Chapter 15

Once we had settled down to that chase there was quiet on the decks, and the ship was on an even keel. The ladies came out of their cabin under the after deck and sat them down on a bench which ran across under the shelter of the bulkhead, and I saw Gerda with them. Thoralf's wife had cared for her, and had done it well, so that she seemed to be a very queen as she sat there with those two making much of her. The elder lady had known her as a child, for she had been in Thorwald's hall with Thoralf the Tall on that visit of which he spoke. The younger lady, whose name I knew afterward to be Ortrud, was of Gerda's age.

Presently it was plain that Gerda would have us speak to them, and we went and were made known to them, and after that we sat and told of our doings for half an hour. Thoralf's wife had naught but thanks to us for caring for Gerda, so that I was glad when Hakon joined us for a little while.

He went forward soon, taking us with him, and sought Asbiorn, who sat on the deck still scouring his wet arms and mail with the cloths the men had lent him. Hakon asked if he could tell anything of a large Norse ship which should have gone west some days ago. It was that which we had seen on the day of our wreck.

"I have heard of a ship which has gone to trade at Sligo," said Asbiorn. "It was in our minds to look for her ourselves presently. That is far to the westward, and if you are in any hurry, you may as well let my folk go, and follow her."

"No hurry at all," answered Hakon. "It seems that these ships of yours are too well known for me to overlook. My men say that I am sure to have to settle with Heidrek at some time, and I may as well do so here as on the Norway shore next summer. I shall be busy then, and Heidrek will have heard thereof. I am not busy just now."

"You will be when you overhaul the ships," said Asbiorn. "But they are of less draught than yours, and you may miss them yet. Round yon point is the Bann River, whence we came this morning."

Hakon turned away with a laugh, and watched the chase for a time. Then he went aft and sat him down by the steersman, with Earl Osric and Thoralf the Tall. Heidrek's ships were swift when before the wind, and these great vessels might not overhaul them until they had reached some shallow waters in the river mouth which Heidrek had already entered. But there waited Dalfin and the Irish levies, who would be gathered by this time in force.

Mayhap Heidrek would not chance being pent between two foes.

So that chase went on, and I wearied of watching it at last. Then Bertric and I went to Asbiorn, for we would ask concerning some things which had happened. Men were serving round the midday meal at the time, and we ate and talked. The first thing I asked him was what he had done with our ship.

"Sold her to one Arnkel in Norway, so to speak," he answered, with a grin. "He was the man who had to do with this treasure ship you picked up."

"Then you had some pact with Arnkel?"

"More or less," he said; "but there was a deal of chance in the matter. In the gale I was outsailed, for your ship is not speedy, as you know. The other two took refuge among the islands on the Norse shore, and there heard of the great mound laying of Thorwald which was to be. The ship had passed in the dawn of that morning, and had not far to go. Whereon my father sent a message to Arnkel, whom he knew, to say that he was at hand, and landed and fell on him. As it turned out, he had better have taken his ships, for Thorwald's folk set the ship adrift to save her from pillage. It seems that they meant her to burn, but blundered that part. There was nothing to fight for then, so they ceased. I came to the islands and there had news of my father, and followed him. On the way I passed Thorwald's ship at a distance, and was afraid of her, she seeming to be a fully-armed war vessel. So I let her pass."

"Then you brought the news to Arnkel that she was not burning?"

"So it was. Whereon he would have us sail at once in chase of her on his account. As we would not do that, and he would not let us go on our own, there was a small fight. In the end Arnkel's men manned your ship and we sailed in company, the bargain being that the treasure was to fall to the finder. We thought we might have little difficulty in overhauling the vessel, and should have had none if it had not been for you. Had you picked up a crew of fishers?"

"No; we managed somehow by ourselves."

"I always told my father that Bertric was the best seaman we had in all our crowd," Asbiorn said frankly. "You did well that time."

Then he told us how they had searched for us much in the way which we had thought likely, and so at last had heard of a wreck when they reached the river Bann.

"Asbiorn," I said, "did you know that there was a lady on board this ship which was to be burnt?"

"No, on my word," he said, starting somewhat. "So that is where the young queen was hidden, after all? There was wailing when her men found that she was missing, and they said that she must have gone distraught in her grief, and wandered to the mountains. How was she left on board?"

"Arnkel put her there," I answered.

