RAIDS.
Springtime was now come and the children of Greenodd went with their
playmates from the thralls’ cottages to roam the woods. For then were
the hollows among the knolls by Crake side all carpeted with golden
lilies and dim white wind-flowers. And when the time of these was over,
bluebells, sweet scented, and growing as thick as grass, covered the
glades. Thorstein, who was now four years old, and some of his playfairs
were in the woods one day; and their game was to make a queen of the
prettiest girl, dressing a bower for her and crowning her with bluebells.
In the midst of it who should come suddenly upon them but a wild red man,
bellowing, they said, like a bull, and shaking his great club as if he
meant to kill them all. But he only caught the biggest and best looking
of the boys, and dragged him off. When the boy bealed and screamed, the
robber nipped him round the throat, and soon stopped his noise. The
children ran home with their knees trembling, and said that a giant had
got their playfellow to eat him. But whatever he did with him he did not
eat him; for next morning before the men could start to lait the lad, he
came down the beck with his head broken.
Said Swein, “No use to shut the door when the roof has fallen in.” Then
he sent a good gift to the thrall whose child was lost, telling him to
wipe his eyes with it: and forbade the youngsters wandering in woods or
out of sight. So all was quiet for a time, and if there were uneasiness
about robbers, it was no more than what everyone felt everywhere in those
days, when by sea and shore men carried their lives in their hands, and
trusted to luck to keep their women and children from bloodshed and
slavery.
In the next winter there was much snow, and the distant mountains were
curd-white, both at Yule and for many a week after. Even the moorlands
were covered and the forests were choked: and when great storms blew,
the mealy snow would drift in streaming clouds, and fill all the hollow
places and the gills: so that many wild beasts were buried in the drifts,
and many came down into the valleys, where the snow lay not so thick
and melted away between whiles. Sheep and cattle needed double care; for
though most of the stock was killed and hung in smoke, some beasts always
had to be kept, and fed with the hay of the summer, and holly boughs,
which the shepherds cut and let them pick up when they took them out from
the byres and folds. Even so there was always danger of drifts, and the
burying of whole flocks in the snow: and then they had to dig them out,
which was a great labour to the men, but a fine playtime for Thorstein
and his brothers. For to the boys the snow was like fairyland, and rare
enough to be something of a marvel to children in sheltered Greenodd by
the sea. What storms they feel come mostly from the warm south-west, and
if the wind blows from north-east it brings sunshine, with blue sky and
black frost that vanishes away long before noon.
One day Thorstein went with the shepherds and their lads to an uplying
fold to serve the sheep, and found the snow much trampled, as though wild
beasts had been there, for all there was a high turf dike around it,
with a sharp fence on the top such as no wolves were like to climb. So
the shepherd began counting out the flock, in their way which Thorstein
learnt from him:—“Un, dau, tri, y-pedwar, y-pump: chwech, y-saith,
y-wyth, naw, deg.” And we may say that our old folk still use this way
of reckoning little changed but to make the words easier with rhyme,
as:—“Yan, tyan, teddera, meddera, pimp; haata, slaata, sour, down,
dick:—” and so forth.
When he had counted a score he marked it off on his fingers, or scored
a notch on a stick, and began again. And so counting he found that two
sheep were gone: and worse than that, they saw, by the blood on the snow
and by the footprints, that thieves had cut their throats and carried
them off. So away they went to track the thieves at once, which was easy
enough because of the snow. Before long, stopping to listen, they heard a
crackling of branches ahead, and shouted, and put Thorstein in the rear,
and pressed forward. Then were seen through the leafless trees three men,
or not men but giants they seemed, long and gaunt and red-haired. One had
a sheep on his shoulders, and another had a sheep on his shoulders, not
a little encumbered as they pushed their ways through the underwood and
thick tangle.
The shepherds had gone too far to go back; and beside that, they were
armed, while the thieves had only their cudgels. But when it came to
blows, such was the tangle in the wood that they were soon scattered:
one was stuck in a thicket, and another floored with a broken head, and
a third with a broken arm; and the robbers were off and away. So when
they came to collect their forces there was one wanting, a shepherd’s
son. They shouted and searched the wood as well as they might, for it
was beginning to grow dark. In the end they were forced to return home
without him, and their sheep were gone and all.
When they brought Thorstein to the house and told their tale, Swein
listened with a very long face, and saw to their hurts: for it was the
chief’s business to be surgeon, both to handle wounds until the blood
stopped, and to set broken limbs and bind them. It was the lady’s to make
drinks of herbs for medicine. Some good drink Unna gave them, and they
went home: but Swein and she talked late that night after Thorstein was
asleep.
The next day Swein himself, with a band of men well armed, set off early,
and soon found the place where the fight had been. Thenceforward by the
broken branches, for it had snowed and the tracks were covered, they
followed the robbers up the fell and towards the moors. But when they
came out of the wood upon the heather, what should they see but the boy
who had been carried off, lying on the ground, and dead. It was plain
that the robbers had knocked him on the head; though why they should take
him all that way, and wherefore they should kill him at the last, nobody
could tell. Swein gave a good gift to the shepherd whose son had been
killed, saying that he could get no other atonement at the time: but that
one day he would gather his neighbours together and clear the fells of
such vermin. And he said no more of the matter, unless it were of nights
to the mistress.