Swain's Burning

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

SWAIN'S BURNING

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

By Arthur D. Howden Smith

Author of “Swain’s Vengeance,” “Swain’s Stone,” etc.

TOSSING waves and a chill wind from the north. The Pentland Firth was a heaving gray floor; the cliffs of Caithness lowered dark in the south, outlined by the white tempest of the rushing surf, torn by the fangs of the black rock-reefs that stretched in an interminable barrier, striving, always unsuccessfully, never dismayed, to ward off ocean’s assault upon the land. Northeast a blurr on the horizon was Haey, first of the Orkneys. Westward, behind the unseen masses of the Sudreyar^[1] and Ireland, the pallid sun was sinking into a monstrous pile of clouds that bellied and whirled before the pressure of the Iceland gale.

Midway of the Firth, steering a precarious course between the hostile impulses of wind and currents, crawled a great dragonship, her red and gold figurehead dipping and plunging as she climbed the short, choppy waves and dropped precipitously into the hollows. She showed only a shred of her big square sail, but her sixty oars rose and fell, rose and fell, with a monotonous, insistent rhythm, which was undisturbed even when the booming combers topped her shallow waist and rolled along her swaying gangway, sloshing ankle-deep among the rowing-benches and spurting in creamy jets from the oar-holes.

“Ha-ha!” panted the oarsmen. “Ha-ha! Hi-heh! Ha-ha! Hi-heh!”

And sometimes a few of them would break into a wild, toneless chant, keeping time to the oar-swing. More than once the singers were choked to silence by a torrent of spray that slapped into their faces, dousing mouths and eyes; but while they might be unable to breathe for the space of a stroke, they never missed the feathering, immersion, pull and recovery in unison with their comrades. They shook their shaggy, bearded heads, until the water flew, and bent their broad backs to the drive of the long, supple, bucking sweeps of toughened ash.

The wind howled overhead; the roar of the surf was a distant menace on their starboard quarter; the waves, tricky at best in those narrow seas, heaped and tumbled from every direction. But from one end of the packed waist to the other there was not a single look of concern, not a mutter of fear or complaint. Tall, thick-thewed, wide-shouldered, their clothing tattered and salt-stained, their armor and weapons rusty, they were men who had dared death in every form too frequently to be affected by the ordinary perils of the storm.

On the poop beside the steersmen, who fought with the steering-sweeps to keep the vessel on her course, stood Swain Olaf’s son, and there was a kind of fierce pride in his bleak gaze as he conned Deathbringer homeward. He knew the dragon as a rider knows his horse. He knew his picked crew of viking-farers, most of them Hebrides. men who had sailed with him for three years on forays the length and breadth of England and Ireland and far to the south, in France and Spain. He knew, too, the dangers which lay in wait for them at that moment, with snow flurries offshore, weeks beyond the period usually considered safe for the undecked longships of the Norse seafarers of the Orkney group. But that made the feat of returning safe to his stead at Gairsey all the more worth while; and he was not less satisfied because it compensated in some part for the ill-luck of their voyage.

He was talking of this, now, as he guided his brother, Gunni, and Osbiorn Grim’s son, the chief of his housecarls, who manned the jerking steering-sweeps, larboard and starboard.

“Bear down, Gunni—hard, boy! You leave it to Osbiorn to fend her off. There’s a nasty current runs in here. So! Hold it. Ease up, Osbiorn. Meet this wave head-on. Well done! There will be women who have wept their eyes dry and men for sharing our gear by now in Orkney, eh? But we shall surprize them all. I want much to see Jarl Rognvald’s face when we beach at Orphir.

“‘You go too often a-viking, Swain,’ said he when we sailed forth in Autumn. ‘Will you never be content?’ And I said: ‘No, Lord Jarl, I’m never content when the viking fever pricks in my blood, and what is more I’ll quarter the seas, whatever foes or weather may be abroad, until I find trace of that witch Frakork and her foul grandson, Olvir Rosta, who slew my father, Olaf, and Valthiof, my brother, and afterward would have robbed us of all our lands, if we had not taken care of Jarl Paul in a way you know of, Lord Jarl.’

“‘Oh, yes, I know that story,’ he said in his dry way. ‘It is little you think of Jarls, Swain.’ ‘Why, that depends upon the Jarls,’ said I. ‘Humph,’ said he. ‘The Orkneys are an ill place for small men and Jarls, between you and Frakork. The witch slew Jarl Harald Hakon’s son with a poisoned shirt—although men said she meant it for his brother Jarl Paul; but you took care of Jarl Paul when you kidnapped him and thrust him into a Scots monastery, if you did what you say you did, Swain, which I doubt.’”

Swain burst into a bellow of laughter that triumphed over the uproar of the tempest.

“‘What else might I have done, Lord Jarl?’ said I. ‘The saints preserve me from thinking upon it,’ said he. ‘But if he has all his parts he is a fortunate man.’ ‘All save his hair, Lord Jarl,’ I answered him. ‘Humph,’ said he again, ‘it may be so. Yet I tell you, Swain, you are foolish to waste your time viking-faring instead of employing your men upon your lands.’ ‘Why should my men farm, Lord Jarl,’ I asked, ‘when there is booty to be gained for the taking in other parts?’”

Osbiorn spoke up.

“Ah, Swain, but the Jarl will have the laugh upon you this time, for what have we to show for our journey, but scars from oar-bite and a few trinkets such as women use?”

“You speak truly,” admitted Swain, “but I would have you recall that we have not lost a man, despite that we have four times come to slaying frays, and we have stayed from home later than any longship in my time. We have had honor, if we have not had plunder. We can not always be fortunate.”

“Perhaps,” replied his brother, Gunni, eyes never leaving the racing seas over the dragon stern. “But it is my thought that our mistake was in following that report Olvir Rosta had been in Ireland. There is small gain to be had in Ireland. Franceward, now——”

Swain’s face clouded.

“You forget yourself, Gunni,” he said bitterly. “Vengeance comes before plunder. I would sink this dragon and all she holds of men and gear, myself, too, if by so doing I might uncover Frakork and Olvir! But the day will come. Have I not prayed to the Old Gods and the White Christ and the blessed Saints Magnus and Olaf? It will come, and then——”

A hoarse hail from the forecastle, where a knot of men off rowing-duty huddled under such protection as was provided by the huge, up-curving figurehead and the low bulwarks above the decked storage space.

“Small boats to landward!”

Swain sprang to the break of the shallow poop, and stared out to starboard through the scud and sea-wrack. A mile or so ahead a dismasted fishing-boat was bouncing in the turmoil of waters, the sport of wind and currents which gradually impelled it toward the dim line of the rock-reefs. A man crouched in the stern, feebly endeavoring to keep head to wind with the assistance of a single oar.

“None but a fool would be out to-day,” growled Osbiorn.

“He is only a Scot,” asserted Gunni confidently.

Swain frowned in perplexity, biting at his red-gold beard that was blown about his eyes.

“It is probable that you are right,” he conceded, “yet——”

“We shall have trouble enough making a lee as it is, with dusk at hand,” counseled Osbiorn.

