The Thrall of Leif the Lucky Part 34

Not till he had turned and stamped away over the snapping twigs, did his men come out of their trance of bewilderment.

As they resumed their climbing, Eyvind the Ice-lander observed sagely, "Never saw I any one whose speech reminded me so strongly of the hot springs we have at home. All of a sudden, without warning or cause, the words shoot up into the air, boiling hot; and it would be as much as one's life is worth to try to stop them. It is incomprehensible."

Pa.s.sing amused comments, they gained the crest and vanished over it, without noticing that the Norman still stood where the chief had left him, with every appearance of being equally bereft of his senses.

With parted lips, and hands nervously opening and shutting by his side, he stood staring away into the dusk before him, until the voices of those who were coming after with the spoils fell on his ear and aroused him. Then he raised to the stars a face that was fairly convulsed with excitement, and took the rest of the climb in three wild leaps.

"It is open to my sight at last!" he muttered over and over, as he hurried through the darkness toward the lighted booths. "Heaven be thanked, it is open to my sight at last!"

As he reached the end of the largest hut and was turning the corner in eager haste, an arm reached quickly out of the shadow and touched his cloak. Instinctively his hand went to his knife; but it fell away the next instant in a very different gesture, as Helga's voice whispered in his ear:

"Alwin,--it is I! I have waited for you since the first noise of the landing. I have a--hush, you must not do that! I have need of my lips to speak with No, no! Listen; I wish to warn you--"

"And I must tell you what has just occurred." Alwin's excitement bore down her caution. "I have guessed the riddle of what my service is to be,--or, to tell it truthfully, luck has guessed it for me, owl that I am! Here has it--"

But Helga's hand fell softly over his mouth. "Dumb as well as blind shall you be, till I have finished! Already I have stayed out long enough to excite suspicion. Listen to my warning; Kark suspects that your complexion is shallow. Yesterday I overheard him put the question to Tyrker, whether or not it were possible that a paint could color a man's skin dark so that it would not wear off."

"Devil take the--"

"Hush, that is not all! I have never thought it worth while to tell you, in the few words we have had together; but now I know that the creature has suspected us ever since the day when Leif came upon us on the bluff.

The day after that, Kark dared to say to me, 'Is a shield-maiden as fickle as other women, for all her steel shirt? In Greenland, Helga, Gilli's daughter, loved an Englishman.' I beat him soundly for it, yet I could not uproot the thought from his mind; and now--"

"And now I tell you that it is of no consequence what he thinks," Alwin interrupted her, eagerly. "I have to-night found out a means by which I am as certain to win favor as--"

But he could not finish. Crackling steps in the grove behind them made Helga spring away from him like a startled bird. He had only time to whisper after her, "To-night,--watch me across the fire!" before she had vanished among the shadows, like one of them.

After a moment the young man went his way around the corner of the cabin and came in through the open doorway, where his companions sat at supper.

The hall, which was also the larger of the sleeping-houses, was not an unworthy off-shoot of the splendors of Brattahlid. Here, as there, the rough walls were lined with gleaming weapons and shields that shone like suns in the ruddy glow of the fire. And in lieu of tapestries, there was a n.o.ble medley of bears' claws, fish nets, glistening birds' wings, drying hides, branching antlers, and squirrels' tails. The bunk-like beds, built against the walls, displayed a fortune in the skin covers that were spread over them; fox skins covered the benches, and wolf skins lay under foot. The chief's seat no longer boasted carven pillars or embroidered pillows, but it missed none of these when the great bear skin had been flung over the cushions of fragrant pine-needles. And if the table-service was not so fine as the gilded vessels on Eric's board, yet the fish and flesh and fowl that piled the trenchers, and the purple juice that brimmed the horns, had never been equalled in Greenland.

"Only to get such wine, the journey would be worth while," Rolf murmured to the shield-maiden, beside whom he sat, when at last the business of eating was over and the pleasure of drinking had begun. As he spoke he tilted his head back, with closed eyes and a beatific smile, and let the contents of his horn run slowly down his throat.

Even a woman might have had the sense to leave him undisturbed at such a moment; yet Helga bent forward and jogged his arm without compunction.

"Are you going to be forever swallowing?" she whispered, sharply. "Look across the fire and tell me what Alwin is doing with his hands. He has turned aside so that I cannot see."

It was with a distinct bang that the Wrestler set down his empty cup, and in a distinct snarl that his answer came over his shoulder. "Not a few men have been slain for such rudeness as that. Why should I care what the Norman is doing? Is it a time to be riding horseback or catching fish? Since there is no babbling woman at his elbow, it is likely that he is drinking."

But Helga's hand did not loosen its hold upon his arm.

"Hush!" she entreated him. "Something really is going to happen; he warned me of it. Something of great importance. You will act with no more than good will if you look and tell me what you see."

Excitement is infectious; even through his sulks Rolf caught it, and leaning forward, he peered curiously over the flames. The Norman sat in his usual place at the chief's left hand. It was evident that his thoughts were far away, for his drinking-horn stood forgotten at his elbow and he was humming absently as he worked. His fingers were busy with a long splinter and a tuft of fox-hairs, that he was pulling carefully from the rug on which he sat.

Rolf's eyes widened into positive alarm as he watched. "He has the appearance of a crazy man!" he reported. "Or it may be that he is making a charm and that is the weird song which he is mumbling. See,--he has finally drawn Leif's attention upon him!"

"He is not acting without a purpose," Helga persisted. "He told me to watch him. Look! What is he doing now?"

