



Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE THRALL OF LEIF THE LUCKY

A Story of Viking Days


By Ottilie A. Liljencrantz




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
  Where Wolves Thrive Better than Lambs

CHAPTER II
  The Maid in the Silver Helmet

CHAPTER III
  A Gallant Outlaw

CHAPTER IV
  In a Viking Lair

CHAPTER V
  The Ire of a Shield-Maiden

CHAPTER VI
  The Song of Smiting Steel

CHAPTER VII
  The King's Guardsman

CHAPTER VIII
  Leif the Cross-Bearer

CHAPTER IX
  Before the Chieftain

CHAPTER X
  The Royal Blood of Alfred

CHAPTER XI
  The Passing of the Scar

CHAPTER XII
  Through Bars of Ice

CHAPTER XIII
  Eric the Red in His Domain

CHAPTER XIV
  For the Sake of the Cross

CHAPTER XV
  A Wolf-Pack in Leash

CHAPTER XVI
  A Courtier of the King

CHAPTER XVII
  The Wooing of Helga

CHAPTER XVIII
  The Witch's Den

CHAPTER XIX
  Tales of the Unknown West

CHAPTER XX
  Alwin's Bane

CHAPTER XXI
  The Heart of a Shield-Maiden

CHAPTER XXII
  In the Shadow of the Sword

CHAPTER XXIII
  A Familiar Blade in a Strange Sheath

CHAPTER XXIV
  For Dear Love's Sake

CHAPTER XXV
  "Where Never Man Stood Before"

CHAPTER XXVI
  Vinland the Good

CHAPTER XXVII
  Mightier than the Sword

CHAPTER XXVIII
  "Things that are Fated"

CHAPTER XXIX
  The Battle to the Strong

CHAPTER XXX
  From Over the Sea

CONCLUSION



FOREWORD

THE Anglo-Saxon race was in its boyhood in the days when the Vikings
lived. Youth's fresh fires burned in men's blood; the unchastened
turbulence of youth prompted their crimes, and their good deeds were
inspired by the purity and whole-heartedness and divine simplicity of
youth. For every heroic vice, the Vikings laid upon the opposite scale
an heroic virtue. If they plundered and robbed, as most men did in the
times when Might made Right, yet the heaven-sent instinct of hospitality
was as the marrow of their bones. No beggar went from their doors
without alms; no traveller asked in vain for shelter; no guest but was
welcomed with holiday cheer and sped on his way with a gift. As
cunningly false as they were to their foes, just so superbly true were
they to their friends. The man who took his enemy's last blood-drop with
relentless hate, gave his own blood with an equally unsparing hand if in
so doing he might aid the cause of some sworn brother. Above all, they
were a race of conquerors, whose knee bent only to its proved superior.
Not to the man who was king-born merely, did their allegiance go, but to
the man who showed himself their leader in courage and their master in
skill. And so it was with their choice of a religion, when at last the
death-day of Odin dawned. Not to the God who forgives, nor to the God
who suffered, did they give their faith; but they made their vows to the
God who makes men strong, the God who is the never-dying and
all-powerful Lord of those who follow Him.



The Thrall of Leif the Lucky




CHAPTER I

WHERE WOLVES THRIVE BETTER THAN LAMBS

    Vices and virtues
    The sons of mortals bear
    In their breasts mingled;
    No one is so good That no failing attends him,
    Nor so bad as to be good for nothing.
        Ha'vama'l (High Song of Odin).


It was back in the tenth century, when the mighty fair-haired warriors
of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, whom the people of Southern Europe
called the Northmen, were becoming known and dreaded throughout the
world. Iceland and Greenland had been colonized by their dauntless
enterprise. Greece and Africa had not proved distant enough to escape
their ravages. The descendants of the Viking Rollo ruled in France as
Dukes of Normandy; and Saxon England, misguided by Ethelred the Unready
and harassed by Danish pirates, was slipping swiftly and surely under
Northern rule. It was the time when the priests of France added to their
litany this petition: "From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, good
Lord."

The old, old Norwegian city of Trondhjem, which lies on Trondhjem Fiord,
girt by the river Nid, was then King Olaf Trygvasson's new city of
Nidaros, and though hardly more than a trading station, a hamlet without
streets, it was humming with prosperity and jubilant life. The shore was
fringed with ships whose gilded dragon-heads and purple-and-yellow hulls
and azure-and-scarlet sails were reflected in the waves until it seemed
as if rainbows had been melted in them. Hillside and river-bank bloomed
with the gay tents of chieftains who had come from all over the North to
visit the powerful Norwegian king. Traders had scattered booths of
tempting wares over the plain, so that it looked like fair-time. The
broad roads between the estates that clustered around the royal
residence were thronged with clanking horsemen, with richly dressed
traders followed by covered carts of precious merchandise, with
beautiful fair-haired women riding on gilded chair-like saddles, with
monks and slaves, with white-bearded lawmen and pompous landowners.