“We will take him off,” decided Swain. “As you say, Gunni, he is likely to be one of these foolish Scots, who deserves to drown. But I do not like to pass any man in such a sea. Bear off to starboard. Stoutly, carls! Bury those oar-blades. Catch deep—together! Put your backs to it—so! Why should we fear Rann’s Bath, who have known worse than this?”

The dragon crawled slowly, like some monstrous water creature, part reptile, part insect, across the billowing expanse. The man in the fishing-boat had seen her now, and he rose half-erect, steadying himself by the gunwale with one hand, shielding his eyes with the other.

Nearer they came, and nearer, and Swain measured the distance with crafty eyes. Then he took a spear from a chest that was bolted to the deck, and tied a strong rope to a loop that was run through a hole near the butt, so that it might be slung at a man’s shoulder. With the spear in his hand, and the rope coiled loosely on the deck beside him, he took his stand at the starboard gunwale.

“Closer,” he called to Gunni and Osbiorn. “Lower that stroke, oarsmen. Slow, all!”

The man in the little boat stood erect, prepared to catch the line, but Swain motioned to him to drop flat out of the way. Then Swain, balanced on the swaying deck, raised the spear above his shoulder, took a quick step forward, and hurled it with the whole strength of his iron muscles. Straight and low it sped, passed the open space of water, the line snaking behind it, and plunged into the sea on the farther side of the little boat, the line rasping across the midmost thwart.

The castaway dived for it head-first, made a rough loop about his waist, heedless of the dangling spear, and plunged overboard into the smother. A shout from Swain brought several men aft along the slippery gangway from the forecastle, and they hauled away at the line with a diligence that drew the castaway at such a pace as to bury him under the waves. He was half-drowned when he reached the gunwale just forward of the poop, and Swain stooped to lift him overside with no appreciable effort, because of the man’s slim bulk.

“Heh,” exclaimed Swain in surprize, as he stretched the fellow on the deck in front of the poop. “Here is no Scotsman or common man of any race. Look to his dress.”

Indeed, the man’s over-jerkin was of bear’s fur, and his tight-fitting breeches were of fine-tanned reindeer hide. A gold chain hung at his neck, and there were gold bands on his wrists and forearms, besides a big signet ring upon one finger. His thin face was dark and proud, but revealed evident marks of dissipation.

One of the crew fetched a cup of mead from the cabin beneath the poop, and Swain dribbled the heady stuff between the man’s lips, with the result that presently he coughed, opened his eyes and struggled to sit erect.

“So it was not an ale-dream!” he muttered, grinning.

“What?” asked Swain, while the others stood around and listened.

“The storm, and the dragon out of the west, and the spear-line, and you, friend.”

“It is not certain that I am your friend,” returned Swain curtly. “How did you come to be in such a plight?”

“I had been visiting MacLean of Gia Firth, and we sat late over the ale last night, yes, all night, as it comes to me now; and when I would have started home in the morning, they told me no small boat could live in the sea, but I said that Norsemen could sail anywhere. So I went.”

He smiled a thought ruefully, and glanced quickly at those around him.

“You are Orkney-folk?” he asked suddenly.

Swain nodded.

“Jarl Rognvald’s men?” the stranger pressed.

“I am Swain Olaf’s son,” said Swain.

The castaway’s face brightened.

“I know of you! The viking-farer—he who brought in Jarl Rognvald and carried off Jarl Paul. You would not hold it against me because I am my father’s son.”

“Who are you?” demanded Swain.

The man hesitated.

“I dwell at Thorsa,” he answered hesitantly.

“That means nothing to me.”

“I am Erlend, son to Jarl Harald Hakon’s son,” said the dark youth, with a hint of defiance.

Swain’s eyes bored into his face.

“Ha,” grunted Swain. “And he it was died of Frakork’s poisoned shirt! Are you his heir?”

The dark youth assented uneasily.

“Jarl Rognvald will be glad to have you where he can set his finger on you,” remarked Swain. “He shares his jarldom now with young Harald Maddad’s son, your cousin, and he would be very loath to consider the prospect of dividing it into thirds to make a portion for you. Yes, I consider you should make an excellent present for him.”

Erlend Harald’s son cast a desperate glance around the ring of harsh, bearded faces. Then looked across the heaving gunwale at the gray wastes of the sea.

“I will pay you a fair price to set me ashore at Thorsa,” he offered.

“You could not pay me as much as Jarl Rognvald would,” returned Swain. “We’ll clip you, as we did your uncle, Jarl Paul, and leave you in a monastery where you can drink ale the rest of your life.”

A gleam of hope dawned in Erlend’s eyes.

“Men say you turned against Jarl Paul because he received Witch Frakork and Olvir Rosta back into his friendship,” he said tentatively.

Swain scowled, and his reply rumbled from the depths of the immense barrel-chest which gave him greater endurance than any man in the North possessed.

“Yes,” he roared. “And all who admit friendship for Frakork and Olvir are likewise my enemies. Let me hear of such and they shall feel the edge of my sword and the burning of lighted brands such as those with which Olvir fired my father’s skalli at Dungelsbae and drove both him and Valthiof, my brother, forth to die upon the spears of a hundred men. Say little of Frakork or Olvir, Erlend, if you would five to taste Jarl Rognvald’s mercy—which is like to be easier than mine, if I am aroused.”

“It is strange that you do not pursue Frakork and Olvir to their steading, since you feel so hostile to them,” persisted Erlend with the courage of despair.

There was a fleck of foam upon Swain’s beard, and his hand stole to the hilt of his sword.

“Fool!” he growled. “Do you think I would spare any effort if I might track them down? Back and forth over all the seas I have been, without discovering so much as a trace, so that I am beginning to believe it true what some men report, that they have fled to Iceland. Next Spring I shall fare west and north and make certain.”

A cunning look crept into Erlend’s face.

“It seems, then,” he commented, “that I have somewhat which you lack.”

“Your life, perhaps,” rejoined Swain grimly.

“No, information where Frakork and Olvir hide.”

Swain studied him with savage intensity.

“Ah, in that case we may think of ways to persuade you to talk.”

With a celerity in contrast to the supine attitude he had maintained since he was dragged aboard, Erlend leaped between two of the men around him and gained the gunwale by the break of the poop, clinging by one hand to the ladder which led to the steersmen’s space.

“Come near me, and I go overboard,” he cried. “And my secret with me.”

There was a note in his voice, a gleam in his eyes, which carried conviction. Swain waved back the men who started after him.

“Stay, Erlend, and tell us more,” Swain called to him. “If you are not deceiving us we may arrive at a composition.”

Erlend held to his grip on the poop ladder, but he declined to come down from his precarious perch.

“I know what I know,” he said; “and I tell it not, except upon proper terms. Pass me your word upon your father’s soul to land me safe and unharmed at Thorsa and I will tell all.”

Swain held aloft the cross-hilt of his sword.

“If you tell me truthfully where Frakork and her spawn lurk, I swear by the Cross and Odin and Thor’s Hammer and the White Christ and my father’s soul, be it in Valhalla or Purgatory, that you shall go ashore at Thorsa whole and unharmed. But if you lie——”

He left the sentence unfinished, and Erlend dropped to the deck.

