The fir withers
That stands on a fenced field;
Neither bark nor foliage shelters it;
Thus is a man
Whom no one loves;
Why should he live long?
Ha'vama'l
In a chain of lengthening golden days and softening silver nights, the spring came.
The instinct which brings animals out of their dens to roam in the sunlight, awoke in the Norsemen's breasts and made them restless in the midst of plenty. The instinct which sets birds to nest-building amid the young green, turned the rovers' hearts toward their ice-bound home.
With glad applause, they hailed Leif's proclamation from under the budding maple-tree:
"Four weeks from to-day, if the season continues to be a forward one, it is likely that the pack-ice around the mouth of Eric's Fiord will be sufficiently broken to let us through. Four weeks from to-day, God willing, we will set sail for Greenland."
The camp entered upon a period of bustling activity. Carpenters fell to work on the re-furnishing of the ship, until all the quiet bay echoed with their pounding. With infinite labor, the great logs were floated down the river and hauled on board. Porters toiled to and from the shore with loads of grain-sacks and wine-kegs. The packers in the store-houses buzzed over the wealth of fruit like so many bees. Even Kark the Indolent caught the infection, and clashed his pots and kettles with joyful energy.
"A little time more, and the death-wolf shall claim his due," he sang over his work. "Only a little time more, and the death-wolf shall claim his due!"
On the morning of the last day in Vinland, Robert the Norman wrote the last word in the grotesque exploring record and laid down the brush forever.
"That ends the matter, chief," he said slowly.
They sat in the larger of the sleeping-houses, as they had sat on that December night when the work was begun. But now a flood of yellow sunlight fell through the open door, and a flowering pink bush flattened its sweet face against the window.
Leif regarded him with dull, absent eyes. "Yes, it is ended," he said, reluctantly; and was silent for so long that the young man looked up in surprise.
An odd expression of something like regret was on the chief's face. As he met his companion's glance, he laughed a short harsh laugh that had in it less of mirth than of scorn.
"It is ended," he repeated. "And though I know no better than yourself why it is that I am such a fool, yet I find myself full of sorrow because it is finished. I feel that I have lost out of my life something that was dear to me." He relapsed into another frowning silence; when he came out of it, it was only to motion toward the door. "No sense is in this," he said, savagely; "yet the mood has me, hand and foot. I am in no temper to talk of anything. To-night we will speak of your reward. Go now and spend the rest of the day as best pleases you."
He did not look up as his follower obeyed: he sat brooding over the great white roll as though it were the dead body of some one whom he had loved.
Out in the blithe spring sunshine, the men stood around in little groups, making hilarious plans for the day's sport. The preparations for the departure being completed, a day of untrammelled freedom lay before them; and what pastime is so dull that it is not given a zest and a relish by the thought that it is engaged in for the last time? In uproarious good spirits, they whetted their knives for a last hunt, and called friendly challenges across to each other. Inviting them to a wrestling bout, Rolf's voice rose loudest of all; but though much laughter and some gibing came in response, there were no acceptances.
When the Norman came out of the booth, the Wrestler ceased his proclamations and strolled to meet his friend with a welcoming smile. "Now I think Leif has behaved well," he said, heartily, "to remember that the last day in such a place as Vinland the Good is far too precious to be wasted on monkish tasks. Sigurd will get angry with himself that he did not wait longer for your coming."
A shade of disappointment fell over the Norman's face.
"Where has Sigurd gone?" he asked. "He swam out to an island in the bay where he has a favorite fishing-place he cannot bear to leave without another visit."
"And Helga? Where is she?"
The Wrestler looked at him in surprise. "She has gone into the woods somewhere, with Tyrker; but surely you would not be so mad as to accost her, even were she before you."
Alwin answered with an odd smile. "A man who is about to die will do many things that would be madness in a man who has life before him," he said. His eyes gazed into his friend's eyes with sombre meaning. "I finished the records this morning."
"You finished the records this morning?" Rolf repeated incredulously.
