Swain Fostri

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

 

GRAY sky, gray sea, gray land. Greasy, steep-crested combers that heaved and toppled endlessly out of the west against the slaty rocks which lifted jagged crests toward smoky cloud wraiths overhead. And riding the waves—poised midway betwixt sea floor and sky roof—a half dozen low-waisted, crawling craft, wet hulls all green and sheeny black, oar shafts a-drip as they flashed up and down, single masts tossing crazily, dragon prows dipping and preening in a gay glitter of green, red and gold.

 

A Complete
Novelette

SWAIN FOSTRI

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

Author of “Swain Kingsbane,” “Swain’s Folly,” etc.

Foremost of the little fleet was Swain Olaf's son's great dragon Deathbringer, dashing the sea to foam with her sixty oars, while the men on her rowing benches chanted in harmony the grunting refrain of the “Rowers' Song'—“Ha! Hee! Ho! Ha-aah!”

Erik Skallagrim's son, who was Swain's forecastleman, beat the time for the stroke on his shield; now and then a burst of song from one of the two scalds, Armod and Oddi the Little, who attended Swain, enlivened the task, or, at a word from Erik, a fresh man from those who stood on poop and forecastle took the place of a rower whose back muscles had wearied or whose hands were become tender from the oarbite.

Astern of Deathbringer followed another dragon and four longships, the least of them pulling twenty oars a side, and each craft crammed with men, whose shields were jammed edge to edge in the gunwale notches. Every poop showed the glimmer of mail and helm and the flare of crimson cloaks where the chiefs stood by the helmsmen.

There were full arms' chests lashed to the poop and forecastle bulkheads, and beneath the rowing benches were stowed fur sleeping bags for the carls who labored at the bucking oars. Under the gangway boards were packed barrels of ripe Orkney ale and a sufficiency of stones, both for ballast and for close work in the fighting. A stout fleet, and well-supplied.

Swain, himself, stood behind Erik, keeping an eye on all his ships, and conning the course as they drew in closer to the land. He was a tall man, but not so tall as the tallest; thick in the barrel, with a ruddy golden beard and eyes of a cold, merciless blue.

Of him it was said that he was the greatest man in all the Northern lands, albeit in station he was no more than a bondi—farmer—in the Orkneys. And certain it is that in his day the scalds were tireless in the chanting of his praises, notwithstanding he was one who never gave rewards for the celebrating of his deeds and would tolerate only the two scalds, Armod and Oddi, in his company. And these two, rather because of their valiance as warriors than for their scaldcraft, at which, indeed, he was accustomed ordinarily to jeer.

From his youth he had been successful as a vikingfarer, and early won fame by reason of his feud with Olvir Rosta^[1] who was as noted for wickedness as Swain was for honorable achievements. Olvir had been the bane of Swain's father and mother and his two brothers, while Swain had burned Olvir's grandmother, Frakork the Witch, and driven Olvir into outlawry.

Back and forth across the world the two harried one another, and a red trail they blazed, recking naught of whom they slew or injured, if the doing of it harmed the other.

Once Swain pursued Olvir to Mikligard^[2] and compelled the Roisterer to flee the service of the Greek emperor. With Swain hard upon his heels, Olvir sailed westward beyond Irland^[3] even to Greenland, and fearing that Swain would come after him there, fared on west and south to that Wineland the Good which Leif Erik's son had discovered.

Nor was his fear unjustified, for Swain followed Olvir's keel furrow to Greenland, chased him south past Furdurstrandi—the Long and Wonderful Beaches, whose silvery gleam has lured men to death by thousands—and finally ran him to ground in the forest inland from the Skraelings' Coast, where no Norsemen, save those of their companies, ever had been before.

But that tale is told elsewhere, and in this place we say only that fate cheated Swain of his vengeance again, and Olvir turned his prow eastward, with the Orkneyman astern.

Thereafterward the two enemies became involved upon opposite sides in the series of Kings' Wars which rent Norway, when the three sons of King Harald Gillichrist—King Ingi, King Sigurd and King Eystein—fell out amongst themselves and struggled to attain sole power. Swain espoused Ingi's cause, and for Ingi, who was a cripple, slew Sigurd in a street fray in front of Sigrid Saeta's tavern in Bergen, whereby he was dubbed Kingsbane. He also aided Ingi in the struggle with Eystein, and through his craft Ingi was able to secure Eystein's death at the hands of the traitor, Simon Skalp.

And when Olvir and the survivors of the chiefs who had acknowledged Sigurd and Eystein set up another opponent to Ingi in the person of the young King Hakon Herdabreid—The Broadshouldered—a son of Sigurd's by the left hand, Ingi called upon Swain once more, and but for the falling out of his two best friends in Norway, Gregorius Dag's son and Erling Skakki—Wrynecked—would have been carried a third time to victory by Swain's wily counsel and skill in battle.

But it was not to be. Erling abandoned King Ingi's part in a rage against Gregorius; Gregorius was trapped and slain through his own rashness; and in a fight against hopeless odds on the river ice near Oslo, Ingi was slain by Olvir Rosta, bearing himself bravely to the last, and Swain and the few who lived out the encounter must flee north to Bergen.

Any man other than Swain would have abandoned the contest then and returned to his lands in the Orkneys, where he was wealthy and respected; yes, where he practically ruled the domain of Jarl Harald, whom he had fostered as a youth and who never undertook to cross Swain in any matter of importance. But Swain was no man to abandon an issue in which he had concerned himself.

“This side of death a man can always be victor,” he said.

He had set out to unite Norway under one king, at first, because Ingi had offered him a fitting reward, but as the war continued and waxed bitterer and more desperate his feeling changed, and the task he had assumed originally as a viking venture, an opportunity for gaining power, became an obligation of honor.

To Erling, sorrow-stricken and remorseful for the deaths of Gregorius and King Ingi, that had been brought about by Erling's readiness to listen to the foolish counsel of his wife, the Princess Kristin, Swain had summed up his attitude in these grim words:

“You have no claim upon me. You forfeited it when you allowed Ingi to march to his death. But this is the first defeat I have suffered at Olvir's hands, and I do not propose to let him enjoy his triumph any longer than I can help. Also, Ingi was a brave man and a fair comrade, and I shall not permit a king to live and reign who was his enemy. For another thing, it was Ingi's desire that there should be one king over Norway, and one king I shall make—and the best king for my purposes is your son, Magnus, who, through his mother, is grandson to King Sigurd the Jorsalafarer.”^[4]

Swain and Erling had more talk, and the end of it was that Erling agreed to put away his wife Kristin, lest she make more trouble for him and spoil his son's luck, and Swain contrived things so that the chiefs of their faction decided in favor of Magnus's claim to the crown, and awarded it to him in open Thing meeting, at the same time appointing his father Erling to be his guardian and protector, seeing Magnus was a child of five years and incapable of ordering a shieldwall or fighting a longship.

After that they and their friends fled Norway for the balance of the winter, partly because they required more aid to help them in the fight they had ahead of them, and partly because otherwise Hakon might have entrapped them in Bergen and slain them one and all by the might of the multitude of housecarls he had gathered around his banner, thanks to the victory he had won and the crafty advice he had from Olvir Rosta and a certain great man of Norway named Sigurd of Reyr, who was the chief of the lendermen—nobles—who had taken the part of Broadshoulders in the struggle for the crown.

Erling and the child King Magnus and the most of the Norse chiefs loyal to them voyaged to Denmark to ask help from King Valdemar. Swain fared for the Orkneys to rouse his friends and equip his fleet. And the two parties covenanted to meet as soon as they might after the Easter season at Bergen, and launch in that town their first attempt to win back the land they had lost.

Hakon, too, was not idle. His emissaries wore their footsoles sore traversing fiorside and seaside, uplands and dales, with promises of reward for their friends and threats for their enemies. Far and wide the word sped through the North lands that in Norway the ravens would have a rich feast in the spring.

Men of all persuasions, landless men and men of property, outlaws and inlaws, rich and poor, thrall and farmer, merchant and shipman, discussed the one question around the skalli fires: Who should be king when the next winter came? And more often than not the question that followed this one was: What device has Swain hidden behind his shield?

For the Norsefolk knew Swain, and feared or admired him, according to their persuasions.

“A helm cracker, the Orkneyman, carls!”

“Ho, I wish never to face him when the shieldwalls crash or prows bite home!”

“Yes, yes, what Swain thinks the lendermen do.”

“If Hakon rules, Swain plots.”

“Ho, there, what news from westward? Is the Orkneyman returned?”

Men spoke so along the strands of the merchant towns from Konungahela, south in the Viken country, to Nidaros, north in Throndhjem. Everywhere they watched for Swain, honing their sword blades, refitting their spearheads, stringing their bows, furbishing their mail—eying one another askance. For who could tell in which king's array his neighbor would be on the morrow?

II

“Meet her, carls, meet her!” rasped Swain to the steersmen who tugged at their big sweeps under the incurving dragon's tail, gasping for breath as the salt spray blanketed their nostrils.

They grinned acknowledgment, and one panted an answer—

“She is not stead broken, this beast.”

“It is for you to break her,” retorted Swain.

He turned to Erik, who stood at the break of the poop, balancing himself easily on the short, bowed limbs which had obtained him the nickname of “Crooked Legs.” A little man was Erik, as little in stature as Oddi the scald, whom men called the Little; but Erik was tremendously broad in the shoulders and heavy of chest, where Oddi was wizened and slender, and his face was a flat brown mask, while Oddi's was a maze of wrinkles and creases, like the shell of a nut. Erik was Iceland born, and noted for his store of wise sayings, as well as for his shipcraft, weaponcraft and steadcraft.

“Well, little man,” growled Swain, peering under his hand at the towering coast they neared, “I may have lost my memory, but otherwise I would say those rocks are no Bergen landfall.”

“Your memory is untouched,” returned Erik. “Whatever that land is, we are not in sight of the heads of Hardanger Fiord.”

“Humph!” Swain's voice boomed from deep down in his chest. “We are far off our course, it seems. And there are not many places in Norway where we have reason to expect a welcome.”

Armod, who was clinging to the weather gunwale, raised a sudden shout.

“A passage, Swain, a water passage! See! To larboard! Inside that island yonder. It looks like a fiord or river mouth.”

“You are right,” assented Swain, after a moment's scrutiny. “There is shelter for us, at any rate.”

“And shelter we need,” spoke up Erik. “Our carls are but half men after the battering they have had. St. Magnus! Three days of westerly swell and easterly gales! Whoever heard the like? Our luck has been with us so far or else we had not kept all our company.”

“I am not inclined to overstrain my luck,” rumbled Swain, “but we are not Hakon's folk, and if Hakon's folk are within there, why——”

“I will go ashore, and discover where we may be,” volunteered Armod.

He was very tall, this scald, and reputed to be the handsomest man in Norway. He had long yellow hair and beard, silky fine. He was fastidious in his garb, affecting the Frankish fashions in gear and in speech, and he spoke with a languid drawl as if any effort was too tedious for him. But save Oddi there was no scald fit to match words with him, and in seafight or landfight no warrior could venture before him.

“No, no,” denied Oddi. “If any go ashore he should be I.”

“And why?” demanded Armod.

“Because, my long alehorn, your figure is marked from end to end of the land, while, I——”

“Could pass off as a thrall, no doubt,” concluded Armod. “But I call to your attention that it was I who spoke first, and——”

“And I call to the attention of you both that it will be I who say who shall go or stay,” interposed Swain. “I think that neither of you will have occasion to try your land legs.”

They had steered around a cape which projected north from the island whose mass Armod had descried, and had had a fair view of the waters that lay betwixt it and the mainland. Swain pointed over the starboard bow at a huddle of masts that were barely discernible through the murky air far up the inlet where the storm's force was abated.

“Friends or foes?” asked the fox when he blundered into the kennel,” said Erik.

Swain's teeth showed white against the red of his beard.

“We are wolves, not foxes, little man. They must be strong mastiffs, and a numerous pack, who would pull us down.”

“More numerous they are,” asserted Oddi. “There are eight or ten of them, at least.”

Swain nodded thoughtfully.

“Yet I do not propose to turn back,” he said. “If they would fight, I believe we can render a good account of ourselves, and there is always the chance that we have stumbled upon some of our friends. Erling must have sent men ahead of him to raise folk for King Magnus.”

He scowled at the rocky gray land which was closing in upon either hand.

“I should like to know where we are,” he growled. “That would tell us more than aught else.”

“It has the look of the Viken country to me,” said Armod.

“There are houses,” exclaimed Erik, “beyond the ships.”

“Yes, a town,” agreed Swain.

“And now I recognize it,” declared Oddi. “Do you see that hill to the eastward? And the white of buildings on it? That is a farm I have often visited. They brew a heady ale, which——”

Swain dropped a huge hand on the little scald's shoulders.

“Forget the ale,” commanded the Orkneyman. “What is the town, drunkard?”

“Tunsburg.”

“It is so,” exclaimed Armod at once.

Erik, also, silently nodded his head.

“Tunsburg,” reflected Swain. “This is not to our credit as shipmen, Icelander. We are a long way off our course for Bergen, and in the heart of our enemies' country.”

“As for the enemies' country, that I grant you,” replied Erik. “But who could have reckoned a sure course, tossed about as we were, and without sight of star or sun for three days on end? I say again we are fortunate to be here.”

“Fortunate or unfortunate, the future must prove,” growled Swain in his gruff way. “Open up those arms' chests, and serve out bows and spears. Bid the rowers don their mail. Relieve them, all of you who are boun.^[5] If we must fight we shall be ready.”

He lifted his voice in a roar of command to the dragon next astern, and bellowed similar instructions to its captain, Kolbiorn Jon's son, telling Kolbiorn likewise to pass them on to the following craft, which were beginning to round the cape into the quieter waters under the island's lee.