“I am satisfied,” answered the castaway. “Moreover, men say that you are true to your oath, Swain. And a thing which you forget is that I am one you might expect to be ready to aid you in slaying Frakork and Olvir, since Frakork was the means of my father’s death, and that in such a way as to lose me my rightful inheritance, by reason Jarl Paul suspected my father of plotting against him with Frakork.”

“Touching your inheritance I have nothing to say,” replied Swain. “But it has been said without denial that Frakork intended the shirt, not for your father, but for Jarl Paul. She was a close friend to Jarl Harald Hakon’s son.”

“Whoever she intended it for, she slew my father with it,” insisted Erlend with unmistakable anger; “and thereby she injured me doubly both by his loss and by the estate that was withheld from me. But we talk to no purpose. Did you never think to look for her in Scotland, Swain?”

“I have looked for her far and wide in Scotland,” retorted Swain impatiently. “She is not there. She and Olvir fled thence in a long ship after they left their lands at Morkaorsbakki on the coast of Caithness when Jarl Paul was overthrown.

“Yes, they fled—to return. They landed by Staur in Sudrland on the coast of Scotland’s Firth, and went secretly up into the country of the mountains, where only the wild hill-folk dwell, and there they have built and planted themselves a steading, with all their folk around them, on the bank of Hjalmundale’s river. There are high mountains and spreading forests on every hand, and they have stayed so quiet that even the King of Scots believes they have fled oversea.”

“How did you come to discover it?” demanded Swain sternly.

“At Thorsa I entertain many of the hill-folk who come to trade, and I had it from one of them.”

“Why have not you, yourself, acted to take vengeance?”

There was a hint of contempt in Swain’s tones, and Erlend flushed.

“I am not a man of much wealth,” he returned with some dignity. And I have few followers, while they have upwards of a hundred tenants and carl. But it has been my intention, if the opportunity arrived, to attempt to waylay Frakork and Olvir when they went abroad.”

“Humph,” grunted Swain. “You shall be spared the trouble. I will take the task off your hands. It may be you have lied, but I think you are telling the truth. And if by any chance, you are not, I will surely take steps to punish you. In the meantime I will land you at Thorsa, and do you see to it that you do not speak of our conversation to any one. My advice to you, also, is to give over ale-drinking, and set yourself to becoming what a man of your birth should be.”

And this was the occasion of the first meeting of Swain Olaf’s son with Erlend Harald’s son, which was to have richer fruits in the future than the mere furthering of Swain’s vengeance upon the slayers of his father and brother, as shall be revealed in the proper place

 

II

LIGHTS blazed in Jarl Rognvald’s skalli at Orphir in Hrossey. The housecarls who sat at the long tables in the great hall pounded with fists and sword-hilts on the greasy planks. Dogs barked amongst the rushes. Men shouted greetings from the high table, and the Jarl, himself, stepped down and welcomed Swain with open arms. Not always had they been so friendly, but with Swain men were definitely one thing or the other. Times had been when Jarl Rognvald would cheerfully have cut his throat. Such times might come again. At this present they were comrades and allies.

“Ho, Swain, we had thought you dead,” hailed the Jarl. “And men say that you won home at best with a bare ship and no booty.”

“I bring that which is worth more to me than the spoil of princes,” returned Swain.

“And what is that?”

There was a hush around them.

“I have found where Frakork and Olvir hide.”

Jarl Rognvald clapped his back with lusty force. A well-made man, the Jarl, as noble in his presence as Swain, which is high praise; but where Swain’s face was grim and vigilant, Jarl Rognvald’s was open and cheery. Men loved him, yet found fault with his heedless generosity, his liking for hairbrained adventures and his readiness to heed whatever the last person poured into his ear. He had his faults. He did not take some of his duties as seriously as he should have, but he was a good lord and kind, and for Swain he had a whimsical admiration which was mingled with respect, for he was of those who had felt the heavy hand of the viking-farer’s wrath.

“And how came you by that, Swain?” he asked now.

“I had it from one you know of, young Erlend Harald’s son.”

“Whose father was——”

“Yes, he.”

A frown furrowed Jarl Rognvald’s pleasant face.

“Why did you not fetch him here, Swain? I should like to have him where I can keep an eye upon him—or a finger, at need. We have two Jarls in these islands and that is enough. I do not want Erlend making trouble for me some day.”

“He is no trouble-maker,” retorted Swain. “An ale-bibber, without means or wealth to be dangerous.”

“Yes, if he is left to himself,” commented the Jarl gloomily. “However, if you let him go, it is a deed done. Where is Frakork’s den?”

Swain recounted the information he had received from Erlend, and Jarl Rognvald nodded agreement with his judgment that it was correct.

“It has the sound of Frakork’s wit. She would seek to remain close enough so that if an opportunity arose they might launch a fresh blow to recover their power in the Orkneys. It is a safe place, Swain; too safe for you. If you come at her from the sea, she will have spies to take account of you, and you can not reach her in the rear because of the Scots who guard the mountain-passes.”

“I can reach her,” answered Swain briefly.

“How?”

A shrill yelp came from the skalli door.

“Let me pass, varlets! Let me pass, or I will set Swain after you.”

A bubble of laughter from the burly housecarls, and a little lad in his first buskins, a miniature sword strapped on his thigh, burst between the tables and ran to Swain with outflung arms.

“What have you brought me, Swain? How many did you slay this voyage? Where have you been? Did you see any sea-monsters? Did you see the man-eating people Bishop William told me of? Or the Paynims? Or the——”

“A question at a time, manling,” begged Swain, swinging him aloft to kick his legs above the heads of the throng. “I fetched you an Irish dagger we had from a fray in the South. But what of you? Have you rendered good account of yourself?”

“Good enough,” swaggered the boy. “Will you take me next Spring?”

“No, no, you must be first as tall as a man’s sword. Now, peace!”

Swain turned his head to Jarl Rognvald.

“You asked me how I might reach Frakork, Lord Jarl. I hold the means in my two hands here.”

“What? The youngling?”

“Even so—little Jarl Harald. His father, Jarl Maddad, rules Atjoklar^[2] for the Scots king. Maddad owes me certain obligations, and will not be disposed to deny me guides and a free passage through his marches into Sudrland.”

Jarl Rognvald cast at Swain a look which was compounded of amusement and exasperation.

“You are never at a loss, Swain! First, you foist the boy upon me to share my jarldom because you say: ‘Two Jarls rule with justice; one Jarl rules with force.’ Then you make use of the circumstance of having aided his family to compass your vengeance.”

“Jarl Paul, who had as good a title to one-half the islands as you did to the other half, made over his rights to the boy, who happens to be his nephew,” returned Swain calmly. “Blame him, if you will. As for what I said, it is true; and if I did not have this means of coming at Frakork and Olvir I should find another.”

Jarl Rognvald laughed shortly.

“I know you, Swain! And I would give much to have heard Jarl Paul acquainting you with his renunciation. The truth is, you thought that I was disposed to be unfriendly to you, and——”

“Was I right?” challenged Swain.

Jarl Rognvald flushed, but before he could answer little Jarl Harald spoke up.

“All men do what Swain wishes, Lord Jarl. Bishop William told me so, and he has talked to the pope.”

Housecarls and noblemen, all in the hall, shouted with laughter. And Jarl Rognvald smiled, if unwillingly.

