



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