A note of impatience sharpened the other's voice. "I fail to understand what there is in that which surprises you. Certainly you must have heard Leif say, last night, that a hundred words more would end the work. And it was your own judgment that Kark would wait no longer than its completion—"
Rolf struck the tree they leaned against, with sudden vehemence. "The snake!" he cried. "That, then, is why he showed his fangs at me this morning in such a jeering smile. Yet, how could I believe that a man of your wit would allow such a thing to come to pass? With a mouthful of words you could have persuaded Leif that there was a host of things which he had forgotten. You could have prolonged the task—"
Alwin shook his head with stern though quiet decision.
"No, I have had enough of lying," he said. "Not for my life, nor for Helga's love, will I carry this deceit further. Such a smothering fog has it become around me, that I can neither see nor breathe through its choking folds... But let us leave off this talk. Since it is likely that my limbs will have a long rest after to-night, let us spend to-day roving about in search of what sport we can find. If I may not pass my last day with the man and woman that I hold dearest, still you are next in my love; you will accompany me, will you not?"
"Wherever you choose," Rolf assented.
They set forth as silently as on that spring morning, two years before, when they had set out from the Norwegian camp to witness Thorgrim Svensson's horse-fight. Now, as then, the air was golden with spring sunshine, and the whole world seemed a-throb with the pure joy of living. There was gladness in the chirp of the birds, and content in the drone of the insects; and all the squirrels in the place seemed to be gadding on joyful errands, for one could not turn a corner that a group of them did not scatter from before his feet. So common a thing as a dewdrop caught in a cobweb became more beautiful than jewel-spangled lace. The rustling of the quail in the brush, even the glimpse of a coiled snake basking on a sunny spot of earth, was fraught with interest because it spoke of life, glad and fearless and free.
They visited the nook on the bluff, screened once more in fragrant, rustling greenness; then descended to the river and walked along its bank, mile after mile. Here and there, they turned aside and threaded their way through the thicket to take a last look at the scene of some fondly recollected hunt, or to inspect some of the traps which they remembered to be there. But when in one snare they found a wretched little rabbit, still alive but frantic with terror, Alwin laid a detaining hand on Rolf's knife.
"Let him go," he said, shortly. "You have no need of him, and his life is all he has. Let him keep it,—for my sake."
He did not stay to watch the white dot of a tall go bobbing away over the ferns. He hurried on rather shamefaced; and when Rolf overtook him, they walked another mile without speaking.
Along in the middle of the forenoon they reached a point on the river where the banks no longer rose in bluffs but lay in grassy slopes, fringed with drooping trees. The sun was hot overhead, and their clothes were heavy upon their backs. Rolf suggested that they stop long enough for a swim.
"That will do as well as anything," Alwin assented. But when the delicious coolness of the water had closed about him, and he felt its velvet softness on his dusty skin, he decided that it was the best thing they could have done. The lounge upon the grassy bank, while they dried themselves in the sun, was dreamily pleasant. Even after he had gathered sufficient energy to get into his clothes again, Alwin lingered lazily, waiting for his companion to make the first move toward departure.
"This is a restful spot," he said, gazing up at the sky through the network of interlacing branches. "It gives one the feeling that it is so far away that no human foot has ever trod it before, and that none will ever come again when we have left."
From the ant-hill which he was idly spearing with grass-blades, Rolf looked up to smile. "Then your feelings are not to be trusted, comrade," he said; "for there are few spots on the river which our men have more frequented. Even that lazy hound of a thrall comes here almost daily to look at the quail-traps in yonder thicket, that being the one food which he likes well enough to make an exertion for. Would that he would visit them to-day!"
Alwin did not seem to hear him. His eyes were still intent on the swaying tree-tops. "It is a fair land to be alive in," he said, dreamily; "yet, I cannot help wondering how it will be to be dead here. Does it not seem to you that if my spirit comes out of its grave at night and finds none but wolves and bears to call to, it will experience a loneliness far worse than the pangs of death? Think of it! In this whole land, not one human spirit! To wander through the grove and the camp, and find only emptiness and silence forever!"
His body stiffened suddenly, and he flung his arms high above his head and clenched his hands in agony.
"God!" he cried. "What have I done to make me deserving of such a doom? Why could I not have died when Leif cut me down? Why could I not have been buried where human feet would pass over me, and human voices fall on my ear at night?" He flung himself over on his face and lay there motionless.
