第6章 HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL(5)

Though it was a time of bustle, there was no joy in it, as there had been at other hostings.The folk were too hungry, the need was too desperate, and there was something else, a shadow of fate, which lay over Hightown.In the dark of night men had seen the bale-fires burning on the Howe of the Dead.A grey seal had been heard speaking with tongues off Siggness, and speaking ill words, said the fishermen who saw the beast.A white reindeer had appeared on Sunfell, and the hunter who followed it had not been seen again.By day, too, there was a brooding of hawks on the tide's edge, which was strange at that season.Worst portent of all, the floods of August were followed by high north-east winds that swept the clouds before them, so that all day the sky was a scurrying sea of vapour, and at night the moon showed wild grey shapes moving ever to the west.The dullest could not mistake their meaning; these were the dark horses, and their riders, the Helmed Maidens, mustering for the battle to which Hightown was faring.

As Biorn stared one night at the thronged heavens, he found Leif by his elbow.In front of the dark company of the sky a white cloud was scudding, tinged with the pale moon.Leif quoted from the speech of the Giant-wife Rimegerd to Helgi in the song:

"Three nines of maiden, ride, But one rides before them, A white maid helmed:

>From their manes the steeds shake Dew into the deep dales, Hail upon the high woods.""It bodes well," said Biorn."They ride to choose those whom we slay.There will be high doings ere Yule.""Not so well," said Leif."They come from the Norland, and it is our folk they go to choose.I fear me Hightown will soon be full of widow women."At last came the day of sailing.The six galleys of war were brought down from their sheds, and on the rollers for the launching he-goats were bound so that the keels slid blood-stained into the sea.This was the 'roller-reddening,' a custom bequeathed from their forefathers, though the old men of the place muttered darkly that the ritual had been departed from, and that in the great days it was the blood not of goats, but of captive foemen that had reddened the galleys and the tide.

The thralls sat at the thwarts, for there was no breeze that day in the narrow firth.Then came the chief warriors in short fur jackets, splendid in glittering helms and byrnies, and each with his thrall bearing his battle-axe.Followed the fighting commonalty with axe and spear.Last came Ironbeard, stern as ever, and Biorn with his heart torn between eagerness and regret.Only the children, the women, and the old men were left in Hightown, and they stood on the shingle watching till the last galley had passed out of sight beyond Siggness, and was swallowed up in the brume that cloaked the west.There were no tears in that grim leave-taking.Hightown had faced the like before with a heavy heart, but with dry eyes and a proud head.Leif, though a cripple, went with the Wickings, for he had great skill of the sea.

There was not a breath of wind for three days and three nights, as they coasted southward, with the peaks of the Norland on their port, and to starboard the skerries that kept guard on the firths.Through the haze they could now and then see to landward trees and cliffs, but never a human face.Once there was an alarm of another fleet, and the shields were slung outboard, but it proved to be only a wedding-party passing from wick to wick, and they gave it greeting and sailed on.These were eerie cheerless days.The thralls sweated in shifts at the oars, and the betterborn talked low among themselves, as if the air were full of ears."Ran is heating her ovens," said Leif, as he watched the warm fog mingle with the oarthresh.

On the fourth morning there came a break in the clouds, and the sight of a high hill gave Leif the clue for his reckoning.The prows swung seaward, and the galleys steered for the broad ocean.That afternoon there sprang up the north-east wind for which they had been waiting.Sails were hoisted on the short masts, oars were shipped and lashed under the bulwarks, and the thralls clustered in the prows to rest their weary limbs and dice with knucklebones.The spirits of all lightened, and there was loud talk in the sterns among the Bearsarks.In the night the wind freshened, and the long shallow boats rolled filthily so that the teeth shook in a man's head, and over the swish of the waves and the creaking of the sheets there was a perpetual din of arms clashing.Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and made sport for the seasoned voyagers.

"It will not hold," Leif prophesied."I smell rime ahead and quiet seas."He had spoken truly, for the sixth day the wind fell and they moved once more over still, misty waters.The thralls returned to their oars and the voices of the well-born fell low again These were ghoulish days for Biorn, who had been accustomed to the clear lights and the clear darkness of his own land.Only once in four days they saw the sun, and then it was as red as blood, so that his heart trembled.

On the eleventh day Ironbeard summoned Leif and asked his skill of the voyage."I know not," was the answer."I cannot steer a course except under clean skies.We ran well with the wind aback, but now I am blind and the Gods are pilots.Some day soon we must make landfall, but I know not whether on English or Frankish shores."After that Leif would sit in long spells of brooding, for he had a sense in him of direction to which he sought to give free play--a sense built up from old voyages over these very seas.The result of his meditations was that he swung more to the south, and events proved him wise.For on the fifteenth day came a lift in the fog and with it the noise of tides washing near at hand on a rough coast.Suddenly almost overhead they were aware of a great white headland, on the summit of which the sun shone on grass.