The Sword Song of Bjarni Sigurdson Read Online Free Page A

and a spare sark? ‘Yes,’ he said again.
    ‘And having just bought him at such a princely price, I am thinking you will not be minded to leave him behind in Dublin.’
    Bjarni shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry.
    ‘Ach well –’ Heriolf took a long reflective pull at the ale-jack, then held it out to him. ‘Have a swallow, you look as though you could do with one . . . It is not the first time that I have carried hounds among the
Sea Cow
’s cargo. You had best go down to her now. I have kept a guard on board. Tell him I sent you, and get your head down; we’ll be loading a fresh cargo in the morning.’

3
Sword for Sale
    THE GREAT SEA-LOUGH ran for half a day’s rowing into the heart of the land; and on its north shore, far enough from the open sea to gain shelter from the mountains behind it, near enough to have its longships quickly out into the open water in time of need, the fleet base of Evynd the Easterner lay clear in late sunlight under a great over-arching bank of cloud.
    ‘Weather brewing,’ said Heriolf, sniffing the wind like a hound, one eye on the threatening cloud bank as the sail came rattling down and the oars were run out; and
Sea Cow
came about in answer to his hand on the steering oar, and headed for the long keel-strand. ‘Well, we shall be snug enough out of storm’s reach tonight.’
    Bjarni, squatting at the master’s feet with his sword across his knees, his free hand twisted in the bit of old rope round Hugin’s neck – the black hound had a name by now, taken from that of one of the god Odin’s ravens – looked along the straining backs of the rowers and out past
Sea Cow’
s up-reared prow as the distance narrowed between ship and shore.
    He saw long turf-thatched buildings, high-gabledship-sheds, the long dark shapes, like basking seals, of galleys lying on the slipways or on the open beach. And mingled with the land scents of sun-warmed grass and heather, the sea-reek of pitch and rope and timber came to his questing nose.
    Along the strand, men were making all secure for foul weather; and some among the nearest came wading out to add their strength to that of
Sea Cow
’s crew as they sprang overboard into the shallows; and so they ran her ashore and well up the beach above the tide-line, where they set to work to rig the storm covers and drive in the chocks that kept her on an even keel.
    Scarce a couple of oars’ lengths further along the strand two slim war-galleys were being made ready for the waiting timber rollers to take them up to a nearby ship-shed. Bjarni, who had splashed ashore with a hand still twisted in Hugin’s makeshift collar, looked up from the rope’s end which somebody had tossed to him with orders to hang on to it, to see the tall dragon-prow of the nearest up-reared against the gathering storm clouds and the wheeling gulls.
    Coming as he did of a sea-going people, he had seen a good few carved wooden dragon-prows before now; but none the like of this one for beauty or for a kind of shining wickedry that lifted the hair a little on the back of his neck. Like many of its kind, it was not all dragon, but held within it traces of some other beast, and looking up at it, letting his eyes follow the long wave-break curves of carving that almost broke into leaves and blossom but never quite, Bjarni realised that this one was part vixen, long-necked, slender and savage, the same curve from throat to chin, the same laid-back ears, the same snarling mask . . .
    ‘That’s
Sea Witch.
She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ saidHeriolf’s voice behind him. ‘They do say she barks like a vixen when her lord comes near.’
    ‘Her lord?’
    ‘Onund Treefoot. Best have a care to that rope.’
    And Bjarni turned back to the work he had forgotten. But when
Sea Cow
had been made secure, and her master had seen the main part of the crew bestowed in one of the seamen’s longhouses that mingled with the ship-sheds along the keel-strand, and with his remaining men