Men scrambled along the gangway, the relieving crew watching their opportunities to slip into the benches by tens, so that at no time would the ship lose her weigh; and as fast as the relieved oarsmen gained the open spaces forward and aft they fell to buckling on their armor, clapped helms on head, snatched up shields and weapons and ran to their fighting stations, spearmen, axmen and swordsmen on poop and forecastle, bowmen the length of the gangway, prepared to cover the rowers who crouched low on the benches under the protection of the gunwale shields.

In the meantime, too, the shipping by the town commenced to boil with activity. Small boats plied back and forth from the strand, and the piers became black with folk. Horsemen could be seen flogging their steeds up the shore paths, and knots of helms showed in clearings here and there, evidently hastening toward Tunsburg.

“We have stirred a hornets' nest,” commented Erik.

Swain, who had been staring with a puzzled expression at the vessels in front of them, paid no attention to this remark.

“Ho, scalds,” he exclaimed, “that is a strange longship which lies nearest us. By the Hammer, I never saw her like—in these waters. She has the build of those vast buses and dromonds we saw in the Greek emperor's fleet at Mikligard. Do you remember?”

“I do, indeed,” rejoined Oddi. “And what is more, Swain, she is no longship. There! Her folk are thrusting out the oars; there are three rows, one above the other. The Greeks used such ships——”

“She is what the Greeks called a trireme,” interrupted Armod. “We used to marvel how they pulled all the oars without confusion. How came she here? Hakon had no craft like her that I ever heard of.”

“She is not Hakon's,” snapped Swain. “Humph! This is a coil. She must carry as many carls as three of our dragons. I am of a mind to have a closer look at her.”

“Her folk are of the same mind,” said Erik. “Here she heads.”

“And her spawn behind her,” added Oddi as the huddle of strange hulls and masts dissolved into an orderly line of ships.

“'When the packs meet, teeth click,'” quoted Swain. “But dog and dog may bark peacefully at each other. Ho, Kolbiorn!” he hailed Seascraper astern. 'Bide as you are. I go forward to see who is in Tunsburg before us.”

Kolbiorn sprang to his poop gunwale, a dark, sober-faced man, trader turned viking.

“Not alone, Swain!” he protested. “There are ten ships against you.”

“By myself I can perhaps avoid a fight—which, I am bound to say, I should prefer,” replied Swain. “Also, it is possible they are friends. If I require aid from you, however, I will hoist my war shield to the masthead.”

When Deathbringer left her companions and came on alone the enormous bus preceding the Tunsburg ships made signal to her consorts and they lay on their oars and permitted her to continue without them.

“Here are others not so keen for battle,” remarked Swain. “I hope these are not Erling's friends. I should be ill pleased to think our folk were so loath at the weaponwork.”

“Nevertheless, I begin to think they are friends,” declared Oddi. “I have seen that gilt helm on the trireme's poop before this day. Holy Magnus, how it flames, even in this light!”

Armod started abruptly.

“You have said it, Oddi!” proclaimed the tall scald. “Mark his strut as he paces the deck. Yes, yes, many's the time we have seen that helm in other days.”

“If you mean Eindride Ungi,”^[6] said Swain skeptically, “he is no nearer than Mikligard.”

“Who?” asked Erik curiously. “Eindride Ungi, who commands the Varangian guards of the Greek emperor?”

“Yes, he,” insisted Oddi. “I would swear to that helm on any deck.”

“And better still, I will take oath to that strut of Eindride's,” cried Armod. “He is as vain as the peacocks in the emperor's gardens.”

Swain frowned without answering, but Erik wagged his head in vigorous dissent.

“It would never be Eindride,” said the forecastleman. “Why, Swain got him a fat office under the emperor when we were in Mikligard after Olvir these many years gone. What would fetch Eindride home, where he will be no more than one among many lendermen?”

“Vanity, as like as not,” said Swain suddenly. “The scalds are in the right again, Erik. That is Eindride. The fool could not keep away from Norway when crowns were tumbling. He would have told himself that his chance was as good as another's.”

Swain's savage laugh rang across the narrowing gap beyond which the trireme was lashing the water with her hundred and fifty oars. Eindride heard it, and leaped to the gilded stern of his vessel, a gorgeous figure in chased and gilded pantzer suit^[7] with crested golden helm, a gold and crimson cloak fluttering from a jeweled broach at his throat.

This Eindride was a young son of a good family in the Viken district, who had gone to Mikligard in the service of the Greek emperor, as has been said, and later, had accompanied Swain on that voyage in pursuit of Olvir Rosta which was celebrated in the Northern lands as “Swain's Chase.” He was a brave fellow, but so vain that any crafty-witted adversary could twist him around a spearshaft and, but for Swain, Olvir Rosta would have ruined him upon a time Eindride's interests had clashed with the Roisterer's. Men called him Weathercock.

“Who laughs at Eindride Ungi?” he shouted now.

“Swain Olaf's son laughed,” roared Swain. “But it is for you to say whether I laughed with you or at you, Eindride.”

“Well met, Swain!” cried Eindride. “It has been years since we encountered. I could wish we were on the same side of the shieldwall, though.”

“Ho,” answered Swain. “Are we enemies, then?”

“If what I hear be true.”

“And what is that?”

The two vessels had drawn within arrowshot, and,a wave of the hand from their commanders brought each to a gradual stop, the oars drifting idly in the lather of their wakes. They lay almost broadside to one another.

Eindride hesitated.

“Why, all men say you hold for Magnus Erling's son,” he said finally.

“I hold for King Magnus,” assented Swain with the faintest emphasis. “Are you well advised, Eindride, to take sides so speedily when you are new come from the South?”

“I am a Vikenman,” retorted Eindride. “And my friends in the country are for Hakon.”

“For Hakon, eh? I thought Hakon's strength lay in the north, in the Throndhjem dales.”

Eindride laughed jeeringly.

“It is plainly to be seen that you, too, are new come from oversea, Swain. Tunsburg is Hakon's town.”

“So you tell me,” derided Swain.

“Come ashore with me, and you shall meet the king, himself,” promised Eindride. “He holds Tunsburg today—he and Olvir Rosta.”

Swain dug his fingers in his beard, considering. This was grave news, news of the utmost consequence. How best to capitalize it?

“And Sigurd of Reyr?” he asked presently. “Is he here, too? They are doughty enemies, Eindride, and honorable in the bargain, as I have always testified.”

“No,” said Eindride, “we do not leave all our eggs in the one basket. Sigurd is in Konungahela, and however Erling comes at us we shall be in position to withstand him and bring his efforts to naught.”

“Humph,” muttered Swain in his beard. “It might also be said that he who divides his eggs divides his care of them, and if he brings one basket home whole the other is likely to be smashed.”

But aloud he said only:

“Hakon is a young man, and like all young men a brisk walker. He covers much ground. But I am amazed that you have seen fit to throw in your lot with Hakon, whose chief supporter is Olvir Rosta, who is my enemy and has been your's, as well.”

Eindride looked somewhat uncomfortable.

“Oh, Olvir has paid me a handsome fine for the harm he wrought against me in Mikligard,” he said, “and he has stood my friend with King Hakon, so we are quits on our account.”

“He is a handsome promiser,” answered Swain. “Did he pay all his fine in hand?”

“A part, and the rest——”

Swain chuckled.

“You will never see the rest. But even if you did, I might remind you that I was once the best friend you possessed, and if you enjoy any wealth it is because I aided you.”

“Whatever aid you rendered me was with intent to help yourself, Swain,” he puffed. “That score is wiped clean.”

“There are two views of that question,” rejoined Swain. “Well, Eindride, if I may not induce you to join my company I must be off.”

“Not so fast; not so fast,” protested Eindride. “There are two views of that question, also. I can not permit an enemy of Hakon's to come in and look at us and run away.”

“Ha,” said Swain. “What can you permit, Eindride? Your position is a highly honorable one, I perceive. You must sell the old friend to the new, as the peddler said.”

“You were never any man's friend, except for what you might wring from him,” exclaimed Eindride furiously. “Take my advice, and yield yourself to my mercy. That barge of your's can not front this ship for a dozen sword-strokes.”

“Yes, it is a mighty ship,” admitted Swain seriously. “You must have a lusty band to man those oars.”

“Never mind our rowing benches,” boasted Eindride. “We have Serkland^[8] thralls for them. My folk—” he waved his sword arm toward the trireme's congested waist—“are free for the weaponwork. They do not have to row and fight, as your crew must.”

Swain tugged at his beard again.

“That is a valuable plan,” he agreed. “It may be we shall come to it yet in the north. But I doubt it. Thralls are hard to come by, and those we acquire are most valuable in tilling the farms. Well, well! You are much stronger than we.”

He half turned to Erik, and added from one side of his mouth:

“Dip oars, when I call, Icelander! Smartly! Ready, spearmen, bowmen!”

Eindride answered him, without noting the slight surge of excitement that rippled Deathbringer's crew.

“Yes, we are by far the stronger, Swain, and I can easily carry those other ships of your's lurking under the island's lee, for beside the ships with me King Hakon has a score more in the shipyards beyond the docks. You can not flee me, even if you would, for the seas outside would swamp you. Cast down your sword, and I will speak a good word for you in Hakon's ear.”

“Are you ready, Erik?” growled Swain aside as he pretended to reflect upon this offer. “At the helmsmen, carls—and that fool in the crimson cloak! Topple them, and the thralls in the trireme's bowels will not know what to do.”

And to Eindride he replied—

“You might induce Hakon to accept a favorable fine from me instead of the ax, but I think Olvir would bid against you.”

Eindride shrugged his shoulders.

“Some chance a man must take, Swain. But you overrate Olvir's influence. There is none so high in Hakon's favor as I, seeing that he and all his folk know that my trireme is the surest tool we possess to wreck damage to Magnus's folk.”

“That is a point we will now settle,” said Swain. “Loose, bowmen! Cast, spearmen!”

A howl of glee echoed up from Deathbringer's decks. A howl of anguish answered from the trireme. Hiss-sstst! went the arrow hail. Swiss-ssh! sang the spears. Eindride dropped with a spear through the thick of his thigh. Two of the trireme's helmsmen were dead; one tugged at an arrow that had pierced both cheeks; the fourth was pinned to the gunwale by a spear through the arm. A third of the folk on the poop were slain or wounded. And spears and arrows continued to rain upon them. The clumsy vessel fell off by the head, with a frantic, ill-timed splashing of oars.

“Oars, Erik!” cried Swain. “Larboard, steersmen! Closer! Closer! Into her oarbank—so!”

Deathbringer, answering the thrust of her steering sweeps, swung in toward the trireme's helpless bulk, gathering weigh with extraordinary rapidity as her rowers bent to their task. A dozen men, perceiving Swain's intent, ran to the steering sweeps, but they hampered themselves by their numbers, and the growing confusion among the rowing benches, buried from sight below decks, neutralized what efforts they could make.

The Norse dragon lurched into the larboard oarbanks of the trireme like a battering ram, her sharp prow smashing the oar staves to splinters or pushing them inboard, so that they shot like projectiles across the cramped area of the rowing benches, knocking men right and left. A wail went up from the oar thralls, and they flung themselves flat on the bank decks, struggling to break free of their chains or to gain cover under the benches.

The trireme spun helplessly to starboard under the impact of the dragon's blow, and Swain's folk raked her decks in passing, rounding under her stern and continuing the torment as Deathbringer ranged back along her starboard side.

Erik waved to the helmsmen to close in, and break through the starboard oar banks but Swain checked him.

“No, no, little man. We have done enough. His friends astern are coming up.”

“Let us fight them all,” answered Erik sturdily. “We are six ships—and Orkneymen!”

“Brave words,” said Swain with a rare chuckle. “But I have other deeds to do. And the news that peacock tossed us will be as good as red gold in Erling's hand. I begin to see how we shall go about the establishment of Magnus' kingship.”

He stepped to the break of the poop, and called down to the sweating rowers:

“You folk at the oars had the luck this day. You showed that the longship could beat Eindride's floating castle, and the scalds will celebrate what you did for years to come.”

“Our muscles and your wit, Swain,” called back a man from the larboard benches. And as the laughter died away, Oddi said:

“Let the folk make a saying of it!

“Swain's wit,
Rowers' grit.

“Yet I do not see how we can improve our lot by venturing outside, where the storm is like to finish us, Swain.”

“The man who slays a bear with his knife can slay his next bear weaponless,” rejoined Swain. “If we perish, we perish. But we must put to sea, and carry the word to Erling that his foes have split their forces.”

Erik nodded approval.

“There is a time to fight and a time to flee. Also, it is my belief that the storm is blowing itself out.”

Swain hailed Kolbiorn as Deathbringer ran up beside Seascraper.

“We have tidings for Erling, carl, that drive us to sea again.”

“So it is not fear of Hakon's knaves, I care not,” replied Kolbiorn.

“We carry with us what shall yet be the bane of Hakon's folk,” said Swain. “And now that we are sailing away from the land and northward we can hoist sails. I doubt if Eindride's ships will follow us.”

“That weathercock!” rasped Erik.

“It is the worst luck for Hakon to have Eindride in his company,” said Armod. He was always more dangerous to his friends than to his enemies.”

“He is too dangerous to live,” scowled Swain. “A man who is your friend one year, and turns from you later! Bah! The ax to his throat! Why, he was Erling's shield-mate, as well as mine. And now he fights beside Olvir Rosta! That is enough for me.

“In oars, carls! Let the wind work for us.”

“Which is more than Eindride's folk will do,” exclaimed Oddi. “They have had enough of this swell already. See! They turn back.”

