Wulfric the Weapon Thane, Charles W. Whistler [ebook reader web .txt] 📗

he would not reverence, and so slew him."

"Aye, brother. And he said that so he would do to any man who would not honour the gods."

"Why do you remember that, Osritha?"

"Because--because there will be the great sacrifice tomorrow, and Wulfric, your friend, is not of our faith."

Then Halfden was silent, looking across at me, and all at once I knew that here was a danger greater than any I had yet been through. Fire I had passed through, and water, and now it was like to be trial by steel. And the first had tried my courage, and the next my endurance, as I thought; but this would try both, and my faith as well.

"That is naught," said Halfden, lightly. "It is but the signing of Thor's hammer, and I have seen Wulfric do that many a time, only not quite in our way, thus;" and he signed our holy sign all unknowing, or caring not. "And to eat of the horse that is sacrificed--why, you and I, Wulfric, did eat horse on the Frankish shores; and you thought it good, being nigh starved--you remember?"

I remembered, but that was different; for that we did because the shores were so well watched that we ran short of food, and had to take what we could under cover of night at one time. But this of which Osritha spoke was that which Holy Writ will by no means suffer us to do--to eat of a sacrifice to idols knowingly, for that would be to take part therein. Nor might I pretend that the holy sign was as the signing of Thor's Hammer.

"Halfden," I said, having full trust in him, "I may not do this. I may not honour the old gods, for so should I dishonour the White Christ whom I serve."

"This is more than I can trouble about in my mind," said Halfden; "but if it troubles you, I will help you somehow, brother Wulfric. But you must needs come to the sacrifice."

"Cannot I go hunting?"

"Why, no; all men must be present. And to be away would but make things worse, for there would be question."

Then I strengthened myself, and said that I must even go through with the matter, and so would have no more talk about it. But Osritha kept on looking sadly at me, and I knew that she was in fear for me.

Now presently we began to talk of my home and how they would mourn me as surely lost. And I said that this mourning would be likely to hinder my sister's wedding for a while. And then, to make a little more cheerful thought, I told Halfden what his father had said about his wishing that he had been earlier with us.

"Why, so do I," said my comrade, laughing a little; "for many reasons," he added more sadly, thinking how that all things would have been different had he sailed back at once.

Then he must needs go back to the question of the sacrifice.

"Now I would that you would turn good Dane and Thor's man, and bide here with us; and then maybe--"

But Osritha rose up quickly and said that she must begone, and so bade us goodnight and went her way into the upper story of that end of the great hall where her own place was. Whereat Halfden laughed quietly, looking at me, and when she was quite gone, and the heavy deerskins fell over the doorway, said, still smiling:

"How is this? It is in my mind that my father's wish might easily come to pass in another way not very unlike."

That was plain speaking, nor would I hesitate to meet the kindly look and smile, but said that indeed I had come to long that it might be so. But I said that the jarl, his father, had himself shown me that no man should leave his old faith but for better reasons than those of gain, however longed for. For that is what he had answered Eadmund the king when the land was offered him, and he was asked to become a Christian.

"Yet if such a thing might be," said Halfden, "gladly would I hail you as brother in very truth."

So we sat without speaking for a while, and then Halfden said that were I to stand among the crowd of men on the morrow there would surely be no notice taken of me.

Yet as I lay on my wolf skins at the head of the great hall, and prayed silently--as was my wont among these heathen--I asked for that same help that had been given to men of old time who were in the same sore strait as I must very likely be in tomorrow.

Then came to me the thought: "What matters if outwardly I reverence Thor and Odin while I inwardly deny them?" and that excuse had nigh got the better of me. But I minded what our king had told me many a time: how that in the first christening of our people it had ever been held to be a denying of our faith to taste the heathen sacrifices, or to bow the head in honour, even but outward, of the idols, so that many had died rather than do so. And he had praised those who thus gave up their life.

Then, too, I remembered the words of the Prior of Bosham concerning martyrs. And we had been led to speak of them by this very question as to sacrifice to the Danish gods. So I made up my mind that if I might escape notice, I would do so--and if not, then would I bear the worst.

