Olaf the Glorious: A Story of the Viking Age by Robert Leighton (rocket ebook reader .TXT) 📖

a dragonship and four longships, ready manned and equipped for the sea, and bade him go a-roving wheresoever he willed in search of adventure and worldly furtherance.

Queen Allogia, however, was very sad at thought of thus losing her favourite, and it was long ere she would make up her mind to let Olaf leave her. But in the end she saw that it was for his own good and advancement that he should go; so she gave him a beautiful banner of silken embroidery that she had worked with her own hands, told him that he would be accounted a noble and brave man wheresoever he should chance to be, and then bade him a last farewell.

CHAPTER VIII: THE YOUNG VIKINGS.

So Olaf quitted Holmgard and went on shipboard, and stood out with his viking fleet into the Baltic Sea. He now owed no allegiance to any man, but was free to journey where he pleased, a king upon his own decks. At this time he was scarcely eighteen summers old; but his limbs were so well knit and strong, and he was withal so tall and manly, that he seemed already to have attained to man's estate. Yet, feeling that his youth might be against him, he had chosen that all his ship companions should be as near as possible to his own age. He had a score or so of bearded berserks on each of his ships--men who feared neither fire nor steel, but who gloried in warfare, and loved nothing better than to be in the midst of a great battle. These indeed were full aged men; but for the rest, his crew of seamen and his band of trained men-at-arms was comprised of youths, none of whom were older than Thorgils Thoralfson, or younger than Olaf himself.

Olaf made his foster brother the chief in command under himself, giving him power over both seamen and warriors. He made his friend Egbert the sailing master, while one Kolbiorn Stallare became his master-of-arms.

Kolbiorn was the son of a powerful viking of Sognfiord in Norway. He was of an age with Olaf Triggvison, and so much did the two resemble one the other that, when apart, they were often taken to be brothers. Both had the long fair hair and the blue eyes of the Norseland, both were of nearly equal height; and it was Kolbiorn's habit to strive, by wearing similar clothing, to increase the likeness between himself and his young master. But when the two were side by side the resemblance ceased, for then Olaf was seen to be both the taller and the more muscular; his hair was seen to be more golden and silken, his skin more purely fair; his eyes, too, were brighter and larger than those of Kolbiorn, and his teeth more even and white. So, too, when it came to a test of skill, Olaf had ever the advantage, notwithstanding that Kolbiorn had spent all his young days on shipboard, had been taught by the vikings to perform all manner of feats, and had taken part in many battles on both land and sea.

On a certain calm morning, very soon after Olaf had set out on this his first viking cruise, he stood with Kolbiorn at the ship's rail, looking out over the sunlit sea as his vessel crept along propelled by her forty long, sweeping oars, and followed by his four longships.

"I think," said he, "that we will amuse ourselves today, and try our skill in some new game."

"I am very unfit to try my skill against yours," returned Kolbiorn modestly, "for you have already beaten me at chess, at swimming, at shooting, and at throwing the spear. Nevertheless, it shall be as you wish."

"Choose, then, what feat we are to perform," said Olaf; "I am willing to join in any exercise that you may know, and I do not doubt that there are many in which your skill must be greater than mine."

"There is one," said Kolbiorn, "that I would be glad to see you attempt, although there is danger in it, and I may be doing wrong in suggesting it."

"If it be new to me, then I shall be all the more pleased," said Olaf; "and none the less so though the risk be great."

Kolbiorn drew the young commander across to the shady side of the ship.

"It is that we shall climb over the bulwarks," said he, "and walk outboard along the oars while the men are rowing."

Olaf looked over the side, and for a few moments watched the regular motion of the oars as they dipped into the green water and rose dripping into the air. He measured with his eye the space between each of the twenty blades.

"It seems not so difficult as I had hoped," he said, "but let me see you do it, and then I will follow."

Kolbiorn climbed over the ship's quarter, and worked his way forward to the first rower's bench. Steadying himself for a moment as he hung by one arm from the gunwale, he dropped with his two feet upon the aftermost oar, and stepped out thence from oar to oar until he reached the one nearest to the forecastle. Then, still balancing himself with outstretched arms, he turned and walked aft by the same way to where Olaf and many of the ship's company had stood watching him. All thought it a very wonderful feat.

