The Long Ships: A Saga of the Viking Age. Michael Meyer

although he had joined his company so unwillingly. The blow he had received on his skull troubled him only for a few days; and he got on well with the men, so that, before long, they ceased to regard him as their prisoner. They remembered gratefully the good sheep that they had obtained from him, and he had other qualities that made him a good shipmate. He knew as many ballads as Berse, and had learned from his mother to speak them with the intonation of the bards; besides which, he could tell lie-stories so cunningly that you had to believe in them, though he admitted that, in this particular craft, he was Toke’s inferior. So they prized him as a good comrade, and a clever one, well able to while away the dreary hours agreeably for them during the long days when they had a good wind in their sail and were resting from their oars.

      Some of the sailors were disgruntled because Krok had left Brittany without having first tried to get new supplies of fresh meat; for the food they had aboard was now beginning to smell old. The pork was rancid, the stockfish mildewed, the meal stale, the bread maggoty and the water sour; but Krok and those of his followers who had sailed on expeditions of this sort before asserted that this was as good fare as any sailor could wish for. Orm ate his rations with a good appetite, though, while he did so, he used often to tell the others of the delicacies to which he was accustomed at home. Berse remarked that it seemed to him to be a wise dispensation of the gods that a man could, when at sea, eat and enjoy food that, at home, he would not offer to his slaves or his dogs, but only to pigs; for, were it not so arranged, long sea-voyages would be exceedingly nauseating.

      Toke said that the thing that troubled him most was the fact that the ale was now finished. He was, he assured them, not a fussy man, and he reckoned that he could stomach most things when necessity demanded it, not excluding his sealskin shoes, but only if he had good ale to wash them down. It would, he said, be a fearful prospect to envisage a life without ale, either on sea or ashore; and he questioned the Jew much concerning the quality of the ale in the country to which they were journeying without, however, being able to extract any very clear information from him on the subject. He told the others stories of great feasts and drinking-bouts that he had been present at, and mourned that he had not, on those occasions, drunk even more than he had.

      Their second night at sea, a strong wind arose, driving high breakers, and they were glad that the sky remained clear, for they were steering by the stars. Krok began to wonder whether it would be wise to come out into the limitless sea; but the wisest sailors among them said that, however far you might sail to the south, you would always have land on your left, save only in the Njörva Sound,¹ where the waters led in to Rome, which stood at the centre of the world. Men who sailed from Norway to Iceland, said Berse, had a more difficult task, for they had no land in whose lee to shelter, but only the open sea, stretching away for ever on either bow.

      The Jew knew all about the stars, and declared himself skilful at navigation; but in the event, he proved to be of little use to them, for his stars had different names to the ones they were used to, besides which, he was sea-sick. Orm suffered likewise, and he and Solomon hung over the gunwale together in great misery, thinking that they would die. The Jew wailed most piteously in his own language in the intervals of his vomiting; Orm told him to shut up, but he answered that he was crying to his god, who was in the storm wind. Then Orm grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and told him that, though he himself was in poor shape, he yet had enough strength to throw him over the side if he uttered one cry more, for there was sufficient wind about already without his bringing his god any nearer to them.

      This quietened Solomon; and, towards morning, the wind lessened and the sea grew calm, and they both began to feel better. Solomon was very green in the face, but he grinned at Orm in a friendly way and seemed not to bear him any ill-will for his conduct of the night before, and pointed his finger across the sea at the sunrise. He sought among the words he knew and said that those were the red wings of the morning far out in the sea, and that his god was there. Orm replied that his god appeared to him to be the sort of divinity who was best kept at a respectable distance.

      Later that morning, they discerned mountains far ahead of them. They pulled in to the shore, but had difficulty in finding a sheltered bay in which to anchor; and the Jew said that this part of the coast was strange to him. They went ashore, and came at once into conflict with the inhabitants of the place, who were numerous; but these soon fled, and Krok’s men ransacked their huts, returning with some goats and other food, as well as one or two prisoners. Fires were lit, and they all rejoiced at having reached land without mishap, and were glad to have the taste of roast meat once more on their tongues. Toke searched high and low for ale, but succeeded in discovering only a few skins of wine, which was so harsh and sour that, he said, he could feel his belly shrivelling as he swallowed it; so much so that he could not drink it all himself, but gave away what was left and sat alone for the rest of the evening singing sadly to himself, with tears in his beard. Berse warned them not to disturb him, for he was a dangerous man when he had drunk himself to weeping-point.

      Solomon questioned the prisoners, and told the Vikings that they were now in the country of the Count of Castile, and that the place to which he wished to lead them lay far to the west. Krok said that they would have to wait for another wind to carry them in that direction, and that in the meantime they could do no more than rest and eat; though, he added, the situation might become awkward if strong hostile forces should attack them here, while the wind was blowing landwards, or if enemy ships should block their exit from the bay. But Solomon explained, as best he could, that there was little danger of this, for the Count of Castile had hardly any ships at sea, and it would take him some time to gather a sufficient force to cause them trouble. In former years, he told them, this Count of Castile had been a powerful ruler, but nowadays he was forced to bow the knee to the Moorish Caliph in Cordova, and even had to pay him tribute; for, saving only the Emperor Otto of Germany and the Emperor Basil of Constantinople, there was now no monarch in the world as powerful as the Caliph of Cordova. At this, the men laughed loudly, saying that the Jew was doubtless saying what he supposed to be the truth, but that he obviously knew little about the subject. Had he, they asked, never heard of King Harald of Denmark, and did he not know that there was no king in the world as mighty as he?

      Orm was still groggy after his sea-sickness and had little appetite for food, which made him afraid that he might be sickening for something serious, for he worried continually about his health. He soon curled up in front of one of the fires, and fell into a deep sleep; but during the night, when the whole camp was still, Toke came and woke him. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he protested that Orm was the only friend he had, and said that he would like, if he might, to sing him a song that he had just remembered; it was about two bear cubs, he explained, and he had learned it as a child at his mother’s knee, and it was the most beautiful song he had ever heard. So saying, he sat down on the ground beside Orm, dried his tears and began to sing. Now it was a peculiarity with Orm that he found it difficult to be sociable when he had just been woken out of a sound sleep; however, he voiced no protest, but merely turned over on to his other side and tried to go back to sleep.

      Toke could not remember much of his song, and this made him miserable again. He complained that he had been sitting alone all the evening, and that nobody had come to keep him company. What had hurt him most, he said, was the fact that Orm had not once given him so much as a friendly glance, to cheer him up; for he had always hitherto regarded Orm as his best friend, from the first moment that he had set eyes upon him; now, though, he realized that he was, after all, only a good-for-nothing blackguard like all Skanians; and when a puppy like him forgot his manners, a good sound hiding was the only remedy.

      So saying, he got to his feet to look round for a stick; but Orm, who was by this time fully awake, sat up. When Toke saw him do this, he tried to aim a kick at him; but, as he raised his foot, Orm snatched a brand out of the fire and threw it in Toke’s face. Toke ducked in the middle of aiming his kick, and fell on his back, but he was on his feet again in an instant, white in the face and blind with rage. Orm, too, had leaped to his feet, so that they now stood facing each other. It was bright moonlight, but Orm’s eyes were flickering a dangerous red as he threw himself furiously upon Toke, who tried to draw his sword; Orm had lain his aside, and had not had time to lay his hand on it. Now, Toke was a huge and powerful man, broad in the loins, and with tremendous hands, while Orm had not yet grown to his full strength, although he was already strong enough