THORSTEIN SEES HIS FATHER.
Now all this while Thorstein was eager for a sight of his father: why
else was he here? And all the more because his heart was sore against
Raineach who could so lightly leave him for her fine friend. He bethought
him, little as he knew of love-making, that he must cap yon glittering
Welshman, or else be cast off as a good-for-nought and a lout. There was
only one way of doing this: namely to get back among his own people, and
let it be seen what like they were, and what like was he when his hand
was in its glove again.
Over yonder he knew was the Althing-stead, somewhere across the water.
Run he could and swim: why not away? So he slipped off and slid down the
gill, steep and steeper down the great crags beneath the fell-folk’s
houses, and buried deep and dark in trees that covered the brink on
both hands with well-nigh impassable thickets. Down the cliff he went,
holding by tuft and ledge, and at last let himself go, sliding down the
scree with a fall that brought him to the water’s edge.
It was a black basin of rock into which the white foam tumbled through
the ferns, a secret place among rowan and hawthorn. In the splashing
water lay great rocks, some as it were bits of carven pillars six sided,
and others whose fragments were bright with red and green colours, and
curiously inlaid with patterns of white and black that looked like
lace work. They seemed to be the precious stones folk put in rings and
brooches, only larger and more precious in every way. He picked them
out of the water, and broke them smaller to get the glowing bits out,
thinking what fine jewellery he had lit upon: there would be enough for
more than Raineach could wear, aye, and for every one he knew: and maybe
gold might be found where jewels were, if he could but light upon it.
He hunted stones up and down the gill until he was wearied, not to say
bruised and bleeding with his scrambling among the sharp rocks and with
many a fall in dub and force: so he lay down, wet as he was, beside his
heaped treasure, and slept. But when he awoke, the bright colours on the
stones had all faded: they shone only while they were lying in the water,
and against the black and grey of the wild rocks in the gill. The white
hawthorn and the purple butterwort were brighter by far, and faded not so
soon as the fairy colours of these stones.
Then he bethought him to explore the gill and find his way down to the
lake: for every beck comes to dale at last. But this was no beck like the
streams of the lower moorlands. It was all fierce forces with rocks on
either hand, and when the ground was ever so little passable the trees
had got a hold of it, and hedged it up. And yet he won down, and lighted
upon the road that led to the wath. Then came folk. Thorstein went back
into the wood, for he dared not risk being seen in broad daylight. He
forced his way up the brow of the fell aslant through the trees, and
struck a path that brought him to the houses above.
So the long day wore, and the gloaming came late as it does in Lakeland
in mid-summer: but it came: and the lasses were abroad, and the woman
throng with her housekeeping in the cot. He slipped away down the gill
again and found the big road, and stood awhile wondering whether he
should swim the lake or go boldly by the general fording-place. Then
there was a noise of horses and men. He climbed a hammer, a jutting rock
that overhung the road, and lay down flat upon it to see and not be seen.
The troop of wayfarers came on in silence, as wearied men who had
travelled far between morning and this late twilight-time, on wearied
beasts,—ponies we should call them rather than horses: for the nags
they rode in those days were tiny compared with the great chargers of
the knights in after ages. It was grey mirk by now, and only when they
came close beneath him did Thorstein know them for Northmen. But even
so their mailcoats and their fighting helms of iron, with great leather
flaps, disguised them. He crept nearer to the edge to look over. A stone
fell from under him and one of them passing beneath looked up sharply.
“Father, father!” cried the lad; but at that very instant was gripped
from behind, and throttled fiercely, and dragged up into the wood: with
two great hands round his neck, and a knee in his back to hold him down,
quick or dead.
Beneath, upon the road, there was a scurrying to and fro, as Swein
Biornson swore it was his lad’s voice, and he would know it anywhere.
“Nay, man, it was but an owl,” said some: and others upheld that it
was some trick to draw them into ambushment: or maybe a troll of that
hag-ridden wilderness. Swein climbed the hammer, where nothing was to
be seen or heard, but the roar of the beck in the gill, and a grisly
groaning in the wood, that might be wind in the trees, or wood-sprites,
or what not. So they went forward, none the slower for this adventure:
and the sound of them died in distant pattering.
“Ha, my little wolf-cub,” said the giant Gartnaidh, loosing his grip
of Thorstein’s throat: “so thou hast eyes for thy father, and none for
thy foster-father. Well, what was my promise? That thou shouldst see
him: and thou hast seen him. Good: we art quits. Now no more straying
of nights, dog. Get to thy kennel.” And he drove him through the woods
with many a stripe, and kicked him into his lair, and rolled a big stone
against the hole of it.