Vandrad the Viking Part 6

His hearers looked at him in amazement. His eyes flashed, his lips twitched, the whole man was transformed for the moment into the Viking of the western seas.

"Once I was a skald myself," he said. "You have quickened what I thought was dead." And he rose and walked out into the night.

For a minute they were too surprised to speak. Then Osla said softly,--

"Your magic is too strong, Vandrad." She threw him one glance that lived long in his memory, and quickly followed her father.

For more than an hour afterwards he could dimly see them pacing the sh.o.r.e in silence, her arm within the hermit's.

Next day the old man was more silent and reserved than before, but every now and then Estein saw that his eyes followed him, and the few words he spoke were couched in a kindlier manner.

"Sing to him again," whispered Osla in the evening, and night after night the young skald sang and the hermit and his daughter listened. Sometimes when he was finished the old Viking would talk on various themes. Brief glimpses of his earlier days, s.n.a.t.c.hes of religious converse, his travels, and the strange peoples he had seen, he would touch upon before the evening prayer.

And so the time pa.s.sed away, till Estein had spent six weeks in the Holy Isle. All the while he had made no open love to Osla. She seemed merely friendly, and he was distracted between a wild desire to break down the barriers between them and a strange and numbing feeling of warning that held him back, he knew not why. So strong was it at times that he fancied two spells cast upon him, one by the island maiden, the other by some unknown spirit.

One morning he found her wandering by the cliffs that formed the seaward barrier of the isle.

"Let us sit here, Osla," he said. "I have a new song to sing you."

"I must bake my cakes," she answered. "Can you not sing it to us to-night?"

"It concerns only you. Sit here but for a moment; it is not long, and you can escape from me when I have done."

"Very well," she said, with a smile and an air of resignation. "I will listen, but do not keep me long."

"If it will tire you, I can wait."

"You can try me."

"I must leave the Holy Isle soon, Osla; I have been too long away from my kinsfolk and my country. It is hard to part, but it must come some day, and these verses are my parting song."

She was silent, and seemed intently plucking sea pinks.

"I cannot tell you why," he went on, "but to-day I feel that my hour has come to rove again. I would that I might live here for ever, but I know it is not fated so."

Then he sang his farewell song:--

"Canst thou spare a sigh, fair Osla? It is fated I must go. Wilt thou think of Vandrad ever When the sea winds hoa.r.s.ely blow, Or will the memory of my love With absence fainter grow?

"Canst thou spare a tear, sweet Osla, When I sail from this fair land? Wilt thou dream of Vandrad sometimes When the waves boom on the strand? Can visions of a pleasant hour The march of time withstand?

"Osla, when I bear me bravely, 'Midst the lightning of the sword, And the armies meet like torrents When the mountain snows have thawed The thought of thine approving smile Shall be my sole reward.

"Fare thee well, sweet blue-eyed Osla! The sea-king must not stay, E'en for tresses rich as summer And for smile as bright as May; But one hope I cannot part from--We may meet again some day!"

"Then are you going?" she said, more softly than he had ever heard her speak before.

"Do you wish me to stay?"

"Not if you wish to rove the seas again, and fight and plunder, as a brave man should," she cried with a flash of raillery. "If it is your fate to go, why should I stand in the way? Am I anything to you?"

She gave him no time to answer, but rose and ran lightly away.

CHAPTER V.

ANDREAS THE HERMIT.

The same day Estein rowed across alone to Hrossey, and started over the hills with his bow and arrows. He walked for some miles through moorland ground, and paused at length on the top of a range of hills, whence he had a wide view over the inland country.

There he sat down and mused for long. Below him he saw a valley opening out into a sweep of low-lying land, watered by many lochs, and bounded by heather hills. All round, in glimpses between the highest hill-tops, and in wide, unbroken stretches over the lower ranges, the open sea girdled the island. Gradually the stillness of the place and the freshness of the air told upon him, and at length he fell asleep. He began to dream, at first of confused events and hurrying faces, and then more distinctly and vividly.

