In the Wilderness (25 page)

“Think you Reidulf would try to raise the yeomen to resistance?”

“That would be no bad plan,” said Olav. “There is both the Hole and Aurebæk Dale—narrow defiles between screes, where the horsemen cannot move to either side. The Duke must have thought he could trust to the black frost’s holding till the change of moon at least, but these snowdrifts will delay his march.”

Mærta Birgersdatter said she would stay at the manor. If the Swedes came, it was not impossible that she might find kinsfolk and friends from the border country among them: “and then it might be of use that I speak with them—that they deal gently with your property. I owe you so much, Olav, that I would fain do you a service in return, if I can.”

“Think not of
that,”
said Olav deprecatingly. It troubled him vaguely that these poor women came and wished to show their gratitude for the little he had done for their welfare—as though it reminded him of old and half-forgotten things: of One who had stretched out His hands to help him, but
he
had turned away, ungratefully.

He bade Bodvar arm himself to go with him northward, and went out to the storehouse together with old Tore. They put up some sacks of food, for Olav thought that Torhild could not possibly bear the cost of feeding so many mouths for an indefinite time. While busy with this he chanced to knock down his skis, which stood in the store. He had used them little since he came south—folk hereabout had given up ski-running a generation ago. Now it occurred to Olav that they might be useful: the road from the shore up to Galaby must be well covered with fresh snow.

Together with his men he carried the sacks aboard the Björnssons’ vessel; she was not so very small, there were seven men in her. While they were engaged, in the darkness and the driving snow, in stowing sacks and boxes, the light of the lantern fell on a big bundle that lay near the mast, well covered over, among barrels and other goods. Wrapped in rugs and skins, Torhild’s children lay asleep; Olav had a glimpse of the boy’s fair head.

The herring-boat put off from the pier, and Olav stood awhile listening for her after the night had swallowed her up. The gloom and the flying snow surrounded him like a tent on every side. He
could feel the hill behind him and the homestead under the steep black wall of the Horse Crag in the black night, and before him the pitch-black water swirled below the edge of the pier, the teeming snowflakes sank into it and were gone. He stood there with Bodvar and a strange lad who had been on board the fishing-boat; on seeing the master was armed, he had begged leave to join him.—All at once an unruly joy surged up in Olav—as though he were released from fetters; it was dark behind and dark before, and here he stood all alone with two armed men, utter strangers, and he knew naught of what the morrow might bring.

Bodvar leaped down into the boat and began to bale her out.

It was toward midnight when the three men from Hestviken reached Galaby. Through the driving snow they caught the smell of smoke beating down from the louver, and on reaching the door Olav heard that folk were still up in the hall—drunken men who were bawling and singing. He had to hammer on the door for some time before at last it was opened. He who opened it was a tall, thin man—he gave a low cry of surprise as Olav and his companions entered. Olav recognized Sira Hallbjörn.

“Are you come with a message of war, Olav—or why are you helm-clad, you and your men?”

“You seem to be a soothsayer, priest.”

Olav looked across the room—two torches stood burning on the long table, and the eight or nine men who sat around it or lay sprawling over the board were drunken, all of them. Olav knew most of them—they were landholders from his or the next parish. Reidulf Jonsson, the Warden’s deputy, had slipped down between the high seat and the table as far as his stomach would let him; his big head with its brown beard had sunk upon his chest. It was the youngest of his brothers who sat on the floor singing, with his legs stretched out into the straw and his head in the lap of another young lad who sat astride the outer bench, twanging on a little harp. The priest alone was almost sober. Sira Hallbjörn suffered from the same defect as Olav Audunsson: God’s gifts did not bite on him; he was just as thin, no matter what he ate, and just as sad, drink as he might.

He stood tense and erect, listening to Olav’s tidings. Olav had not remarked before that the priest’s red hair had become strongly streaked with grey of late, and his narrow, bony, and freckled face
was aged and wrinkled now. But he was still clean-shaven, like Olav himself—such had been the usage in their young days.

It was not many of the franklins that they could rouse to sufficient clarity to make it worth while taking counsel with them. They had come to Galaby for the settlement of a suit. “Baard, your kinswoman’s husband, went home early,” said the priest; “and ill it was that he did so. He was the man we had most need of as leader—Reidulf is little worth.”

