In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset
They had the driving snow right in their faces across the fields and Olav had to exert himself so as not to lose the other’s dark shadow in the flurry. Sira Hallbjörn went forward with long, supple strokes; the points of his skis sank deep in the heavy snow at each sweep. In the blind night he aimed blindly at gap after gap in the fences, where the gates were in summer. Olav wiped his face now and then and his helmet, on which the snow lay melting, sending streams of water down his neck, but he could not stop for an instant if he was to keep up with his companion.
Within the forest it was better. Where they were going Olav no longer knew, but the other seemed as sure as ever. Sometimes the firs stood so thick that their skis scraped the bare ground when they ducked under the snow-laden boughs. Olav recalled what he had heard said of the priest—that he was not afraid to hunt in another man’s wood—but none cared to speak of it; Sira Hallbjörn raised strife enough without that. Likely enough it was true; the priest went forward as though he knew every turn of the way in spite of the darkness and the snow.
Once Olav recognized where he was—they had entered a narrow track with a steep wall of bare rock to the east of it and loose stones at the bottom, so Olav was afraid the skin underneath his skis would be cut to pieces, as they struck the bare rock so often. There was a faint gurgle of water underneath the snow. The weather had cleared; high up above the defile strips of black sky peeped out between light clouds, and a star twinkled. Folk shunned this pass after dusk:—any evening the troll’s hound might be heard barking among the crags. Involuntarily Olav hailed the other under his breath.
“Are you afraid, master?” asked the priest with a little laugh as Olav came up to him. “Not even the troll will turn out his tike tonight.”
“Not afraid either.” Olav lifted off his helmet and let it hang on his back. “Only my head itches so; I am in such a sweat.”
Sira Hallbjörn waited till the other was ready, then he set off again.
They went side by side over a flat white surface darkened by patches of water—it was oozing up now in the thaw. Sira Hallbjörn stopped for a moment, leaning on his staff and getting his breath.
“You are tired now, Olav?”
Above their heads the clouds were parting more and more, showing deep rifts of blackness and a few stars faintly shining. A deep sigh went through the snow-covered forest around the lake, and here and there the branches let fall their burden with a low gasping and rustling sound.
“Oh, nay. I feel I am not so good a ski-runner as I was in my youth.”
“You are not used to finding your way at nighttime?”
“I went once from Hamar town to Miklebö in Elfardal—I have made that journey many times—but once I did the half of it by night and found my way—I knew not where I was going.”
“Were you alone?” asked the priest.
Olav said: “I had company—half the way—with a young lad. But he was untried—had little skill at ski-running.”
But Sira Hallbjörn asked no more. They stayed awhile longer to regain their breath, then the priest flung himself forward and they were off again. They plunged into the woods again and followed a watercourse—Olav had to go in the other’s tracks, and they ran on and on. In a way he was pleased that the priest had asked no questions—and he felt it to be a good thing that he was beginning to be tired; more and more his body moved of itself. When he was gliding downhill he felt his heart beating less violently, and the breeze was cooling to his overheated body. A little shock of anger ran through him every time a branch caught in the load on his back and gave him a bath of wet snow.
He did not know how long they had been going, but at last the night began to fade away. It was in the grey light of early morning, with a sky again heavy with snow, that Sira Hallbjörn and Olav passed along the top of an enclosed field that sloped down to a cluster of farms in a plain. Olav was broad awake all at once—every yard was full of people, men in steel caps, armed with long swords, their horses close at hand. And thick black smoke rolled up from every roof—on one farm farther south a great bonfire was burning out in the yard.
Sira Hallbjörn stood watching, sniffing at the scent of smoke. Then he made for the alder thicket, creeping down gently and spying out. Olav followed, excited and wide awake.
They came to a rail fence. Before them a great white field sloped down toward the outhouses of the nearest farm. In front of the byre some armed men stood round two countrymen who were holding and flaying a slaughtered beast. Olav and the priest watched for a while.
“I declare!” Sira Hallbjörn laughed angrily. “They have forced him, Sigurd himself, to hold the beast, and ’tis his son that flays it.”
Olav knew where he was now—these farms lay south and east of Kambshorn. The village was surrounded by forest, which divided it from the district to the east toward Jalund Sound. Olav advanced a little farther along the fence while he considered which way they ought to take in order to reach the more populous district under cover of the woods, so that they might have a sight of the Duke’s main force.
Then he heard the twang of a bow-string behind him. He saw the arrow fly and bury itself in the snow behind one of the men who watched the flaying. Sira Hallbjörn knelt down on one ski and picked up another of the arrows that he had stuck in the snow before him. Olav turned abruptly and dashed uphill toward him. At the same moment the first bolt whizzed past him into the thicket, shaking the snow from the branches. The men by the houses rushed out into the field, but sank deep in the new snow. Then one of them fell. Sira Hallbjörn had shot a second arrow, but now he leaped up, and he and Olav fled together uphill over the pasture. One or two more bolts came whistling after them, but it was vain for the Swedes to give chase to the two ski-runners.