III

All the folk in Bergen were on the strand to watch Swain's sea-battered ships sail up Hardanger Fiord to the king's docks, and no less did Swain's carls throng their gunwales to observe the signs of Erling's success: A swarm of armored men on the piers, thirty or more fine longships and dragons at anchor, and the evident friendship of the townfolk, pressed close behind Erling's troops.

“It is like the old times when Ingi was king,” exclaimed Armod. “There are the scarlet cloaks of the guards on the pier under the smithy shops.”

“That man on horseback in their midst must be Erling,” said Oddi. “He has somewhat on his saddlebow before him. That would be Magnus, I suppose.”

“Yes, it is a babe or a swaddling,” agreed Erik, his hawk's eyes fixed on the splendid picture. “As you say, Armod, it is like the old times. Ingi used to sit so on his horse, with his guards around him, when we sailed in after the spring gales to join his banner.”

“But there is this difference,” put in Oddi merrily. “In those times the king on the horse was a cripple, seeing that Ingi had a hump to his back and a twisted foot, and now the king is a child still tied to the bower.”

“A difference, yet not such a difference,” growled Swain, speaking for the first time. “A cripple king and a child king, each must have others lead his troops and fight his battles. But I do Ingi an injustice in those words. It is true he was of small account in his body, but he had a warrior's spirit, and no man will forget that he met his doom in the shieldwall on a stricken field, with his war-cry on his lips. This child will be of even less account, since he can not have developed any spirit or sense at so young an age.”

“It might be said that you do not sound as if you entertained great hopes for the future, Swain,” said Erik slyly.

“I shall not worry about the future if Erling will heed my counsel,” answered Swain. “Starboard, helmsmen! We turn in here. They have saved us ship space at the king's pier.”

Erling rode forward as Deathbringer nosed into the slip, the child king perched on the saddle in front of him, curious round eyes shifting eagerly from ship to shore and back again, while the assembled warriors raised a thunderous war shout, with rumbling of ludr-horns and shrill outcries from the townfolk.

Swain gave a parting order to Erik, bidding him see to the mooring of the other ships and keep the crews aboard—“as it is my opinion we shall not be here long enough to give them drinking time in the taverns—” and leaped to the pier three ells distance from the gunwale, with all his mail on his back.

“A warm greeting, Swain,” called Erling, leaning from the saddle to offer his hand. And with a merry twinkle added, “This is one occasion upon which I was first at our meeting place, it seems.”

Erling was a tall man and strongly made, with high shoulders and a short neck, which was twisted upon one side by an old wound he had received in a seafight what time he had fared with Swain to Mikligard in pursuit of Olvir Rosta, and it was from the circumstance of this wound that he was nicknamed Skakki.

His complexion was light, and his hair of a sandy color, beginning to turn gray. His features were very ugly, sharp and thoughtful in cast, and his manner was agreeable. In his character he was distinguished by overcaution, albeit no man in Norway might challenge his personal bravery or his skill in battle once he was committed to action, and a tendency up to this time to attach undue importance to the opinion of his wife, the Princess Kristin, who was largely the cause of the trouble between him and King Ingi and Gregorious, which, as has been told, had resulted in the deaths of these two, and the accession to the crown of Magnus.

It might be suspected that Erling had consciously planned that matters should fall out in just this fashion, in order to advance his son; but the contrary was true. He would have been satisfied had Ingi lived to consolidate the kingdom, since the crippled king had no son, and was inclined to favor Magnus to succeed himself. Now, Magnus had come to the throne in the face of strong opposition; the Thingmen who elected the child had fled at once before Hakon's host; and Erling and Magnus and the principal of their followers had been obliged to spend the winter in Denmark.

As the scalds afterward said, no king ever became king under less favorable conditions than Magnus Erling's son—and as to the luck he had, it was more the work of Swain than any other man.

As Swain accepted Erling's hand on the pier he ignored the twinkle in his friend's eye; his gaze was fastened upon the boy king's face, plumbing the soft curves of cheek and jaw, the liquid depths of the eyes, for indications of the budding character that should give them their final mold.

“Well, youngling,” he said, without answering Erling, “what do you think of this being king?”

The boy stared back at him with equal curiosity.

“I like it,” answered a treble voice. “I have many valiant warriors about me, and there are always brave tales to hear from them.”

“Ho,” grinned Swain. “It seems that you are inclined to the weapon work!”

“That I am,” boasted Magnus. “Wait until I have my growth, and I will fare with you, Swain. We will be vikings together after we have won the kingdom.”

“Yes,” agreed Swain, still grinning, “after we have won the kingdom!”

“But where have you been these spring months?” asked the boy. “We have waited two weeks for you here in Bergen.”

“I was late boun,” rejoined Swain. “As you can see, I have brought six ships with with me and a few score steel eaters. Also, we had evil weather on the eastward voyage.”

Erling, who had listened to this conversation with amusement, now spoke again.

“Yes, you are late, Swain. We have had the first bicker here.”

“Was there fighting?” answered Swain.

“Nothing serious. We slew Arne Brigdarskalle, who held the town for Hakon, and a dozen or two of his carls; but the townfolk were glad to have us back. All has gone well, saving only that I was concerned for you. Hakon was in Throndhjem after Easter, with all the ships he took from Ingi at Oslo, and he held a Thing in Nidaros and had himself formally proclaimed king.”

“Any man can be proclaimed king,” scoffed Swain.

“True. He also advanced many men to higher rank, and among others he made Sigurd of Reyr Jarl of Viken. And then he disappeared seaward, where I do not know. I have had a strict lookout kept, thinking he might be planning a surprize attack upon us.”

“He and Sigurd went south to secure Sigurd's Jarldom,” said Swain.

Erling straightened in his saddle, and the other chiefs who had come up to hear what was being said looked their surprize.

“How can you know that, Swain!” protested Erling. “You are just arrived from the west.”

“I was storm-driven into Tunsburg,” replied Swain.

“Why did you not say as much?”

“You gave me no chance to,” growled the Orkneyman. “You were so proud of having slain Arne and his folk. Well, it is true that you drew first blood, but I think we performed a more notable exploit than you did.”

The chiefs crowded closer.

“What exploit do you mean?” questioned Erling, bewildered.

“We fought with Eindride Ungi's trireme—”

“Eindride Ungi! He is in Mikligard.”

“No, he has come north and cast in his fortunes with Hakon.”

“Ill news!” muttered Erling.

The boy king stirred restlessly in front of his father.

“What is a trireme, Swain?” he asked.

Swain surveyed the ships along the strand and finally pointed to an English bus.

“Somewhat like that, Kingling, but larger and higher in the sides, and she has three rows of oars, one above another.”

“And you fought with her!” cried the treble voice shrilly. “How did you escape?”

“Did you have sore manscathe?” challenged Erling.

“Such a craft must be like the great rockborgs in Valland,”^[9] exclaimed one of the near-by chiefs.

“One at a time,” said Swain gruffly. “As to escaping, we dealt our blow and were away without difficulty. We lost no men. And it is well said that Eindride's ship is like a castle. That is the trouble with it. It is so big, and it has so many rowers—and they all thralls—that it is like a fat man in armor who contends with a swift-footed bowman. I would rather be the bowman, naked, than the fat man, armored.

“But our fight with the trireme was not so important as the tidings I wrung from that fool Eindride. He told us that Hakon was in Tunsburg, with a part of his forces, while Sigurd of Reyr was east in Konungahela. They think to be ready for you, whichever way you come into the Viken country, and if you will be guided by me you will not disappoint them. With their forces united, they might be too strong for us. Divided, I do not see why we can not rout one or the other, with a little skill.”

“Would it not be safer policy to fare north and establish ourselves in Nidaros?” asked Erling doubtfully. “We have friends in the Throndhjem dales who would join the banner if they had encouragement.”

“The way to harm your enemy is to attack him,” growled Swain. “Defeat Hakon, and you will have no trouble persuading your friends to join you. It will be Hakon who must travel light, and you who can afford to pick and choose your following.”

“True talk,” cried a score of chiefs who overheard.

And men commenced to drum on their shields with sword hilts or spearshafts.

“It is in my mind,” continued Swain, “that Hakon and his chiefs, by some mischance, have not heard of your coming hither. It is likely they left Nidaros before their friends carried word north, and there has not yet been time to get the word back into Viken. Therefore they are looking for you to come from the south. My advice is that you should embark every man you can depend upon, and sail with this afternoon's tide.”

“Which one would you strike at?” temporized Erling. “Hakon or Sigurd?”

“When you attack a king strike at his person,” replied Swain. “If, by chance, you slew him, that would be as good as a score of chance onfalls.”

“We should stake all we have on this issue,” said Erling. “If Hakon beat us——”

“He will not beat me,” snarled Swain.

“No, no,” laughed the boy King Magnus, wiggling with excitement, so that he almost fell from his father's horse, “Hakon will not beat Swain. Bethink you, father, it was you told me Swain had never been beaten when he had folk he might depend upon in his shieldwall.”

Arne Ingerid's son, who was mother's son to King Ingi that was dead and notable among the chiefs that fought under Erling's banner shouldered his way through the jam of lendermen on the pier end.

“We waste time, Erling,” he called. “Swain has the right of it. We are, indeed, fortunate, if our luck has afforded us an opportunity to strike Hakon when his folk are divided. Lose no time in moving or we may be too late. You must bear in mind that it was in the Viken country Hakon won his victory and slew Ingi, and if we do the like by him there all the eastward folk will flock to us.”

“Yes, yes,” shouted the chiefs.

And the clamor spread to the warriors and the townfolk on the strand, until the air shook with the roar of voices and the drumming of shields.

“If Hakon is divided, then we are not,” said Erling.

He smiled.

“I might have known that with your coming the sword music would be heard, Swain. And I must laugh at myself when I think that I fancied I could mock you for being late at our meeting place. Late you may have been, but you wrought profitably on your way.

“Well, well, we are gone past words. Let us try deeds. Hakon will outnumber us considerably, but we are a goodly company, with many warriors of great merit, and we have Swain's wit to aid us.

“Ships, carls, ships! He who is last boun shall buy the ale with which we celebrate our victory!”

“Skoal, Magnus's folk!” roared the chiefs in answer. “Out swords, carls! Ships! Ships!”

“Humph,” growled Swain. “I hear the beating of the Valkyrs' wings. There will be rich meat for the war birds before many suns have set.”

IV

Outside the king's skalli the ludr-horns were rumbling; the Bergen streets resounded with the clank and rattle of marching men; the cobbled ways clattered to the jouncing of the carts that bore the ale barrels and food chests down to the piers; and through the medley of noises dinned the battering of the mallets of the shipmen, finishing the last jobs necessary to make the ships ready for sea.

Erling and Swain sat in a small chamber off the hall of the skalli, a low-raftered room, with a window looking out over the town and the haven. The little King Magnus was sprawled on the floor rushes, playing with a brace of puppies.

“We shall be late boun,” said Erling, draining his ale horn the while Swain gnawed at a joint of meat, “but no doubt you are right in pushing off without waiting longer light.”

“Past doubt, I am right,” answered Swain. “I tell you, every hour counts. Well, what luck did you have in Denmark? I see you have ships and folk to man them, and that means gold and silver. But what did you pay for them? Promises?”

Erling's face clouded.

“No, Swain. Valdemar is a shrewd fellow. Promises he listened to, but always put by. He would have more solid stuff than that.”

“What?” demanded Swain shortly.

“Why, we talked together many days, and always he was willing to agree to do aught which might be necessary to place my son on the throne. But I might never shake him from his price”

“A man must have his price,” said Swain.

“Yes. And Valdemar's was the Viken country, north to Rygiarbit.”

“A fat price,” commented Swain drily. “He is a notable bargainer, this Dane king.”

“Oh, I would not have you think that I yielded to him tamely,” replied Erling quickly. “But naught else would he take. He always came back to it, saying that his ancestors, Harold Gorm's son and Svein Forked-Beard had possessed it.”

“By force of arms,” amended Swain.

“He will get it through me by the same means,” answered Erling, “for we go to win it this day, and by force of the arms he has enabled me to obtain.”

“Humph,” growled Swain. And after a pause—

“A promise forced is not a promise kindly given. Perhaps——”

“It is more than a promise, Swain,” interrupted Erling uncomfortably. “The clerks wrote out a treaty, and we signed and sealed it before witnesses.”

“By the old gods,” cursed Swain in a voice that shook the room walls and brought the boy king, staring, to his knees. “This passes reason! That we should be undertaking this venture today for the benefit of Valdemar! I like it not, Erling. You were ill advised.”

“What was I to do?” countered Erling, more uncomfortably than ever. “The time was passing. I was to meet you here two weeks gone. I dared not wait to bargain longer. For every week that passed gave Hakon the more opportunity to strengthen his grip upon the country.”

“The harm is done,” said Swain gloomily. “A treaty! Bah, I never liked any matter a clerk had his finger in. But we do not have to cross this ford at once. It can wait until later. Then——”

He tossed his bone to one of the puppies and broke off, peering out of the window at the busy town.

“What, then, Swain?” cried the boy on the floor. “Will you go, and fight with Valdemar? I would go with you!”

“Proper spirit, youngling,” chuckled Swain. “You are fit to stand in Ingi's shoes.”

“Ingi was a cripple,” said the boy petulently. “My back is straight.”

Swain regarded him seriously.

“Never permit any man to belittle Ingi to you, boy,” he said. “For if the king's body was pindling and twisted, his spirit was a champion's. Many is the talk I have had with him in this room, and never did I find him loath for the fray or unwilling to perform his share of the weaponwork. If he had been less anxious to stand with stronger men he would be here with us now, and you would not be king. Yes, what you are, you owe to him.”