He had landed, he thought, on the Holy Isle. It was dark, but he seemed to see plainly a figure, wrapped in a long cloak, walking before him towards the cells. It was neither Andreas nor his daughter, and with some wonder he quickened his steps and overtook it just as it was about to enter the hermit's cell. Then all at once it seemed to flash upon him that this was no mortal visitor, and with a sudden thrill of fear he stopped. At that instant the figure turned a shrouded face on him, and said sternly, and so clearly that the words were ringing in his ears when he woke,--

"What doest THOU here, Estein Hakonson?"

He came to himself with a start, the sweat standing on his forehead. It was the second time he had heard the voice. Once before it had warned him when he first entered the hermit's cell, but now as then he could find neither name nor circ.u.mstance to fit it.

All at once the prophecy of Atli came into his mind--"You will be warned, but you will heed not," and in spite of himself a feeling of gloom settled over his mind.

A herd of deer browsed unheeded on a distant slope, the hours pa.s.sed, and the sun sank low in the west, while he sat there alone.

At last he rose and retraced his steps back to the sh.o.r.e. The tide was running strongly, he had a long and stiff pull to win his way across, and the summer dusk that never reaches darkness in the north was gathering when he landed.

He looked round as though he expected to see a cloaked figure start up out of the gloaming, but the island was deserted and still. Before the cell he paused for an instant. "You will not heed the warning," he repeated. "Yet what is fated must be," and then he entered.

The hermit was alone. Farmer Margad had come for Osla, for his wife was unwell, and the credulous people thought the daughter of the wizard, as they deemed Father Andreas, might have some healing influence. Estein sat down and took his supper; and all the time he was eating, Andreas paced the floor saying nothing aloud, but muttering continually under his breath. Legends of shape-changing and black magic came into the young Viking's mind. As he watched the old man pa.s.s to and fro in the firelight, and the huge, distorted shadow sweep across and across the cell, he fancied once or twice that he could see the beginnings of some horrid transformation.

All of a sudden the hermit stopped and looked at him earnestly.

"Sing to me a song of battle!" he cried; and Estein saw that a change had indeed taken place. A fit of gloom had given way to a period of strange excitement, and the spirit of the sea-rover was returned.

Estein composed his mind, and sang the song of the Battle of Dunheath, beginning:--

"Many the chiefs who drank the mead As the sun rose over the plain, But small the band who bound their wounds When the heath was dark again."

As the last words died away the hermit began to talk excitedly and volubly, and in a strain new to his guest.

"I once sang such songs," he said. "I sailed the seas in my long ship, and men feared my name--feared me, Andreas, the man of G.o.d.

I was a heathen then, as thou art; I worshipped the G.o.ds of the North, and the hammer of Thor was my symbol on the ocean. I spared none who stood in my way. These hands have dripped with the blood of my foes, and many a widow have I left desolate."

He paused, and a tongue of flame shot suddenly from the fire and cast a bright light in the cell.

"Fire!" cried the old man--"fire like that have I brought on my foes! I have burned them like rats; I have left their homesteads smouldering! Listen, Vandrad, and I shall tell thee of a deed that made my name known throughout all the Northland. Now," he added, "I am a Christian man, and my soul is safe with Christ.

"Once I received an injury I swore I should avenge. Hakon, King of Sogn, a proud man and a stern, banished my brother Kolskegg for manslaughter. The deed was but an act of justice on one who had beguiled our kinswoman; but the dead man had many friends, and the king hearkened neither to Kolskegg's offers of atonement nor to my pet.i.tions--to mine, who had never asked aught of mortal man before! My brother was a dear friend of the king, foster-father even to his eldest son Olaf, and he weakly bowed his head and left the land. When I heard that he had gone, I pressed my sword-hilt so tightly in my rage that the blood dripped from my nails, and I cursed him aloud for idly suffering such insult to our house to pa.s.s without revenge. Our race is as old and proud as the kings of Sogn themselves, and I vowed that Hakon should rue that day. I was a heathen then, Vandrad."