"So that explains his way somewhat. He seemed to want that ship caught, and yet did not. When we did sail, he steered wide of the course she took, and too far to the northward."

Then his face grew very black, and he growled: "Bad we are, but not so bad as Arnkel, who would have men think him an honest man. Now, if it were but to get in one fair blow at him for this, it were worth joining Hakon. I take it that he will hear your tale--and maybe mine."

"And the lady's also," Bertric answered. "Well--wait until you know what befalls your ships."

"And my father," answered Asbiorn, getting up and looking ahead. "To say the truth, I am not altogether sorry of an excuse to leave that company, which is bad, though I say it. Yet he was driven out of his own home by his foes, and thereafter his hand has been against all men. It is the crew he has gathered which I would leave, not him."

We had not gained on the two pirate ships. Now they were rounding that headland whence they had come, and were altering their course. Asbiorn said that they were making for the river mouth, and half an hour thereafter we opened it out and saw that Heidrek was far within it, heading landward. The beacon fires blazed up afresh as the watchers knew that he had returned, and presently each fire had a second alongside it. Men thought that Heidrek had brought us to help him raid the land.

There were Norsemen on board, men from Dublin, who knew the mouth of the river as well as need be, and better than Heidrek, who had been into it but this once before. One of them piloted the ships after him, for Hakon meant to end the business even as he had said, here and now, if he could, and sent for Bertric that he might tell him more of the enemy. He heard somewhat of our story at this time, we sitting on the after deck with him, but he said little about it then.

I suppose that we stood into the river over the falling tide for five miles or more. Then Heidrek took to his oars, finding that he was chased in earnest, and Hakon did so likewise at once. It was a beautiful river, wide and clear, with great, green hills on either side, and thick forests at their feet. But never a boat on its waters, or man on its shores did we see. Only from each hilltop the smoke of the war beacons rose and eddied.

The channel narrowed presently as we held on, going with all caution. Then we opened out a wide valley, down which ran a fair stream, and there we saw the Irish at last. High up they were, crossing the valley in a column of black-garbed warriors which seemed endless. There was no sparkle of mail among them, but here and there a speck of light flashed from an axe blade or spear point, to tell us that they were armed men. They were keeping pace with Heidrek's ships by crossing from point to point, and how long they may have watched him and us from the forests I cannot say.

Now the river took a sharp bend, and I heard the pilot say to his mate that Heidrek had better have a care at this stage of tide, while Asbiorn, forward, was watching intently. The tide was almost at its lowest by this time, and Heidrek's hindmost ship was about half a mile ahead of us. Hakon meant to pen them in some stretch of the river which the pilot knew, and there deal with them. It was said to be a deep reach with a bar at its head, beyond which no ship might pass until high water.

Suddenly there came a shout from the men forward, and the pilot cried to the oarsmen to cease rowing. Heidrek's second ship had gone aground. We could see her crew trying to pole her off, and Hakon asked if we could reach her.

"Not by five score yards," answered the pilot; "but see what happens."

I suppose that he knew the Irish ways, for he had hardly spoken when somewhat did happen. Out of the fringe of thicket and forest along the bank of the river swarmed the Irish, with yells and howls which reached us plainly, and flung themselves into the water to wade out to the ship. The bank was black with them, and the light from their axes overhead shimmered and sparkled in a wave of brightness. The water was full shoulder deep round the ship, but they did not heed that. Nor did they pay any attention to us, for we could not reach them, and they knew it. They would deal with us presently in one way or another. Meanwhile, this ship was at their mercy.

Heidrek's other ship held on round the bend, and may have been out of sight of her consort before she grounded, as the river bent with its channel close under the banks. At all events, she did not return to help.

"This affair is off our hands," said Hakon. "Best not meddle therewith, even if we could. It is a great fight."

So it was, for the Danes fought well. The sides of the ship were high above the wading men, and the spears flashed out between the war boards, and the axe and sword were at work across the gunwales. Yet the Irish never fell back from their swarming attack, and their cries never ceased. One or two wounded men floated, paddling with their hands, down past us, and hurled curses and defiance at us also. Phelim and Fergus cried to them to forbear, for we were friends, but they did not heed them, and passed, to reach the shore below us as they might. We did not watch them.

For now the Irish had borne down the defence amidships, where the run of the gunwales was lowest. The sheer weight of them as they clambered, one over the other, on board, listed the ship over, and made the boarding easier for those who followed. The wild Danish war shout rose once or twice, and then it was drowned by the Irish yell. After that there was a sudden silence, for the fighting was over.