“In part, Swain, perhaps. Yes, in part you were right. But for that you had only your own domineering ways to thank. After all, I am Jarl.”

Swain put down the boy, and bowed low.

“True, Lord Jarl, and is any more swift than I to pay my dues and give my service at your call?”

“No, no. You are Swain. And as Swain, I accept from you what I would not from other men. But let us end this bickering. When Spring comes you shall go to Jarl Maddad, and try your venture. In the meantime, we are celebrating Yule here at Orphir, and it is my desire that you and your following pass the feast with me.”

Swain shook his head.

“I thank you for the favor you would show me, Lord Jarl, but I must be about the matter of my vengeance without delay.”

“You are mad!” protested the Jarl. “At this time? In Winter? I tell you the mountain passes will be deep in snow. You might not pass them, even if——”

“Nevertheless, I am sure that I can reach Hjalmundale’s river,” said Swain firmly. “And I hold you to a promise you made me, Lord Jarl, when I first contracted alliance with you to bring you into these islands and establish you here, that you would aid me at my need in seeming vengeance upon Frakork and Olvir.”

“But in the depths of Winter, Swain! And after all, that old hag Frakork has seen the passing of her power and Olvir is good for nothing against us. Let them go, man! There are better ways to win name and gear.”

Swain turned on his heel and walked to the door of the crowded hall.

“A promise is a promise,” he remarked. “Yet if you will not keep it, you will not, and there is no more to be said. In that case, I will go with such men as I can raise myself.”

Jarl Rognvald frowned angrily.

“You have still your rough tongue, I see,” he exclaimed. “You leap to unjust conclusions, as usual. I have not refused you aid. What would you have of me?”

“One longship, and eighty men,” replied Swain promptly. “I can raise at least as many more.”

“Are you sure it will be enough?”

“I take two men for each of Frakork’s.”

“A mad scheme,” fussed the Jarl. “You stay out in Deathbringer until all have thought you shattered by ice, and next you must be off in mid-Winter to traverse Scotland to slay enemies who may not be there. You will do well to escape with your life. Who would care to accompany you of his own free will?”

A shout went up from the hall.

“I’ll go, Lord Jarl!” “And I!” “Hrolf Bitling offers!”

And tailing the deep voices of the housecarls, little Jarl Harald’s piping tones proclaimed his willingness to aid.

“Count on me, Swain! I’d go, if there were but you and I alone. And my father shall aid you, for I will speak stoutly to him and my mother.”

The howl of laughter that followed sent the smoke from hearth-fire and wall-torches and table-candles twisting and eddying up into the cobwebbed recesses of the rafters.

“I give you thanks, Lord Jarl,” said Swain, gravely addressing the boy, when at last he could make himself heard in the din. “But I fear you must wait a year or two before you go viking-faring. Now do you run swiftly to your bower, or the women will be coming for you and humble us in front of our brother-warriors.”

 

III

ORPHIR STRAND was black with people, and small boats crunched through the inshore ice ferrying men and supplies to Deathbringer and Jarl Rognvald’s longship, Ravenfeeder. Already Bishop William had blessed the departing crews and their vessels, bidding all remember their mission was holy in that Frakork was a confessed witch. Swain, himself, had shaken Jarl Rognvald’s hand and accepted the Jarl’s good wishes, with the bishop’s aid, too, blasting a sudden last-minute suggestion that he should accompany the expedition. For now that it was on the point of departure its daring and novelty appealed to the underlying vein of chivalry in Rognvald’s character, which prompted him to accept any dramatic appeal and in his later life sent him crusading to Jorsalaheim.^[3]

Other chiefs and boendr gave Swain parting advice, and he was free to say goodby to his mother. A tall, stately woman, Asleif, with a calm, watchful face. She was not of those who weep; grief and death were old stories to her, and she was accustomed to suffering in silence. In her face now there was no light of exultation, only a certain confidence and faith.

“You will succeed, Swain,” she said placidly.

“I will succeed or perish, mother,” he answered as unemotionally.

“No, it is in my mind that you will succeed—if not this time, then another. I have prayed to the Old Gods for you, Swain. I think it is they who will aid us. This White Christ which Olaf Tryggvi’s son forced upon us is no god of vengeance, whatever Bishop William may say.”

Swain shrugged his shoulders.

“I have more trust in my sword than in any gods,” he said. “But we shall soon know. At any rate, I have not forgotten how my father and Valthiof died.”

“You would not, my son. Be vigilant and show no mercy.”

They kissed each other, and Swain stamped off across the ice-hummocks to enter the boat which carried him to Deathbringer’s side. Asleif remained where he had left her until the two longships were hull-down behind Kalfey, and that was the last any one in the Orkneys saw of Swain Olaf’s son—whom many men called Asleif’s son—for weeks to come. His vessels were sighted once from Dungelsbae as they steered south through Pentland Firth. Then they disappeared.

 

THE expedition passed east of Caithness and sailed south into the Breida Firth,^[4] coming to land at Dufeyrar^[5] in Moray, where they beached the galleys on the sandspit and covered them roughly with awnings. Swain made an arrangement with a Scots trader here to keep them in his care while he and his men went south into Atjoklar, representing that he was come from the Orkneys at the command of young Jarl Harald to serve Jarl Harald’s father, Jarl Maddad, who dwelt at the castle of Atjokl; and as the Scots well knew the relationship, which existed between Swain and Jarl Harald—who regarded Swain in light of his foster-father, so that men sometimes called Swain Fostri—there was no great surprize at his coming, and people were sent with him to smooth his way and avert any conflict with the Scots.

So at last, close to the beginning of Yule, Swain reached the castle of Atjokl with one hundred and ninety men. Jarl Maddad and his wife, the Lady Margaret—who had been own sister to that Jarl Paul of the Orkneys whom Swain had kidnaped and thrown into a monastery, in order to make way for her son, the little Jarl Harald—received him with mixed feelings of satisfaction and apprehension. They were glad to hear of Swain’s success in maintaining their son’s rights to one-half the islands, and they feared his presence, because it was well known that Swain was a dangerous man to have in the vicinity. He was given to sudden actions and bitter hatreds, and when he hated and acted somebody else was bound to suffer. They had no feeling of concern for poor Jarl Paul, of course. He had refused their son his rights, and they and Swain—they exaggerated their share in the exploit—had made away with him, which was as it should have been.

“You carry a large train of housecarls with you, Swain,” commented Jarl Maddad, after they had welcomed him and he was sitting with them at the high table in the castle hall. “You must have increased your wealth very considerably.”

The Jarl was a man of medium size, sly in the face. His wife, the Lady Margaret, caught up his words.

“It is no more than natural that Swain should prosper,” she remarked, “seeing that he has become the guardian of our son, and must therefore be almost as great a man as Jarl Rognvald, himself, in the islands.”

Swain laughed as he stared insolently into her ripely handsome, haughty features. Of Norse stock, she towered over her lord.

“I was wealthy before the youngling came to Orphir, and I have had no need to pouch his revenues since,” he answered. “All the world is my purse. If your Atjoklar was but richer you would see me oftener.”

“No harm was intended,” said Jarl Maddad hastily.

