‘This shall not be wasted,’ he muttered, and hurled it against the nearest of his foes, crushing two of them and tripping up several others who fell over their bodies.
Then he cried to Orm and the others that there was nothing more to be done in the ship and, with those words, jumped head first into the sea, in the hope of swimming ashore. Orm and as many of the others as could disengage the enemy followed suit. Arrows and spears pursued them, and two of them were hit. Orm dived, came up, and swam as hard as he could; but, as he was often to observe in his old age, few things are more difficult than swimming in a mail-shirt when a man is tired and his shirt is tight. Before long, neither Toke nor Orm had the strength left to swim further, and they were on the point of sinking when one of the enemy’s ships overtook them, and they were dragged on board and bound fast, without being able to offer any resistance.
So the Vikings were defeated, and their victors rowed ashore to examine what they had won and to bury their dead. They cleared the decks of the ship they had captured, throwing the corpses overboard, and began to rummage through its cargo, while the prisoners were led ashore and sat down on the beach, well guarded, with their arms bound. There were nine of them, all wounded. They waited for death, staring silently out to sea; but there was not sign of Berse’s ship or of their pursuers.
Toke sighed and began to mumble to himself. Then he said:
‘Once, thirsty, I
Wasted good ale.
Soon shall I taste
Valhalla’s mead.’
Orm lay on his back, gazing up at the sky. He said:
‘At home in the house
That saw me grow
Would I were seated now
Eating sour milk and bread.’
But none of them was sicker at heart than Krok; for, ever since the beginning of their expedition, he had regarded himself as a lucky man, and as a hero, and now he had seen his luck crumble within the hour. He watched them throwing his dead followers overboard from what had been his ship, and said:
‘The ploughers of the sea
Earned for their toil
Misfortune and a foul
And early death.’
Toke observed that this was a remarkable coincidence, that three poets should be found in so small a company.
‘Even if you cannot fully match my skill at composing verses,’ he said, ‘yet be of good cheer. Remember that it is granted to the poets to drink from the largest horn at the banquet of the gods.’
At this moment, they heard a piercing shriek from the ship, followed by a great hubbub, signifying that the foreigners had discovered Toke’s girl in her hiding-place. They brought her ashore, and an argument seemed to be developing as to who should have her, for several men began quarrelling in high-pitched voices, their black beards going up and down. Toke said: ‘Now the crows are disputing for possession of the hen, while the hawk sits nursing his broken wing.’
The girl was led forward to the chieftain of the foreigners, a fat man with a grizzled beard and gold rings in his ears, clad in a red cloak and holding in his hand a silver hammer with a long white shaft. He studied her, stroking his beard; then he addressed her, and they could see that the two of them understood each other’s language. The girl had plenty to say, pointing several times in the direction of the prisoners; but to two of his questions, when he also pointed towards them, she made a negative gesture with her hands and shook her head. The chieftain nodded, and then gave her an order which she seemed reluctant to obey, for she raised her arms towards the sky and cried out; but when he spoke to her again, in a severe voice, she became submissive and took her clothes off and stood naked before him. All the men standing around them sighed and tugged their beards, and murmured with enraptured voices, for, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, she was exceedingly beautiful. The chieftain ordered her to turn round, and examined her closely, fingering her hair, which was long and brown, and feeling her skin. Then he stood up, and laid a signet ring, which he wore on one of his forefingers, against her belly and breasts and lips; after which, addressing some remark to his men, he took off his red cloak and wrapped it about her. On hearing his words, all his followers placed their hands against their foreheads and bowed, murmuring obsequiously. Then the girl dressed again, retaining, however, the red cloak, and food and drink were given to her, and everybody treated her with reverence.
The prisoners watched all this in silence; and, when it reached the stage where the girl was given the cloak and was offered food and drink, Orm remarked that she seemed to have the best luck of all Krok’s company. Toke agreed, and said that it was a hard thing for him so see her in all her beauty only now for the first time, when she was already another man’s; for he had had little time with her, and they had always had to hurry; and now, he said, he could weep to think that he would never have the opportunity to split the skull of the pot-bellied greybeard who had soiled her body with his greasy fingers.
‘But I cling to the hope,’ he added, ‘that the old gentleman will get little joy out of her; for, from the first moment that I saw her, I found her intelligent and of excellent taste, even though we could not understand each other’s conversation; so that I think it cannot be long before she will stick a knife into the guts of that old billy-goat.’
All this while, Krok had been sitting in deep silence, weighed down by his fate, with his face turned towards the sea, unable to take any interest in what was happening on shore. But now, all of a sudden, he uttered a cry, and as he did so the foreigners began to gabble excitedly among themselves, for four ships had appeared far out in the bay, rowing towards the land. They were the ships that had fought Berse, and were rowing slowly; and soon they could see that one of them was lying very deep in the water, badly damaged, with the centre of one of its gunwales smashed in, and many of its oars broken.
At this spectacle, the prisoners, though dispirited at their own plight, faint from their wounds and much troubled by thirst, broke into shouts of delighted laughter. For they realized at once that Berse had succeeded in ramming this ship, once the wind had risen out in the open sea, and that the enemy had had to break off the fight when they found themselves with only three sound ships left, and had rowed back with the damaged one. Some of them now began to hope that Berse might return and rescue them. But Krok said: ‘He has lost many men, for he had enemies aboard and his hands full when I last saw him. And he must have guessed that few of us can be left alive since he has not seen our ship come out of the bay; so he is more likely to try and reach home safely with what he has, either in both his ships or, if he has too few men left to man both, in one of them. Should he reach Blekinge safely, even if only with one ship, the story of Krok’s expedition will be told in the Listerland, and will be well remembered in the years to come. Now, however, these men will surely kill us, for their anger will be greater now that two of our ships have escaped their clutches.’
In this, though, Krok was proved a false prophet. They were given food and drink, and a man came to look at their wounds; and then they realized that they were to become slaves. Some of them regarded this as preferable to death, while others were doubtful whether it might not prove a worse fate. The foreign chieftain had his galley-slaves brought ashore, and let them speak with the Vikings. They seemed to hail from many different lands, and addressed them in various strange mumblings, but none of them spoke any language that the prisoners could understand. The foreigners remained in this place for a few days, putting their damaged ship in order.
Many of the oarsmen in this ship had been killed when Berse had rammed it, and the captured Vikings were set to replace them. They were well used to