Rolf laid a hand on his comrade's shoulder, and for once his voice was honestly kind. "It is hard to know what to say to you, Alwin, my friend. You who have borne trials so manfully have a right to a better fate. There is only one thing which I can offer you: choose what man you will—so long as he be no one with whom I have sworn friendship—and I promise you that before we sail to-morrow, I will pick a quarrel with him and slay him; so that, if worst comes, your spirit shall have at least one ghost for company. I—"
He did not finish his sentence. Suddenly his touch upon Alwin's arm became an iron grip, that dragged the Saxon to his feet.
"Look!" the Wrestler gasped, as he pulled him behind the great oak in whose shelter they had been lying. "Look! Are those ghosts, or devils?"
Half-dazed, Alwin could do no more than stare along the pointing finger. On the opposite bank, some hundred yards below their point of observation, stood two long-haired, skin-clad men. Another pair had already plunged into the river and were nearly half-way across. And as the white men gazed, four more beings crashed out of the underbrush and joined their companions.
"Praise the Saint who hung leaves upon the trees as thick as curtains!" Rolf breathed in his comrade's ear. "Up with you, for your life! And make no rustling about it either."
With the agility of cats they went up the great bole, and the kind leaves closed behind them.
"Is it your opinion that they are ghosts, or devils?" Alwin asked, when each had stretched himself along a branching limb and begun a curious peering through chinks in the enveloping foliage. "It has always been in my mind that ghosts were white and devils black, while these creatures appear to be of the color of bronze."
"We shall see more of them before the game is over," Rolf returned. "The first ones are even now coming to land."
As he spoke, the two shaggy swimmers clambered out of the water, like dripping spaniels, on the very spot that the white men's bodies had pressed less than an hour before.
"I am glad that we are not now lying there without our clothes," Alwin murmured.
And Rolf ejaculated under his breath, "Now it is certain that I would rather be the only human being in the land than be in company with such as these, granting them to be human. For by Thor's hammer, they have more the appearance of dwarfs than of men!"
They were not imposing, certainly, from all that could be seen of them through the leaves. Two of their lean arms would not have made one of the Wrestler's magnificent white limbs, and the tallest among them could not have reached above Alwin's shoulders. Skins were their only coverings; and the coarseness of their bristling black locks could have been equalled only in the mane of a wild horse. Though two of the eight were furnished with bows and arrows, the rest carried only rudely-shaped stone hatchets, stuck in their belts. When they began talking together, it was in a succession of grunts and growls and guttural sounds that bore more resemblance to animal noises than to human speech.
Rolf sniffed with contempt. "Pah! Vermin! I think we could put the whole swarm to flight only by drawing our knives."
But at that moment one of the number below raised his face so that Alwin caught a glimpse of the fierce beast-mouth and the small tricky eyes in the great sockets. The Saxon lifted his eyebrows dubiously.
"I am far from certain how that attempt would end," he answered. "Though it is likely that it will have to be tried, if their intention is to settle here for the day, as it appears to be."
The men of the stone hatchets had indeed settled themselves with every look of remaining. Though one of the bowmen continued to pace the bank like a sentinel, his fellows sprawled themselves upon the turf in comfortable attitudes, carrying on their uncouth conversation with deep earnestness.
"We shall certainly have to stay here all day if we do not do something," Rolf bent from his branch to whisper to his companion. Alwin did not answer, for at that moment the harsh voices below ceased abruptly, and there ensued a hush of listening silence.
Up in the tree, Saxon gray eyes and Norse blue ones asked each other an anxious question; then answered it with decided head-shakes. It was impossible that their whispers could have carried so far, or have penetrated the growl of those voices. It must have been some noise from beyond. They strained their ears, anxiously intent.
There was no trouble in hearing it this time; it rose shrill and piercing on the drowsy noon air, a man's whistle, rapidly approaching from the direction of the Norse camp.
While Alwin listened with dilated eyes, Rolf's lips shaped just one word: "Kark!"
Almost without breathing they lay peering out between the leaves. At the first sound, the men below had leaped to their feet and grasped their weapons. Now, after a muttered word together, they drew apart noiselessly as shadows and vanished among the bushes, without so much as the snapping of a twig. Smiling innocently in the sunlight, the little nook lay as peaceful and empty as before.
Nearer and nearer came the whistler; until the crunching of his feet could be heard upon the dead leaves. Rolf pushed the hair out of his eyes, and settled himself to watch with a sigh of almost child-like pleasure.