Along one of those roads that crossed the city from the west, a Danish
warrior came riding, one keen May morning, with a young English captive
tied to his saddle-bow.

The Northman was a great, hulking, wild-maned, brute-faced fellow,
capped by an iron helmet and wrapped in a mantle of coarse gray, from
whose folds the handle of a battle-axe looked out suggestively; but the
boy was of the handsomest Saxon type. Though barely seventeen, he was
man-grown, and lithe and well-shaped; and he carried himself nobly,
despite his clumsy garments of white wool. His gold-brown hair had been
clipped close as a mark of slavery, and there were fetters on his limbs;
but chains could not restrain the glance of his proud gray eyes, which
flashed defiance with every look.

Crossing the city northward, they came where a trading-booth stood on
its outskirts--an odd looking place of neatly built log walls tented
over with gay striped linen. Beyond, the plain rose in gentle hills,
which were overlooked in their turn by pine-clad snow-capped mountains.
On one side, the river hurried along in surging rapids; on the other,
one could see the broad elbow of the fiord glittering in the sun. At the
sight of the booth, the Saxon scowled darkly, while the Dane gave a
grunt of relief. Drawing rein before the door, the warrior dismounted
and pulled down his captive.

It was a scene of barbaric splendor that the gay roof covered. The walls
displayed exquisitely wrought weapons, and rare fabrics interwoven with
gleaming gold and silver threads. Piles of rich furs were heaped in the
corners, amid a medley of gilded drinking-horns and bronze vessels and
graceful silver urns. Across the back of the booth stretched a benchful
of sullen-looking creatures war-captives to be sold as slaves, native
thralls, and two Northmen enslaved for debt. In the centre of the floor,
seated upon one of his massive steel-bound chests, gorgeous in velvet
and golden chains, the trader presided over his sales like a prince on
his throne.

The Dane saluted him with a surly nod, and he answered with such smooth
words as the thrifty old Norse proverbs advise every man to practise.

"Greeting, Gorm Arnorsson! Here is great industry, if already this
Spring you have gone on a Viking voyage and gotten yourself so good a
piece of property! How came you by him?"

Gorm gave his "property" a rough push forward, and his harsh voice came
out of his bull-thick neck like a bellow. "I got him in England last
Summer. We ravaged his father's castle, I and twenty ship-mates, and
slew all his kinsmen. He comes of good blood; I am told for certain that
he is a jarl's son. And I swear he is sound in wind and limb. How much
will you pay me for him, Karl Grimsson?"

The owner of the booth stroked his long white beard and eyed the captive
critically. It seemed to him that he had never seen a king's son with a
haughtier air. The boy wore his fetters as though they had been
bracelets from the hands of Ethelred.

"Is it because you value him so highly that you keep him in chains?" he
asked.

"In that I will not deceive you," said the Dane, after a moment's
hesitation. "Though he is sound in wind and limb, he is not sound in
temper. Shortly after I got him, I sold him to Gilli the Wealthy for a
herd-boy; but because it was not to his mind on the dairy-farm, he lost
half his herd and let wolves prey on the rest, and when the headman
would have flogged him for it, he slew him. He has the temper of a black
elf."

"He does not look to be a cooing dove," the trader assented. "But how
came it that he was not slain for this? I have heard that Gilli is a
fretful man."

The Dane snorted. "More than anything else he is greedy for property,
and his wife Bertha advised him not to lose the price he had paid. It is
my belief that she has a liking for the cub; she was an English captive
before the Wealthy One married her. He followed her advice, as was to be
expected, and saddled me with the whelp when I passed through the
district yesterday. I should have sent him to Thor myself," he added
with a suggestive swing of his axe, "but that silver is useful to me
also. I go to join my shipmates in Wisby. And I am in haste, Karl
Grimsson. Take him, and let me have what you think fair."

It seemed as if the trader would never finish the meditative caressing
of his beard, but at last he arose and called for his scales. The Dane
took the little heap of silver rings weighed out to him, and strode out
of the tent. At the same time, he passed out of the English boy's life.
What a pity that the result of their short acquaintance could not have
disappeared with him!

The trader surveyed his new possession, standing straight and slim
before him. "What are you called?" he demanded. "And whence come you?
And of what kin?"

"I am called Alwin," answered the thrall; "and I come from Northumbria."
He hesitated, and the blood mounted to his face. "But I will not tell
you my father's name," he finished proudly, "that you may shame him in
shaming me."

The trader's patience was a little chafed. Peaceful merchants were also
men of war between times in those days.

Suddenly he unsheathed the sword that hung at his side, and laid its
point against the thrall's breast.

"I ask you again of what kin you come. If you do not answer now, it is
unlikely that you will be alive to answer a third question."

Perhaps young Alwin's bronzed cheeks lost a little of their color, but
his lip curled scornfully. So they stood, minute after minute, the sharp
point pricking through the cloth until the boy felt it against his skin.

Gradually the trader's face relaxed into a grim smile. "You are a young
wolf," he said at last, sheathing his weapon; "yet go and sit with the
others. It may be that wolves thrive better than lambs in the North."




