The Thrall of Leif the Lucky Part 33

"He will slay him and leave him out there in the darkness... I shall not be by to raise his head and weep over him, as I did before .... Oh, thou G.o.d, if there is help in Thee--! I shall not be with him... Leif will slay him and leave him out in the darkness, alone..."

Sigurd's face grew white as he watched her, and he clenched his hands so that the nails sank deep in the flesh.

"There is nothing to do but to wait," he said, briefly. "If Tyrker is found, all will be well." He paced to and fro before her, his ear set toward the river.

Over in front of the cook-house, Kark's fires began to twinkle out like altars of good cheer. Like votaries hurrying to wors.h.i.+p at them, the hungry men went and threw themselves on the gra.s.s in a circle; with dice and stories and jests they whiled away the time pleasantly enough.

For the pair in the shadow, the moments dragged on lead-shod feet. Time after time, Sigurd thought he heard the sounds he longed to hear, and started toward the river,--only to come slowly back, tricked. An owl began to call in the tree above them; and ever after, Helga connected that sound with death and despair, and shuddered at it.

When at last the distant hum of voices crept upon them, they would not believe it; but sat with eyes glued to the ground, though their ears were strained. But when one of the approaching voices broke into a rollicking drinking-song, which was caught up by the group around the fire and tossed joyously back and forth, there could no longer be any doubt of the matter.

Sigurd leaped up and pulled his companion to her feet, with a cheer.

"They would not sing like that if they bore heavy tidings," he a.s.sured her. "Do not spoil matters now by a lack of caution. Stay here while I run forward to meet them."

Then, for the first time since the failing of the blow, Helga recalled with a flush of shame that she was a dauntless s.h.i.+eld-maiden; and she took hold of her composure with both hands.

Singing and shouting, the rescuers came out of the woods at last and into the circle of firelight. On the shoulders of the two leaders sat Tyrker, his little eyes dancing with excitement, his thin voice squeaking comically in his attempts to pipe a German drinking-song, as he beat time with some little dark object which he was flouris.h.i.+ng. The chief walked behind him with a face that was not only clear but almost radiant. Still further back came Robert Sans-Peur, quite un-harmed and vigorous. In the name of wonder, what had happened to them?

"It is the strangest thing that ever occurred."--"It is a miracle of G.o.d!"--"Growing as thick as crow-berries."--"Such juice will make the finest wine in the world!"--"Biorn Herjulfsson will dash out his brains with envy."--"Was ever such luck as the Lucky One's?" were the disjointed phrases that pa.s.sed between them.

Waving the dark object over his head, Tyrker struggled down from his perch. "Wunderschoen! As in the Fatherland growing! And I went not much further than you,--only a step, and there--like snakes in the trees gecoiled! So solid the bunches, that them your fingers you cannot between pry. The beautiful grapes! Foster-son, for this day's work I ask you to name this country Vine-land. Such a miracle requires that. Ach, it makes of me a child again!"

He tossed the fruit into their eager hands and began all at once to wipe his eyes industriously upon the skirt of his robe. Swiftly the bunch pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Each time a juicy ball found its way down a thirsty throat a great murmur of wonder and delight arose.

"There is more where this came from? Plenty, you say?" they inquired, anxiously. And on being a.s.sured that hillside after hillside was covered with bending wreaths of purple cl.u.s.ters, their rapture knew no bounds.

Ale was all well enough; but wine--! Not only would they live like kings through the winter, but in the spring they would take back such a treasure as would make their home-people stare even more than at the timber and the wheat.

"You need have no fear concerning Leif's temper," Sigurd whispered in Helga's ear. "This discovery makes his mission as sure of success as though it were already accomplished. No man's nose rises at timber, but two such miracles as wheat and grapes, planted without hands and growing without care,--these can be nothing less than tokens of divine favor!

The Lucky One would spare his deadliest foe tonight."

"That sounds possible," Helga admitted, studying the chief's face anxiously. As she looked, Leif's gaze suddenly met hers, and she had the discomfort of seeing a recollection of their last encounter waken in his eyes. Yet they did not darken to the blackness that had lowered from them at the cliff. They took on more of an expression of quiet sarcasm.

Turning where the Norman stood, a silent witness of the scene, the chief beckoned to him.

"A while ago, Robert Sans-Peur, I had it in my mind to run a sword through you," he said, dryly. "But I have since bethought myself that you are a guest on my hands; and also that it is right to take your French breeding into account. Yet, though it may easily be a Norman habit to look upon every fair woman with eyes of love, it is equally contrary to Norse custom to permit it. Give yourself no further trouble concerning my kinswoman, Robert of Normandy. Attach yourself to my person and reserve your eloquence for my ear,--and my ear only."

CHAPTER XXVII

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

Middling wise Should every man be, Never too wise; Happiest live Those men Who know many things well.

