The North Star/Chapter 15
XV
THE WRATH OF THE PEASANTS
Terrified by the reports of the great army of peasants marching to find him, Earl Haakon ordered his son Erlend to proceed to More, where he would join him and together they would seek a place of safety. The earl left his ship, and set his men free. He rode on horseback with Kark alone, also mounted, as his attendant. Riding furiously they reached the bank of the river Gaul, where they paused.
“My Jarl,” said the thrall, sullenly, “where art thou going? I am weary of this ceaseless journeying. Behind us are the angry peasants, and coming from some shore there is Olaf, the great son of Harold Fairhaired!”
Earl Haakon groaned. “Be faithful to me, Kark!” he pleaded, “be faithful! And as to Olaf—it is but a story,—a wild dreaming.”
“It is no wild dreaming, my Jarl. Olaf is in the Trondelag. The Tronders are wild over his coming. What will it be when he meets these hinds whom thou hast angered so greatly?”
“Be faithful to me, Kark, and I will reward thee; for think thee, my thrall, we were born in the same night, and death must meet us together.”
Kark rode on in silence. Haakon was too troubled to speak. At the edge of the river, Kark paused. “Must we ford this deadly stream?” asked the thrall. “See, my Jarl, the floes of ice still rest upon it though it is spring.” Kark shivered, and drew back his horse.
Earl Haakon looked back over the country they had just travelled, and then turned to the river. “This way lies safety. Come, Kark! Plunge in with thy beast. Beyond the river it is but a step to Rimul, to Thora’s house. There we shall find shelter and full comfort.”
“My Jarl, thou hast a liking for the name of Thora. She that is dead, the wife of thy youth, was Thora; and I marvel how her brood, Sweyn and Heming, and the proud lady Bergljot, like that thou hast given the woman Thora their mother’s place. Oh, the women! the women! Jarl Haakon. It is not a wonder that Jarl Sigvalde, and his wild crew of Jomsvikings, let not a woman within their stronghold. Thou hadst conquered the Jomsvikings, and thou couldst have been the peaceful, prosperous, overlord of Norway, but that a woman’s beauty, and she the wife of a strong yoeman, bewitched thee. Then when my lord Erlend, thy faithful son, sent the woman away to appease the peasants, and with the wish that thou wouldst not find her so fair when Thora’s nails and teeth had been fastened in her face, then thou must needs send for the wife of another peasant, and a stronger man besides. Orme Lyrja is king of his valley, and all Norway has risen up against the overlord, who will not let the wives dwell in peace and in honor within their homes.”
“But Kark! thou didst tell me thyself of the beauty of these women.”
“But, my Jarl, thou dost forget. The times have altered. The brave old heathen days when we won our wives with a thrust of the sword have passed. It is one God, these Christians say, one wife unto death.”
“It is all very lonesome,” Earl Haakon lamented. “Our old Asa faith gave us a world full of fights and of fair women, and a heaven full of mead and beautiful maidens.”
“It were a pity, Jarl Haakon, for thy present safety, that thou hadst not remained a Christian, for too many women will be thy fall, even as they were the fall of the brood of Gunhild. Harold of Denmark had her drowned in a swamp for the sorceress she was, and they are all of them witches. They can conquer and steal the strength of every Norseman; and I would that all the fens and fiords of Norway were full of witches’ bones.”
“Thou dost hate the women, Kark, as honestly as Jarl Sigvalde’s crew.” Earl Haakon spoke with grim laughter.
“Jarl Sigvalde! Oh, yes! He that swore by the Beard of Brage that before the snows of three winters were melted thou wouldst be gone out of Norraway. It may not be a false saying, my Jarl. Look thou now. How hast thou stirred up all Norway over two witches of women! How fair will they seem to thee, when Olaf is on thy throne? And that other sorceress—an old withered witch she is—Jarl Sigvalde’s wife, that is kin to Olaf’s mother and hath her name? This Aastrid has kept up such a memory of her kinsman, Olaf, that every maid in Norway spins to the sagas of that viking. The scalds call him the ‘North Star,’ that is to rise over the darkness of Norway.”
Earl Haakon groaned. “Cease, Kark,” he pleaded. “It is enough. Be faithful to me in my present plight, and I will greatly reward thee. It is not the first danger we have triumphed over. Come on.”
They rode into the icy river and their horses stood still from the shock and chill. But they spurred them on, and reached the opposite shore. Then Earl Haakon dismounted.
“What wouldst thou, my Jarl?”
Without a word the earl unfastened his heavy blue cloak, rich with golden embroidery. He flung it upon the icy water, and removing the golden helmet from his head, he laid it upon the floating cloak. The setting sun poured a dazzling flood of light upon the helmet, and like the orb of day upon a sky of azure, it drifted down upon the glittering river.
“There lies Jarl Haakon, if the angry peasants come this way to seek me,” he told Kark.
Then they led their noble steeds down below the fording place, where two deep, treacherous holes made a fatal trap for man and beast. There they drove in the horses, and hurried away out of sound of the death neighs of the drowning animals.