There came news from the South, in the spring that followed, that made it easier for me to get away and spend time up on the ness, watching the birds and the seals, and the rock on the beach; but it was not good news. A village on Linnfjord -- a place a good bit bigger than ours -- had been raided. The raid came from the sea. Nothing was left alive nor a stick standing. The pedlars said that it was because of Jarl Trigvi being dead that the raiding was worse again. While he was still alive all the fighting men would be away raiding with him in the southlands. But now there wasn't one jarl who was stronger than the others. Also, they were feuding among themselves, so there was no leader to take a great host over sea.
All this seemed very distant from us. We knew that now and again the Landesthing named one of the jarls to be king. But we usually didn't get to hear of this until after the king was dead. None of us had ever seen a king. No-one we knew had ever been to the Landesthing. My father had seen a jarl called Haakon, who had come to the thing at Sondefjord once, but that was many years ago. My Uncle Olaf had once gone raiding with a jarl called Ranulf, but I could not remember my Uncle Olaf.
Whatever, whether it was because of the jarls of something else, the raiding did not feel distant. It has happened forever, on that coast, but lately it had been less. The young warriors had been going further for their prey -- to Britain and the Isles, to Ireland, to Russ. It was said that the pickings were richer. If they were raiding on our coast again, we might have to move to somewhere where there were more folk, because we did not have enough men to defend the stead. In any case, the news from Linnfjord had the men feared.
Again there came a day I saw a sail. I had been sitting at the point of the Ness all day, idly watching the guillemots and fulmars at their nests -- it was over late in the year, now, to be taking their eggs -- and the sun was high when I saw it, a dark square against the sky. It had a good west wind behind it. I ran down to the houseplace and found my father in his forge. Again the swirl of excited men, the overloud voices. It was a big sail, this time. A bigger boat than I'd ever seen before.
I volunteered to go back up to watch, this time. The whole place was in panic, and I didn't yet believe it was justified. I wanted out of the way, to avoid the work. But on the head of the Ness I found no comfort. The ship sailed steadily in. There was no doubting its course. The wind was fair to it, and it sailed swiftly. I waited until I was sure of the size of it, but no longer. I ran back. The panic was in me, now.
Back in the stead the men crowded round me. It rowed twenty oars a side, I thought, or even more. It carried its figurehead mounted. There were many men on board.
The men scattered, dashing about the stead, seizing treasured possessions. I stood still in the yard, frightened, confused. I think I cried in fear. The folk were running now for the track to the high pasture, bearing far more than they could carry far. My step mother, struggling with her kist, screamed at me to help her. At last I moved. There was something to do. I knew it was hopeless, pointless. No one could miss where we had gone. The ground was damp enough to show prints, and folk were already dropping things as they fled.
But as we struggled up the path, and out of the coppice that shelters the house place, we saw a man coming down the path to meet us: a tall figure in a great blue mantle. And as we drew closer, he stood as he had on the beach, easily, feet apart, resting part of his weight on his staff, his mantle licking at his heels. It was the stranger.
"Whither away, good folk?"
Nothing but the panting of laboured breath answered him. We struggled on up. He swung his staff horizontal, so that it blocked the path, and said again: "whither away?"
My father halted in front of him, gasped for breath
"raiders... coming... let us... pass"
"be calm", he said, and at once I could hear folk breathing more easily, their breath less ragged. Myself I felt a warming, a quieting -- "come back down with me. The raiders will not harm you."
He strode through the midst of us, and we let him pass between us. We milled about, uncertain what to do. He looked back over his shoulder, calling: "haste now! there is little enough time."
One after another we turned and followed down the track. He walked on at a good pace, but not so fast that we couldn't catch him up. We were at his heels when he strode into the yard.
He went straight to the doorway of the hall, stamped his staff once on the threshold, struck it once against the lintel, and said: "be not seen!"