"Here is sport! Here is a chess game where the pieces are not of ivory. I would not have missed this for a gold chain!" he told his companion. "Imagine Kark's face when they spring out upon him! So intent is his mind upon your death, that he could walk into a pit with open eyes. You can never be sufficiently thankful, Alwin of England, that the Fate which destroys your enemy, gives you also the privilege of sitting by and watching the fun."
Uncertainty was on Alwin's face, as he gazed down through the branches and saw the thrall's white tunic suddenly appear among the green bushes.
He said slowly, "I do not dispute that it looks like the hand of fate—and it is true that he is my enemy—that it is his life or mine—"
A wild yell of alarm cut him short. One by one the lean brown men were gliding out of the bushes and forming in a silent circle around the thrall. They offered him no harm; they did not even touch him; yet the apparition of their shrivelled bodies in their animal-hides, with their beast-faces looking out from under their bristling black locks, was enough to try stouter nerves than Kark's. Shriek after shriek of maddest terror rent the air.
Rolf smiled gently as he heard it. "About this time our friend below is beginning to distinguish between death-wolves and death-foxes," he observed.
Glancing at his comrade for a response to his amusement, his expression changed. "What is it your intention to do?" he demanded sharply.
Alwin had drawn himself into a sitting posture; and with one hand was tugging at the handle of his knife. He flushed shamefacedly at the question, nor did he look up as he answered it.
"I am going down to help the beast," he said. "I cannot remedy it if I am a fool. I do not deny that Kark is a cur; yet he is white, as we are; and alone. I cannot watch his murder."
He brought his knife out with a jerk; and putting it between his teeth, prepared to turn and descend.
Before he could make the move, Rolf had swung down from the limb above and landed beside him. Under his weight the boughs creaked so loudly that, but for the cover of Kark's cries, the pair must surely have been discovered.
The Wrestler spoke without drawling or gentleness: "Either you are a child or a silly fool. Do you understand that it is your enemy that they are ridding you of? What is it to you if he is chopped to pieces? You shall not stir one finger to aid him."
Forgetful of the dagger between his teeth, Alwin opened his mouth angrily. The weapon slipped from his lips and fell, a shining streak along the tree-trunk, and buried itself noiselessly in the soft sod between the roots. The next instant, a scarf from Rolf's neck was wound around the Saxon's jaws; one of the Wrestler's iron arms reached about him and gathered him up against the broad chest; one of the Wrestler's great hands closed around his wrists like fetters of iron; and a muscular leg bent itself backward over his legs like a hoop of steel. As well fight against steel or iron!
Again Rolf's voice became fairly caressing in its gentleness. "Willingly will I endure your struggles if it pleases you to employ your strength that way, comrade; yet I tell you that it would be wiser for you to spare yourself. I shall not let you go, whatever you do; whereas if you lie quietly, I will permit you to move where you can see what is going on. It looks as though it would become interesting."
It did indeed. At that moment, wearying perhaps of the howls, the brown men began to make experiments with a view toward changing the tune. Closing in upon the thrall, they commenced to feel of his clothing and his shaven head, and to pinch him tentatively between their lean fingers.
A redoubling of his outcries caused a spasm of frantic writhing in Alwin's fettered body, but Rolf's manner was as serene as before.
"See now what you are missing by your head-strongness," he reproved his captive. "It is seldom that men have the opportunity to sit, as we sit, and learn from the experience of another what would have been their fate had their fortune been equally bad. Such great luck is it that I get almost afraid for your ingratitude. It will be a great mercy if some god does not punish you for your thanklessness... By Thor! In his terror the fool has attacked them... Ah!"
From below came a sudden snarl, a sudden savage yell, the noise of struggling bodies, and then a shriek of another kind from Kark, no longer a cry of mere apprehension, but a sharp piercing scream of bodily agony.
"Let me go!" Alwin panted through his muffled jaws. "It is a nithing deed for us—to permit the death of one of our number—so. Let me go, Rolf—he is a human being. Let me go!"
A man of wood could not have been more relentless than Rolf; a man of stone could hardly have been less moved.
