The Long Ships (74 page)

As they drew near to Gröning, Orm’s impatience increased, and he and Olof rode ahead of the others. The first sight that met their eyes was that of men repairing the great gate. Then they saw that the church had been burned. At this, so great a fear came over Orm that he scarcely dared to ride up to the house. Then the men working on the gate saw him and uttered a glad cry, and Ylva came running from the house. It was good for him to see that she, at least, was safe.

“It is good that you have come home at last,” she said. “But it would have been better if you had returned five days earlier.”

“Has bad luck come upon the house?” asked Orm.

“Bandits attacked us during the night,” she said, “four days ago. Harald is wounded and Rapp dead, and three others besides. They took Ludmilla, and the necklace, and much else, and three of my women. Father Willibald was clubbed on the head and is lying half-dead. I managed to escape with the little ones and Oddny and Asa. We spent all the next day hiding in the forest. They were Smalanders; that I know. They took the cattle too, but the hounds went after them and came back with fourteen head. Asa thinks that things might have been unluckier, and I think so too, now that you have come safe home.”

“They are unlucky enough,” said Orm. “Rapp dead, Ludmilla stolen, and the priest wounded almost to death.”

“And the necklace,” said Ylva.

“Do not grieve for that,” said Orm. “You shall have all the trinkets you need. It is lucky that I have so many men still with me, for this business shall not go unavenged.”

“You speak the truth, Orm,” said Olof Summerbird. “It shall not go unavenged. Does anyone know where the robbers came from?”

“Nobody knows anything,” said Ylva. “Harald was wounded in the beginning of the fight and dragged himself to the bathhouse and remained lying there. Only Father Willibald may have something to tell us, if he ever recovers sufficiently to be able to do so. The strangest thing is that they set fire to the church only; he was down there when they hit him. They stole all they could lay their hands on, and we could tell from their voices that they were Smalanders. There were very many of them. They took their dead with them; five were killed by Rapp and his men as they fought at the gate. That is all I know.”

Orm’s men had by now reached the house, and Ylva laughed with joy to see Blackhair safe. The first thing Orm did was to send men on horseback to rich neighbors to beg them to lend him food, for there was little left in the storehouse, and nothing at all in the brewhouse, as the result of the bandits’ depredations.

Then he turned his attention to the wounded. Harald had received a spear in his chest and an ax-wound in his shoulder, but was in good heart. He assured them that he would soon be strong again, and said that what he most wanted was to hear Glad Ulf and Blackhair tell him of the adventures that had befallen them.

Asa sat with the priest, nursing him like a son. His head was swathed in bandages, and he was still half senseless. When he saw Orm, his eyes lightened, and he said in a weak voice: “Welcome home!” but then drowsed back into unconsciousness. Asa said that he often mumbled to himself as he lay there, but that nobody could understand what he was saying.

The sight of Orm greatly revived her spirits, and she straightway began to reproach him for not having returned in time to avert this calamity. But when she heard that he had Are’s treasure with him, her temper softened, and she thought that this had been a trivial attack compared with some she could remember from her young days. That Ludmilla had been stolen, she said, was only what she had always said would happen, because of the unlucky name they had given her. Father Willibald, she was sure, would recover, though he had been near to death, for sometimes now he understood what she said to him, which was a good sign. What worried her most was the empty storehouse and all the cattle that had been stolen.

Toke, Spof, and Blackhair took men and followed the tracks of the bandits to see whither they led; Sone’s sons assured them that they would not be difficult to follow, since there had been no rain since the attack. While they were gone, Orm questioned the survivors of Rapp’s men closely, in the hope of discovering more about the identity of the bandits; but they could add little to what he had already learned from Ylva.

The day before the attack, they told him, had been the holiday that the priest called All Saints’ Day; he had preached a great sermon to them all, and in the evening they had drunk to the honor of the saints. Then they had all slept soundly until the gray dawn, when the bandits had fallen on them. The hounds had begun to bay, and almost at once the bandits had attacked the gate with rams made of tree trunks and had broken it open.