Nothing happened. I felt a great wave of disappointment -- more than disappointment, shame, betrayal. The stranger, undaunted, turned to the barn. Again he stuck the threshold, struck the lintel, and called out. Again nothing happened. He turned to the byre. In a stunned silence of despair, our eyes followed him. Again, the curious ritual. He walked across to the forge, and as he did so, passed between us and the hall
passed between us and where the hall was
not.
A hummock of ground, a small, lumpish hill, covered with whin, with scrub willow and scrub birch stood there. The hall had gone. I spun to look at the barn, and it was... gone. The byre was gone. I turned back to the forge, just as he struck the lintel. He called the words. Nothing happened. He passed on, but I kept my eyes firmly on the forge. And the forge, solid little building that it was, remained. All around me I heard sounds of wonder, sounds of amazement. I would not be distracted. I watched the forge, and the forge stood. Someone shook me by the shoulder. It was my father. My eyes only flicked away from the forge a moment, but when they flicked back, it was gone.
The stranger was urging us all to get inside, and folk were walking up the hillside where the hall should have been, scrabbling at the earth with their hands, and once again beginning to panic. I looked hard at the hillside and willed the hall into being. It was there. I grabbed my stepmother's hand -- she was nearest -- said "shut your eyes and hold onto me" -- and led her inside. As I turned and walked back out they all stared at me in wonder. Again I grabbed the nearest hand and said "shut your eyes".
I called out to the others to grab the one in front and close theirs. We walked like some strange caterpillar into the hall. As they opened their eyes, I could see that they could all see it as I could -- the big, dim interior of the old hall where most of us had been born, and where we had lived all our years. Safe. Familiar. Out in the yard, I saw the stranger rapping each of the last items of the litter we had abandoned with the staff. Then he followed us in. I walked across to the seaward side of the hall, and drew aside the bull's hide from the doorway. The ship was into the bay now. Others gathered behind me to watch. The tension filled the hall.
The ship came swiftly up the bay. Its bow wave was clear and crisp in the calmer waters. At the last possible moment, the sail dropped with a clatter to the deck. The forefoot struck the shore with a long crunch and the forepart of the ship rose a little as it felt the ground. A good twenty men leaped into the knee-deep sea and rushed up the beach. The ship floated again for a moment, and then, as they heaved on ropes, grated again on the shingle and was still. As many men again followed them from the ship.
They dressed as warriors of our own folk do -- no surprise, for there are no foreigners handy enough with ships for our wild waters. Each carried a round targe, and an axe or a long sword. Most wore helmets, and stout leather jerkins sewn with iron links. Two had hauberks of chain mail, and four were bare sark. They formed a line and started up the beach. No voice was raised. They came at a fast trot, weapons drawn. They passed our boats, and burst through the thin screen of shrub.
It seemed obvious that they must see us now. They were not a stone's throw away. Behind me, my uncle Trigvi told me to get down. I crouched and looked back to see him with an arrow nocked to his good bow. The stranger grabbed at it, whispering fiercely: "put it away, you fool."
Trigvi lowered his bow. I could see that he was shaking with fear. So was I. I looked back at the raiders. Still they came at their fast trot, showing no sign of excitement. Suddenly I realised that they were no longer running on the earth, but rising in the air. In my shock I pointed, and started to cry out.
An iron hand came across my mouth, gagging me, but the first shrillness of my surprise had escaped. The nearest of the raiders suddenly broke stride, and looked sharply around him. We cowered in silence. Then another called to him and he ran on, over our heads.
A few of us crept back to the yard door. I peered over shoulders, and watched the raiders running down the slope of air into the yard. They pointed to the footprints leading to the hill path and ran on at a faster pace. After a few moments we heard voices calling in surprise and puzzlement, and then the sounds faded up the hill.
They were back at the darkening of the day, carrying six of our best bullocks on poles, but weary and grumbling. They passed over our heads again, in the same unbelievable way. Down on the beach, they broke up our boats for firewood, and started to cook. We all stayed in the hall. The stranger forbade us a fire, tho' I doubt we'd have dared light one anyway. The men muttered together about what they would do -- "if only there were a few less of them."
