UNBIDDEN GUESTS.
But what about Asdis, all this while? She was never the worse off,
whatever happened. She was too wise to spoil her looks with weeping,
and too pretty to sit long at Asmundarlea waiting for a new husband.
She lighted on her feet, like a cat, wherever she fell: and before many
months was purring by another fireside, with the cream of the milk to
lap. But as she blinked in the fireglow, she was only watching her mouse.
The land was not so bare of people as it had been twenty winters since.
Bit by bit, as the days went on, the dales were cleared and inhabited.
From the low country one after another went up to take land among the
fells. For the Northmen could never abide close quarters. They hated
towns, and loved a free life: a spot to themselves, with elbow-room; a
seat on a howe overlooking broad fields and fell-pastures, with the smoke
of the next neighbour’s hall rising far away through the green wood. It
was one thing to have good friends within hail and call, but another to
be thrust among folk in one of those stinking swine-styes, said they,
where the Saxons herded. And so their biggings crept up from the shore
of Leven and Duddon, and from nook to nook the house-reek rose, like
bale-fires lighted to tell the world that this Lakeland was the land-take
of the Northmen.
Therefore all the coming and going of Thorstein could not fail to be
spied, and the tale sped from mouth to mouth, time and again, and lost
little in its travels. In a while it came to dame Asdis, where she sat
with black anger in her heart against Thorstein, and against the wild
she-wolf of the fells who had stolen him out of her arms. And in all this
she blamed herself never one whit, and folk came to look on her as a fair
woman with great wrongs to avenge.
In a time of quiet, when ill men are aweary of peace, and stirring men
hanker after the adventures of old days, no great work was needed to egg
on rough fellows to the job she had on hand. A gang of lads and louts was
drawn together, and some silly vow got out of them that they would rid
the land of the wood-biders: and all as if it had been some great deed.
Now the island was but very little known to the North-folk at the back of
the fells; but one thing they knew, and this was that they could not come
at it without boats: and if they stayed boat-building they would be spied
and foreset. But said Asdis, “Wait until the apple drops. Why build a
boat to cross a bridge?” At which they gaped, but she bade them watch the
birds and the bushes.
For that third winter began to be a hard winter. The swallows went
early, and the wild swans came in flocks from the north. Choups and
holly-berries reddened the hedges; and after Yule the fells were
creamed over and the becks dwindled. As the days lengthened so the cold
strengthened, until even the sunny shores of Leven and Duddon were frozen
fast; and when a high tide came, it burst the floe, and left the sands
and mosses strewn for many a mile with huge blocks and tables of ice,
piled one upon another like peats to dry. Then Asdis rubbed her hands and
said, “Now, lads, your bridge will be built.”
So they set out and away through the snowy woods until they came to
the waterside of Thurston-mere; and there was a sight. Still as death
the white fells stood around. Still as death the lake spread, white and
black; white where the snow hid it, and black in great reaches that could
hardly be known from standing water, but that its soft ripples stirred
not, and the picture of wood and fell lay upon them clearer and quieter
than the shapes in a tarn on a summer day, for all the north-wind’s
blowing. The only thing that moved was a wreath of smoke on the fellside
over against them, and the likeness of the same wreath in the glassy
field below. And where the two wreaths met was a crag, standing up from
the flat; an island no longer.
They adventured from the snowy shore, hardly knowing when they were on
land and when on lake, until suddenly, beneath their feet, deep down,
they saw the stones lying at the bottom, clear in the sunlight, through
the wonderful floor, such as the floor of Heaven may be to them that walk
upon it, and look down upon us thence. Slowly now and warily the men
went, for the ice was smooth and slape; and if it was roughened at all,
it was not with waves, but as if stars and arrowheads of crystal had been
inlaid in glass, like the silver a smith inlays in steel.
Then as they walked there arose a strange turmoil in the stillness.
Far and wide the ice began to crack and settle, with groanings and
thunderings that roared and muttered from shore to shore. Across the
black, clear deep there flew white, ragged lightnings, on either hand,
before and behind, as when one watches a thunderstorm in the valley
beneath a lofty mountain. Then a great crack flitted screaming right
under their feet, and half the company turned and scattered, crying out
there was witch-work in it, and they were lost. But as they staggered and
slid and fell others cursed them for fools, and kicked them up again, and
egged them on; showing them how to set feet together and shove themselves
along with their spears thrust hard behind them upon the ice. And so they
won a mile or so to the island.
But before they were half way over, the smoke shot up into a thick cloud,
and flames flickered; and over the waste of white and black, above the
moaning and groaning of the ice field, arose the deep note of a horn,
stifled and quivering at first, and strengthening into a hollow peal,
that suddenly stayed. As suddenly it was answered from the fell; and then
again from the Beacon hill behind; and then again far down the valley;
and then again far up the lake; until the sky was ringing with it. They
stood in amaze to listen; and the flame blazed higher, and the smoke
rolled in coils, brown against the white moorland. Again the war-horn
pealed, and the answers came; and when the last had died away, another
answer, over and above the echoes, a faint clang, far down the Crake.
And then there was only the groaning of the ice to hear; and the island,
when they came to it, was nothing but a snowy rock, untenanted, for aught
they could see, and lifeless, but for the great fire.
All round the brink the slape ice shelved away, by the settling of the
lake, so that footing was bad to get. The rock went down sheer into the
smooth floor, grey and bare beneath and heaped with pillowy snow above,
from which hung fringes of icicles, like teeth of a dragon in northern
deeps. They scrambled up the shelving slide, and grasped at the rocks
to break away the icicles and beat down the snow, for hand-hold and
foot-hold. But as they strove up the lower rocks, half smothered with the
mealy drift, two heads came out upon the top of the crag, and two great
stones rolled among them. And those they fell upon cried but once.