Ha'vama'l

They must have missed a great deal of enjoyment, to whom a new world meant only a new source of gold and slaves. To these men from the frozen north, the new world was an earthly paradise. A long clear day under a warm sun was alone a gift to be thankful for. To plunge unstinted hands into the h.o.a.rded wealth of ages, to be the first to hunt in a game-stocked forest and the first to cast hook in a fish-teeming river,--to have the first skimming of nature's cream-pans, as it were,--was a delight so keen that, saving war and love, they could imagine nothing to equal it. Like children upon honey, they fell upon the gift that had tumbled latest out of nature's horn of plenty, and swept through the vineyard in a devastating army. Snuffing the sweet scent of the sun-heated grapes, they ate and sang and jested as they gathered, in the most innocent carousal of their lives. Shouting and singing, they brought in their burdens at night,--litters of purple slain that bent even their stout backs. The roofs were covered with the drying fruit, which was to be doctored into raisins, and cask after cask of sour tangy wine was rolled into the provision shed beside the garnered grain.

"The King of Norway does not live better than this," they congratulated each other. "We have found the way into the provision house of the world."

Their delight knew no bounds when they found that the arrival of winter would not interfere with sport. Winter at Brattahlid meant icebergs and blizzards, weeks of unbroken twilight and days of idling within doors.

Winter in this new land,--why, it was not winter at all!

"It is nothing worse than a second autumn," Helga said, wonderingly.

"They have patched on a second autumn to reach till spring."

The woods continued to be full of game, and the gra.s.s on the plains remained almost unwithered. There was only enough frost in the air to make breathing it a tonic, a tingling delight. Not even a crust formed over the placid bay; and the waters of the river went leaping and dancing through the suns.h.i.+ne in airy defiance of the ice-king's fetters.

On the last day of December, autumn employments were still in full swing. The last rays that the setting sun sent to the bay through the leafless branches, fell upon a group of fishermen returning with a load of s.h.i.+ning fish hanging from their spears. From the grove came the ringing music of axes, the rending shriek of a doomed tree, the crackling, cras.h.i.+ng thunder of its fall. Down at the foot of the bluff a boat was thrusting its snout into the soft bank, that an exploring party might land after a three days' journey along the winding highway of the river.

In the bow stood the chief, and behind him were Sigurd Haraldsson and Rolf; and behind them, Robert the Norman.

With a great racket of joyous hallooing for the benefit of their camp-mates, the crew leaped ash.o.r.e. While some stayed to load themselves with the skins and game stowed under the seats, the rest began to climb the trail, laughing and talking noisily.

Sigurd leaped along between Rolf and the Norman, a hand on the shoulder of each, shaking them when their sentiments were unsatisfactory.

"How long am I to wait for you to have a free half-day?" he demanded of his friend from Normandy. "It was over a week before we left that I found those bear tracks, and still am I putting off the sport that you may have a share in it. Is it Leif's intention to keep you dangling at his heels forever, like a ta.s.sel on an ap.r.o.n? Certainly he cannot think that there is danger of your talking love to Helga while you are fighting bears."

"Though once I would have said that wooing a s.h.i.+eld-maiden was a very similar sport," Rolf added, pleasantly.

Whereupon Sigurd shook them both, with an energy that sent all three sprawling on their faces, to the huge amus.e.m.e.nt of those who came after.

They scrambled to their feet in front of a tall sumach bush that grew half-way up the slope. Alwin's eyes fell upon a narrow ledge-like path that showed plainly between the bare branches, and he nodded toward it with a smile.

"Missing bear-fights is certainly undesirable," he said. "But it was not long ago--and on this same bank--that I antic.i.p.ated a worse fate than that."

"Nevertheless, I have never seen so much service exacted from a king's page," Sigurd growled, as he bent to brush the dirt from his knees.

But Rolf shook his head with quiet decision.

"One need never tell me that it is only to keep you from saying fine things to Helga that the chief demands your constant presence. It is because he has come to take comfort in your superior intelligence, and to value your attendance above ours. There, he is calling you now! I foretell that you will not fight bears to-morrow either." He gave the broad back a hearty slap that was at the same time a friendly shove forward.

The chief's voice had even taken on an impatient accent by the time the young squire reached his side.

"I should like much to know what is the cause of your deafness! Are you dead or moonstruck that I must shout twenty times before you answer? If your wits go sleep-walking, then may we as well give up, for I have depended upon them as upon crutches. I want you to keep it in mind for me that it is after the river's second bend to the right, but its fourth bend to the left, that the trees stand which I wish to mark. And the spring--the spring is--"

"And the spring is beyond the third turning to the right," the young man finished readily. "The chief need give himself no uneasiness. It is written on my brain as on parchment."

Leif turned from him with something like an angry sigh.

"It needs to be more than written," he said. "It needs to be carved as with knives."

On the crest of the bluff he paused suddenly to shake his fists in a pa.s.sion of impotence.

"A man who has no more than a trained body is of less account than a beast!" he cried. "My brain is near bursting with the details which I have sought to remember concerning these discoveries, and yet what a.s.surance have I that I have got even half of them correct? That I have not remembered what was of least importance, and confused this place with that, and garbled it all so that the next man who comes after me shall call me a liar and laugh at my pretensions? And even though I relate every fact as truly as the Holy Book itself, what will there be left of it by the time it has pa.s.sed through a hundred sottish brains in Greenland yonder? I tell you, this stained rag of a cloak I wear is nearer to what it was first, than that tale will be after swinish mouths have chewed upon it a day. It is the curse of the old G.o.ds upon the heathen. And I fling my curse back at them, for the chains they have hung upon my free hands and the beast-dumbness with which they have gagged my man's mouth."

In an abandonment of fury, he shook both fists high over his head at the scattered star faces that were peering out of the pale sky.