They halted a moment and listened—in a white clearing within the forest, where a few old barns stood.
“You shot unwisely, Sira Hallbjörn,” said Olav with vexation.
“I have hit a longer mark ere now,” said Sira Hallbjörn coldly; “but I sprained my thumb last night, so my first arrow went wide.”
“It is not that I meant,” said Olav impatiently. “But now we shall have small profit of our scouting—we have seen no more than we knew already. And ’tis most likely they will take revenge on the poor folk of these farms—”
Sira Hallbjörn’s face flushed deeply with anger, the veins stood out like cords on his temples; but he received Olav’s words in silence. And so they went on.
They now made for the highway, and early in the day they reached the southernmost farms of Saana parish. The folk here had already had news of the trouble, and as they came farther north they heard the church bells ringing. By the bridge north of the church they came upon a great body of countrymen, eager for news.
It was very mild and the sky hung low and grey over the level country, but the ice on the river was safe under the covering snow, so it would be useless to try to check the Swedes at the bridge. Moreover, many of the folk from here had taken their cattle with them eastward into the forest tract of Gardar; it lay well out of the way.
Sira Hallbjörn urged the men to go with him and join the countrymen farther north, all those able to bear arms. But it was easy to see that the people of Saana parish thought things were well as they were: they expected the invaders to march straight through their district without doing them great damage. And they even seemed not to wish that the Swedes would be thrown back—if they had the hostile army pouring over them, smarting under a defeat, it would be worse than all. “The rich townsmen, merchants and clerks, are better able to pay ransom than we.”
Olav saw the priest was so angry that it would be imprudent to let him have a hearing. So he himself stepped forward and spoke:
“Good friends and kinsmen, see you not that if Duke Eirik get possession of the castle of Akershus, we shall have this hard master over us all for we know not how long, till the spring at least, and then he will fleece us all to the skin. He has with him three hundred German horseme
Someone suggested that surely King Haakon must come home now and defend the country.
“The King has his hands full with defending the border by the river. We franklins here about Folden had a name in old time of being peace-lovers, so long as we were left in peace. Do you not remember how our forefathers danced more than once with their enemies on the ice outside Oslo?”
“They did not carry off the victory in that dance, Olav Audunsson,” a man interrupted. “Know you not that?”
“They gained by it in the long run, for all that, Erling—’tis always worst in the end for him who dare not defend himself. And so thickly peopled is the country hereabout that we should be men enough to bring the Duke to another mind.”
The end was that Paal Kurt of Husaby and the sons of Bergljot from Tegneby promised to follow with as many men as they could raise. Sira Hallbjörn and Olav then went on.
“Knew you not,” asked the priest, “that the King sailed to Björgvin before Martinmas? Sir Helge and Count Jacob have charge of the new castle on Baagaholm with few men—”
“Better to let them think hereabout that they have our army at their back.”
“Where have you heard that the Duke owes the Germans pay?” he asked again.
“Never have I heard aught else of dukes and mercenaries—” Olav gave a little laugh. “Tempus bellus, was it not so you said?”
“Tempus belli,” Sira Hallbjörn corrected him, and laughed too.
Arrived in their own country, they heard that Baard of Skikkjustad and Reidulf, when he was sober again, had given up the plan of meeting the invaders in the Aurebæk Dale and had gone forward with more than eighty men to join the men of Aas; they had taken up arms. Folk judged that with the snow in this state the Duke could not advance farther the first day than Kraakastad or Skeidis, and so the country levies would wait for him a little to the northward, where the road runs under a little ridge, having on its eastern side some bogs that never freeze till after midwinter, as they are full of springs; there they thought they could decoy the horsemen out into the morass. Olav was not very familiar with the country inland, but the priest muttered and shook his head when he heard of this plan.
They reached the place as it grew dark. In a little hollow on the ridge the watchmen had made a fire. The scouts made their report, as they had agreed upon it—they both thought it useless to say that they had seen a little of the hostile army. They took off their boots and hung them on poles by the fire, threw themselves down on beds of pine branches close to the crackling logs, where some men had set up a sort of tent of blankets and cloaks, and fell asleep, dead-tired both of them.
It was not yet full daylight when Olav was aroused as they broke camp. He snatched his boots from the pole above the embers; they were toasted hard, but gratefully warm, for he was chilled all through. He pulled on his hauberk over his coat and ran, axe in hand, to the brow of the ridge.
Below him the rock sloped smooth and steep for thrice the height of a man to the narrow road that skirted the bog. Farther on, it swung onto the high ground. The slope was not very steep, and the weak point of the position was that at the top of the pass there was level and open ground on both sides—mossy ground with scattered trees. Up here lay the men of Aas and Saana, a hundred or more. On the edge of the ridge stacks of timber had been built.