Then began a storm of stones from above, to which they could make no
reply, for the defenders were hidden behind the highest ridge, and safe
from shot. Even if the attackers could make a shift to use bow and dart,
and that they could seldom in their eagerness to win upward, and in their
unsteady footing, their weapons only rattled down among them again from
the icebound rock. And so this went on for a while, until many had been
maimed, and some killed outright. The nearer they got, the steeper and
more dangerous were the battlements of that castle built without hands:
a long wall, high enough and steep enough to be difficult any day, but
hopeless in this snow and frost, with the great stones plunging down,
well aimed from above.
They drew off to the open and held council. In a while they broke into
two bands, and went round the island to try for scaling spots, and to
break in on both hands at once. Now the ends of the island are less brant
than its sides, for there is a way up between the ridges, both to north
and south. But nobody who meant to hold the place would fail to stop
those doors with some stockading at least, if not a good stone wall:
and so they were brought to a standstill here as heretofore. The north
end was not only well blocked, but the rocks there are stiff and steep
for this work; and of the two defenders one followed each company round
about, never leaving them alone, what with stones, what with hand-strokes
when they tried the wooden palings. And if fire was hot within the hold,
it was all frost without, and never a spark to set the doors alight.
So now they met together at the south end, where the twin harbour lies
between the calf and the crag. They began to swarm up a buttress that
makes a narrow ladder to the top, easy enough to climb if it were not for
the ice that sheeted it, and for the rough welcome that awaited the first
man on the sharp and perilous crest. By this the far-away fells stood
rosy red and dim around; the sky was like fire behind Beacon fell, and
the cold floor of ice seemed to be all one lake of blood. The bale on the
crag reeked and roared, and out of the smoke came a sword that lopped the
first comer like a bough, and sent him rolling down the unbroken rock for
many an ell. Then they were aware of the wood-biders standing over them,
each with a weapon. They took heart and shuffled up the harder, shouting
curses, and what they would do when they won to the top. But the next
comer rolled into the bay with his brains knocked out. That was the doing
of a big stick that swung round and about in the hands of Raineach.
“Well done, lass,” shouted Thorstein, who kept his distance from her,
however. “It’s not for nothing she’s a giant’s daughter,” he laughed, for
he was warming to the work.
But then the children waked behind them, stirred by the noise; and they
screamed. Raineach was scared lest some of the rascals had got in the
back way, and she flew to seek them. The carles below set up a jeer, and
three or four flung in at once. One was down, and another was down; but
Thorstein’s sword bent; and as he kneeled on it to straighten it, the
others were at him. They had him on his back, and a stroke would have
done their job; but out came Raineach with such a swingeing batt of her
club on the one of them, as broke his backbone like a rotten stick; and
she gripped the other by the throat and hauled him off. She lugged and
tugged, and fairly lifted him off his feet, and bundled him over the
edge among his fellows. Up springs Thorstein with a great shout, and she
beside him; and every mother’s son that could stir a limb scattered off
the edge in a flock. The weight of them all coming down together broke
the ice where it was rotten from the warmth of the flat rock, that caught
and kept the morning sun; and they went into the hole like corn into the
miller’s hopper. It was deep there: the rock goes down at once into the
lake, and rises again in ugly teeth, bound to cut a swimmer’s knees, let
alone the edges of the broken ice. He with the lopped arm, their leader
in the assault, after a few wild strokes went down in a red spot. The
rest struggled out, to the nearest shore, and shouted themselves hoarse
with their anger.
Thorstein and Raineach went up to look at the man whose back was broken.
He cried for water, and she gave him to drink. Thorstein stood over him,
fierce and stern.
“Who sent thee, man?” he said.
But they got nothing out of him, and in a while he died.
And then, when all was over, Raineach burst into a blurt of weeping.
“What, lass! what, lass!” said Thorstein, as she shook and sobbed in his
arms; “hold up, my little one; all’s right now. I warrant we see no more
of them. There’s not a scratch on thee, and I am none the worse but for a
bruise or two. What’s there to greet for?”
“It’s not that,” she sobbed.
“Here, then; take the barn: hark how he is crying on his mother.” Then as
the sobs shook her, and the baby at her breast, said Thorstein, staring
at them, and biting a twig, “Eh, queer things women are. Aye, and,” says
he, “there’s women and women.”
And so Asdis goes out of the story.
When the stars were shining, they had more guests, not unbidden, though
late to the play.
“Kinsman,” said Hundi, as he panted and caught his breath, between
draughts of milk in the cot on the island; “Kinsman, no more of this.
To the Althing thou goest this mid-summer, if I drag thee yonder by the
scruff of the neck.” And “Aye, goes he,” said the half score of men that
had come hot-foot from Lowick.
“Never saw I woman more scared than Halldora when thy horn sounded.”
“Scared was she,” said one of them: “but for a scare, oh boys, the master
capped all. Snail? says I, as I peltered after him. Hare! says I,—Hundi
Harefoot’s the word!”
Hundi caught him by the hand, laughing. “A forfeit,” he cried, “to fasten
the name! But Thorstein, my man, get thy peace, and let us share it. Life
is not worth living, with this horn-blowing to look for.”
So when mid-summer was come, Thorstein set forth alone, sorely as
Raineach grudged his leaving her. She said it was for no good he was
going. But he kissed her, and said she should be mistress of Blawith
before the summer was out. “That may be,” she said, “but never so happy
as here.”