He had no desire to see viking bands ravaging in his villages.

“But you must have a reason for traveling with so many men,” insisted the Lady Margaret.

“I have discovered where Frakork hides and works her witchcraft,” he replied; “and I go to burn her in her lair.”

Jarl Maddad crossed himself. Margaret looked doubtful.

“She is not hereabouts?” she inquired.

“She is in the mountains south of Sudrland.”

“Ah, then she is not near enough to work us any harm,” said Margaret complacently.

Swain grinned.

“She is near enough to work a spell upon you. How would you like to have your hair drop off?”

This time the Lady Margaret crossed herself.

“But she has not,” she exclaimed, quickly bethinking her that she feared for nothing definite.

“She will as soon as she knows you have entertained me,” declared Swain.

The woman beside him turned from white to green in hue. Vanity was her chief weakness.

“She could not! She could not!” she clamored.

“Do you watch, and see,” rejoined Swain.

“Oh, it is too bad! Why did you come here? I believe you have done it purposely for some evil grudge.”

Swain grinned again.

“If you will help me a little, I will prevent her from working the curse,” he said.

“How can you?” she cried.

“The Church—” began Jarl Maddad.

But Swain cut him off.

“I have brought these men with me so that I can wipe out her foul nest. But it is a difficult journey over your border mountains to where her steading is hid, high up on Hjaimundale’s river, and I require guides to find it. Provide them for me, and you need have no fear of Frakork’s witchcraft.”

“Yes, that would be best,” said Margaret.

“I am not so sure,” objected the Jarl. “It is no concern of ours, after all, and if——”

Swain stooped his face until it was at the level of Jarl Maddad’s shifty eyes.

“Is it no concern of yours?” he asked softly. “How long would young Jarl Harald last at Orphir if I worked against him? Do you think Jarl Rognvald would be loath to abandon the division of his jarldom?”

“But you would not?” cried Margaret. “You fear to let Rognvald have too much power.”

“As for that,” returned Swain, “I happen to have in mind another claimant upon the jarldom I can employ at need.”

“You shall have the guides,” promised Jarl Maddad quickly.

“Yes, yes,” added the Lady Margaret. “We were jesting, Swain. We wished to see if you were as stout-hearted as ever. Ha, ha! But you are.”

“I am,” agreed Swain grimly. “And I will have you see to it also that no word of my purpose escapes. If I am betrayed, I shall——”

He left the sentence unfinished, and Jarl Maddad shuddered. Margaret only glowered

“If it were not for my son,” she muttered.

“Ah,” rumbled Swain. “But then I should not be here.”

 

IV

WEK’S journey north of Atjoklar Swain and his viking-farers were set upon by the wild people of the mountains, huge, half-naked men, their bodies and faces covered with long red hair, their scanty clothing of beasts’ skins or crudely woven wool. The Orkney-folk were traversing a narrow defile, climbing with effort over icy rocks and drifts of snow, when a storm of spears assailed them from a height and they had barely time to form a shield-ring before the Redbeards were on them. The Atjoklar men whom Jarl Maddad had sent for guides shouted that they must retreat, but Swain sternly swore that he could cut down him who repeated the advice.

“We will teach our foes to fear us at the beginning of our acquaintance,” he said. “Afterward perhaps they will let us alone.”

Ten of his men died to carry out the lesson, but, as he had foreseen, a few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting convinced the Redbeards that they stood no chance against the big shields and mail-shirts and helms and heavy swords and axes of the viking-farers, with their ordered discipline. Shouting curses in guttural, nasal voices, the mountaineers drew off, to swirl half-heartedly around the shield-ring, making spasmodic efforts to resume the attack, but always failing to come to blows.

Swain would not suffer his men to butcher the enemies’ wounded, instead explaining by means of the guides to those who could walk that his party were intending to pass this country without doing harm to its inhabitants, if they were left in peace, and with this word he sent them to their leaders, and formed his camp for the night on the scene of the encounter. To keep themselves warm the Orkney-folk reared a cairn above their dead, for in that high place the sweep of the wind and the chill of the snow-banks made sleep impossible.

In the morning a chief of the Redbeards, who called himself MacCollum, ventured within earshot of their position, and shouted harshly that they might go on without fear if they kept their promise not to despoil the country.

“But see to it that you do not return this way,” he added savagely. “We know what happens when the Norsemen come into a strange land.”

Swain smiled dourly.

“Do you tell him we will pass as we choose,” he said to the guide who was interpreter between them. “I would fight them until they were all slain, except that I may need every sword against Frakork.”

The guide prudently reduced the temper of Swain’s threat, and the expedition continued unhindered, although on every height and crag for two days after they saw the flashing steel and scowling faces of the hairy mountain-folk. They feared treachery, and were continually on their guard, day and night, so that no more than half of them lay down to sleep at once, and they made their camps in defensible nooks. But on the third day they bade good-by to the Redbeards, and entered a country of dark forests and enormous mountains so desolate that even the wild people did not venture into it.

Here they saw the tall-antlered reindeer, which some of them had hunted in Caithness, and which was making its last stand in these Scots wildernesses. They met many red deer, and at night as they huddled around their fires they heard the shrill, swelling chorus of the wolf-packs racing their quarry across the hills. Bear-tracks were frequent, and the streams and lakes were populated with otters and voles. But nowhere did they see a human face or the far-off smoke of a mountain village or find so much as a broken weapon or a cast-off garment to indicate that men had been here before them. There were no paths for them to follow, and their guides were forced to travel by the stars and certain landmarks which the oldest of them had observed when he had once penetrated the ultimate north with a party dispatched by the Scots king to collect tribute where it was never offered willingly.

Late on the sixth day they sighted a plume of smoke on the horizon’s rim and the guides assured them they must be approaching the vale down which Hjalmundale’s river dashed toward the sea; and in order that they might run no risk of being spied upon they hid until dark within the confines of a wooded glen. Here again the Atjoklar men were for temerity; they would have scouted the land ahead, in preparation for the final advance. But Swain brushed their arguments aside.

“I have waited long enough for this night,” he said fiercely. “I tell you I care not how many they be beyond those hills.”

When the frosty stars were out he led the long files of the viking-farers from the wood, and they continued northward, crossing a frozen lake on the ice and scaling two intervening mountain bulks. The dawn was already at hand when they came to the foot of a third ridge behind which the smoke curled high in the early windless air that was yet sharp with the chill cold. Very faintly in that morning stillness they heard, too, the barking of a dog, sure sign that men were near.

Up the ridge swarmed Swain and his men, stumbling on the smooth rocks and ice, pulling themselves by tree-roots, wading through snow-banks in the hollows, scaling one precipice by crawling over one another’s backs and hoisting the rear men with a rope of belts. By mid-morning they had won to the top, and only the straggly trees which crowned it concealed them from Hjalmundale.

Swain’s instinct was to charge forward, but he saw that his followers were exhausted and he made them lie in the snow and eat their slender fare of cold venison. Meantime the dogs of the steading were barking with redoubled violence, scenting the strangers out of reach of the eyes of the watchmen who looked to the north and east; and so loud became the uproar that Swain was worried. He stirred up his men, and they crawled cautiously through snow and brush to the opposite slope. Frakork’s lair lay below them.