Olaf praised Kolbiorn's skill, but promptly prepared to follow his example. Throwing off his red silk cloak, lest, by falling into the sea, he should injure it, he climbed overboard, and without hesitation dropped down upon the square shank of the aftermost oar; then going out near to the blade, he ran forward with quick, well measured strides. Once or twice, as the oars were dipped, he faltered and nearly lost his balance, but he reached the foremost one without accident, and returned with greater ease. When he again stepped upon the deck he appealed to Thorgils Thoralfson to decide which had shown the more skill. But Thorgils was unable to determine the matter.

"The game has not yet had sufficient trial," said Olaf; "it must be gone through once more. But this time I will myself take the lead, and let Kolbiorn or any other of our company follow."

Then he asked Thorgils and Kolbiorn to lend him their handsaxes, and taking his own from his belt he again climbed over the side, and walking along the row of moving oars played with the three dirks, throwing them in turn up into the air, so that one was ever aloft and one hilt ever in his hand. Thus he played as he strode forward, without once dropping one of the weapons, and without once missing his sure footing. Climbing over the forecastle deck he then returned along the oars on the other side, and reached the deck with dry shoes.

No one on board could understand how Olaf had done this surprising feat without having practised it many times before, and when he gave back the two dirks to their owners, Kolbiorn stood before him and looked at him in silence.

Olaf said: "Why do you stand thus and not try after me?"

"Because I own myself beaten," answered Kolbiorn. "And yet," he added, "I cannot believe that you did this feat by your skill alone and without some secret power. Either you have the favour of Odin to aid you, or else you are descended from some mighty king whose natural skill you have inherited. Marvellous does it seem to me that whatsoever exercise you attempt, in that you are certain to surpass all other men."

Olaf laughed lightly and turned away towards his cabin, while his ship fellows continued to talk among themselves of this new example of his great agility.

Thus, even at the beginning of his free life as a sea rover, he had made upon his companions so deep an impression that they one and all respected him, and openly acknowledged him their superior in all things.

But most of all, they wondered of what kin he had been born that he should so easily and with such little effort excel all men they had known. For although they well knew that he had been a favourite at the court of King Valdemar, yet none even guessed at the truth that he was a blood descendant of the great Harald Fairhair; and less still did any imagine that he was even now heir to the throne of Norway. None but Thorgils Thoralfson knew his true name. At this time, and indeed throughout the whole course of his after adventures in Britain, he was known only as Ole the Esthonian.

Now although Olaf had spoken of his wish to return to the land of his fathers, yet now that he was upon his own dragonship, and free to follow where fortune should lead him, he showed no haste to make a landing in Norway. He bent his course across the Gulf of Finland, and then westward among the many green islands and rocky holms that lie in the mid sea between Finland and Sweden, and for many sunny days and calm starry nights simply enjoyed the idle pleasures of his new life of freedom.

It was the summer season, when all the channels of the sea were clear of ice, and there were many trading ships abroad which might have been an easy prey had Olaf so chosen to fall upon them. But although he was a viking, and had all the viking's lust for war and plunder, he yet remembered the time when his own mother had been taken by Jarl Klerkon and sold into bondage. So he determined to let all peaceful merchant ships alone, and to join battle only with such vessels as were intent upon warfare. In token of this resolve he had the great dragon's head lowered from his prow, so that its wide open jaws and terrible aspect might not strike fear into the hearts of the peaceable traders; and the shields that were ranged along his outer bulwarks were peace shields, painted white, as showing that he meant no harm to those who might chance to meet him on the seas.

His berserks, and many of the young men who had joined his fellowship in the hope of gain, grumbled sometimes when they saw him allow some richly laden ship to go by without attacking her, and they declared that after all he was a viking only in name. Olaf bade them wait in patience, reminding them that there was no lack of good food and well brewed ale on board, and that they had no need to feel discontent so long as their daily life was passed in bodily comfort.

"And as to fighting," he added, "I cannot think that any of you would take pleasure in drawing arms against men who have not been trained in warfare."

Not long did they need to wait ere their instinct for fighting was in part satisfied.

One gloomy forenoon his ships with their sails full set were speeding before a strong wind through the wide channel of sea dividing the two large islands of Gottland and Eyland. Thorgils was at the tiller of the dragon ship--a post which, in the viking times, was always held by the chief man on deck. As he stood there, his eyes swept the wide stretch of the grey sea in search of ships; for Olaf Triggvison had now put his red war shields out on the bulwarks, and the winged dragon reared its great gilded head at the prow, as if in menace. Olaf himself was below in his cabin under the poop, watching a game of chess that Kolbiorn and Egbert were playing.

The chessboard was a very beautiful one, its squares