From below, the muffled rumble of the advancing body could be heard already, and the splashing of horses’ hoofs in the slushy road—he made out the leading horsemen to the southward; they could ride three abreast here. Out on the bog dark clumps of men could be seen running, where the ground was hard; they were the yeomen who had lain at the little farms under the brow of the wood in that direction. At that moment came the first shower of arrows and javelins, but most of the men on the bog had aimed too high, so that their shots flew over the heads of the horsemen and struck the cliff—one fell in the heather about the feet of those standing on the ridge.
“Too soon besides,” said Baard of Skikkjustad with an oath—he was standing just in front of Olav.
For all that, there was confusion in the ranks of the horsemen on the road below; some of the horses reared or tried to break out to the side. Those who rode in the van reined theirs in; there were shouts to those behind and answering shouts. Then the leaders spurred their horses; it looked as if they would ride on without heeding the body of men on the bog. Great pools of water had formed during the night, disclosing the danger of attempting to pursue the attackers on horseback—nay, but some of them were leaping out of the saddle, they would try a bout after all.
So far as Olav could judge in the grey dawn, the mounted troop was about an old hundred in number. They pressed on from the rear; some horsemen were forced out to the edge of the bog. And now the leaders had reached the top of the pass; there they were met by the country levies, who received them with spears, axes, and swords, and now the shots from the men in the bog began to take effect—some riderless and wounded horses screamed and neighed and caused confusion as they tried to break out of the ranks, and the cries of wounded men rose above the clash of arms in the pass.
Down in the road a loud young voice called out above the tumult—a tall, erect man in knight’s armour held in his horse and called for a hearing. When the noise of the battle died down a little the men on the ridge could hear that the knight was Norwegian. They could make out most of what he shouted to the countrymen in the pass. In the stillness that followed Olav noticed that it had begun to rain.
The Norwegian knight called out that Duke Eirik had not come to wage war on the people of the country, unless they attacked him first. It was King Haakon who had broken treaties and agreements both with the Duke and with the Danish King, so now they might expect another raid on that land when summer came; and he had made a pact with King Birger and would lead Norwegian forces out of the country to support the Swedish beggar King who wronged his own brothers. King Haakon had foully betrayed the man he had lately embraced as his son-in-law—and the Duke sought no other aim here in Norway than to come to speech with the King, but so basely had King Haakon outraged his own knighthood, and so harshly and presumptuously did he rule in Norway’s realm, that Duke Eirik had found support with many good and noble Norwegian lords, and they looked to it that the people of the land would back their demand for a settlement.
“That is Sir Lodin Sighvatsson,” said Sira Hallbjörn, “Bjarnefostre—a fox and a traitor like his uncle.”
“Let go now,” cried Baard along the line, and the men on the ridge hurled down the piles of timber and stones. There was a smell of scorched rock as the falling mass thundered over the troop of horsemen below. Among the mass of tumbled logs Olav saw horses’ legs kicking in the air as the animals rolled; there were neighs, cries, and shouts in the confusion and men struggled to get out of the saddle and onto their feet—the road was a-crawl as when boys drop stones into a cup full of earthworms. Then he ran with the others along the edge of the rock and rushed out at the top of the pass, where the first troop of yeomen was now hard pressed and some men lay on the ground—and several of the horsemen had already hacked their way through, turned their horses, and attacked the Norwegians in the rear.
Olav had flung his shield over his back and wielded his axe in both hands, fighting among the steaming bodies of horses, while flakes of foam showered over him from the muzzles of the neighing and rearing animals. He seized hold of a bridle, warding off as he did so the rider’s spiked mace with the head of his axe, pulled the horse down to its knees, and struck at the man so that he reeled to one side. Olav ran on past the overthrown horse and rider, and several of his own men followed him. He received a blow on the helmet which staggered him, but it glanced off and he kept his feet, fighting, feeling that this was an unequal struggle, men on foot with horsemen against them before and behind—the place was ill chosen. Now the Swede
Then he saw down the road under the ridge a long line of advancing horsemen armed with lances; in the wretched grey light there was a gleam of wet on their steel caps and shoulder-plates, on the horses’ armour—further resistance was useless.
He managed somehow to hack his way through to the steep side of the road, hooked his axe into a crevice, and got up. Before and after him his comrades climbed, scrambled, and ran—most of them had succeeded in getting up. A little way up the height he stopped and looked back. On the other side of the road the greater part of the country levies were in flight across the moor, pursued by horsemen, and they disappeared into the pine woods.
In the road, which was now much cut up, horses and men lay here and there, dark forms in the mud; some moved and some lay still, and on came the Duke’s main force of steel-clad, heavily armed warriors, tramping and jingling—and the rain was now pouring down. Then Olav ran on along the wooded ridge.