A pleasant valley was ringed by the barren mountains; midway a river foamed too rapidly for ice to form. A skalli of stones and timber stood on the nearer bank and around it a group of barns and outbuildings. Fields were outlined under the snow. Cattle and horses moved in the yard. Men and women hurried about their duties. Straight beneath the viking-farers the stead dogs were lifting their muzzles in a denunciation which drew puzzled glances from an occasional housecarl or serving-man. It was plain that Frakork’s people had no thought of danger from that quarter.

Swain drew a great breath of satisfaction, and unsheathed his sword.

“Now we shall make a vengeance men will talk of in our children’s time,” he said. “Swords out! Go quietly.”

“Ho!” exclaimed his brother Gunni. “I can smell a burning roof-tree!”

“I see that river running red,” said Osbiorn Frim’s son.

“There is rich plunder down there,” said a third man.

Swain plunged into the sparse tree-growth that clothed this side of the mountain, a gentler, easier slope than the one they had ascended.

“Plunder for all,” he called back encouragingly.

Men bared their teeth with a hiss of expectant greed. Eyes flared lustfully. There was a soft, musical tinkle of mail, the creaking of shield-straps, a slurring of the breaking snow-crust as the long line advanced. The invaders stretched out along the mountain’s flank; the trees protected their flitting progress.

The dogs barked louder and louder, but nobody observed Swain’s band until they burst from the thinning trees upon the lower slopes. Then the blast of a ludr-horn was taken up and carried along the valley. The people working about the steading stopped in their tracks and looked to see what was happening. Women made for the skalli; men snatched up their weapons and ran to meet the strangers. Horses were caught and saddled. Shouts echoed obscurely, and the shrill blasts of the ludr-horns overrode the excitement.

Frakork’s people rallied with entire confidence, for most of them supposed that they had to confront nothing more serious than a raid of the Redbeards, driven desperate by hunger; and some sixty men formed a hasty shield-wall behind a short, immensely broad man, whose black beard and swart features showed conspicuously against the dazzling white background of the snow.

Swain halted abruptly as this man appeared.

“Ho,” he roared, “there is Olvir Rosta. He is a good warrior. Close up, men. Shield to shield!”

And the viking-farers ordered their array, so that they presented a solid front, shield lapping shield, with reversed flanks at either extremity of the line to guard against assault upon the rear. In the center of the line was Swain; Gunni was upon the right end and Osbiorn on the left. They tramped forward silently across a field and a frozen brook until they were within a long spear-cast of the line of the Hjalmundale men, who had eyed them with increasing surprize as they drew nearer. Here Swain halted them, and stepped forward alone.

“Come out, Olvir Rosta, and prove your name,” he shouted. “Let us see if men call you Roysterer in vain! Come out, I say, and let me have a look at you before you die.”

Olvir shoved out between the shields of his men; his face was livid with repressed passion.

“You have done an ill deed, Swain,” he snarled.

“It is likely to turn out ill for you,” Swain agreed. “As well as for the witch, your grandmother.”

“You can not harm us,” Olvir boasted. “She will make spells which will draw the strength from your arms. All of your endeavors will come to nothing.”

“Put what you say to the test,” invited Swain. “Fight with me here between the shield-walls. None shall come near us, and if you slay me, by magic or otherwise, you shall go free, with all your men.”

Olvir laughed mockingly.

“Yes, your men would be likely to honor such a promise! Why should I fight you there, when your death is certain if I wait a little while? Presently we shall be throwing your bodies into the river, and after a few days they will reach the sea and be cast up on the beaches of Caithness to acquaint the Orkney-folk with your doom.”

From the comer of his eye Swain perceived that a steady stream of recruits flowed to augment Olvir’s following. Already the opposing shield-wall had double its original frontage. But he craved above everything the satisfaction of killing Olvir, himself, and he was loath to abandon his efforts to lure his enemy into the open.

“You are afraid,” he jeered. “You are not the Olvir Rosta who fought with me once upon the beach at Morkaorsbakki and again when the Valkyr’s favorites strove an afternoon off Deerness and the longships crashed together with splintering oars. Men will say that you feared Swain Olaf’s son. Why, Olvir? Do you believe the gods have cursed you since you burned my father and Valthiof? Well you may, for it is said that there will be another burning today, yes, a red burning, with the wails of women and sword-blades hissing for the souls of heroes dying. Come!”

Olvir suddenly turned and barked a single command. His shield-wall folded in upon itself, becoming a dense column, and pelted forward at a run, a moving spearhead, with Olvir for its tip, aimed to strike the middle of Swain’s extended line and split it asunder.

Swain grasped his enemy’s strategy too tardily to accomplish more than emergency measures to meet it. His wings, too, folded inward, but in considerable confusion, and he urged the inchoate mass of the viking-farers to a trot, in order that they might be able to diminish the impetus of Olvir’s blow. Himself, he remained outside the shield-wall, hoping that so he might have opportunity to match swords with Olvir. But Olvir was a leader of nimble wits, who had been schooled in all manner of tricks by his grandmother, as clever a warrior, scalds have sung, as any man of her time.

A dozen paces from Swain he altered his direction to the left, and his spearhead of men turned after him. Swain was thrown upon its flank, helpless to do more than hew at the outer rank of housecarls, with such of his own men as came up in time, while the mass of Olvir’s attack struck with hammer-force a shearing blow that lopped off the whole left flank of the viking-farers’ line and scattered the snow with lifeless bodies.

That was a cruel stroke. At one move Olvir had seized the advantage from Swain. His inferior band, with small losses, had cut the viking-farers in two sections, and methodically set to work to butcher the smaller one. But Swain did not stay idle. He gathered the balance of his people, and drove into the flank of Olvir’s column so mightily as to split it to pieces in its turn, and the field became a tangled mêlée of isolated groups and companies of men. For a brief space Olvir maintained the fight with a diminishing force, but when Swain had mustered his entire strength and undertook to weave a ring about the Hjalmundale men, the fight went out of Frakork’s people and they and their leader fled with shielded backs to gain the shelter of the skalli and its outbuildings.

In the stead yard there was a second interval of confused carnage. Again little groups of men contended, singly and by twos and threes. For a few minutes the Hjalmundale men held the line of a shallow stone fence and a barn, but Swain’s superior numbers brushed them aside, and Swain, leading a fiery charge, had a brief vision of Olvir leaping through the skalli door.

He was collecting torch-wood to set the roof alight when a cry was raised; there were men and horses behind the skalli, and running that way he discovered Olvir and several others mounted and Frakork in the act of climbing into a saddle. Swain made for them with a bellow of rage.

“Forward, men!” he shouted. “Forward, all men! A farm to the man who stays Olvir! My Dungelsbae lands if you stop Frakork!”

A dozen of the viking-farers sprang for Olvir and his men, but Swain himself was the means of staying Frakork. In desperation and for want of any missile weapon, he cast his sword at her, and its point, striking her horse in the rump, caused the beast to rear and break away. Frakork was thrown to the ground, but regained her feet and slipped back into the skalli before Swain could reach her. He hurled himself upon the door she had entered as the bars dropped across it.

“At any rate,” he muttered, turning away, “the witch is housed.”