He argued the matter amiably: "It is true that by some mistake or other Kark wears a man's shape," he admitted; "yet it is easily seen that in every other respect he is a dog. Indeed I think there are few dogs that have less of courage and loyalty. Take the matter sensibly, comrade. If you cannot rejoice in the death of your enemy, at least consider what interest it is thus to study the habits of dwarfs. The cur who was useless during his life, will be honored by serving a good purpose in his death. Leif will think it of great importance to learn how these creatures are disposed toward white men. They have the most unusual methods of amusing themselves. Now they are doing things to his ears—" Renewed shrieks for help and mercy drowned the remainder of his words, and called forth fresh exertions from Alwin.
But when at last the Fearless One ceased, and lay spent and panting against the brawny chest, he became aware that the cries were growing fainter.
"Though they have in no way hurried the matter, I believe that he is almost dead now," Rolf comforted his captive.
Even as he spoke, the last faint cry ended in a gurgling choke,—and there was silence.
Instantly the scarf was slipped from Alwin's mouth, and the living fetters unclasped themselves from his limbs.
"Thanks to me—" Rolf was beginning.
The brief interval of silence was shattered by a cry from the sentinel on the river bank, followed either by an echo or an answering whoop from the opposite shore. Rolf stretched himself along the branch, just in time to see the men below scatter in wildest confusion and plunge headlong into the thicket.
"In the Troll's name!" he ejaculated. "When dwarfs run like that, giants must be coming!"
Alwin had clambered to his feet, and stood with his head thrust up through the leafy roof.
"It is more out of the same nest!" he gasped. "They are coming from the other bank, swarms of them ....There! Some of them have landed..."
Rolf laughed his peculiar soft laugh of quiet enjoyment. "By Thor, was there ever such a game!" he exclaimed. "I can see them now; they are after the first lot like wolves after sheep—No, Kark was the sheep! These are the hunters after the wolves. Hear them howl!"
"The last ones have climbed out of the water," Alwin bent to report. "Do they also follow?"
"As dogs follow deer. Saw I never such sport! When we can no longer hear them, it will be time for us to run a race of our own."
Alwin made no answer, and they waited in silence. Gradually distance drew soft folds over the sharp cries and muffled them, as women throw their cloaks over the sharp swords of brawlers in the hall. Once again the drone and the chirping became audible about them, and the smile of the sunshine became visible in the air. It occurred to Alwin that the peacefulness of nature was like the gentleness of the Wrestler; and there floated through his head the saying of a wrinkled old nurse of his childhood, "The English can die without flinching; the French can die with laughs on their lips; but only the Northmen can smile as they kill." When the last smothered shout was unmistakably dead, Rolf swung himself down from the bough; hung there for an instant, stretching himself comfortably and shaking the cramps out of his limbs, then let himself down to the ground; and Alwin followed.
The soft sod lay trampled and gashed by the grinding heels; and the lengthening shadows pointed dark fingers at the middle of the nook, where a shapeless thing of white and red was lying.
Rolf bent over it curiously.
"It must be that these people love killing for its own sake, to go to so much trouble over it," he commented. "Evidently it is not the excitement of fighting which they enjoy, but the pleasure of torturing. I will not be sure but what they are trolls after all."
"It was a devils' deed," Alwin said hoarsely. He looked down at the ghastly heap with a shudder of loathing. "And we are not without guilt who have permitted it. It is of no consequence what sort of a man he was; he was a human being and of our kind,—and they were fiends. You need not tell me that we could not help it," he added in fierce forestalling. "Had he been Sigurd, we would have helped it or we would both have lain like that."
Rolf shrugged his shoulders resignedly as they turned away. "Have it as you choose," he assented. "At least you cannot deny that you were helpless; let that console you. May the gallows take my body if you are not the most thankless man ever I met! Here are you rid of your enemy, and at the moment when he was most a hindrance to you, and not only do you reap the reward of the deed, but you bear no dangerous responsibility—"
He was checked by a glimpse of the face Alwin turned toward him. Pride and loathing, passion and sternness, were all mingled in its expression.
The Saxon said slowly, "Heaven's mercy on the soul that reaps the reward of this deed! Easier would it be to suffer these tortures a hundredfold increased. Profit by such a deed, Rolf Erlingsson! Do you think that I would live a life that sprang from such a death? To cleanse my hand from the stain of such a murder, though the blood had but spattered on it, I would hew it off at the wrist."
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