Michael Meyer - The Long Ships - A Saga of the Viking Age

Many of them applauded his proposal and cried assent; but others doubted whether they were sufficiently provisioned to carry them through until they came to their goal.

Then Krok spoke again. He said that Berse had made exactly the suggestion that he himself thought of putting forward. Berse had spoken of the daughters of counts and of wealthy abbots, for the return of whose persons they would receive large ransoms; and he would like to add that in Ireland, there were, as was well known, no less than a hundred and sixty kings, some great, some small, but all of whom possessed much gold and many fine women, and whose soldiers fought wearing only linen garments, so that they could not be difficult to overcome. The most difficult part of their voyage would be passing through the Sound, where they might find themselves attacked by the natives of those parts; but three strongly manned ships, which Styrbjörn himself had not dared to challenge, would be likely to command respect even in the Sound; besides which, most of the Vikings of that region would, at this time of the year, already have sailed westwards; and in any case, there would be no moon during the next few nights. As regards food, any that they needed they could easily obtain as soon as they had successfully negotiated the Sound.

By this time they had all recovered their former high spirits. They said the plan was a good one, and that Krok was the wisest and cleverest of all chieftains; and they were all proud to discover how little trepidation they felt at the prospect of a voyage to the lands of the west, for no ship from their district had attempted such a journey within living memory. They set sail and came to Möen, and rested there for a day and a night, keeping a good look-out and waiting for a favourable wind. Then they headed up through the Sound in stormy weather, and came that evening to its neck without meeting any enemies. Later, during the night, they anchored in the lee of the Mound and decided to go ashore in search of provisions. Three companies landed secretly, each in a different place. Krok’s company was lucky, for they came at once on a sheep-fold near a large house, and managed to kill the shepherd and his dog before they could give the alarm. Then they caught the sheep and cut the throats of as many as they could take with them, but this caused the animals to bleat loudly, so that Krok bade his men make haste with the work.

They returned to the ship by the way they had come, making as much speed as they could, each man bearing a sheep over his shoulder. They heard behind them the clamour of people who had awoken in the house, and soon there arose the harsh yowling of dogs that had been unleashed on their scent. Then they heard from farther off a woman’s voice, which piercing through the noise of the dogs and men cried: ‘Wait! Stay with me!’ and screamed: ‘Orm!’ several times, and then again cried: ‘Wait!’ very shrilly and despairingly. Krok’s men had difficulty in moving quickly with their loads, for the path was stony and steep, and the night was cloudy and still almost pitch-dark. Krok himself went last in the line, carrying his sheep over his shoulder and holding an axe in his other hand. He was anxious, if possible, to avoid becoming involved in a fight for the sake of a sheep, for it was not worthwhile to risk life and limbs for so little; so he drove his men forward with harsh words of rebuke when they stumbled or slackened speed.

The ship lay hard by some flat rocks, being held away from them by the oars. They were ready to pull out as soon as Krok returned, for the other landing-parties had already returned empty-handed; some of them were waiting on the beach in case Krok should need any assistance. They were only a few paces from the ship when two great dogs came bounding down the path. One of them leaped at Krok, but he jumped aside and struck it with his axe; the other flashed past him with a huge leap at the man just in front of him, knocked him over by its impetus and buried its teeth in his throat. Two of the others hastened forward and killed the dog, and when they and Krok bent over the man who had been bitten they saw that his throat was badly torn and that he was rapidly bleeding to death.

In the same instant a spear hissed past Krok’s head, and two men came running down the slope and out on to the flat rocks; they had run so fast that they had outstripped all their companions. The foremost of them, who was bareheaded and bore no shield, but carried a short sword in his hand, tripped and fell headlong on the rocks; two spears flew over him and hit his companion, who crumpled to the ground. But the bareheaded man was at once on his feet again; baying like a wolf, he hewed at one man who had leaped forward with his sword raised when he had fallen, and felled him with a blow on the temples. Then he sprang at Krok, who stood just behind him; all this happened very quickly. He aimed savagely at Krok, but Krok was still carrying his sheep, and he slipped it round to meet the blow, in the same instant striking his adversary with the reverse edge of his axe on the forehead, so that he fell to the ground senseless. Krok bent over him, and saw that he was no more than a youth, red-haired and snub-nosed and pale-complexioned. He felt with his fingers the place where the axe-head had landed and found that the skull was unfractured.

‘I shall take the calf with me as well as the sheep,’ he said. ‘He can row in the place of the man he killed.’

So they picked him up and carried him on to the ship, and threw him beneath an oar-bench; then, when they had all come aboard, except the two men whom they had left dead behind them, they pulled out to sea just as a large crowd of pursuers appeared on the beach. The sky had now begun to lighten, and some spears were thrown at the ship; but they did no damage. The men pulled strongly at their oars, happy in the knowledge that they had fresh meat on board; and they had already gone a good way from land when the figures on the beach were joined by a woman in a long blue shift with her hair streaming behind her, who ran to the edge of the rocks and stretched out her arms towards the ship, crying something. Her cry reached them as a thin sound across the water, but she stood there long after they had ceased to hear her.

In this wise, Orm, the son of Toste, who later came to be known as Red Orm or Orm the Far-Travelled, set forth on his first voyage.

Krok’s men were very hungry when they reached Weather Island, for they had had to row the whole way there. They lay to and went ashore to gather fuel and cook themselves a good dinner; they found there only a few old fishermen, who on account of their poverty were not afraid of plunderers. When they came to cut up the sheep, they praised their fatness, and the evident excellence of the spring pasturing on the Mound. They stuck the joints on their spears and held them in the fire, and their mouths watered as the fat began to crackle, for it was a long time since their nostrils had known such a cheering smell. Many of them exchanged stories of the last occasions on which they had been present at so tasty a meal, and they all agreed that their voyage to the lands of the west had begun promisingly. Then they began to eat so that the juice of the meat ran over their beards.

By this time, Orm had regained his senses, but he was still sick and dizzy, and when he came ashore with the others, it was all he could do to keep on his legs. He sat down and held his head between his hands, and made no reply to the words that were addressed to him. But after a while, when he had vomited and drunk water, he felt better, and when he smelt the odour of the frying meat, he raised his head like a man who has just woken up, and looked at the men around him. The man who was sitting nearest to him grinned in a friendly way, and cut off a bit of his meat and offered it to him.