Rapp and Harald had been the first to engage them, though the rest of the men had quickly joined them; they had done what they could, so that most of the women had succeeded in escaping with the children out of the back of the house and then down the river and into the forest. But they had been heavily outnumbered and had not been able to hold the gate long. The priest, who had begun of late to grow harder of hearing, had not awakened immediately, despite the hubbub, and when he at last came out, Rapp had been killed and the bandits were everywhere. He had seen them set fire to the church, and at the sight of this had cried in a loud voice and run down toward it, so that the hounds had not been slipped in time to achieve anything.

This, they said, was all they knew; for, on seeing Rapp fall, and others with him, they had realized they were hopelessly outnumbered, and had given up the battle and taken to their heels. Later, when the bandits had gone, the hounds had been released; the bandits had not dared to approach them. The hounds had followed their traces and, after being away for a whole day, had returned with some of the cattle.

Orm listened blackly to all this, thinking that things had been poorly handled; but there seemed little point in upbraiding them now for what could not be mended, and he did not reproach them for saving their own lives after they had seen Rapp killed and Harald wounded.

He hardly knew whether to grieve more over Ludmilla’s fate or Rapp’s; but the more he thought about the business, the greater his anger waxed, and he determined to lose no time in settling accounts with this rabble of bandits. He thought it likeliest that they were men from Värend, though there was peace between them and the Göings and he could not remember that he had enemies there.

The next day Father Willibald was conscious again, though still very weak, and had important news to tell them.

By the time he came out of the house, he said, the bandits had already stormed the gate, and the first sight that met his eyes was flames leaping from a pile of straw that the bandits had heaped against the church and ignited. Rushing toward the flames, he had cried to them to leave God’s church in peace.

“Then,” he continued, “a man with a black beard strode toward me. He laughed, and cried in a loud voice: ‘God’s church shall burn, for I have renounced God. This is my third sin. Now I can sin no more.’ Those were his words; then he laughed again, and I recognized him. It was Rainald, the priest who lived here long ago, and gave himself up to the Smalanders at the Thing. He it was, and none other; we had already heard, you remember, that he had turned himself over to the Devil. I cursed him and ran to the blazing straw to pull it clear; but then a man struck me, and I knew no more.”

All those listening cried aloud with amazement at this news. Father Willibald closed his eyes and nodded.

“It is the truth,” he said. “One who was God’s servant has burned my church.”

Asa and Ylva began to weep loudly, for it seemed to them a terrible thing that this priest should have given himself so utterly to the Devil’s service.

Olof Summerbird ground his teeth and drew his sword slowly from its sheath. Reversing it, he rested it hilt-downwards on the floor and crossed his hands upon its point.

“This I swear,” he said. “I shall not sit at table, nor sleep in a bed, nor take pleasure in anything, until my sword stands in the body of this man called Rainald, who was a priest of God, and who has stolen Ludmilla Ormsdotter. And if Christ helps me, so that I find her again, I shall follow Him for the rest of my days.”

1.
The dragon who guarded the Nibelungs’ gold.

AS soon as the news spread of the attack on Gröning and of Orm’s return, neighbors came flocking to the house with men and horses, anxious to help him secure a good vengeance. Such opportunities, they complained, occurred all too seldom nowadays, and they greatly looked forward to what might come of it. Those who were Christians said that they were entitled to a share in the vengeance because of what had been done to their priest and church. Orm bade them all welcome and said that he was only waiting for the return of Toke and the others before setting forth.

On the third day, toward evening, Toke returned. They had followed the tracks of the bandits far to the north and east; and their best news was that they had with them Torgunn, Rapp’s widow, whom they had found starving and half-dead in the wild country. She had escaped from the bandits and had run and walked as far as her legs would take her. Toke’s men had taken turns carrying her back, and three of them had already proposed marriage to her, which had revived her spirits; but none of them, they said sadly, had seemed to her to be as good a man as Rapp.