“And what Ingi was, in large measure, he owed to you, Swain,” said Erling.

“He was a proper warrior,” pursued Swain, ignoring the interruption. “If this boy becomes his like, with a strong body to make his spirit count, we shall have a proper king as well as a proper warrior, and that will be good for the land.”

“To become a proper warrior a child must have rigorous training and a good example,” said Erling. “As you know, Swain, it is the custom to give a son a foster father, largely for this purpose, seeing that flesh and blood can yield over-softly to flesh and blood. How say you? Are you of a mind to add Fostri to the other names the scalds have given you? Honors, I know well, have come to you frequently, but you have not yet fostered a king.”

Swain reached out a big arm, and plucked Magnus from the floor rushes by the scruff of his neck, much as a child picks up a kitten.

“Stand here,” he bade gruffly, planting the boy betwixt his knees and bending the icy fire of his blue eyes upon the chubby face.

Magnus stared back unwinking, nor did he complain of the numbing pain that Swain's fingers had caused in his neck, and if he choked twice, it was because he was something more than half strangled.

“I can not afford to foster a weakling,” Swain went on. “And a weak king is a poor king. Humph!”

His hand darted out again, and bit into the tender flesh of the boy's arm. Tears came in the brown eyes, but Magnus blinked them back, and returned Swain's stare, without quivering.

The Orkneyman loosed his grip, and pushed the little king away with a pat a bear might have given its cub.

“He will do,” he said. “But if I am to foster him, Erling, I will have no interference. Not from you or from any other. You may keep him with you in battle and on the march, but his training will be as I order it.”

“That is reasonable,” assented Erling.

“What of his mother?” demanded Swain. “I will have naught to do with her, nor shall she interfere with him.”

“She is in Denmark. I left her there. The court life amuses her, and I promised you——”

Erling hesitated.

“To put her away,” scowled Swain. “Well, have you done so?”

“As good as done so. She knows she will never have a welcome from me in Norway.”

“Humph! That is good. But what is more important, she will have a still colder welcome from me if she ever fares hither. I know a nunnery in the Syllingar,^[10] which is nigh the world's end, where I buried the woman who was my wife for a space; and there we could put Kristin out of all harm's way, should she endeavor to cause trouble for you again.”

“She will not, Swain,” Erling assured him uneasily. “And there is this to be said in her behalf. She is intent upon Magnus' achieving full power here, and to that end she will work for us at Valdemar's court, regardless of her hatred for you.”

“And for yourself, too, I doubt not,” snapped Swain. “She may be useful, though. For I tell you frankly, I am not of a mind to pay Valdemar his price, treaty or no treaty. A king of Norway, who had Danish housecarls in Viken, would not be king in Norway. And I should be a poor foster father to Magnus did I suffer his dominions to be hacked up in that fashion and outland troops stationed in his doorway. But that is a difficulty to solve in its proper order. I hear the horns grunting louder, and that must mean the fleet is ready for us. Come, fosterling, we will make a warrior of you, and win back the Viken country to show Valdemar that when we undertake a task we are likely to accomplish it.”

V

Swain managed the voyage so that King Magnus' fleet came up to Tunsburg in the early morning before King Hakon's folk were awake, and the first warning Broadshoulders had of it was the shouting of men aboard his ships along the strand, who perceived the hostile longships rowing through the haze in the fiord.

The horns blew in the streets, and the troops gathered at their meeting places quickly enough; but before they could be embarked Swain had seized a number of Hakon's vessels that lay at anchor some distance from the shore.

As it chanced, too, Eindride Ungi had put to sea several days previously, as soon as he could repair the damage Swain had done him, indeed, swearing that he would not rest until he had laid himself ship to ship with the Orkeneyman; and the long and the short of it was that, albeit Hakon had more men than Swain and Erling, he had fewer ships and he and his chiefs were wary of testing their fortune afloat.

They held a hasty counsel on one of the piers, where the dragon Baekisudin was berthed; she had been King Ingi's, and Hakon was wont to sail in her. This Hakon was a young king and a valiant, pleasant spoken with all men, forward in the fighting, with the figure of a true warrior, and he was always for accepting an honorable challenge.

“My judgment is that we should shove off, and give battle to Erling,” he said. “It is evident that he is not inclined to come ashore against us.”

“We folk have never had any luck on the water,” said Onund Simon's son, a great lenderman of the Throndhjem district.

“It is time our luck changed,” cried the king.

“No, no,” said Olvir Rosta. “I advise that you should show caution, Lord King. I recognize Swain Olaf's son's dragon Deathbringer out there in the fiord, and where Swain is you may rely upon encountering a crafty foe.”

Hakon raised his head proudly.

“Your words spur me to sea, Olvir,” he replied. “Swain, as you say, is a crafty foe, and he has always had the better of us afloat; but the last time we met, on the river ice at Oslo, he was not ashamed to show us his back. It may be we shall have equal good fortune today.”

“I do not see why that should not fall out, King,” admitted Olvir. “Yet it is only the part of caution to remember that we are separated from Jarl Sigurd, who has a good half of our folk with his banner, while Eindride is absent with several thousand more stout carls.”

“My view is the same as Olvir's,” remarked Onund, and other chiefs expressed similar approval.

“What would you do, then?” demanded the king. “We can not flee from Swain without losing our honor, for we have here at least as many folk as he and Erling can muster.”

“We are the more numerous, I believe,” returned Olvir promptly. “And the best way for us to make use of our superiority is in fighting ashore. I advise that we should bide where we are in the town, and leave it to Swain to come against us here.”

“But will he?”

“He must for the sake of his own honor. It is one thing to seize a handful of ships; it is another thing to attack a town held by such an array as ours. But if he sails away without coming to a weapon clash he will have lost more than he gained by his venture.”

“It is not like Swain to suffer himself to be placed at a disadvantage,” commented Hakon.

“Swain is no smarter than other men,” retorted Olvir with a trace of heat. “He succeeds because he is willing to wait until his foes commit some foolishness which gives him an opening for victory.”

“He is up to some trick now,” called Onund, pointing down the fiord, where lay Erling's fleet clustered about the captured ships. “What is that vessel they are working on?”

All the men around King Hakon stared with interest at the knot of shipping.

“It is the bus we carried the king's horses in,” said one of the chiefs.

“But they will not use horses to attack us from the sea,” objected Onund.

“The horses are all ashore,” said King Hakon. “They seem to be tossing timbers into the hold from the other vessels.”

“Those two longships astern of her have taken cables from her on to their forecastles,” added Olvir, stroking his beard. “And now they begin to move this way. They drift with the tide. This is strange, Lord King. The bus seems to tow the longships, and the rest of them follow her.”

Hakon smiled grimly.

“It is likely that you spoke too soon when you said that Swain was no smarter than other men,” he jeered. “Make no mistake, Olvir, we shall be put to it to defend what we possess, for there is no man in the north who is more to be feared than Swain, if he has folk with him he can trust.”

Olvir scowled blackly. He was a black carl, this. Swart-skinned, eyes like polished black agates peering out of the black brush of beard that masked his face. Men called him a warlock, and it is certain that his grandmother, Frakork, who had the rearing of him, was a witch, as also, that he had dwelt with the Laps and practised the sorcery they affected.

But above all else, he was a disciple of wickedness. Evil he loved for its own sake, and he could match craft of a kind with Swain's—courage, too, although he was no man to match weapons with a stronger foe, unless he must.

“That is to be seen,” he snarled. “I do a fear Swain, however the rest of you may, and——”

“Be careful,” flashed the young king. “No man tells me I fear another!”

Olvir clicked his teeth together.

“I was at fault,” he apologized suavely. “Yet heed me when I say that you do ill to weaken your resolution by anticipating what——”

“Smoke!” cried Onund. “See the smoke!”

“The bus is afire!” cried others. “They draw her back! No, she comes forward! Her people are leaving her.”

Hakon frowned.

“This is peculiar,” he said. “Why should they destroy a rich prize?”

“To mask their attack,” snapped Olvir. “The smoke is spreading. Their ships will be cloaked by it, and so they can come up close to the piers and sweep the strand with their arrows.”

“It is a clever device,” exclaimed the king. “Well, we know what to meet. Order up the townsfolk. We must have plenty of carls in line to fight a landing. They may approach unseen, but they cannot land unseen.”

“As Olvir has said,” Onund spoke up, “if Swain and Erling land they must meet us on less than even terms. What difference can a cloud of smoke make when we are half again as numerous as they?”

“All will be well if the townfolk stand firm,” muttered Olvir.

“How?” asked Hakon.

“We shall do very well if the townfolk stand firm,” repeated Olvir.

“Is it that you are losing confidence?” mocked the king.

“I am not losing confidence,” replied Olvir, “but it occurs to me that we who fight here shall be laboring in behalf of Jarl Sigurd, who is not present to defend his own jarldom. It is not a pleasing task to risk life and limb for another man's wealth.”

“Such words do not confer honor upon you,” rebuked the king. 'You were very confident a moment since.”

“If it was an open fight, yes,” answered Olvir. “But King Eystein used to say, 'when Swain contrives, the devil drives.'”

“You are in a bad humor,” said King Hakon disapprovingly. “We will go to our posts.”

VI

When Swain saw that Magnus had more ships than were berthed at the Tunsburg piers he made up his mind that Hakon's folk would refuse to risk battle on the fiord, and rowing closer to Erling's ship he called to him, advising that they should drive home their attack.

“It is true that we shall be at a disadvantage if we go away from here after achieving no more than we have so far, Swain,” answered Erling. “But nevertheless it appears to me we should be guilty of foolish conduct if we threw our folk against the array I see ashore.”

“To drain an ale barrel you need not suck from the butt,” returned Swain. “We have taken a horse transport that is full of straw. How if we filled her hold with wood, and put a torch to her? She would make a thick smoke, and under cover of that we might push home a landing that would give Hakon the toothache.”

“I am in favor of any attack that will not put our fortunes in danger of destruction,” said Erling cautiously. “But I do not see what success we could hope for, when Hakon has so many more carls than we.”

“Half his folk are townsmen and boendr^[11] levied from the countryside,” explained Swain. “Give them a fright, and they will cry for peace.”

“Perhaps it is so,” said Erling doubtfully.

“I know it is so.”

“Still, it is a great risk.”

“It is a hold on the crown for Magnus if we win,” rasped Swain. “If we sail away from here without a further effort we shall be no better for our voyage.”

“What you argue I can not disprove,” admitted Erling. “Well, let it be done. We will try our luck, as you indicate.”

When the bus was ready for Swain's purpose he had cables carried from her stern to the prows of two of his own longships, and he bade the captains of these ships let the bus drift up to the town.

“But when you are within arrow flight,” he added, “go back on your oars sufficiently to keep her in that position, and in the mean time we others will take advantage of the smoke to direct our attack to the best advantage.”

It was done as Swain had directed. The moment the flames reached the hold of the bus, choked with straw and timber and cargo from other captured vessels, she commenced to throw off a dense, greasy cloud of black smoke, which spread low over the water because of the light wind that was blowing; and Swain and Erling led their ships into the heart of the cloud, coming close up to the docks and the houses along the strand, so close that through the rifts in the smoke they could see Hakon's troops standing helpless in their ranks, and the pre shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

When the arrows commenced to bite, and spears and stones added to the confusion, the troops ashore raged as helplessly as formerly they had stood. They shot their arrows blankly into the heart of the smoke, and hurled their spears whenever they caught a glimpse of a dragon prow or the tip of a mast gliding above the cloudbank; but missles cast at random against men sheltered behind gunwales and shields had little effect compared with the slaughter the hail from the ships wrought in the close-packed ranks on the strand.

Many of the townsmen retired from the piers at once, and as the smoke that drifted overhead became mingled with sparks that caught in the roof thatch of houses forgot their duties as warriors altogether, ran for buckets and confined themselves to fighting the flames.

Presently, they wearied of this danger, too, and a number of the principal merchants went to a certain priest who was know as Hroald the Long-Winded—because he preached the longest sermons this side of Purgatory, men said—and begged him to go to Erling and ask peace for the town.

Hroald folded his gown around his fat stomach, standing on the steps of his church in the market place, quite safe from the fighting on the strand, and answered that this was a dangerous task they set him.

“For look you,” he recited with pompous precision, “in the heat of battle, as we are amply assured by the chroniclers of the more ancient classical times, as well as by the sagamen of our own day, the perception of men, being so engaged, is decreased in proportion to the intensity of the struggle and their own efforts therein. And this absorption being rendered the more perplexing by the darkness which precedes from the burning ship of which you complain, it might well befall, however accidentally in intent, that some ignorant carl, smiting blindly in his wrath, would do me a mischief and thus incur the perils of eternal torment, a contingency for which I should not care to be responsible, seeing that the care of men's souls and their safety is the great end of my attainment, and furthermore——”

“And furthermore,” interrupted one of the merchants, “while you have been talking, holy father, a spark is kindling on the church roof.”

“Oh, holy saints!” cried Hroald. “This is unthinkable! Are these people heathens that they burn a church?”

“Heathens or Christians, they will burn the town, if we do not cry them off,” said a second merchant. “Go to them, and say that the Tunsburg folk will no longer support Hakon, but will be Magnus's men.”

Hroald sought to argue longer, but they took him by the arms and pushed him to a place on the shore where a small boat was waiting, and in this he was rowed out into the smoke cloud. And as luck had it, the ship he first encountered was Swain's Deathbringer, and the first face he saw was Swain's, all smeared with sweaty soot, and savage as any fiend's as it glared over the dragon's poop gunwale.

“Oh, holy Olaf!” prayed Hroald. “Here is Satan, himself, come from the Pit! Mercy, devil, mercy!”