So I fell asleep at last. And what it may have been I know not--unless the wind as it eddied through the high windows clashed some weapon against shield on the walls with a clear ringing sound--but I woke with the voice of Bosham bell in my ears--and Rorik and Halfden each in his place started also, and Rorik muttered a curse before he lay down again, for he sat up, looking wildly.

But greatly cheered with that token was I, for I knew that help was not far from me, and after that I had no more fear, but slept peacefully, though I thought it was like to be my last night on earth.


CHAPTER X. WHAT BEFELL AT THE GREAT SACRIFICE.

Very early in the gray morning Halfden woke me, and he was fully armed, while at the lower end of the hall the courtmen were rising and arming themselves also, for Vikings must greet Odin as warriors ready to do battle for him when Ragnaroek {xvi} and the last great fight shall come.

"Rise and arm yourself," he said; "here are the arms in which you fought well in your first fight, and axe and sword beside. Now you shall stand with our crew, and so none of them will heed you, for they love you, and know your ways are not as ours. So will all be well."

Then I thanked him, for I surely thought it would be so; and I armed myself, and that man who had been my own shield man when I led the midship gang helped me. One thing only I wished, and that was that I had the axe which Lodbrok made for me, for then, I told the man, I should feel as a Viking again, and that pleased him.

"However," he said, "I think I have found an axe that is as near like your own as may be."

And he had done so, having had that kindly thought for me. Then we went out, for the horns were blowing outside the town in the ash grove where the Ve, as they call the temple of Odin and Thor and the other gods, was. And overhead, high and unseen in the air, croaked the ravens, Odin's birds, scared from their resting places by the tramp of men, yet knowing that their share in the feast was to come.

I shivered, but the sound of the war horns, and the weight and clank of the well-known arms, stirred my blood at last, and when we fell in for our short march, Halfden and Thormod, Rorik and myself leading our crew, I was ready for all that might come, if need for a brave heart should be.

Silently we filed through the bare trunks of the ashes, the trees of Thor, where many a twisted branch and dead trunk showed that the lightning had been at work, until we came to the place of the Ve in its clearing.

There stood the sanctuary, a little hut--hardly more--built of ash-tree logs set endwise on a stone footing, and roofed with logs of ash, and closed with heavy doors made of iron-bolted ash timber also. This temple stood under the mightiest ash tree of all, and there was a clear circle of grass, tree bordered, for a hundred yards all round it, and all that circle was lined with men, armed and silent.

Before the temple was a fire-reddened stone, the altar. And on it were graven runes, and symbols so strange that neither I nor any man could read them, so old were they, for some men said that stone and runes alike were older than the worship of Odin himself, having been an altar to gods that were before him. And a pile of wood was ready on the altar.

Beside it stood Ingvar, clad in golden shining scale armour, and with a gilded horned helm and scarlet cloak that hung from shoulders to heel; for as his forefathers had been before him, beyond the time when the Danes and Angles came from their far eastern home {xvii}, led by Odin himself, he was the "godar", the priest of the great gods of Asgard, and his it was to offer the sacrifice now that Lodbrok his father was dead.

Now, as I stood there I thought how my father had told me that our own family had been the godars of our race in the old days, so that he and I in turn should have taken our place at such an offering as Ingvar was about to make. And straightway I seemed to be back in the long dead past, when on these same shores my forbears had worshipped thus before seeking the new lands that they won beyond the seas. And that was a strange thought, yet now I should know from what our faith had brought us.

In a little while all Ingvar's following had come, and there were many chiefs whose faces I had seen of late as they came to plan the great raid that was to be when the season came. And the men with them were very many, far more than we could have gathered to a levy on so short notice; and all were well armed, and stood in good order as trained and hardened warriors. No longer could I wonder at all I had heard of the numbers of the Danish hosts who came to our shores, and were even now in Northumbria, unchecked.

There was silence in all the great ring of men; and only the rustle of the wind in the thick-standing ash trees around us--that seemed to hem us in like a gray wall round the clearing--and the quick croak and flap of broad wings as the ravens wheeled ever nearer overhead, broke the stillness.

We of the crew for whose good voyage and safe return the offering was made stood foremost,