Then the victors leapt out of the ship and went ashore as swiftly as they had come, and the forest hid them. The ship was hard and fast aground now, and we pulled up abreast of her slowly, having no mind to share her fate. Whether the Irish took any of her crew with them as captives I do not know, but I saw her decks, and it seemed hardly possible. So terrible a sight were they, that I feared lest Gerda should in any way see it. But the doors of the cabin had been shut, doubtless lest the fighting should fray the ladies.

"Will you venture farther, King Hakon?" asked the pilot.

"We will take one ship farther," he said. "The other shall bide here, and see that this ship is not burnt by these wild folk. Mayhap we shall want her."

Thoralf laughed at that. "We have no men to man her withal," he said.

"We have men to sail her to Norway, and there wait the men to fight for us," Hakon answered gaily. "We shall meet no foes on the high seas, and we have met a queen whose men will hail us as their best friends."

Thoralf shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "None can say that you fare forward sadly, Hakon."

"This is the worse of the two ships," Bertric said. "The other is Heidrek's own. He is not here. Asbiorn yonder commanded this."

"Asbiorn is in luck today," Earl Osric said, nodding toward those terrible decks.

But Asbiorn stood on the foredeck with his back to that which he had looked on, biting the ends of his long moustache, and pale with rage. I did not wonder thereat.

Now Osric hailed the other ship and bade her anchor in the stream while we went on. The pilot said that we could safely do so, and that the next reach was the one of which he had spoken as a trap. Then his comrade went into the bows with a long pole, sounding, and so we crept past the stranded vessel, and into the most lovely reach of river I had ever seen. It was well nigh a lake, long and broad, between the soft hills and forest-clad shores, and the water was bright and clear as glass beneath our keel, so that I saw a great silver salmon flash like an arrow past the ship as we held on. There was a village at the head of the reach, and men swarmed in it like angry bees round a hive's mouth. Only the long black ship, which still pulled slowly away from us, and the fiercely-burning fires on every hilltop spoilt the quiet of the place.

"Now it is a question whether the Irish or we take Heidrek," said Hakon. "It is plain that his time has come, one way or the other. On my word, I am almost in the mind to hail him and bid him yield to us to save himself from these axes."

I believe that so Hakon would have done, but that the chance never came. And that was the doing of Heidrek himself, or of his crew. What madness of despair fell on those pirates I cannot say, but Asbiorn has it that they went berserk as one man at the last, as the wilder Vikings will, when the worst has to be faced.

The Irish swarmed at the upper end of this reach, as I have said, and those who had dealt with the other ship were coming fast along the shore to join them. There must have been five hundred of them in all, if not more. The river beyond the broad reach narrowed fast, and one could see by the broken water that there was no passing upward any farther until the tide was at its height. But before the village was a long sloping beach, on which lay two or three shapeless black skin boats, as if it was a good landing place with deep water up to the shore. Above the village, on the shoulder of the near hill, was an earthwork, and some tents were pitched within its ring. It was the gathering-place to which Dalfin had gone this morning, and no doubt his father, Myrkiartan the King, was there.

There came a hoarse roar across the water to us, which rose and fell, and shaped itself into a song, so terrible that I saw Hakon's men grow restless as they heard it. The pirates were singing their war song for the last time.

Their ship swung round and headed for the village, and with all her oars going, and the white foam flying from her bows, and boiling round the oar blades, she charged the beach and hurled herself half out of the water as she reached it.

Over her bows went her men with a shout. Before the Irish knew that anything had happened, the last of the Danes were halfway up the little beach, and were forming up into a close-locked wedge, which moved swiftly toward the village even as it grew into shape.

"What are they about?" asked men of one another as they watched, breathless, from our decks.

"They will try to win to yonder camp," one said in answer, and that was likely, though what hope could lie in that none could say.

Now the wedge had reached the little green which was between the village and the shore. Before it lay the road hillward, steep and rough, and that was full of Irish.

Still the Irish held back. They looked to see our ship follow, no doubt, and would have all their foes ashore at once, lest we should make some flank attack in the heat of the fight. But the Danes moved onward steadily.