“What will you have, priest?” growled Swain. And over his shoulder: “More arrows to starboard, carls. I saw Olvir's black beard that way a moment past.”

He turned back to Hroald.

“Well? What is it? Who are you?”

“I— I—am Hroald—I——”

Swain had heard of Hroald, who was a famous man in his way, and burst into a roar of laughter.

“So you are Hroald! Have you come to preach to us?”

Hroald plucked up a shadow of courage from the laughter of the genial demon above him.

“No, I have come for peace. The poor folk of the town, being fearful lest their property will all be consumed by the flames which you have leveled against them, have beseeched me, as their spiritual advisor, to approach King Magnus, or perchance, his father, whom men call Erling Skakki, and make known to them that in return for mercy and a relinquishment of this fell intention they will—”

“Hold! Hold!” shouted Swain, pressing his hands to his ears. “I can make no sense out of your words. Words! Yes, that is what they are. A surfeit of words. Talk sense, priest? What is it? Do you ask for peace?”

“Indeed, the townfolk have deputed me to press their offer of aid and alliance to King Magnus, providing only—”

“The townfolk wish peace?” challenged Swain.

“Such is the burden of my message, and if Erling or some other lord will vouchsafe me the opportunity—”

“I am Swain. You need go no farther. Row back, Hroald, and acquaint the Tunsburg folk that if they retire from Hakon's array we will not harm them and their town.”

“Oh, glad tidings! Oh, news of blessed import! You shall never regret your mercy, Lord Swain. I, myself, will offer candles for you, and my prayers.”

“I do not want your candles or your prayers,” growled Swain. “I would rather have the blood of an old horse for Odin. Be off with you! My arrows are still sweeping the streets.”

Hroald disappeared in the smoke, for the men who had been rowing him bent to their oars, regardless of his continued admonitions and thanks to Swain; his voice could be heard for a long time, growing fainter and fainter, with every now and then a shriek as some ship in the smoke loosed an arrow or cast stone or spear at him, ignorant of his purpose.

But Swain was more merciful than his answer to Hroald had indicated. He was never one to slay folk without need.

“A carl dead is a gap in a shieldwall,” he would say, “and though he fights against me today, tomorrow he may be my man.”

He steered Deathbringer to where the fireship belched and flamed, and bade the two longships that controlled it tow it off before the cables burned asunder.

As the bus receded and the smoke clouds thinned, Erling ranged his dragon alongside of Swain's.

“What is this?” called “Wrynecked.” “Why do we haul off the fireship? The town would have been in flames in another——”

“The town asks peace,” returned Swain. “And inasmuch as it will soon be King Magnus's town, there is no sense in burning it.”

“Ho!” exclaimed Erling. “But Hakon——”

“My advice is that we should run our keels aground at once,” replied Swain. “Hakon, without the townfolk, will be in no case to front us long.”

The little King Magnus came across the deck to his father's side, and peered above the gunwale at Swain, standing on a dead man to bring his eyes high enough.

“We are beating them, Swain,” he piped.

“We are, King,” rejoined Swain gravely.

“That was an excellent plan of yours, to use the smoke!”

“It served.”

“But now we must try the shieldwall, eh? You and I, Swain! I will stand beside you.”

And he brandished a tiny sword as he spoke.

“I do not think there will be a very stiff push,” returned Swain. “But if there is need, King, I will call upon you.”

Swain addressed Erling again.

“The King approves my plan,” he said. “Do you?”

Erling knit his brows.

“You are always for extreme measures, Swain. Let us wait.”

“And give Hakon a chance to summon aid, perhaps for Sigurd to reach him! No, no! Strike now or flee.”

“Well, if you must——”

“Dip oars, carls!” Swain shouted to his own rowing benches. “Swain goes ashore.”

A ragged cheer answered him, and ship by ship, the fleet followed the Orkneyman. Erling, after a moment's hesitation, also gave the word for his dragon to beach. The ships bunched together, and turned their prows toward an open space, just outside the town, where there was room for forming an orderly array. But as Swain had guessed would happen, Hakon's folk did not await them.

The defection of the townsmen became precipitate as soon as Hroald returned with Swain's assurance of peace, and their losses on the strand, without opportunity to fight back, had shaken the courage of the troops. Hakon, himself, would have fought to the last. He gathered his own personal company about him, called to the chiefs who were related to him or had been with him longest and strove in every way to make a shieldwall to receive the attack.

“Come, Olvir,” he hailed the Roisterer. “Here is your chance to meet Swain, knee to knee. We are as many as they, and fresh, where they are worn with the shipwork, the oarbite sore in their hands.”

But Olvir shook his head.

“It is not my way to meet Swain when he has the advantage.”

“It is we have the advantage. We will slay them as they drop from their gunwales. They can never lock shields.”

“You are over confident,” said Olvir, slinging his ax over his shoulder. “Also, I am not of a mind to fight for Sigurd's jarldom when he is not here.”

This speech was caught up on all sides, and the word spread through the ranks of Hakon's folk—  “Why should we endanger our bodies for Sigurd's jarldom, seeing that Sigurd is safe in Konungahela?”

Several chiefs who had remained with the king ran off, and the common men began to flee by scores.

“To me, Hakon's folk!” cried the king in a final effort to rally his supporters.

But instead of rallying they fled faster, and Olvir caught Hakon by the arm.

“This has gone far enough,” said the Roisterer gruffly. “It is boy's talk that holds you here. Come! We have horses waiting. Let us go while there is time. If we lose this battle we shall win the next. But if you die here what benefit shall we have of it?”

Hakon wept and cursed in the heat of his rage, but a dozen chiefs joined themselves with Olvir, lifted him on the back of a horse and galloped away with him even as Swain and the Orkneyfolk tumbled ashore, first of Magnus' fleet to reach Tunsburg strand.

VII

King Hakon and his folk fled up the country, and took the land road north to Throndhjem, but before they left Viken Broadshoulders dispatched a messenger to warn Jarl Sigurd of his defeat and bid the jarl sail to Nidaros with such ships as he had in the Gaut River.

Sigurd lost no time in complying with this order, for he had word independently that Swain and Erling were on the point of moving against him with a great armament, including all the ships they had captured from Hakon at Tunsburg. He shoved off his keels that day, and put to sea, heading far to the westward in order that he might not run into Magnus' fleet by mischance.

Eindride Ungi had tidings of Hakon's disaster from a friendly bondi of the Seaside above Tunsburg, and he likewise fared for Nidaros to rejoin Broadshoulders. But when he arrived in the merchant town he discovered that he was not as popular as he had been.

“Little luck have we had of you, Eindride,” quoth Hakon bitterly. “In the beginning, you must let Swain know of our plans, and afterward permit him to humiliate you and escape. And lastly, by your absence, you made it possible for Erling and Swain to drive us out of Tunsburg.”

“If what men say be true,” retorted Eindride with some temper, “there is another side to that story, Lord King. You might have held Tunsburg if your folk had been willing to bide the shock.”

“Kindride speaks justly,” declared Jarl Sigurd. “I am told there was an unwillingness to hammer steel because I was not present.”

“It is certain that we were not inclined to bare our necks in defense of your property, Sigurd, when you were safe in Konungahela,” said Olvir Rosta.

Sigurd reached for his sword, but King Hakon came between the two men.

“Little respect do you show for me, who am your king,” he complained. “It is sufficient to say that all of us have been at fault, myself amongst the rest, seeing that I should have persisted in my resolution to resist our enemies when they landed.”

“In that case, you would have been dead by now, Lord King,” said Olvir.

“I am bound to agree with Olvir in that,” added Jarl Sigurd, “albeit I say, too, that matters would have happened otherwise had he and the rest of your chiefs been as resolute as yourself. But it is frequently noted that one man of daring can not temper the hearts of a thousand peace lovers.”

Olvir and Sigurd were nigh coming to blows again over this, but the king ordered his housecarls to pull them apart, and afterward he said that he would have slain whichever one of them moved to harm the other. Also, he ordered that no man should speak in further despite of Eindride, apologizing himself for what he had said, with the remark that it was not given to all people to be sensible in every emergency. But for all his efforts to weld his great chiefs into friendship once more they were never again as intimate as they had been.

Jarl Sigurd and his friends dwelt apart from Olvir Rosta's company, and neither would have aught to do with Eindride and his band of outland venturers—skalli vikings, Olvir dubbed them, because of their niceties in dress and equipment and the rich way of living they practised.

Yet Hakon and his faction soon regained confidence in the future, for all the outlaws and landless men and younger sons and restless spirits, who had been accustomed to try their luck in vikingfaring were thrown back upon Norway by reason of the growing courage of the southland folk and the stone borgs that had been built at frequent intervals along the coasts of Scotland, England, Valland and every other land that formerly had been easy prey to the Norse raiders.

Except Swain, no man had had much luck at vikingfaring for years, and the lawless folk were quick to seize upon the opportunities for ravage and plunder which their adherence to Hakon conferred upon them.

In those days in Norway the party of King Magnus stood for orderly government; King Hakon's people were more inclined to let the country go as it pleased. Hakon was a brave young king, but he had spent his life in longships since he was able to swing steel, and he had no ambition other than to win himself as much wealth and power as possible. Swain and Erling, on the other hand, were fighting for more than the kingship of Magnus; they looked to see the whole land consolidated under the reign of one king, with an increase in wealth and order such as this policy should ensure.

Naturally, under the circumstances, the disorderly folk, the troublemakers, flocked to Hakon's banner. The substantial men of property and conservative views and the merchants and priests adopted the cause of Magnus, which had been the cause of King Ingi, who had held views identical with Swain's and Erling's.

King Magnus' host was much augmented after Tunsburg fight. The dissensions in Hakon's ranks were made public by prisoners, and Armod composed a song on the battle, in which he said:

“Olvir declares he will not go
In battle 'gainst Jarl Sigurd's foe,
If Jarl Sigurd does not come,
But with his housecarls sits at home.

King Magnus' men rush up the street,
Eager with Hakon's folk to meet;
But Hakon's war hawks, somewhat shy,
Turn quick about, and off they fly.”

This song was sung from end to end of the land by the scalds, and made much talk and laughter—as did a stave which Oddi was wont to recite:

“If Olvir grudges Sigurd's wealth,
And Sigurd plots with angry stealth
The Roisterer's influence to take,
Who, then, will Hakon's shieldwall break?”

Some of Erling's advisers were inclined to urge that they should force conclusions with Hakon that summer, but Swain sided with the cautious chief against that policy.

“Let us first make certain of the Viken country and the land between as far north as Bergen,” he said. “We shall gain more by delay than Broadshoulders can, for the stronger we grow the more doubters will come to us. If we sailed to Nidaros now we might slay Hakon, and we might not. And if by any bad luck he defeated us we should be hard put to it to maintain ourselves in Norway. Well enough is good enough.”

“This is one time I find you as deliberate as myself, Swain,” answered Erling with a smile.

They had little difficulty in performing the task Swain had outlined, and before the cold weather set in they came to Bergen and quartered their troops in the town and the surrounding farms, sending home the companies of some chiefs, so that they might keep down the expense.

By Swain's suggestion, Erling maintained considerable state around his son. The child king's guards were provided with scarlet cloaks, and every day he sat on a throne at the head of the great hall in his skalli, with his father on one side of him and Swain on the other, and received folk who had complaints to make or desired the king's justice or wished to offer him fealty.

It made a considerable impression. Men who had said previously that he would be niddering who submitted himself to a babe now admitted that they had spoken too hastily.

“He is of the royal blood,” they said, “and born on the right hand, where Hakon was on the left. Also, a babe fostered by Swain is likely to become a stalwart warrior.”

Several weeks before Yule an emissary came to Bergen from Denmark, bearing a message to Erling from King Valdemar:

Valdemar rejoices to see that Erling's first accomplishment was to reconquer Viken, and in token of his appreciation of this feat the king has been pleased to confer upon Erling the title of Jarl of that country.

“What shall we reply?” Erling asked blankly of Swain. “What Valdemar seeks is that I should offer to hand over Viken to him at once.”

“Tell him that you are grateful for his message,” counseled Swain roughly. “Say that, and no more; but scrape together all the gold you can spare, and send it to him, with the word that it is an earnest of your gratitude.”

“But what will he do, then?” returned Erling. “And what can we do if——”

“How do I know what he will do?” growled Swain. “Put him off now, and meet that trouble when you must. My guess is that the gold will placate him for a while. You can secure more to replace it if you slay Hakon next summer.”

VIII

Toward the end of the winter Swain sent the two scalds, Armod and Oddi, north to discover what the Throndhjem folk were discussing, for such famous men as they were welcome in any skalli during the months the people were snowbound. They returned several weeks past Easter with the tidings that Hakon was mustering a greater host than he had led south of Viken the preceding spring. Some men came to him willingly, and some by compulsion, but in numbers he exceeded the array that Swain and Erling led. His one disadvantage was that he lacked ships to embark so considerable a multitude.

“Humph,” said Swain, “it appears to me that this is a situation which requires guile.”

“As how?” queried Erling.

They were sitting by themselves in Erling's private chamber, the scalds having just quitted them.

“Why, we are still short of the men we should have,” answered Swain. “That is not to be denied, and the wise man is he who reckons his defects as vigilantly as does his enemy. Hakon has a plenitude of men, but few ships. We have many ships, but scarce the men to row them—and if we met his folk in a shield pushing, his wings would overlap us on either flank.”

“Yes, yes,” Erling agreed anxiously, “and it becomes us to act with caution, Swain.”

“Caution I grant you,” nodded Swain.

“We must bide in Bergen until——”

“If we bide in Bergen then Hakon will ravage the estates of our friends,” rejoined Swain. “The scalds have said that he was constrained to remain in Nidaros only by fear of what we might undertake afloat.”