CHAPTER II

THE MAID IN THE SILVER HELMET

    In a maiden's words
    No one should place faith,
    Nor in what a woman says;
    For on a turning wheel
    Have their hearts been formed,
    And guile in their breasts been laid.
       Ha'vama'l


Day after day, week after week, Alwin sat waiting to see where the next
turn of misfortune's wheel would land him. Interesting people visited
the booth continually. Now it was a party of royal guardsmen to buy
weapons,--splendid mail-clad giants who ate at King Olaf's board, slept
a his hall, and fought to the death at his side. Again it was a
minstrel, with a harp at his back, who stopped to rest and exchange a
song for a horn of mead. Once the Queen herself, riding in a shining
gilded wagon, came in and bought some of the graceful spiral bracelets.
She said that Alwin's eyes were as bright as a young serpent's; but she
did not buy him.

The doorway framed an ever changing picture,--budding birch trees along
the river-bank; men ploughing in the valley; shepherds tending flocks
that looked like dots of cotton wool on the green hillsides. Sometimes
bands of gay folk from the King's house rode by to the hunt, spurs
jingling, horns braying, falcons at their wrists. Sometimes brawny
followers of the visiting chiefs swaggered past in groups, and the boy
could hear their shouting and laughter as they held drinking-bouts in
the hostelry near by. Occasionally their rough voices would grow
rougher, and an arrow would fly past the door; or there would be a clash
of weapons, followed by a groan.

One day, as Alwin sat looking out, his chin resting in his hand, his
elbow on his knee, his attention was caught by two riders winding
swiftly down a hill-path on the right. At first, one was only a blur of
gray and the other a flame of scarlet; they disappeared behind a grove
of aspens, then reappeared nearer, and he could make out a white beard
on the gray figure and a veil of golden hair above the scarlet kirtle.
What hair for a boy, even the noblest born! It was the custom of all
free men to wear their locks uncut; but this golden mantle! Yet could it
be a girl? Did a girl ever wear a helmet like a silver bowl, and a
kirtle that stopped at the knee? If it was a girl, she must be one of
those shield-maidens of whom the minstrels sang. Alwin watched the pair
curiously as they galloped down the last <DW72> and turned into the lane
beside the river. They must pass the booth, and then...

His brain whirled, and he stood up in his intense interest. Something
had startled the white steed that bore the scarlet kirtle; he swerved
aside and rose on his haunches with a suddenness that nearly unseated
his rider; then he took the bronze bit between his teeth and leaped
forward. Whitebeard and his bay mare were left behind. The yellow hair
streamed out like a banner; nearer, and Alwin could see that it was
indeed a girl. She wound her hands in the reins and kept her seat like a
centaur. But suddenly something gave way. Over she went, sidewise; and
by the wrist, tangled in the reins, the horse dragged her over the stony
road.

Forgetting his manacled limbs, Alwin started forward; but it was all
over in an instant. One of the trader's servants flew at the animal's
head and stopped him, almost at the door of the booth. In another moment
a crowd gathered around the fallen girl and shut her from his view.
Alwin gazed at the shifting backs with a dreadful vision of golden hair
torn and splashed with blood. She must be dead, for she had not once
screamed. His head was still ringing with the shrieks of his mother's
waiting-women, as the Danes bore them out of the burning castle.

Whitebeard came galloping up, puffing and panting. He was a puny little
German, with a face as small and withered as a winter apple, but a body
swaddled in fur-trimmed tunics until it seemed as fat as a polar bear's.
He rolled off his horse; the crowd parted before him. Then the English
youth experienced another shock.

Bruised and muddy, but neither dead nor fainting, the girl stood
examining her wrist with the utmost calmness. Though her face was white
and drawn with pain, she looked up at the old man with a little twisted
smile.

"It is nothing, Tyrker," she said quickly; "only the girth broke, and it
appears that my wrist is out of joint. We will go in here, and you shall
set it."

Tyrker blinked at her for a moment with an expression of mingled
affection and wonder; then he drew a deep breath. "Donnerwetter, but you
are a true shield-maiden!" he said in a wavering treble.

The trader received them with true Norse hospitality; and Alwin watched
in speechless amazement while the old man ripped up the scarlet sleeve
and wrenched the dislocated bones into position, without a murmur from
the patient. Despite her strange dress and general dishevelment, he
could see now that she was a beautiful girl, a year or two younger than
himself. Her face was as delicately pink-and-pearly as a sea-shell, and
corn-flowers among the wheat were no bluer than the eyes that looked out
from under her rippling golden tresses.

When the wrist was set and bandaged, the trader presented them with a
silken scarf to make into a sling, and had them served with horns of
sparkling mead. This gave a turn to the affair that proved of special
interest to Alwin. There is an old Norse proverb which prescribes "Lie
for lie, laughter for laughter, gift for gift;" so, while he accepted
these favors, Tyrker began to look around for some way to repay them.

His gaze wandered over fabrics and furs and