Dusk turned to dark, and one by one folk went to their bedplaces to sleep. I stayed by the seaward door, watching the flickering fires die down on the strand, and listening to the oystercatchers and the curlews, and the old, slow voice of the owl.
I must have slept a while, for suddenly it was darker, and cloud covered the stars; it was bitterly cold. The fires on the beach were no more than a faint red glow. The stranger was standing beside me, leaning on his staff, and watching the tide lap back into the bay. I stirred, and shivered. The stranger crouched beside me and pulled me under his mantle. We sat together like that for a while. The mantle was warm and heavy, as I remembered it from the night on the beach. It smelled of sweet herbs and woodsmoke. His arm on my shoulders was warm and comforting. At last he whispered: "go to your bed; I shall keep watch."
I stood up, yawned, stretched. I bent quickly to kiss him on the forehead. He caught my hand, and squeezed it, as if we were chapmen over a bargain. I suddenly realised what he might think I meant, and pulled away. He wished me goodnight quietly, and turned back to his watch. I crept across to the bedplace I shared with Aud and Ragna Trigvi's daughter, slipped through the curtain, pulled off my gown and eased myself into bed. Ragna turned and flung an arm over me. I huddled against her for warmth, and slept.
I was later up in the morning than usual. None of the normal sounds of the hall woke me. Others told me later that the cock did crow that morning, and that is how it came about that the raiders found, and made off with, most of our hens. But in the hall, folk crept about, or stood clustered around the seaward door, watching the beach. Breakfast was cold oatcake and cold smoked herring washed down with ale -- for we dare not go out to the well for water. At last, mid morning, the tide refloated the raider's ship, and they rowed out of the bay. We watched them out of sight. When they could no longer be seen from the stead, I was sent up to the Ness to watch how they went.
Trigvi was sent up the fell to find how they'd fared on the high pasture, and as I ran up to the ness I could now and again see him jogging up the hill path through the woods on the other side of the dale. From the point, I saw the ship sailing fast southward, her sail trimmed close to the wind. Rain clouds were scudding downwind, foretelling a blow out of the west. I ran back to the now clearly visible steading with my news. The fire was lit again, and a good stew was on for the night meal. At the news the ship was truly gone, the mood lightened a touch more. It did not stop the men grumbling about the bullocks and the boats!
A while later Trigvi was back as the first rain fell. The lads had taken no hurt, he said; they had seen the raiders coming and had scattered into the forest where they could not be found. The herd was scattered, but apart from the six we had seen, they knew of only two that had been slaughtered. They were now rounding up the rest, and would send word of the tally down with whoever took their food up next.
The stranger stayed with us for the night meal. In the warmth of the fire, he had shed the great mantle, and his leather jerkin. He wore a sark of black silk, embroidered with strange beasts in red and gold. Like the green one I had seen him wear before, it was old and worn, neatly mended in many places. He wore the same great belt I had seen before, but no weapon hung from it. His empty eye socket was covered by a black leather patch, tied round his head with thong. He ate little, and spoke less.
After the eating was done, we sat talking and drinking around the long table. He told us that the hiding spell would keep the steading safe from raiders -- just so long as we took no advantage of it. If one of us started a blood feud, or ambushed folk from its cover, then it would desert us forever. He said he would leave us that night. Again, as he had done the previous Autumn, my father asked him who he was, and where he must go, on such a wild night; and again, he would not say.
Then, as the talking died away, my uncle Trigvi banged on the table with the hilt of his dagger, so that we were all quiet. Then he began, in his story telling voice, to tell the story of the all father and the three sisters. Now that is a tale that everyone knows, but my uncle told it well, and we listened quietly. When he started the tale, he spent longer than is usual describing the look of the lord of the raven. He told us how tall he was, and of his great blue mantle and his tall staff, of his way of wandering the world as a stranger, of his power over shape and seeming. And each thing he named about the god, he looked at the stranger under his brows, and paused for a moment. But the stranger just sat in his place, listening quietly, paring his fingernails with a little curved knife. And so my uncle went on with his story, until he came to the place in it where the all-father gives his right eye to the guardian of the spring, as price for the drinking of knowledge. When he had told us of this, he paused again, for so long that the stranger looked up with in surprise in his one eye, as though to say, come on, can you not remember the ending? And my uncle flushed, and finished the tale more abruptly than he might. When he had finished, the stranger thanked him for it, and said that the tale was well told.