“Would you have us cast away this caution you advise?” demanded Erling.

“No, I would turn it to a profitable account.”

Swain looked out the window beside them at the haven, white with merchant shipping from all the south lands. A Danish longship was in the act of raising her sails.

“Is the Dane for Nidaros?” he asked.

“Yes.” Erling was puzzled. “But what of that?”

“It occurs to me that it would be a good device to forbid all the merchantmen going northward. By doing so we might prevent Hakon from securing any news of our movements, save that which we intended him to have.”

“Perhaps I am very ignorant,” said Erling “but I am unable to understand your purpose.”

Swain leaned forward, and commenced to tick off points of an argument on his thick, blunt fingers, one by one. Erling at first heard him dubiously, then with excited approval.

“So,” concluded Swain, sinking back in his chair. “And if that does not fool them I am at a loss, and Olvir Rosta may have a free stroke at my neck. But you had best send a messenger speedily to command the Dane back to his moorings or we shall have to overhaul him with a longship.”

Erling bounded to his feet, ugly face aglow with exultation.

“I will send word, myself. Ho, Swain, I think we have here a trick that will accomplish great things for us!”

“You will first receive a boiling-mad crew of merchants,” retorted Swain grimly. “Be prepared for that, carl. You must be firm with them, but regretful, for when all is said the merchants are the best friends we possess in the land.”

It fell out as Swain had predicted. The two chiefs were at their evening meal when one of Erling's courtmen came in with an odd look on his face.

“Here are all the Bergen merchants and outland folk from the shipping in the skalli yard, Erling,” he said. “They will see you forthwith. And they are as wrathy and loud of tongue as so many penned bears!”

“Fetch them in,” ordered Erling with a grin. B

ut the courtman wagged his beard in dissent.

“There is not room for them in the hall.”

“Go out to them,” counseled Swain. “So you will conciliate them at the outset.”

“True talk,” exclaimed Erling, “but do you come with me, Swain. I am like to need your backing.”

“That you are,” grunted Swain.

The skalli yard was packed tight with raging merchants and ship-captains, and at the first sight of Erling they set up a howl of indignant protest.

“Why can we not sail north?”

“What is this word that all shipping must remain at Bergen?”

“Where are we to sell our goods?”

“Will you ruin us, king's father?”

Erling raised one hand in a gesture for silence.

“One question at a time,” he said. “I have ordered that no ship shall sail from the town because if you were permitted to go and come Hakon would receive news of whatever we intended against him or in defense of ourselves.”

“But this is ruin, Lord Erling,” protested one of the Bergen merchants. “What are we to do with the goods we have bought for sale in the north?”

“Sell them here,” returned Erling promptly.

“But our folk have purchased all they can use. We should lose——”

“If you lose it is to be regretted,” said Erling, “but still it is better that it should be so than that the Nidarosfolk should have more goods. To keep them lacking is to our advantage.”

“How long must our ships lie idle?” called an English shipman.

“I can not say,” replied Erling.

“Not long, if I have my way,” growled Swain. “When we go out to do battle with Hakon you carls may sail in our wakes.”

And that was the best comfort the merchants could extract from the situation. The taverns buzzed with angry talk, but Erling's longships mounted guard in the haven, and no man cared to dare the pursuit of those sea crawlers.

This was the very beginning of the trading season, and ships came in every day from the southlands. They came in gaily, expecting a good trade, but their captains had not been ashore long enough for the first lip-wetting when the gayness was changed to wrathy expostulation.

Again and again parties of the merchants went up to the king's skalli, and each time Erling received them, offered them wine and ale to drink, and sent them away no better satisfied than when they passed the scarlet-cloaked guards in the outer yard.

So matters went for several weeks, and then of a sudden one day the word spread along the strand that the king's men were drawing his ships ashore. The merchants and ship-captains ran in haste to the royal dockyards. Yes, it was true. Snekkes and longships were being hauled up on the ways, and the shipwrights were actually setting up the winter penthouses over them. In reply to the questions that were showered upon them the workers answered only that they had been ordered to do so. They knew no more than others, but it was said that Swain and Erling had decided not to fare north this season.

Back up-to the king's skalli rushed the merchants, and were ushered into the hall, where Erling sat at the high table, Swain very black and gloomy beside him.

“I am glad that you have come to me,” said Erling courteously before any man had a chance to address him, “for I was on the point of sending you an invitation to attend the king. We have decided to remove the prohibition upon sailings to the north. You are all at liberty to go wherever you will.”

“Not with my leave,” scowled Swain. “This is a foolish business.”

The merchants exchanged looks of curious speculation. One of the boldest cleared his throat and spoke apologetically:

“It is not our desire to seem unduly curious, but will you acquaint us whether you intend to sail in our wake or before us, Lord Erling? We are men of peace, and in no way prepared to be caught up in a battle between hostile fleets of longships.”

“That is a fair question,” answered Erling. “I have ordered my own ships to be shedded over.”

“Ah, then you do not propose to sail north?” asked another merchant.

“Some of my friends have advised me that I might meet Hakon to better advantage here in Bergen,” replied Erling warily.

“I was not of their number,” roared Swain pounding his fist upon the table. “We shall all be called niddering folk if we skulk here in the merchant town, instead of going forth to meet our enemies.”

Erling shrugged his shoulders.

“If we do not agree, that is to be regretted Swain,” he remarked. “I will go as far with you as I can.”

No more was said, but the merchants returned to the strand, and spread the word that Swain and Erling were in open disagreement at last.

“Swain was all for sailing north to attack Hakon's folk,” they reported. “But Erling would have none of it.”

“No one need be surprized by that,” said others, “seeing that Erling has always been disposed to caution.”

This was a Sunday. There was a soft and favorable wind from the south, and before vespers were sung most of the shipping in the haven had put to sea and fared north, the various vessels hoisting every sail they could bend to the ropes and urging themselves on with oars when they might, for each merchant was keen to come first to Nidaros, where all knew that by now there must be a hungry market for their wares.

“Hakon will pay well for what we know,” thought more than one.

IX

Swain's device worked out as he had expected. When the merchants met Hakon he asked what news they had of Magnus' folk, and those who were friendly to him or anxious to curry favor or else nursed resentment against Erling for the embargo laid upon them at Bergen replied very volubly, saying that Erling had laid up his ships and had given over any thought of a voyage north that summer.

“What does Swain think of that?” inquired Olvir Rosta, who stood by the king on the strand.

“He thinks ill of it,” returned one of the Outlanders. “We heard him rebuke Erling for what he called niddering conduct.”

“Then there is no doubt that this news is true news, King,” commented Olvir.

“That is my opinion,” answered Hakon. “The question for us to decide is how we can turn Erling's cowardice to best use.”

Jarl Sigurd, who was also present, asked the merchants then if Erling and Swain possessed a numerous troop of followers. Some merchants said one thing and some another, according to their secret opinions regarding the struggle for the crown; but the result of the several statements made was to convince Broadshoulders and his friends that their enemies were stronger than formerly, but not quite so strong as the northern array.

“My counsel is that we should proceed deliberately,” said Olvir Rosta. “If we act with haste——”

“I do not see why we should be deliberate,” Eindride Ungi broke in. “We have more men than they.”

“How would you move against them, Eindride?” demanded Jarl Sigurd, who for once was in agreement with Olvir. “We have the men, but as has often been said before, we lack ships.”

“How if we took some of the merchantcraft to transport our troops?” offered Eindride.

The merchants cried out at this, and Hakon himself spoke up.

“No, no, Eindride, I have never had any luck on the water. Let us make this fight on the land.”

“So that we fight, I do not care where it is,” answered Eindride boldly. “Let us arm our folk, and march south by the seaside.”

But Jarl Sigurd and Olvir both resisted Eindride's suggestion.

“You can never be too strong to fight Swain,” protested Olvir.

“He who examines the hillside in front of him never trips over a hidden stick,” remarked Sigurd.

“Here is only division of opinion,” exclaimed Hakon impatiently. “What will you have, carls?”

And Eindride puffed out his chest and cried scornfully—

“It is plainly to be seen that some men are for fighting and some for ale-swigging!”

“In your teeth!” growled Olvir.

“Let us fight, by all means,” said Jarl Sigurd, “but so contrive it that we shall have the advantage.”

“How?” challenged the king.

“Thus: We can never have too many folk to lead against Swain, as Olvir has said. Also, we shall do well if we confuse them at the beginning of the summer. They will look to see us come straight to Bergen by land or sea path. Instead, I advise that we take what ships we have and fare south, ravaging the boendr on the seaside who are friendly to Erling and gathering additional men for our company, as we go.

“It is probable that the people we injure will send to Bergen for aid, and perhaps Erling and Swain will be induced to come forth with their carls and attempt to defend the countryside. If this happens we can summon the remainder of our friends to follow us by land from Throndhjem, and fall upon Erling's troop in the open country, where he will not have walls to aid him or ships at hand to secure his retreat.”

“A plan worth trying!” approved Olvir.

“Yes, it has points,” said Eindride doubtfully, “but I shall not be satisfied with any fight unless it permits me to lay my ship alongside Swain's.”

“You had better be thankful if your luck saves you from such a fight,” cried Hakon, “for I doubt very much whether you would gain the advantage of Swain. He is a far more dangerous foe afloat than ashore.'

Olvir shook his head vigorously.

“That is dangerous talk, King,” quoth the Roisterer. “If it were Swain alone we had to reckon with I should be as fearful of a shield pushing as a hull cracking. But our great advantage is that Erling's caution has weakened his confidence, and a man who is not sure of the future is half beaten before the bowmen loose.”

The next day Hakon embarked the choicest troops he owned, with a notable body of chiefs, Jarl Sigurd, Olvir Rosta, Eindride Ungi, Onund Simon's son, Jon Svein's son, Philip Peter's son, Philip Gyrd's son, Ragnvald Kunta, Sigurd Kapa, Sigurd Hiupa, Frirek Keina, Asbjorn of Forland, Thorbjorn Gunnar's son, Stradbjarne and others, and fared south to Veey. He had upward of twenty ships, but not so many of these were large. Eindride's trireme, Draglaun, loomed like a church above the snekkes^[12] and skeids.^[13]

From Veey he dispatched Jarl Sigurd with a number of ships to forage in More, collect recruits and levy taxes. Broadshoulders, himself, with Olvir Rosta, Onund Simon's son, Eindride Ungi and the rest of the chiefs, thirteen ships in all, sailed on south to Steinavag and rested there on the island until they heard what luck the forayers had in More. His forces now were in three parts, the greatest number penned up in Nidaros, shipless, several thousand men with his banner at Steinavag and the remainder with Jarl Sigurd.

X

It was on a Sunday that the merchants had sailed from Bergen. On the following Wednesday, before Mass was sung in the town, Erling and Swain embarked their choicest troops aboard twenty-one large ships, dragons and longships of substantial burden, and pointed their prows to the north.

Erling and the child king sailed in the Baekisudin, which had been King Ingi's ship, and Swain sailed side by side with them in Deathbringer. The Bergenfolk cheered lustily as the fleet rowed to sea, and the troops left in the town rattled swords on shields and endeavored by noise making to atone for the disappointment of missing the battle all men knew was soon to come.

For several days nothing happened. The ships sailed and rowed as occasion served and Magnus prattled hourly his disgust that the foe were not in sight. But one evening Swain overhauled a fisherman of More, and from him wrung the news that Hakon was at Steinavag. A thrill of exultation shot through the fleet. The crews bent two to an oar, and the oar holes smoked with the grinding of their efforts, while the scalds sang martial lays to enencourage them. They made two doegrs'^[14] distance, it seemed, in one doegr's time.

As was to be expected, however, warning of their coming sped ahead of them, for the folk of the seaside spied the passage of the fleet from many a stead, and horsemen flogged their steeds to carry the word north. King Hakon and his lendermen had just celebrated matins—the day was a Friday—and were sitting on a hillside of the island, watching the common men of the host playing games, when they spied a small boat rowing out from the mainland.

“Those carls are in haste,'” remarked the king idly. “See, they are pulling so hard that they bend back nearly to the keel.”

“Perhaps they have a message for us from Sigurd,” said Olvir Rosta.

When the men in the small boat reached the island's shore they did not tarry to belay the boat, but leaped overside the instant the keel took ground and ran up the hill, crying:

“Where is the king? Where is Broadshoulders?”

Hakon rose from his seat, and walked down to meet them, shouting—

“Here I am, carls. What is your word?”

The boatmen were so out of breath, what with the rowing and running, that they could not speak connectedly, and Eindride Ungi called—

“Have you news of Erling Skakki that you make such haste?”

At this both men nodded their heads vigorously, and one panted—

“Here comes Erling against you, sailing from the south, and Swain and many others with him.”

“How many ships has he?” asked Olvir.

“Twenty-one or thereabouts,” answered the second messenger,” of which many are great enough.”

“And now you shall soon see their sails,” cried the other.

“Ill news! Ill news!” groaned Onund Simon's son.

“Too near to the nose, said the peasant, when his eye was knocked out,” exclaimed Eindride.

“You are mistaken to make too much of this,” said Hakon, undismayed. “It is true we are taken by surprise, but——”

A great shout came from a group of men who had lingered on the hilltop.

“Sails, Lord King! Sails coming out of the south!”

“Here is no time to waste,” snapped Olvir.

And Eindride echoed him—

“He who has the disadvantage must jump the quickest.”

“Is it dignified to run?” asked the King: “We are not a weak company.”

“But we have not such a fleet as comes against us,” shouted several lendermen.

“In More Jarl Sigurd awaits us,” reminded Eindride. “Also, the townfolk in Veey are our friends. Ashore there we shall be safe.”