Olav said they must first send a messenger in all haste to the town, to the captain of Akershus—“but sooth to say, I have more mind to stay with you here—if you hold with me that it will be a great shame on us if we let the Duke march through Aurebæk Dale without trying whether perchance we may give him some trouble.”

“Fifty men should be able to hold the pass a day long against an army,” said the priest. “And the townsmen will gain time—if we gain no more.”

Young Ragnvald was sober enough by now to take things in pretty clearly. He offered to ride in at once. The priest got out writing-materials; meanwhile Olav and some of the others went to the servants’ room to wake the men there.

The snow had abated a little as the body of franklins made their way toward the church town, but every trace of the road was drifted over. The priest and some of the others rode; so they soon went ahead of the rest, who had to tramp on foot in the snowdrifts. Olav glided quietly and lightly on skis by the side of the horsemen; now and again he had to stop and wait for them. He was standing at the edge of a little clearing, when Sira Hallbjörn appeared out of the darkness. The priest reined in his steaming horse, leaned over to Olav:

“I have been thinking: we are two men here who can run on skis—what if we struck southward tonight and scouted?”

Olav said he had thought the same.

At the parsonage they came into a pitch-dark, ice-cold house—Sira Hallbjörn had been from home since break of day, and his house-folk were in bed. At long last he managed to strike fire and light candles. To Olav it seemed many days since he took boat at Hestviken; the night had been hard and long, the sail up the fiord, then on skis and into one strange homestead after another—it had
all taken time. From within the closet Sira Hallbjörn called: would he not rest awhile before they set out?—but Olav said they could not afford to waste time. He packed in his scrip some frozen bread and meat and a ball of butter that the priest’s servant brought him—remembered that he had left home without food or money, thinking he should be back before they took the field. But the very fact that he was now headed straight for warfare gave him an easy feeling.

Sira Hallbjörn stepped out. He wore a smooth, old-fashioned iron helmet with a big, hinged visor and a pitch-black canvas hauberk over the priest’s blue frock, which he had kilted up; his sword hung in a leather baldric over his shoulder. In his hand he held a longbow such as the English and the men of Telemark use; the arrows rattled in their quiver on his back.

Olav could not resist saying, with a little smile: “You are arrayed to sing a man’s requiem now, father!”

A tremor seemed to pass over the other’s sharp, long-nosed face:

“Tempus occidendi, et tempus sanandi
—you told me once, they taught you something of the scripture when you were at Hamar in your youth. Did he teach you that saying, the stubborn Lord Torfinn?”

“No. But so much do I know, that I think I can tell the meaning. A time to kill and a time to heal?”

The priest nodded; he bent his bow and strung it. “
‘Tempus belli et tempus pacts.’
Solomon wrote that in the book that is called Ecclesiastes—’tis one of the bravest books in scripture. But take off your armour, Olav—’twill be heavy to run in.”

Olav removed his surcoat and took off his hauberk. It was of elk’s hide with thin iron plates about the waist to protect his vitals. As he folded it and tied the thongs he asked: “Are there more such sayings in the book you named—of war?”

“ ‘Laudavi magis mortuos quam viventes. Et feliciorem utroque judicavi, qui necdum natus est, nec vidit malo quœ sub sole fiunt’
—such are his words.”

Olav shook his head: “That was too learned for me!”

“ ‘I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been born, nor seeth the evil work that is done under the sun.’ ”

“Is such the wisdom of Solomon?” Olav slung the bundle of armour on his back, and the two men went out. Now it was snowing again so that the night flickered about them. “He must have said that because he sat too safely there in his castle of Zion and his days were too full of ease,” said Olav, laughing quietly. Sira Hallbjörn laughed too as he ran and was swallowed up by the darkness; he had to go and find his skis.

They had the driving snow right in their faces across the fields and Olav had to exert himself so as not to lose the other’s dark shadow in the flurry. Sira Hallbjörn went forward with long, supple strokes; the points of his skis sank deep in the heavy snow at each sweep. In the blind night he aimed blindly at gap after gap in the fences, where the gates were in summer. Olav wiped his face now and then and his helmet, on which the snow lay melting, sending streams of water down his neck, but he could not stop for an instant if he was to keep up with his companion.

