Styrbiorn the Strong

Against the coming of winter, when Styrbiorn was now fifteen winters old, Eric the King made great blood-offering in the temple at Upsala for the goodness of the year, as was his wont and the wont of his fathers before him from time immemorial. Thither were come together lords and great men of account from up and down the land, and there was great drinking toward. But Styrbiorn came not to meat that day, and came not to the King’s hall. So the King sent men to seek for Styrbiorn. In a while they returned, and a man of the King’s bodyguard said, “So it is, Lord, that we found him sitting on his father’s howe, King Olaf Biornson’s.”

The King’s brow darkened. He said to Earl Wolf, “Must this thing be, every autumn feast of sacrifice? Well, ’tis now the third time and the last; and yet it goeth nigh to anger me. Or will he not swallow my plighted word, that I will give him all, but not until he be sixteen year old?”

“I looked not for this again, King,” said the Earl. “And truly I’m sorry for it.”

The King made them go again to bid him to the drinking. But back they came empty-handed. “Did he answer you naught?” asked the King.

At that, they were silent, looking one at the other. Then answered one for them all and said, “Naught, Lord, save this: that he would waste no breath on the King’s thralls.”

“Like as his father was,” said the King, “so is this young whelp. Go thou, Earl, if that might fetch him.”

Earl Wolf stood up and went betwixt the benches and the fires and forth of the main door into the King’s garth, and

There was a spring in his step as he walked. He went not straight to the howe but took a sweep out into the open country, looking this way and that as searching for something. He was come within about a hundred paces from the howe when he espied that whereof he stood in need: a dark and shaggy body, four-legged, sturdy, high-shouldered, tailless, with a marvellous long and hairy coat that trailed well nigh to the big cloven hooves of the beast, and with great curly horns like a ram’s, and hairy face and nose, grazing some way off from him in the rough pastures that went down to Fyriswater. Styrbiorn halted on his way and gave a low call. The thing stopped grazing, lifted head and looked and saw him. It stood still at gaze: he called again. It lifted its nose and gave an answering bellow; then, like a coyly playful girl that will be wooed but must provoke, turned about and walked away from him, casting a look behind every four or five paces to make sure it was being followed. Styrbiorn was upon it ere it had gone twenty yards, and caught it by the horns. “Moldi,” he said, “how durst thou, when I want thee?” It was a yearling musk-ox, littler than common oxen, but heavy enough and strong enough to do with most men as it would; but with Styrbiorn, as was well seen as they tussled and strove together, it was very nicely matched. Round and round they swung for a while, trampling the ground, swaying and staggering back and forth, puffing and snorting both the one and

Styrbiorn slept the night after that banquet a sleep tumultuous with visions. In sleep, he rode a swift horse through lands silent and unpeopled, white with moonlight. He rode now through fires, as it were Brynhild’s fiery girdle about Skatalund, and now down deep wooded valley-slopes of darkness, where the young leafage brushed his hair and lips and hands as he passed. Then, in the swirling about of the visions which belonged to that unquiet slumber, he seemed to behold suddenly Sigrid the Queen naked before him in a whiteness of blinding brilliance; with the glory of which sight, sleep broke, and he opened his dazzled eyes on lamplight, and on Sigrid indeed in very presence standing beside his bed, but cloaked in her great scarlet cloak lined with swansdown.

She stood there by his feet, holding the lamp high. Her eyes were large and shining. Beholding him awake, she said, “I slept ill, and the whim took me to see if thou didst sleep tonight. I would not have waked thee.” Her breath caught as she spoke.

Styrbiorn rose sharply on his two elbows. His eyes, broad awake now, were fixed on her. And there was in that look, and in the whole frame of him, a tenseness like as is in a bowstring stretched. His face, flushed with sleep, took while he looked a yet darker red.

“This would I know,” he said, and his speech came hoarse and stumbling: “is it with the King’s leave thou goest o’ these night-walkings?”

Sigrid’s mouth hardened. She gave him an odd look from half-closed eyelashes, then, daintily as a seagull settles on the sea, sat down at the far end of the bed. Styrbiorn’s stillness was like the stillness of great clouds brooding before the lightning.

Styrbiorn came a pace nearer to Harald the King and stood over him like as one fighting dog stands a-bristling over another. “I love not talk and chat,” said he; “yet, to please your whim, King, I have spent two hours a-talking. Here be no eavesdroppers. Thou seest under thy feet there my ships and thine. Think well: for this choice I give thee, either to stretch out thine hand and betrothe to me thy daughter, and swear friendship to me, and these hundred ships too; or if not, I will flit thee ashipboard this very night, over seas to Kirialaland or the Finn-heaths of Smaland or otherwhere, and deliver thee up to savage men shall shear off thy nose and thine ears and draw out thy tripes for their dogs to eat. Choose, then.”

His words, tripping and stumbling, came like a clatter of weapons about the King’s ears. The King looked up in his eyes without blenching, a deadly look. A dirty greyish pallor was on the King’s cheek and brow: his lips were drawn back, showing in a set grin his teeth and gums and that ugly great tooth of his that jutted forth like a wild swine’s tusk blue and monstrous in the left-hand corner of his mouth. His right hand was clenched like iron on his sword-hilt, but his sword abode safe home in the scabbard. When Styrbiorn had ended there was deep silence, save for the faint sound of the wash of the waves on the seashore below them.