He expected to see Olvir at bay, likewise, but in the time required by his pursuit of Frakork, her grandson had brushed aside the panting opposition of the viking-farers, and was now safe out of their reach, galloping down the valley, Frakork’s riderless horse at the heels of his little troop.

“Horses! Find more horses!” ordered Swain.

And he and his men searched feverishly steading and near-by farms without success. Olvir and other fugitives had carried away all the beasts in the valley.

“He can not ride far in this country in Winter,” said Gunni, wiping a bloody sword with a handful of snow. “Let me go after him.”

Swain considered.

“Yes, do so,” he decided at length. “Follow him, if you must, to the sea. I have business to do here with Frakork. When that is attended to, the rest of us will come after you.”

Gunni selected ten of the viking-farers who were comparatively fresh, and stopping only to fill their pouches with food from a near-by farm kitchen, they set out to follow the horses’ tracks in the snow. Swain returned to the skalli, and put his men to gathering torchwood; but he was annoyed to learn that they were all fearful of approaching close to its walls.

“What is the trouble?” he demanded. “There are no men inside.”

“The witch is making spells,” answered Osbiorn Grim’s son, who was bleeding from a stiff cut in the shoulder.

“They will do nobody any harm,” returned Swain. “She tried once to bewitch me, and could not.”

“Nevertheless,” insisted Osbiorn stubbornly, “she is singing in there, and it makes my bowels turn into water to hear her.”

“Will you let a woman fright you?” snapped Swain.

“Go, yourself, and listen to her,” said Osbiorn.

“Yes, Swain, go yourself,” spoke up several more of the older men.

“I would not go near to that skalli for all the gold in Jarl Maddad’s coffers,” declared one of the Atjoklar men, who had been in the rear during the fighting. “She has an evil name, that Frakork. Men say she can wither your limbs or charm the spirit from your body and replace it with a demon.” The sturdy viking-farers, spattered with their enemies’ blood, leaning on their nicked shields and soiled blades, shuddered at such words, and glanced fearfully at the shuttered walls of the skalli.

Swain snorted in derision.

“There is only an old woman—and maybe some more like her,” he said. “I will go in and drag her out myself. You shall see her die.”

Osbiorn crossed himself.

“Have a care, Swain,” he urged. “We can bring up the faggots as near as her magic permits, and if——”

“I shall not need faggots,” retorted Swain.

He selected an ax from a heap of weapons on the ground, and strode up to the skalil door.

V

 

THE skalli was quiet as Swain approached it. A curl of smoke rose from the chimney-hole in the roof. Otherwise there was no evidence that it had been occupied.

Swain raised the ax high above his head and drove the keen blade to the haft in the door-planks hard by the bolts of a hinge. Chips rained to the ground; the crash of the blow resounded over the valley. He hesitated, lifted the ax again and was poised for a second blow when a cool voice spoke to him from the opposite side of the barrier, so close, indeed, that involuntarily he leaped back, fearful of some trickery.

“You waste your strength, Swain. Save it for this old body that may yet spoil your splendid youth.”

Insolent, bodyless, with a chill intonation that conveyed a feeling of passionless hatred and knowledge of unspeakable horrors, that voice was the audible significance of Frakork Maddan’s daughter, whose witchcraft and wizardry had made her name a byword all through the North. Men feared her—and served her; feared her and fought her—and died. Her life was a sinister tapestry of wickedness.

Swain recovered himself, with a burst of anger for having quailed in front of his men, and again he buried his ax-blade in the door-planks. The whole wall of the skalli quivered under the blow.

“You waste threats, witch,” he growled. “Save breath for your death-speech.”

A laugh, as coldly mirthless as the trickle of the valley’s river, was her answer.

“The door is unbarred,” she called. “Come, Swain, and make an end of me—or yourself. Come, and I will tell you how your father, Olaf, and Valthiof died when Olvir burned Dungelsbae skalli and I stood by and watched.”

Swain wrenched his ax free, and pulled at the door-latch. It gave readily, and swung open toward him.

“Show yourself, witch,” he commanded.

But this time her answering laughter came remotely from the skalli’s interior. Swain, standing on the door-step, peered in upon a darkened antechamber, littered with ale-barrels and planks and rests for the long tables which were set up when the housecarls ate in the hall.

“I am here, Swain,” she hailed him mockingly.

Swain set his foot over the threshold as Osbiorn shouted to him from the uneasy group of viking-farers who had watched his assault upon the door.

“She will trick you, Swain! Come out, and let us try her witchcraft with fire.”

“No, we will burn her in the open,” replied Swain. “Make ready the faggots. I will fetch her forth.”

He made certain the antechamber was unoccupied, and crossed it rapidly to an opposite doorway, draped with a leather curtain. This he pushed aside with his ax, lest some one lurked behind it to stab him through its folds; but his precaution was unnecessary. He looked through this inner doorway to the hall of the skalli, the usual long, lofty room, open to the roof-beams, the floor of beaten earth, the walls lined with benches, except on the south side where was the high table. Here stood Frakork, one hand resting upon the table, which was cluttered with weapons and serving-dishes and a dish-lamp burning with a bright, steady flame.

The lamp and the sunlight which streamed through the chimney-hole in the roof illumined the hall sufficiently so that Swain could see Frakork clearly.

The witch-woman looked no different from when he had seen her last. Her tall figure in its clinging robes of black velvet cloth, her full, unlined face, defied the years she had lived; and Swain could not repress another shudder as he recalled the tales of the foul practises by which she was reputed to have retained her physical vigor at an age when other women were bent and worn and content to huddle by a warm fire.

Her green eyes glowed with the icy radiance which gave them their uncanny power. She watched him with an appearance of amused indifference, which yet was void of humor, instinct rather with incarnate wickedness and overknowledge of nameless things beyond all law and reason.

“You have more craft than I credited you with, Swain,” she said in her placid voice. “It was well thought of to come down upon us from Scotland’s side.”

Swain was conscious of a feeling of bitter cold, as if an Iceland wind was shriveling his soul.

“This is no time for talk,” he muttered, and clutched tighter at his ax-helve.

Her green eyes dwelt upon his, and he felt now a numbing power fastening upon his wits.

“No time for talk!” she repeated, jeering him without stressing a syllable. “Yes, it is a time for action, for the consummation of another step in the vengeance I have planned against your house. Olaf and Valthiof are dead. You will die in a few moments—very horribly, Swain; your carls outside will be of no avail to aid you. Then I think Gunni will die as he blunders homeward. And after I shall come to Asleif, myself. Some one must tell her of her sons’ ends. Why not I?”

The cold sensation communicated itself to Swain’s eyelids. They became rigid. He tried to open his mouth, and could not. He made to raise his ax, and it weighted his arm down. The hall dwindled before him. Frakork melted to a bust, a head, a pair of green eyes that blazed with chilling fire.

Frakork’s hateful voice went on, monotonously level, implacable.

“Yes, why not I? I am a woman, Swain, if I am a witch, as you and others say. A malign charge! I, a witch, indeed! Why, what power have I? What harm could my old body do to you at this moment? It is ridiculous! So, as a woman, it will be my duty to go to Asleif, and tell her of her grief. ‘Swain died thus and so. Oh, bravely, Aslief, bravely as the ox that grunts when it feels the knife in its throat! And Gunni was sprawled upon a hillside, with a stake in his entrails. He called upon you at the last! He cried that his God had abandoned him.’