“It was in my mind that I had heard you saying you would not be satisfied with any fight unless it permitted you to lay your ship alongside Swain's!” exclaimed Hakon contemptuously.

“It was not my thought to fight Swain alone,” retorted Eindride.

“That is sense, Lord King,” expostulated Olvir. “We are too few to make head against twenty-one great dragons and longships.”

The king shook his head, groaning with shame and disgust.

“Truly has it been said that my luck deserts me on the sea!” he exclaimed. “Well, if we must flee let us lose no time.”

He ordered the ludr-horns to be blown in signal that all his folk were to embark, and the men around him raised a great shout, which was carried from group to group. But the common men at first were not eager to go aboard ship, for they had been exercising vigorously all the morning at their games, and their midday meat was ready on the cooking fires, so that most waited to grab a handful or two of food. And when the word was passed that the hostile fleets were actually within view there was a disorderly rush to the strand, and men tumbled aboard whichever vessel was nearest.

Crews were mingled together, and some ships had more than their regular complement, while others were undermanned. Eindride's trireme was the only craft that had not been beached or run close ashore, and because it was the farthest out and the most difficult to come at the majority of her crew betook themselves to more convenient vessels, and Eindride was hard put to it to get his anchor up and way on her.

As many of his thralls had been slain in the first encounter with Swain or had sickened and died from the rigor of a Norse Winter, to which they were unaccustomed, he had been constrained to employ Norsemen to pull the two upper banks of oars. With a short crew his clumsy vessel could only crawl at the pace of a log in the current, and sails were of no use because the wind was contrary.

The result of all this was that while Hakon and the rest of his fleet made fair progress, Baekisudin and Deathbringer came abeam of Eindride's Draglaun under the lee of the island known as Sekke, and Eindride, who was no coward, despite his vanity and foolish ways, seeing that he could not escape, decided to adopt the more honorable course, brought his ship around and met his enemies' attack with a right good will.

“Ho,” exclaimed Swain, “there is valor in the Weathercock!”

Erling called across the water to Swain—

“Let us offer Eindride peace for the sake of the days we were shieldmates.”

“Not with my approval,” returned Swain promptly. “We could never trust him in those days, and he did ill by us when he took Hakon's side a year ago.”

“It irks my stomach to slay a man I have known as well as Eindride,” persisted Erling

“you will not, leave him to me,” growled Swain. “I will cheerfully hew him down. All his life he has never realized when he was well off, but must be forever chasing this ambition or that, like a bee after fresh honey.”

So Swain bade his helmsmen run Deathbringer aboard of the trireme on her larboard beam, and he and Erik mustered their archers and spearmen on the forecastle, in order that they might wreck as much slaughter as possible before the hulls crashed. And when Erling perceived these preparations he was unable to obey his first inclination to shift his helm over, and continue in pursuit of the remainder of Hakon's fleet.

“We must support Swain,” he said to the folk with him on Baekisudin's poop, “for he may not have as great luck against the trireme as he did on the occasion of their earlier meeting. Put up the helm, and we will board Eindride to starboard.”

Eindride stood on Draglaun's poop, very splendid in his gilded mail, and he summoned all the free men of the crew from the oars, and, albeit he was undermanned, he yet had with him as many folk as there were both on Swain's ship and Erling's, and he had, too, the additional advantage that his vessel's sides were high above those of the two dragons.

“Hearts up, carls!” he cried to his company. “We will teach Swain a lesson he'll not forget.”

They cheered him willingly, for, indeed, they were a brave troop, including men who had served in the Varang Guards of the Greek emperor in Mikligard and others who had passed their lives in viking faring and adventuring. Cold steel was the favorite repast of these folk.

Swain steered Deathbringer into the larboard oarbank of the trireme, and missiles showered back and forth betwixt the two vessels as they lurched together, Swain suffering the most, since his men were exposed, while the crew of the trireme, high overhead, could take shelter whenever they wished at close quarters. Also, when Deathbringer's crew strove to climb the rounded hull of the trireme they were easily beaten back by Eindride's folk, even after Baekisudin ground into Draglaun's starboard side. Now and again a handful of men would gain the bulwarks, only to be hacked apart or cast back upon their comrades below.

Finally, Swain and Erik undertook to build a heap of oar benches and other gear against the trireme's hull, and from this they forced an entry, which they made good as half a dozen other vessels of their fleet came up, flinging men over their bows like the salt scud on the wings of an easterly gale. Draglaun's bulwarks were topped in ten places at once. Erling was on her deck not seven strokes behind Swain. Her waist was cleared, and the fighting shifted fore and aft to poop and forecastle.

In the mean time, and while this had been happening, Hakon and the other twelve ships of the northern fleet had arrived close to Veey; but when they heard the bellowing of the warhorns astern and marked how Eindride was beset and how gallantly he bore himself, Broadshoulders came about and hailed his ship captains to follow him.

“It appears that Eindride did not boast idly when he said he would not rest until he had laid his ship alongside of Swain's,” cried the king. “And as honorable men, it would not become us to reach safety under the shelter of Eindride's lone fight. We must bear a hand for him.”

Onund Simon's son turned his ship, very reluctantly, and came under Hakon's stern.

“Think well what you do, Lord King,” shouted Onund. “We are outnumbered, and like to——”

Olvir Rosta, also, foamed up, his dragon Fafnir's Bane a long streak of black, red and green, in the midst of the creamy belt of spume raised by her oars.

“Madness, King!” hailed the Roisterer. “Why should we risk death for that fool, Eindride?”

“That fool Eindride risks death for us,” retorted Hakon. “And there are times when even a king can not afford the part of disgrace.”

“You do this by no counsel of mine,” scowled Olvir.

And as the king was heard to exclaim to the officer setting the stroke, “Faster, carl, faster!” Olvir spoke low to his folk and ordered them to moderate their efforts, although continuing to give evidence of an attempt at speed.

The effect of this was that Olvir's ship lagged behind the rest, and when Hakon and his lendermen drove into the rim of longships that surrounded Eindride's trireme like dogs worrying a wounded stag, Fafnir's Bane remained on the outer edge of the circle, lying board-and-board beside a craft of twenty oars, half of whose crew were on Draglaun's deck.

But those of her folk left to her offered enough of a fight to keep Olvir busy, and since this was all the Roisterer desired, he simply clung to the position he had chosen, creating a vast din of shouting and weapon clashing, but careful not to venture an oar's length farther than he must, and vigilant for the first excuse that would justify flight.

XI

Hakon's return did not suffice to save Eindride, but it brought about what men afterward said was the most desperate and disorderly sea fight since the old berserk days.

Full tilt into the ring of dragons and longships around the trireme came the twelve vessels that had followed Broadshoulders' lead. Olvir, of course, had bided at the circle's edge, but the other eleven penetrated it, and became involved in hopeless confusion with Magnus' ships.

Crews leaped from bulwark to bulwark, regardless of whether they fought on their own decks or not. A dozen separate fights commenced, dissolved into smaller combats, fused again, divided, swirled this way and that.

Sometimes the struggle was on Hakon's vessels; again, his folk would succeed in carrying it to Magnus's. But wherever it was men fought it was with a grim determination that earned the impartial praise of the scalds who celebrated their deeds. Those of Eindride's men who survived the last rush of Swain and Erling escaped to join Hakon, and added their strength to the brave effort of Broadshoulders' men.

Eindride, himself, died in this fashion. He had retreated to the poop of Draglaun, with a very considerable company, and both Swain and Erling came at him there, hemming him so completely that his men, who had fought very well, commenced to drop over the stern, some into the water, others to the decks of any ships they could reach. Eindride held the ladder stairs as long as he could, and when he saw that he must give ground and permit his enemies to reach the poop on a level with himself, he raised his voice in a great shout:

“Ho, Swain, Erling! Heed me for a breath! Eindride calls!”

Erling lowered his sword immediately, but Swain called back—

“If you ask quarter——”

“I ask quarter for such of my folk as are here with me,” returned Eindride, “seeing that they have conducted themselves like brave warriors. For myself, I wish only to meet Swain in single combat. He has put a grave slight on me, and I am disposed to show that he is not so great a man as the scalds who attend him would have people believe.”

A snarl of rage came from Swain's men, and they started to surge forward again, but Swain held them back with outstretched arms.

“I have no quarrel with Eindride's terms,” he said calmly. “For his folk here, they shall have quarter. For himself, I will gladly give him an opportunity to hammer helms with me, and this the more readily because I have determined that he must die, and it will please the vanity which had enthralled him that he should die at my hands, and so be assured of a fame he might not otherwise attain.”

Eindride turned crimson, and heaved up the huge Varangian ax, which was his battle weapon.

“In your teeth!” he howled.

“Bide, bide,” answered Swain. “Let your carls drop their arms.”

Sullenly, with mutters of anger, Eindride's men clattered their weapons on the deck, and submitted to being confined in the spacious poop of the trireme. As it chanced, they were the only ones of Hakon's folk to receive quarter that bloody day.

“Now, are you sure that you need only fear my ax?” snorted Eindride as the last prisoner was led away.

“What if he lives, Swain?” spoke up Erling.

“He will not live,” answered Swain.

“You are too confident,” sneered Eindride.

“I am so confident,” replied Swain, “that I will say you are to go free if by any mischance you slay me.”

“I do not seek life at your hands,” fumed Eindride.

“At mine, Eindride,” exclaimed Erling. “I can not hope that you may slay Swain, but if you do—”

“Talk never made the fire burn,” exclaimed Swain impatiently.

“We have fought with this carl behind the same shield in bygone times, Swain,” urged Erling.

“Little did it mean in his recollection,” snapped Swain. “Come, Eindride, we have talked too much.”

“I am content,” said Eindride, and he prowled toward Swain with legs crooked and ax held so that he could swing it in any direction.

Swain awaited him in careless posture. The Orkneyman's famous sword Hausakliufr—Skullsplitter—was hanging from his hand, point to the deck. Several of his men, accustomed though they were to his success, murmured remonstrance.

“Guard, Swain!”

“Up blade, Kingsbane!”

“Ho, Fostri, watch that ax!”

But Swain knew his opponent. Eindride, always vain, always self-confident, with never a thought for the future, laughed aloud.

“You are not so eager for this fight as you pretended!” he barked contemptuously.

The ax flickered in air, swished down from right to left in the collarbone cut which no mail could resist. But Swain's sword flashed up to meet it. The heavy blade sheared through the thick oaken haft, and the ax head rang on the deckplanks. Eindride's mouth gaped open, his eyes stared. A gasp came from the onlookers, became a grunt of wonder as Hausakliufr hovered momentarily at the peak of its cut upward, and then sang down upon Eindride's neck just above the collar of his glittering pantzer coat.

The plate of proof, forged by the cunningest Greek armorers, turned the blow as no linkmail might have done, but the blade bit deep through flesh and bone, turned sidewise by the steel's resistance, and Eindride's head seemed to jump upward on the column of blood that spouted from the severed veins.

“A short fight is a lucky one,” growled Swain. “Hark, carls! There is more work to do.”

For at that instant came the battering crash of hulls that proclaimed Hakon's entry into the fray, and a tempest of battlecries rang above the clang of steel and booming of the war horns.

Calls for help came from several of the southern ships, whose companies had been denuded by the rush to carry the trireme.

“Hakon has delivered himself to us,” said Swain, “but I advise you, Erling, to keep a close watch upon your son.”

“That is good advice,” agreed Erling. “This is a strange battle.”

“Whether it is strange or not, we ought to be able to secure an advantage from it,” replied Swain. “Do you guard Magnus, and I will fare afield, and try what fortune will be won on cluttered decks.”

Erling said that this should be so, and he climbed down to Baekisudin's deck, and formed a ring of the most stalwart of his housecarls around the little king, nor did he stir from the ring, himself, for the remainder of the fighting, except when now and again a stray band of Hakon's folk, in flight or pursuit, crossed Baekisudin's gunwales.

Swain gathered all the men he could find, and dropped over the other side of Draglaun where the fighting was bitterest, and so took his path from ship to ship, as occasion served. There was only a short time during which Hakon had the better of the struggle, for as soon as Swain appeared and the men who had been on the trireme returned to their vessels, Broadshoulders was outnumbered and outfought. He must have fallen at the first clash, with the bulk of his men, but for the confusion of the fray. The sails were lying across the decks. Oars were scattered about the benches. No two ships were bound together, and the huddle of craft simply ground hither and yon, occasionally gunwale to gunwale, a moment later with clear water a spear's-length wide separating them.

Swain was picking his way from bench to bench of a ship that had just been cleared when a man in a gray cloak sprang from the next ship and alighted on a chest under the forecastle. Swain eyed him curiously.

“Ho,” said the Orkneyman. “Who are you, carl?”

The man clutched the cloak tighter to him.

“There was no staying over there,” he replied. “Our friends were all dead.”

“'Our friends',” repeated Swain. “Now, I wonder who our friends might be?”

And then he noted the unusually square set of the shoulders under the cloak, and laughed aloud, striding closer.

“I know you, Broadshoulders! We have met before. Do you remember? It was on a ship's deck in the Gaut River fight under Hising.”

“Yes,” assented Hakon, casting aside the cloak to give his arms free play. “And I should have perished there, if you had allowed the archers to loose at me in the water when I swam ashore.”

“And we meet a second time on a ship's deck when you have need of flight!” commented Swain.

“I am not of a mind to flee,” answered Hakon shortly.

“Why did you return to meet us, when your escape was assured?” asked Swain.

“And leave Eindride to withstand you alone! That is not the course an honorable man would advise.”

“No,” agreed Swain. “You are an honorable man. Humph, I should put my sword to your throat, but——”

Hakon placed himself in a posture of defense.

