The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson Read Online Free

had taken a knife-gash for his sake, and he could not abandon it to fend for itself in this howling wilderness of the streets of Dublin. Well, hehad enough silver to feed them both for a while. He slid his knife back into its sheath, his hand expecting the feel of his pouch beside it. It was not there. And glancing down he saw the pouch strings neatly cut through, and remembered the faint tug at his belt, the dark thing arching across the moon on its way to be caught by someone else in the crowd. The knife had not been meant for him, only to separate him from his pouch. The fight had grown from that only because he had felt the tug and turned before the thief had a chance to get clear.
    What now? It was not only his silver that had gone, but the time it would have bought him. Time to work out what to do next, find someone to sell his sword-service to. Everything in him shied away from the thought of going back to Heriolf and
Sea Cow,
telling him how he had fared in the King’s garth. ‘The captain told me to go and grow myself a beard.’ Now he would have to add, ‘And some cursed bog-brother has stolen my pouch.’ He did not think that he could do it.
    The dog looked up at him hopefully, wagging its tail.
    ‘I haven’t anything more,’ Bjarni said. Already he seemed to hear the jeering, the rough, good-humoured laughter. Well, that would be the price to be paid; there was generally a price to be paid for things.
    ‘Come,’ he said with a small slap to his thigh; and the dog gave a little bounce and came, willing and eager. Bjarni would have slipped a strap round its neck if he had had one to spare, but all he had was his belt, without which both his sword and his breeks would fall down. But when, twisting his bleeding knuckles in one corner of his cloak, he turned and walked on, the creature paced at his knee with the proud submission of a good hound.
    There was a gaggle of ale-houses strung out along the keel-strand; and Heriolf and several of the
Sea Cow’
s crew were taking their ease in the third he looked into.
    The merchant master looked round from the bench on which he was sprawling, and saw them in the doorway, and waved a greeting with the ale-pot in his hand.
    And Bjarni jostled his way into the crowded peat-reek of the place, the black dog still at his knee.
    ‘And what brings you down this way from the High King’s Hall?’ Heriolf demanded.
    ‘I was thinking you’ll be needing a bodyguard up north to Evynd’s keel-strand,’ Bjarni said.
    ‘Will I so? And what of the King’s house-carles?’
    ‘I changed my mind! I have no wish for the King’s house-carles, nor for his town.’ Bjarni grinned, standing with his feet apart.
    ‘Which, it seems, has lightened you of your silver.’ Heriolf’s brows were up and his small dark eyes flickering with amusement along Bjarni’s belt where his pouch had been knotted.
    ‘I exchanged it for the dog,’ Bjarni told him, and all the weather-burned grinning faces along the table. It was true in a way.
    There was a splurge of laughter, good-natured enough, and every eye was on the gangling black creature standing pressed against his leg.
    ‘What?’ said Heriolf. ‘For that half-grown, half-starved gutter-cur?’
    Their laughter twisted in Bjarni’s gut. But he answered steadily, ‘He’ll be a fine hound by and by, fed up a bit, and when he’s grown to match his legs.’
    ‘And you so eager to get him that you paid the pouch along with the silver, cutting the purse strings rather than waiting to untie them?’ Heriolf jerked athumb at the end of knotted thong still fastened to Bjarni’s belt.
    ‘Yes,’ Bjarni said, and looked him eye into eye, knowing that the man did not believe a word of the story, but sticking to it all the same.
    ‘And your bundle too? Was that part of the bargain?’
    Until that moment, Bjarni had forgotten all about his bundle, abandoned, presumably, when he needed both hands for other matters. Still, what was an old cloak