With that we rose from the meal, and in the bustle the stranger pulled on his jerkin, and fastened it; reslung his belt over it; swung on his mantle; picked up his staff; and without further word, ducked out through the doorway. Suddenly realising he had gone, I ran for my mantle and followed. The rain was lashing at the thatch, and the night was dark as raven feathers. Again, I could not mark where he had gone.
I ran across the inpasture up to the wood on Red Ness, and slipped and slithered down through the muddy wood to the voe. The boat lay there clear to see, its little after mast already raised. Through the mirk I could see him lifting the forward mast into its place.
"Hey!", I called, raising my voice against the crash of the sea. What else could I call? I had no name to call him -- save the all-father's, and that might be presumptuous even if it were true. I pelted down the beach to the boat. He dropped the mast into its place, and vaulted lightly over the rail to meet me.
"Well Kirsten", He said -- "what brings you here in this weather?"
"I could not let you go without a farewell, and without thanks", I said. And then, more hesitantly -- "you will be back?"
In the dark, and the lashing rain, I could not tell his expression. But he looked at me for several moments. Then he laid his hands on my shoulders and gripped them.
"I will, Kirsten.
More hesitantly still, I said: "and may I have a name to know you by?"
This time I saw the flash of teeth in a grin -- more savage than amused, I thought.
"You may call me Lochlann."
He turned and but his shoulder to the stem of the boat. The spring tide, lifted by the wind, was almost floating it. Slowly it moved backwards over the shingle. I looked seawards and felt sick in my guts. The sound of water on the reef was not rhythmic, but a continuous confused roar. Through the spume and spindrift I could see the water white as milk across the opening of the voe. The great ocean swell was toppling to destruction on the reef.
The boat floated free, and he pulled it's head round to the rocks on the north side of the voe. The cliffs were turning the onshore wind so that it blew more north than west across us, giving some shelter there.
"Lochlann" -- I yelled to him -- "don't go out in that! Wait `till it's over..."
"I must go."
"Wait `till morning!"
I waded out into the swirling, heaving water where he stood, steadying the boat.
"I must go, Kirsten. I will take no harm. This old boat and I have seen worse winds than this... Here, could you hold her steady while I get some sail on her?"
I took hold of the stem where he had been holding it -- I found an iron ring clenched through the timber, and gripped it. The boat leaped and bucked, wrenching at my shoulders, and the freezing waters tried to pull my feet from under me. But I held. He said "I thank you, Kirsten. I shall be back". He surged over the rail like a seal onto rocks. He was on his feet at once, and did something with the forward mast. A triangular scrap of sail exploded into life above my head, crackling and hammering in the wind. He ran to the after mast, and again a scrap of sail leapt into demented action. Through the wind came a last cry: "let go! Farewell!"
The sail above my head hardened into shape. The boat pulled away from me at once, turning swiftly across the wind. The forward sail cracked once more, leaping across the boat to fill from the other side. I felt sick horror knotting my stomach. The boat surged towards the narrow opening in the reef into the bursting of a wave. Dimly, through the flying spray, I saw the boat stand on its stern as if it were sailing to the moon, and thought that must surely be the end of him. Then the wave collapsed and I saw the stern rise and the boat slide into a trough. The next wave masked it. Then as that collapsed, I thought I could make out two pale shapes, setting course south west across the face of the wind.
I scrambled quickly, shaking and shivering in the weather, to the top of the ness and looked out, trying to persuade myself I could see him. But I could not. I stood, staring, for a long time. Then I cursed myself for foolish, and turned for home.
Copyright © Simon Brooke
1992-1996
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