Within the forest it was better.
Where
they were going Olav no longer knew, but the other seemed as sure as ever. Sometimes the firs stood so thick that their skis scraped the bare ground when they ducked under the snow-laden boughs. Olav recalled what he had heard said of the priest—that he was not afraid to hunt in another man’s wood—but none cared to speak of it; Sira Hallbjörn raised strife enough without that. Likely enough it was true; the priest went forward as though he knew every turn of the way in spite of the darkness and the snow.

Once Olav recognized where he was—they had entered a narrow track with a steep wall of bare rock to the east of it and loose stones at the bottom, so Olav was afraid the skin underneath his skis would be cut to pieces, as they struck the bare rock so often. There was a faint gurgle of water underneath the snow. The weather had cleared; high up above the defile strips of black sky peeped out between light clouds, and a star twinkled. Folk shunned this pass after dusk:—any evening the troll’s hound might be heard barking among the crags. Involuntarily Olav hailed the other under his breath.

“Are you afraid, master?” asked the priest with a little laugh as Olav came up to him. “Not even the troll will turn out his tike tonight.”

“Not afraid either.” Olav lifted off his helmet and let it hang on his back. “Only my head itches so; I am in such a sweat.”

Sira Hallbjörn waited till the other was ready, then he set off again.

They went side by side over a flat white surface darkened by patches of water—it was oozing up now in the thaw. Sira Hallbjörn stopped for a moment, leaning on his staff and getting his breath.

“You are tired now, Olav?”

Above their heads the clouds were parting more and more, showing deep rifts of blackness and a few stars faintly shining. A deep sigh went through the snow-covered forest around the lake, and here and there the branches let fall their burden with a low gasping and rustling sound.

“Oh, nay. I feel I am not so good a ski-runner as I was in my youth.”

“You are not used to finding your way at nighttime?”

“I went once from Hamar town to Miklebö in Elfardal—I have made that journey many times—but once I did the half of it by night and found my way—I knew not where I was going.”

“Were you alone?” asked the priest.

Olav said: “I had company—half the way—with a young lad. But he was untried—had little skill at ski-running.”

But Sira Hallbjörn asked no more. They stayed awhile longer to regain their breath, then the priest flung himself forward and they were off again. They plunged into the woods again and followed a watercourse—Olav had to go in the other’s tracks, and they ran on and on. In a way he was pleased that the priest had asked no questions—and he felt it to be a good thing that he was beginning to be tired; more and more his body moved of itself. When he was gliding downhill he felt his heart beating less violently, and the breeze was cooling to his overheated body. A little shock of anger ran through him every time a branch caught in the load on his back and gave him a bath of wet snow.

He did not know how long they had been going, but at last the night began to fade away. It was in the grey light of early morning, with a sky again heavy with snow, that Sira Hallbjörn and Olav passed along the top of an enclosed field that sloped down to a cluster of farms in a plain. Olav was broad awake all at once—every yard was full of people, men in steel caps, armed with long
swords, their horses close at hand. And thick black smoke rolled up from every roof—on one farm farther south a great bonfire was burning out in the yard.

Sira Hallbjörn stood watching, sniffing at the scent of smoke. Then he made for the alder thicket, creeping down gently and spying out. Olav followed, excited and wide awake.

They came to a rail fence. Before them a great white field sloped down toward the outhouses of the nearest farm. In front of the byre some armed men stood round two countrymen who were holding and flaying a slaughtered beast. Olav and the priest watched for a while.

“I declare!” Sira Hallbjörn laughed angrily. “They have forced him, Sigurd himself, to hold the beast, and ’tis his son that flays it.”

Olav knew where he was now—these farms lay south and east of Kambshorn. The village was surrounded by forest, which divided it from the district to the east toward Jalund Sound. Olav advanced a little farther along the fence while he considered which way they ought to take in order to reach the more populous district under cover of the woods, so that they might have a sight of the Duke’s main force.