THORSTEIN’S BONDAGE.
In a while the rest of the men came up, not all as huge as the giant
who had caught him, but all long fellows, gaunt with fell-running and
hard fare. They began their feast, dipping bowls and spoons into the
skin over the fire, and drinking out of horns and cups until they were
merry. Then one of the youngsters spied Thorstein where he sat, and threw
at him the bone he had been gnawing. Thorstein warded it off with his
hand, and others that were thrown: but whenever they hit him there was
a horse-laugh. When all the bones were gnawed and thrown, one of them
picked up a dart, which he threw at the lad: and it would have made an
end of him, but Thorstein dodged it: at which they all cried “Oigh!” and
seemed to wonder at his address.
Last of all one of the men, seemingly enraged at his luck or cunning
leaped up and ran at him with a cudgel, a thick stick with a stone
hammer-head at the end of it. Thorstein had been through too much to cry
out now: but what was his surprise when one of the children, a great girl
with long red hair over her bare shoulders, ran in and flung her arms
round him, half smothering him with her mane and the closeness of her
embrace.
Then there was gabbling in a strange tongue while she kept him tight and
seemed to forbid the giant lad to touch him: and the chief of them all
spoke long, waving his arms and nodding his head, as who should say “Let
the barn be, and we will keep him for our thrall.” He seemed to show how
he had threatened the lad with his own knife, and held up the knife, and
pointed away over the fells: from which Thorstein gathered that they knew
whence he had come and somewhat of who he was: and for the first time a
gleam of hope shone into his heart.
In the end they gave him some of their meat, which he loathed and could
not swallow: and pushed him into the stone hut, the best that there was,
though even this could not be entered except by creeping: and they signed
that he should lie down and go to sleep. But little sleep came to him:
the place was filthy, and he was among unfriends; his head ached and all
his bones were sore. So he watched them as they came in one by one, and
stripped, for the hut was as hot as an oven: and they lay down, as it
seemed, in a heap, like snakes in an old tree root.
At last all was quiet without, and within they were snoring. The air was
thick and foul: Thorstein could not breathe. It was fun to sleep in a
tree with squirrels, but this was sleeping in a pighull among swine. He
dragged himself like a worm, a little nearer the door-hole and then lay
still. After a while he dragged himself a little nearer: and lay still
again, with his heart beating so loud, he feared it would awaken them all.
Out into the fresh air Thorstein crept in the end: and it was like a
draught of cool ale after haymaking to taste the night wind. He stepped
warily between the huts, straining his eyes in the gloom lest he should
run against anything, for the night was cloudy and there were no stars,
not even the dawn-streak in the north. He groped his way like a white
ghost to the first wall, and began to climb it; but just as he reached
the coping, down it came with a rumble and a thud, and the stones fell on
his feet and crushed them, so that he could not stir for the pain. And
straightway he was in the grip of the giant again, who belaboured him
with a dart, as if he had been a dog. The pain of his crushed feet and
sickness was such that Thorstein felt little of the giant’s blows, though
every time the dart-head touched him, it cut into the bare flesh.
But when he woke up at last, it was in the nasty hut: and every one was
gone except the child who had flown at him before; and she was nursing
his head and weeping over him. She looked so ugly, thought the boy, as
he opened his eyes, with her face all blubbered and red, and the tears
making dirty water-courses down her freckles, and dripping off her chin,
and upon her rough red hair that hung all about. But when he came to
himself, she called out shrilly, and an old woman brought milk in a pan
and put it to the lad’s mouth: and when he drank, the child let go his
head to clap her hands and laugh. It hurt Thorstein to drop his head, but
he thought she was less ugly when she laughed, and threw back her hair:
and he saw that her eyes were blue, and her teeth shone. And it rested
Thorstein when she took up his head again, and smiled and stroked him.
To make a short story, he lay there for days and nights, and sometimes
slept, and often raved, and only now and then knew that the child was
holding him and giving him drink from the milk-pan. Whether it was dark
or light when he awoke from wild ugly dreams of swamps and snakes, and
things chasing him through the brambles, and high endless walls to climb,
and torrents of stones rolling down with him into the snakes again:
whenever he came to his senses there she was, and no other pillow he
had. In the end, the fever left him. As for his wounds they let the bark
harden, and Thorstein had a whole skin before ever he was strong enough
to stand up in it.
But when he could look about him, the child seemed to be eager in giving
him what pleasure she could. She brought out a little kist that held
her treasures: there were shining beads, and pennies of silver and gold
with holes to hang them by, and a gold thing like a Thor’s hammer, but
Thorstein guessed it must be a cross; for the child set it up and knelt
down before it and prayed, looking sometimes at it and sometimes at
him. Thorstein knew that his own people set little store by Christians,
because they were not so good at fighting as the Northmen, and because
they could be overreached by their chapmen, so they said: and he thought
that all strange uncouth folk were Christians, as a matter of course: and
so the wonder was less that giants and troll-kin in filthy huts should be
of that faith.
But when he slept again after this awakening, he dreamed that he was at
home, and his mother was kissing him good night, and stooping above him
through the hangings of his own shut-bed: but her hair seemed to be all
red like fern on the fells after early frost when the summer is over.