Still humming, and with the leisurely air of one who works to please himself alone, the Norman completed his task and held the result up critically to the light. It was nothing more nor less than a clumsy little fox-hair brush. Leaning back on the bear skin the chief continued to gaze at it curiously. But the pair across the fire suddenly turned to each other with a gasp of comprehension.

The Norman, still humming carelessly, drew his horn nearer with one hand, and with the other pushed a bowl out of his way. Then dipping his brush in the purple wine, he began to paint strange-looking runes on the fair new boards before him.

"It has come to my mind to try whether I can remember the words of that French song which we heard together in Rouen," he said lightly to Sigurd Haraldsson who sat by him. "Was it not thus that the first line ran?"

Almost with the weight of a blow, Leif's hand fell upon his shoulder.

"Runes!" he cried, in a voice that brought every man to his feet, even those who had fallen asleep over their drinking. "Runes? Is it possible that you have the accomplishment of writing them?"

His hold upon the shoulder tightened, of a sudden, to such a pressure that the young man was fain to drop his brush with a gasp of agony, and catch at the crushing hand. "You have had this power all these months that you have known of my great need? How comes it that you have never put forth a hand to help me?" he thundered.

Across the fire, Helga, Gilli's daughter, held herself down upon the bench with both hands. But though his lips were twisted with pain, the rune-writer met Leif's gaze unflinchingly.

"Help you, chief?" he repeated, wonderingly. "How was I to know that Norman writing would be of a.s.sistance to you? When did you ever tell me of your need?"

Though his gaze continued to hold the Norman for awhile, Leif's grip on his shoulder slowly relaxed. Then, gradually, his eyes also loosened their hold. Finally he burst into a loud laugh and slapped him on the back.

"By the edge of my sword, your wit is as nimble as a rabbit!" he swore.

"I cannot blame you for this. At least you lost little time in coming to my support as soon as I had told my need. By the Ma.s.s, Robert Sans-Peur, you could not have brought your accomplishment to a better market! I tell you frankly that it is of more value to me than any warrior's skill in the world, and I am not too stingy to pay what it is worth."

Unclasping the gold chain from his neck, he threw it over the Norman's head.

"Take this to begin with, Robert of Normandy," he said, with grave courtesy. "And I promise you that, if your help proves to be as great as I expect, there will be little that you can ask that I shall not be glad to give."

Decked in the shining gold of his triumph, the masquerading thrall stood with bent head, a look that was almost shame-stricken stealing over his face. But it is probable that the chief feared that he meditated another attempt at hand kissing, for that brusque commander began to speak quickly and curtly of purely unsentimental matters.

"I have none of the kid-skin of which your Southern books are made. Yet will not a roll of fresh white vadmal offer a fair subst.i.tute? And certainly there is enough wine--"

There certainly was enough, and more; yet at this suggestion an indignant murmur could not be suppressed.

"Though I never dispute your wisdom in anything, that appears to me to be little better than desecration," Valbrand declared, frankly.

With an effort the Norman roused himself. "It will not be necessary," he said, absently. "I know how to make a liquid out of barks that will have a dark color and suffer no damage from water."

He did not notice the expression that flared up in Kark's eyes; nor did he hear Helga's gasp, nor feel Sigurd's foot. His gaze fell again to the floor in moody abstraction.

The chief answered briefly to the murmurs: "It is unadvisable to oppose my whim for writing in wine; who knows but I might exchange it for a fancy to write in blood? Bring hither the vadmal, thrall, and we will lose no more precious moments."

Was ever monkish work begun in more unchurch-like surroundings? Alwin wondered, a festal board for a desk and a wine-cup for an ink-horn! The brawling crew along the benches drank and sang and rattled dice in their nightly carousal; and, in a corner, Lodin wrestled with the well-grown bear-cub before a circle of cheering spectators. The firelight flickered over the trophy-laden walls, picking out now a severed paw and now a grinning skull, until the whole place seemed a ghastly shrine of savagery.

The warrior-scribe wrote with painful slowness; and more than once, in trying to catch some of Helga's chatter across the fire, he wrote such twisted sentences that it was impossible to unravel them when he came to retranslate. Yet he did write. Ploddingly, haltingly, clumsily, he still caught the fleeting thoughts as they sped, and fastened them down, in purple and white, to last so long as one thread should lie beside another. No longer need anyone torture his brain to remember whether the tallest maple-trees stood beyond the river's second bend to the left or its fourth to the right, or between the third turning to the right and the fifth to the left. The little fox-hair brush sprang upon the fact and pinioned it, a prisoner for the remainder of time.

The chief's pleasure was almost too great to be controlled. He went at the work as a starving man goes at food, and he hung over it as a drunkard hangs over his dram. Tyrker rose with considerable bustle to take his departure for the other house; and Vaibrand stamped about noisily as he renewed the torches on the walls; but the monotonous steadiness of the dictation never faltered. One by one, the men about Leif dropped off, snoring; and he heeded it no more than he did the soughing of the wind through the grove. By and by, even the fresh torches began to snore, in angry sputters; and the fire, which had long since begun to wink drowsily, shut its last red eye and lay in total oblivion.

Leif sat up reluctantly, and stretched his arms over his head with a regretful sigh. "My mind comes out of it as stubbornly as Sigmund's sword came out of the tree trunk. We will return to it the first thing in the morning. You have done me a service which I shall never forget while my mind lives in me."

Leaning back against the bear skin to stretch his arms again and yawn, he added thoughtfully, "Your accomplishments have remedied my misfortune that last winter I was obliged to kill a youth who was of great value to me."

The scribe sat thrusting his legs out before him and working the fingers of his cramped hand, in a stupor of weariness. He awoke suddenly and, through the flickering light of the one remaining torch, shot a stealthy glance at the chief's face.