“And then, Swain, I think she will weep. And I shall embrace her gently, as an old woman should, and whisper in her ear things which will rive her brain from its pan and tear her heart into fine-spun scarlet shreds, blackening and besmearing her soul and riving her wits into sundered madness. What think you of that, Swain?”

A shout came from the stead yard, Osbiorn’s voice, scarce dulled by the skalli walls.

“Ho, Swain! Call to us if you live.”

It smote upon Swain’s dulling consciousness like the edge of the ax he still grasped in his right hand, prying a wedge between him and the evil influence which flooded from Frakork’s green eyes.

By an effort so tremendous that it brought a groan to his lips he wrenched his gaze from her face, and strove to answer—

“I live!”

He did not know the voice for his own, quavering, shrill, uncertain; but it stirred him to renewed energy. He realized that he had been in Frakork’s power to an extent which infuriated him, and he brought all his will to bear to withstand the numbing shock of her eyes. Gradually, as he stared across the hall, the full, oval face took shape in the lamp-light, the black-robed figure reappeared.

The green eyes blinked as if they, too, had been released from a burden of effort.

“How do you like my magic, Swain?” purred Frakork.

Swain mustered a laugh that rang forced and hollow.

“I have broken your magic and now I shall break you,” he answered, and raised the ax above his head to strike.

But as he put his foot forward Frakork stooped above the high table and emptied a packet of powder upon the flame of the lamp. There was a flash and a noise such as the sea makes when it pours over the lip of a rock-cavern. A dense, greenish smoke, pungent, eye-biting, billowed upward and started to settle in an impervious blanket upon the chamber.

“I have more magic, Swain,” mocked Frakork’s voice from the heart of the smoke-cloud.

Awed despite himself, Swain dared not charge into it. He had a dim vision of the witch twenty feet distant, and he flung his ax at her with a baffled snarl. He heard a thud as it struck the table, then a cool laugh from Frakork and there was a whisper beside him. He reached out his hand—and touched a spear that quivered in the door-post at his left. Another whisper. The leathern curtain behind him was ripped by a second spear. The air seemed to be filled with whispering voices; a knife, point-first, sped down from overhead and was shattered on his helm.

Swain dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled into the antechamber. The ax he had flung sang over his head as he saw daylight through the dissolving haze of the smoke. He stumbled to the door, fell out and banged it after him. Osbiorn and a dozen others ran to aid him, eyes popping in their bearded faces.

“Has she spelled you, Swain?” “Can you speak?” “Are you whole in your body?” “Are your wits with you?”

Swain found his feet and waved them all to silence.

“We will burn her,” he said grimly. “Yes, she would have put a spell upon me. But for Osbiorn’s call she would have succeeded, She has stronger magic than I thought. But any witch will burn in fire. Bishop William has told me so. Carry those faggots up to the wall. No, no, be not so fearful, fools. If I went in to her, and came forth alive, you can venture so far as the skalli wall.”

They heaped the fat wood against the windward side of the skalli until it was man-high, and then set it alight, compassing the building meanwhile with a mailed circle. The flames spread rapidly, for all the snow piled on the eaves, and the younger men amused themselves by attempting to toss lighted torches in through the chimney-hole. Swain, having recovered his sword from the rear of the building, came and stood gloomily over against the front entrance. He had no feeling of exultation such as he had anticipated. He began to wonder if he should be successful, after all. He was disposed to believe Frakork might yet escape them by some device of black magic beyond their power to prevent. But as the roof caught in earnest and the flames spread across the kitchen end, feeding upon the dried hams that hung from the rafters, his spirits brightened, his confidence was restored. No thing with life in it could long exist in that inferno of fire.

So Frakork decided. While Swain watched, the door was opened and the witch appeared. Sparks from the roof had burned holes in the rich fabric of her dress; her face was streaked with soot. But her green eyes blazed with the same undiminished malignancy, cold as the fires that rage in the heart of a great diamond which men die for and women ruin themselves to possess.

Swain started toward her, sword in hand; but he stopped when she spoke.

“It is no use, Swain. I shall save you the trouble. I choose to die by my own act, if die I must. But do not think that this is the end of the tale. There is more to come, much more. I have seen Gunni dead, and Asleif dead; and at the far end of all I think you, too, will die with victory in your grasp. The riches you win and the honors you gain shall taste sour in your mouth; and all your life Olvir shall be a marsh-light dancing ahead of you to divert you from the greatness you otherwise might win. When you are dead men will say of you, ‘He was Swain Olaf’s son, who might have been a Jarl; but he spent his days pursuing a feud and his wealth in exacting vengeance.’”

She raised a phial to her lips, and tipped back her head.

“It is over, Swain,” she cried. “And it will do you little good.”

And before he could answer her, she had turned upon her heel and gone back into the skalli, closing the door behind her. Afterward some of the viking-farers claimed that they had heard a voice that was unearthly in its beauty singing above the roar of the flames. But what is certain is that a few minutes later the roof fell in, and the next day when the ashes had cooled they did not find so much as a charred bone to indicate how Frakork had died.

Because of this the claim was made and repeated in after years that Frakork had magicked herself away from the skalli and cheated the flames. Yet no man ever saw her again; and Olvir Rosta, who had been a leader el wealth and influence so long as he had her to advise him, became a rover and a trouble-maker wandering from place to place, earning a living by his sword and the craftiness of his wit, which was sufficient in its way, but by no means equal to Frakork’s.

He escaped Gunni, it is true, by abandoning his horses in a pass of the Sudrland mountains and doubling upon the track he had followed, so coming down upon the shores of Scotland’s Firth, where he took boat for the Sudreyar, and after a Winter in hiding went north to Iceland. But he was never after a man of lands; he reckoned his estate in longships, and he had the specter of Swain’s vengeance always at his elbow—as, indeed, Swain also had Olvir’s vengeance mouthing over his shoulder wherever he went.

Men made a saying of it:

Olvir’s roasting,
Swain’s burning,
Bring the ravens
Oft-returning.

And it is to be said that more men died through this feud and its consequences than through any other cause that was ever known in the North. But at that time Swain recked little of it. He gained much honor from his march through Scotland, and the King of Scots sent for him and invited him to curb the Redbeards who wreaked havoc with the settled parts of the kingdom. Jarl Rognvald also listened to him with increased respect, and he earned popularity by dividing the spoils of the raid among his followers without claiming any share himself.

Only Aslief, his mother, gave him small praise. When he came to her skalli on Gairsey she kissed him, according to her wont, but said nothing, and Swain, who regarded her alone among women, was very humble.

“I did what I might, mother,” he said.

“You did all that a man could,” she answered. “But I think it would have been better if you had failed rather than achieved a half-measure of success. However, you must continue as you have begun, for your father and Valthiof will not rest easy wherever they are until Olvir is slain.”

“Long years or short years, come good luck or bad, I will slay him,” promised Swain.

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1. Hebrides
2. Athole.
3. Jerusalem
4. Moray Firth
5. Burghead