the man who showed himself their leader in courage and their master in
skill. And so it was with their choice of a religion, when at last the
death-day of Odin dawned. Not to the God who forgives, nor to the God
who suffered, did they give their faith; but they made their vows to the
God who makes men strong, the God who is the never-dying and
all-powerful Lord of those who follow Him.
The Thrall of Leif the Lucky
CHAPTER I
WHERE WOLVES THRIVE BETTER THAN LAMBS
Vices and virtues
The sons of mortals bear
In their breasts mingled;
No one is so good That no failing attends him,
Nor so bad as to be good for nothing.
Ha'vama'l (High Song of Odin).
It was back in the tenth century, when the mighty fair-haired warriors
of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, whom the people of Southern Europe
called the Northmen, were becoming known and dreaded throughout the
world. Iceland and Greenland had been colonized by their dauntless
enterprise. Greece and Africa had not proved distant enough to escape
their ravages. The descendants of the Viking Rollo ruled in France as
Dukes of Normandy; and Saxon England, misguided by Ethelred the Unready
and harassed by Danish pirates, was slipping swiftly and surely under
Northern rule. It was the time when the priests of France added to their
litany this petition: "From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, good
Lord."
The old, old Norwegian city of Trondhjem, which lies on Trondhjem Fiord,
girt by the river Nid, was then King Olaf Trygvasson's new city of
Nidaros, and though hardly more than a trading station, a hamlet without
streets, it was humming with prosperity and jubilant life. The shore was
fringed with ships whose gilded dragon-heads and purple-and-yellow hulls
and azure-and-scarlet sails were reflected in the waves until it seemed
as if rainbows had been melted in them. Hillside and river-bank bloomed
with the gay tents of chieftains who had come from all over the North to
visit the powerful Norwegian king. Traders had scattered booths of
tempting wares over the plain, so that it looked like fair-time. The
broad roads between the estates that clustered around the royal
residence were thronged with clanking horsemen, with richly dressed
traders followed by covered carts of precious merchandise, with
beautiful fair-haired women riding on gilded chair-like saddles, with
monks and slaves, with white-bearded lawmen and pompous landowners.
Along one of those roads that crossed the city from the west, a Danish
warrior came riding, one keen May morning, with a young English captive
tied to his saddle-bow.
The Northman was a great, hulking, wild-maned, brute-faced fellow,
capped by an iron helmet and wrapped in a mantle of coarse gray, from
whose folds the handle of a battle-axe looked out suggestively; but the
boy was of the handsomest Saxon type. Though barely seventeen, he was
man-grown, and lithe and well-shaped; and he carried himself nobly,
despite his clumsy garments of white wool. His gold-brown hair had been
clipped close as a mark of slavery, and there were fetters on his limbs;
but chains could not restrain the glance of his proud gray eyes, which
flashed defiance with every look.
Crossing the city northward, they came where a trading-booth stood on
its outskirts--an odd looking place of neatly built log walls tented
over with gay striped linen. Beyond, the plain rose in gentle hills,
which were overlooked in their turn by pine-clad snow-capped mountains.
On one side, the river hurried along in surging rapids; on the other,
one could see the broad elbow of the fiord glittering in the sun. At the
sight of the booth, the Saxon scowled darkly, while the Dane gave a
grunt of relief. Drawing rein before the door, the warrior dismounted
and pulled down his captive.
It was a scene of barbaric splendor that the gay roof covered. The walls
displayed exquisitely wrought weapons, and rare fabrics interwoven with
gleaming gold and silver threads. Piles of rich furs were heaped in the
corners, amid a medley of gilded drinking-horns and bronze vessels and
graceful silver urns. Across the back of the booth stretched a benchful
of sullen-looking creatures war-captives to be sold as slaves, native
thralls, and two Northmen enslaved for debt. In the centre of the floor,
seated upon one of his massive steel-bound chests, gorgeous in velvet
and golden chains, the trader presided over his sales like a prince on
his throne.
The Dane saluted him with a surly nod, and he answered with such smooth
words as the thrifty old Norse proverbs advise every man to practise.
"Greeting, Gorm Arnorsson! Here is great industry, if already this
Spring you have gone on a Viking voyage and gotten yourself so good a
piece of property! How came you by him?"
Gorm gave his "property" a rough push forward, and his harsh voice came
out of his bull-thick neck like a bellow. "I got him in England last
Summer. We ravaged his father's castle, I and twenty ship-mates, and
slew all his kinsmen. He comes of good blood; I am told for certain that
he is a jarl's son. And I swear he is sound in wind and limb. How much
will you pay me for him, Karl Grimsson?"
The owner of the booth stroked his long white beard and eyed the captive
critically. It seemed to him that he had never seen a king's son with a
haughtier air. The boy wore his fetters as though they had been
bracelets from the hands of Ethelred.
"Is it because you value him so highly that you keep him in chains?" he
asked.
"In that I will not deceive you," said the Dane, after a moment's
hesitation. "Though he is sound in wind and limb, he is not sound in
temper. Shortly after I got him, I sold him to Gilli the Wealthy for a
herd-boy; but because it was not to his mind on the dairy-farm, he lost
half his herd and let wolves prey on the rest, and when the headman
would have flogged him for it, he slew him. He has the temper of a black
elf."
"He does not look to be a cooing dove," the trader assented. "But how
came it that he was not slain for this? I have heard that Gilli is a
fretful man."
The Dane snorted. "More than anything else he is greedy for property,
and his wife Bertha advised him not to lose the price he had paid. It is
my belief that she has a liking for the cub; she was an English captive
before the Wealthy One married her. He followed her advice, as was to be
expected, and saddled me with the whelp when I passed through the
district yesterday. I should have sent him to Thor myself," he added
with a suggestive swing of his axe, "but that silver is useful to me
also. I go to join my shipmates in Wisby. And I am in haste, Karl
Grimsson. Take him, and let me have what you think fair."
It seemed as if the trader would never finish the meditative caressing
of his beard, but at last he arose and called for his scales. The Dane
took the little heap of silver rings weighed out to him, and strode out
of the tent. At the same time, he passed out of the English boy's life.
What a pity that the result of their short acquaintance could not have
disappeared with him!
The trader surveyed his new possession, standing straight and slim
before him. "What are you called?" he demanded. "And whence come you?
And of what kin?"
"I am called Alwin," answered the thrall; "and I come from Northumbria."
He hesitated, and the blood mounted to his face. "But I will not tell
you my father's name," he finished proudly, "that you may shame him in
shaming me."
The trader's patience was a little chafed. Peaceful merchants were also
men of war between times in those days.
Suddenly he unsheathed the sword that hung at his side, and laid its
point against the thrall's breast.
"I ask you again of what kin you come. If you do not answer now, it is
unlikely that you will be alive to answer a third question."
Perhaps young Alwin's bronzed cheeks lost a little of their color, but
his lip curled scornfully. So they stood, minute after minute, the sharp
point pricking through the cloth until the boy felt it against his skin.
Gradually the trader's face relaxed into a grim smile. "You are a young
wolf," he said at last, sheathing his weapon; "yet go and sit with the
others. It may be that wolves thrive better than lambs in the North."