Then into the opening of the lane rode a man on a tall chestnut horse, and the Irish yelled and thronged to him as he leaped off it. It was Dalfin himself, as I saw when he was on foot. I suppose that he had managed to find this steed somewhere on the way, meeting with mounted men hurrying to the levy like himself most likely. If the fishers were yet with him I could not see. They were lost in the crowd round him.

Now Dalfin's sword went up, and the men shook themselves into some sort of order. A slogan rose, wild and shrill, and with the prince at their head they flung themselves on the Danes, lapping round them, so that they hid them from our sight. Only in the midst of the leaping throng there was a steady, bright cluster of helms, above which rose and fell the weapons unceasingly.

The Irish could not stay that wedge. It went on, cleaving its way through the press as a ship cleaves its way to windward through the waves, and after it had passed, there was a track of fallen men to tell of how it had fared. There were mail-clad men among that line of fallen, and those, of course, were not Irish. They, like Dalfin, would wear neither helm nor byrnie.

Slowly the Danes fought their way, uselessly to all seeming, away from the water and hillward. Without heeding the depth of the lane from the village, though the darts rained on them from its banks, they went on, and we lost sight of the fighting, though the black throng of warriors who could not reach their foe still swarmed between them and the village. Some of them came back and yelled at us from the shore, and once they seemed as if they were about to launch the two boats which lay on the strand for an attack on us. We had dropped a small anchor at this time.

Father Phelim saw that and came to me.

"Let me go to the young prince," he said; "I may be of use here. There will be trouble, unless someone tells the poor folk that these ships are friendly in very deed."

So we went to Hakon, and I told him what Phelim thought.

"The good father is right enough," he answered. "But how is he to get ashore unharmed? To send a boat would mean that it would be fallen on before it was seen who was in it."

"Let me swim," said Phelim stoutly.

"Maybe your tonsure might save you, father," said Hakon; "but I would not risk it. One cannot see much of a man in the water."

"Let me have one of the small boats--it can be launched from the far side of the ship--and I will row him ashore," I said. "I can speak the Gaelic."

Hakon considered. "Well," he said, "it may save endless trouble, and I do not see why you should not go. Phelim must stand up, and they will see him."

Thoralf would have us bide on board, letting Phelim stand on the bows and hail the shore. But that would have made trouble at once, for he would have been thought to be a captive. Then Earl Osric said that we might as well wait until we must, but Hakon and I and Phelim thought it easier to deal with the few men here than to wait until the rest returned, most likely flushed with the victory their numbers must needs give them. So in the end the small quarterboat was got over the side away from the village, and we took our place. Phelim was in the bows, and I set my helm at my feet, and had a dark cloak over my mail.

I pulled away from the ship and came round her stern in a wide sweep, in order not to seem at once as if we came from her. Then we went swiftly to the beach, and Phelim stood in the bows and signed to the men who stood along it. They saw what he was, and ran together to meet him, ceasing their cries to hear him. But I was not going to run more risk than I could help. So soon as we were twenty yards from the beach, I stopped pulling, and bade Phelim say his say.

He told them what was needful, and they growled at first, as if they could not believe him. Then he pointed to Fergus, who could be seen on board the ship, and they grew more satisfied. At last he told them that they must fetch Dalfin the Prince as soon as possible, for that we of the ship, or some of us, were those who had brought him back. And at last he told how there was a queen on board who had avenged the death of Dubhtach of the Spearshafts, and given back the torque which was lost.

That was all they needed to hear, for the torque had been seen, and word had passed round concerning it. The black looks faded, and there was naught but friendliness thereafter. Phelim asked for some leader, and a man stepped forward, and so took messages for Dalfin, and went across the green and up the lane with its terrible token of the fighting, that he might give them as soon as it was possible. Then we rowed back slowly, for it was not worthwhile to go ashore.

"Thanks," said Hakon, meeting us at the gangway. "That is well done. I will own that we had nearly run ourselves into a trap, and you have taken a load off my mind."

"No need to have stayed here," said Thoralf.

"Nay, but I want that ship, and now I think we may get her. I did but stay to see if it might be done."

I went and found Asbiorn, for somewhat was troubling me. The thought of the men who had been taken at the same time as myself, and must needs be in one or other of these ships.

"We took seven in all," he said. "Well, I had five. Two got away in Norway as soon as we fell out with Arnkel. One was too much hurt to be of use, and we left him there. My father took the other two, and they are yonder with him, I suppose. Those two who joined us of their own free will were in my ship. They were good men."