“You are welcome to try,” he said. “If God wishes my death, I am not afraid to meet it.”

“Well spoken!” growled Swain. “I do not like this business, though. Myself, I have always advised your death, yet—humph! Say, Hakon, if we give you quarter, will you submit to Erling, yield up the kingship and accept exile or imprisonment?”

“It is not my inclination to prefer life with dishonor,” returned Hakon. “After all, I have been a king.”

“Ah, yes,” said Swain. “But a live man is better than a dead king, Hakon. And while a man has life he can work and strive for regaining what he has lost.”

“That is strange advice from you,” said Hakon.

“Well, I find myself sorrowful for a king as honorable as yourself,” answered Swain. “There are few like you. But sorrowful or no, I can not stand here. Will you yield?”

Hakon cast down his sword.

“To you, yes. But there is no other man could have taken me sword in hand, Swain.”

Swain guided him across the rolling ships to the forecastle of Baekisudin and gave him in charge of Erling's folk there.

“I charge you,” he said in Hakon's hearing, “to guard him as you would Magnus, for he has yielded himself to me on terms. And moreover, he is an honorable foe, who deserves honorable treatment.”

These men, who are not named by the sagas, exclaimed readily that they would protect Hakon with their own lives, from their friends, if need be—“for he is, as you say, Swain, a warrior who is an honor to Norway, and there will be much said in his praise, despite that he has lost the day.”

With this Swain went off to continue the task of carrying those of Hakon's ships that had not been cleared, and the word spread over the whole area of the fighting that Hakon had been taken and was held on Baekisudin's forecastle. It came first to Erling, and the man who told him had heard it from the forecastlemen at the other end of the dragon.

“They say that they will defend him against you or any man,” declared this fellow.

“Did they take him?” answered Erling.

“No, they had him from Swain.”

“If Swain took him, and gave him to my forecastle folk to keep, then I am content with any orders Swain gave,” returned Erling.

And he sent straightway one of his courtmen forward over the littered waist, where the dead and wounded lay in heaps, to bid the forecastlemen make good their boasts.

“I have no objection to giving Hakon life and safety,” he said, “although my chiefs must approve whatever we do.”

About the same time a number of Hakon's chiefs heard that he was on Baekisudin, and they mustered some hundreds of men and rowed and fought their way through the tangle of the fight, some from deck to deck and some in ships they worked free of the confusion. Swain was trying to cast grapplings on the hull of Olvir's dragon to prevent the Roisterer's escaping, and he was not at hand when this happened.

So vigorous was the attack upon Baekisudin that Erling and all his housecarls and courtmen were required to resist it, and they kept the little King Magnus safe, literally, by covering him with their bodies. There was a scutter of arrows in the air, and at last Erling bade them bury the king under a heap of corpses, and by this means they preserved him. Nobody took thought to Hakon in the excitement, and it was only after Swain had returned, black with fury because Olvir had pulled from the welter of ships before the grapplings had caught, and smashed the attempt at rescue that a cry was raised that Broadshoulders was gone.

“Not he!” scouted Swain. “He yielded himself to me, and he was not the man to break his word.”

“But he is not here, Swain!” wailed the forecastlemen who still lived, a bare handful.

“Look closer,” counseled Swain. “What is that under the gunwale there? It is gray. Haul off those bodies. Yes, so!”

They pulled the heap apart, and under it lay Hakon Herdabreid, dead of a spear thrust in the breast.

Who killed him was never known. It was more likely than not, all folk agreed, that in the flurry and turmoil of the combat a blow from the hand of one of his own men had reached him, for his captors were ringed almost back to back and there was scant room for weapon-play and less time to select an opponent.

“Humph,” growled Swain when he was satisfied that Hakon was dead. “This has been a battle which we won, but the honor must go to a king who lost both battle and life.”

And he had King Magnus dug from beneath the heap of corpses that had sheltered him, and led the child forward to where Hakon lay.

“Do you remember this fight, youngling,” ordered Swain gruffly. “It was the making of your kingship. And remember, too, that the king we overthrew for you was a king you will do well to pattern after when you have the strength to swing steel.”

Magnus nodded solemnly.

“I will be like him and like you, Swain,” he promised. “You shall not have cause to be ashamed of fostering me.”

Swain grunted approval as he surveyed the bloodstained little figure.

“We have not fed the warbirds for nothing this day,” he said, “and that is more than can be said of most battles.”

XII

There was a great slaughter of Hakon's folk in the fight under Sekke, but Olvir Rosta, Onund Simon's son, Frirek Keina and most of the chiefs managed to escape, thanks, first of all, to the proof of their mail which preserved them from their enemies' blows in the heat of the conflict, and after that, to their good luck in tumbling into one of the several ships that were able to imitate Olvir's example and pull away.

Magnus's carls were too weary from the labors of the pursuit and the battle to harry them further, and they reached Veey in safety. Presently Jarl Sigurd joined them, and the whole company fled to the uplands as their only refuge from the wrath of Swain and Erling.

Magnus's chiefs dispatched a swift snekke to call up the troops remaining in Bergen, and when these had arrived by the land road in More they resumed their advance by ship and shore, subduing the country as they proceeded north. The large body of Hakon's men in Nidaros was dispersed without a fight.

Those chiefs who had no blood feud with Erling and his son sent in their submissions and returned with their folk to their steads. Only the men of the more desperate sort headed for the uplands and joined themselves with the skeleton host that still clung to Jarl Sigurd and Olvir. But there was no longer an army or a king in opposition to Magnus, only a band of outlaws who were concerned with the stealing of cattle to feed themselves, rather than with an ambition to rule the land.

“Let them be,” advised Swain. “They are turning all the folk against them with their depredations. When we have securely established Magnus as king we will hunt them down like the wolves they are.”

So Magnus was carried to Nidaros, and from the merchant town Erling sent a call to an Eyra Thing—so called because it met on the Eyra, the plain between the river and the sea by the town, and which from the old times had the election of the Norse kings—to all the chiefs and famous men in Norway.

And when the Thing-men were assembled, Erling presented his son to them, with Swain holding the boy by the hand.

“This is my son, who is the rightful King of Norway,” said Erling. “He succeeds Ingi by blood right and by weapon right, and also because in his rule is the land's best hope of peace and wealth. He has already been elected king in the open Thing, but lest the evil-minded have an excuse to plot in secret against him I have decided to submit his cause to the Eyra Thing, against which there can be no just appeal.

“On my own behalf, I pledge myself to act faithfully as my son's guardian during his tender years, and toward his interests well. And in order that he may be preserved from the softness and indulgence of a parent's rearing, I have obtained the consent of Swain to act as foster father to him and supervise his upbringing. You all know Swain by repute, if it has not been your fortune to meet him, it may be, even, that some of you have had occasion to face him across a shieldwall.”

There was a roar of laughter at this gibe.

“We know Fostri!” cried some men. “A shrewd striker, the Fosterer!” hailed others.

And one man called:

“This Swain is forever winning new titles. Kingsbane he was, and now he must be Fostri.”

“Well, what do you say of him?” asked Erling. “The king will have no bower training at his hands.”

“Let Swain foster him!” came the answering shout. “Give the king to Swain! Swain Fostri! Swain Fostri!”

When the uproar had died away Swain strode forward a pace, the little king's hand still clutched in his.

“It has been fairly said of me,” he growled, “that I am an outlander. But the blood in my veins is Norse blood. My luck is Norse luck. And if I had my way I should worship the old Norse gods—let the priests make the most of that! Years since, I came east from the Orkneyar at King Ingi's urging to aid him in establishing himself against the efforts of his brothers, Sigurd and Eystein. I say frankly to you that then I thought only of the plunder to be won in kings' wars.

“But as the struggle continued, as we lifted Ingi to higher power and as the lawless folk clung the closer to resist him, I saw things differently. I saw, with Ingi's eyes, a Norway such as Harald Haardrada made, a Norway united under one king, a land that other people should fear.”

Not a cough interrupted him. Not afoot moved, not a weapon jangled amongst the listening thousands. The boy Magnus, Erling, all the folk, had fastened their gaze upon the Orkneyman's grim features.

“Humph!” he growled on. “Enough of myself! You know what a bloody time we have had. Year after year of forayings and burnings, of landfalls and seafarings, of ship fights and land fights. Humph! First, we of Ingi's faction slew Sigurd. Then we slew Eystein. Then Hakon's folk slew Ingi. Now we have slain Hakon—or I should say we brought about his slaying, for it is as nearly certain as may be that Broadshoulders had his bane from an unwitting stroke by one of his own folk.

“Four kings have died in these wars. Two of them, Ingi and Hakon, were kings to be proud of. Ingi was a little man in his body with a twisted foot and a hump on his back; but he had a great spirit in him, a spirit like the clean gray flame of a sharp sword. Hakon was a sturdy youth. He had valor and honor and a love for adventuring. He was born on the left-hand, it might be said, and he died on the right-hand, a brave king who was unlucky. Yes, I say this, who was his enemy, he deserved better luck. For he was a very honorable man. The saga-men will speak well of him.

“Humph! So much for the kings who have died. Now, here is the king who lives.”

He pulled Magnus forward.

“He is little more than a babe, but he does not whimper when the arrow flight is hissing. It is my judgment that we can make of him a king who will be a fit successor to Ingi and Hakon, with the spirit of the one and the lusty vigor of the other. What I can do for him I will do, and I pledge my endeavor to rear him to be such a king as warriors will joy to follow.”

“Skoal!” thundered the voices of the Thingmen, weapons rattling on shields. “Skoal, Magnus! Skoal, Fostri!”

When he could be heard again Erling put the question to them, whether Magnus was king, and they replied formally, without a dissenting voice, that the boy should be proclaimed king of all Norway—“by blood right, as lawful grandson of King Sigurd the Crusader, and by weapon right, as victor over Hakon, sole contender for the crown.”

XIII

After the Eyra Thing had dispersed Erling stationed a garrison in Nidaros to hold the town for him, and journeyed south by land, receiving the allegiance of the lendermen. And while he was so engaged, Swain took a small host, and went to the uplands, and there harassed Jarl Sigurd and Olvir Rosta so sorely that most of the folk remaining to them were slain or fled away, and the chiefs were compelled to retire through the forests into Sweden.

Swain accounted himself unfortunate because he had been unable to bring either Olvir or Sigurd to cross swords with him, but Erling said that it did not matter, since both were thoroughly discredited in the land.

“What concerns me now,” he said, “is the treaty I made with king Valdemar.”

“Leave that to me,” answered Swain.

Erling set up his court in Bergen, whence he could conveniently travel north, south or east, as circumstances might demand, and Swain dwelt with him. They did not hear from King Valdemar until autumn was at hand. Then a second embassy arrived in Bergen, with a letter announcing that the Danish King was ready to accept the jurisdiction over Viken which Erling had contracted to him.

Erling's face was white with anguish as a clerk read out the courteous, yet stern, wording of the letter.

“What can we do?” he cried to Swain. “I see no outlet but war, and that will not make Magnus the more popular with our people.”

“No,” assented Swain gruffly. “It would not, nor would the spreading of the knowledge of your foolishness in making such a treaty incline the Norsefolk to affection for you or your son.”

“But what else is there to do?” insisted Erling.

“Two things,” answered Swain with sudden energy. “In the first place, we will put off the Danes for a few weeks the while we hold a Thing of the Vikenfolk, and submit the question to them.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Why, the Vikenfolk will say that they will die sooner than submit to the Danes!”

“And then?” asked Erling doubtfully.

“Then you shall give their decision to Valdemar, asking him how he would derive any advantage from the possession of Viken, if the Vikenfolk were hostile to him? And to sweeten the purge, you shall offer him as much gold as you can afford to pay as recompense for the abandonment of his claim.”

“That would furnish a good argument,” assented Erling, “but how if Valdemar still refuses?”

“He probably will for a time,” admitted Swain coolly, “but if he does you will have a strong claim upon the Norsefolk. Instead of being in the position of trying to give Viken to the Danes, you will be defending it against them.”

The shadow lifted from Erling's brow.

“A shrewd plan,” he exclaimed. “Yes, yes, Swain. I think you have found a knothole we can crawl through. Well, we will try it!”

And the affair worked out very much as Swain had predicted. The Vikenfolk held a Thing in which they declared they would all die sooner than yield themselves to the Danes, and Swain took care that Erling should be represented to them only as a stanch defender of their rights as Norsemen.

Valdemar's ambassadors were very wroth at such tidings, but their wrath was somewhat diminished when Erling offered them a good round sum of weighed gold in cancellation of Valdemar's claim.

They returned to Denmark, with this offer, and likewise as Swain had predicted, Valdemar at first refused to accept it. For several years he was hostile to Erling, and once he even undertook to seize Viken by force of arms; but Kristin, King Magnus's mother, gave warning of his coming, and the hostility of the Vikenfolk was so manifest that he did not persist in his effort. And as Erling declared that this attempt absolved him from any further payments, Valdemar had naught for the aid he lent Magnus's cause, save the money given his earlier ambassadors, which, indeed, was a fair price, reckoning by merchants' calculations.

So Magnus was safely established as king, and the land waxed rich and the people fat with the peace Swain and Erling had won.

Oddi the Little, who had a trick of making word jingles to describe great events, composed one which was quoted widely at this time:

First came Swain,
Then Hakon's bane.
And these twain
Wrought Magnus' gain.

---

1. The Roisterer.
2. Constantinople.
3. Ireland.
4. Crusader.
5. Equipped.
6. The younger.
7. Plate mail.
8. Saracen.
9. Southern France.
10. Scilly Isles.
11. Farmers.
12. Cutters.
13. Headless longships.
14. The doegr was a period of twelve hours.