She had important information to give them. Father Willibald was right; the man whom they called the magister was the chieftain of the band. He had recognized her and had spoken with her while they were returning to the bandits’ village. He told her that he had renounced God and could now do whatsoever he wished. He had burned the church in order to drive God out of the district; for, now that that was destroyed, there was no church standing within many miles.

His band, Torgunn continued, consisted of outlaws, criminals, and all kinds of ne’er-do-wells, some from as far distant as West Guteland and Njudung, who had sought shelter with him and now lived by plundering. They were strong in numbers and feared no man, and the magister wielded great power over them.

Of Ludmilla she could tell them little, save that she had been in good heart and had threatened the magister and the rest of them with speedy retribution. While the bandits were taking them back to their village, the great hounds had overtaken them. Several of the bandits had been bitten, one to death, and the hounds had driven off a number of the cattle, which had greatly angered their captors. She and Ludmilla had tried to run away during the confusion, but had been recaptured.

At length they had arrived at the bandits’ village, which lay near the northern tip of a great lake, which they had had on their right hand during the final stages of the journey. The bandits called their village Priestby. There Torgunn had been allotted to a man called Saxulf, a large, coarse churl of evil disposition. He had tied her up and thrown her on to a pile of skins in his cottage. In the evening he had come to her drunk. He had untied her arms and legs, but had brought neither meat nor drink for her. She had realized that she was now a widow; nevertheless, it had irked her to be forced to lie with a man who conducted himself so coarsely. Accordingly, a short while after he fell asleep, she had slipped out from under the skins and, looking round for a weapon, had happened upon a rolling-pin. Strengthened by God, and also by her hatred of the man and her desire to avenge Rapp, she had hit Saxulf over the head with this pin. He had not uttered a sound, but had merely twitched his limbs. Then she had crept out into the night and escaped from the village without being observed. She had made what speed she could for a day and more, following the tracks along which they had come, terrified lest they might be after her, with nothing to eat save a few cranberries she picked from hedges; then, overcome by exhaustion, she had lain down, unable to move farther, expecting death from starvation and fatigue, or possibly from the jaws of wild beasts, until Blackhair and his men found her and gave her food. She had had to ride home on the men’s shoulders; now, however, she was already beginning to recover from this dreadful experience.

Such was Torgunn’s story, and it told them what they most wished to know: where the bandits’ hide-out lay. Men who had been along their track, and who knew the country, said that the great lake she spoke of was that called Asnen; and two of Olof Summerbird’s men claimed to know those deserted parts and a way by which the place might be reached. They undertook to lead Orm and his companions there. The best plan, they said, would be to turn off after the first day’s march and proceed westwards, coming upon the bandits from that direction. Orm and the others thought this a wise suggestion, for by this means they would trap them with the lake at their backs.

Orm counted his men and found they numbered one hundred and twelve. The next day, he declared, they would set forth. Fearing for the safety of his Bulgar gold, he took Toke, Olof, and Blackhair with him late that evening, when all the rest of the men were asleep, and hid the chests in a safe hiding-place in the forest, far from all paths and tracks, a spot to which no man ever came. His great hoard of silver he did not think worth hiding; for he had lost his fear of silver, he said, and was content to let it lie in Ylva’s coffers, though the house would only be guarded by the few men who were to be left behind.

The next morning, before dawn, all the men were up and ready. There was some delay, however, before they could start out, for Orm was intending to take the great hounds with him, and they had first to acquaint themselves with all the strangers in the party, so that there might be no misunderstandings and the wrong men bitten. The hounds took but a few moments to accustom themselves to most of the men, merely sniffing them two or three times; but others they were more suspicious of and snarled fearfully at, appearing unwilling to accept them as people who ought not to be killed immediately. This caused much hilarity, for the men whom the hounds distrusted grew surly, claiming that they smelled as good as the next man, and words were exchanged on this subject.