John Brunner - Path of the King

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THE PATH OF THE KING
by John Buchan
TO MY WIFE I DEDICATE THESE CHAPTERS
FIRST READ BY A COTSWOLD FIRE
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1. HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL
2. THE ENGLISHMAN
3. THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
4. EYES OF YOUTH
5. THE MAID
6. THE WOOD OF LIFE
7. EAUCOURT BY THE WATERS
8. THE HIDDEN CITY
9. THE REGICIDE
10. THE MARPLOT
11. THE LIT CHAMBER
12. IN THE DARK LAND
13. THE LAST STAGE
14. THE END OF THE ROAD
EPILOGUE
Linum fumigans non exstinguet; in veritate educet judicium. ISA. XLII.3.
PROLOGUE
The three of us in that winter camp in the Selkirks were talking the slow aimless talk of
wearied men.
The Soldier, who had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil War and
descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle. I said something about the stark
romance of it--of Jeb Stuart flitting like a wraith through the forests; of Sheridan's attack at
Chattanooga, when the charging troops on the ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of
Leonidas Polk, last of the warrior Bishops, baptizing his fellow generals by the light of a mess
candle. "Romance," I said, "attended the sombre grey and blue levies as faithfully as she ever
rode with knight-errant or crusader."
The Scholar, who was cutting a raw-hide thong, raised his wise eyes.
"Does it never occur to you fellows that we are all pretty mixed in our notions? We look for
romance in the well-cultivated garden-plots, and when it springs out of virgin soil we are
surprised, though any fool might know it was the natural place for it."
He picked up a burning stick to relight his pipe.
"The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places to look for
masterful men. They began strongly, but they have been too long in possession. They have been
cosseted and comforted and the devil has gone out of their blood. Don't imagine that I undervalue
descent. It is not for nothing that a great man leaves posterity. But who is more likely to
inherit the fire--the elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with his fortune to find?
Just think of it! All the younger sons of younger sons back through the generations! We none of us
know our ancestors beyond a little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins. The dago
who blacked my boots at Vancouver may be descended by curious byways from Julius Caesar.
"Think of it!" he cried. "The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under
ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows
waste. And we fools rub our eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't
begin there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the son of a woolpedlar, and Napoleon of a
farmer, and Luther of a peasant, and we hold up our hands at the marvel. But who knows what kings
and prophets they had in their ancestry!"
After that we turned in, and as I lay looking at the frosty stars a fancy wove itself in my
brain. I saw the younger sons carry the royal blood far down among the people, down even into the
kennels of the outcast. Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in
the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the
race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in it. It sinks and rises again and blossoms at
haphazard into virtue or vice, since the ordinary moral laws do not concern its mission. Some rags
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of greatness always cling to it, the dumb faith that sometime and somehow that blood drawn from
kings it never knew will be royal again. Though nature is wasteful of material things, there is no
waste of spirit And then after long years there comes, unheralded and unlooked-for, the day of the
Appointed Time....
This is the story which grew out of that talk by the winter fire.
CHAPTER I. HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL
When Biorn was a very little boy in his father's stead at Hightown he had a play of his own
making for the long winter nights. At the back end of the hall, where the men sat at ale, was a
chamber which the thralls used of a morning--a place which smelt of hams and meal and good
provender. There a bed had been made for him when he forsook his cot in the women's quarters. When
the door was shut it was black dark, save for a thin crack of light from the wood fire and torches
of the hall. The crack made on the earthen floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on
a bench in his little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his heart
beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his small body bathed in the
radiance. The game was not to come back at once, but to foray into the farther darkness before
returning to the sanctuary of bed. That took all the fortitude in Biorn's heart, and not till the
thing was dared and done could he go happily to sleep.
One night Leif the Outborn watched him at his game. Sometimes the man was permitted to sleep
there when he had been making sport for the housecarles.
"Behold an image of life!" he had said in his queer outland speech. "We pass from darkness to
darkness with but an instant of light between. You are born for high deeds, princeling. Many would
venture from the dark to the light, but it takes a stout breast to voyage into the farther dark."
And Biorn's small heart swelled, for he detected praise, though he did not know what Leif
meant.
In the long winter the sun never topped Sunfell, and when the gales blew and the snow drifted
there were lights in the hall the day long. In Biorn's first recollection the winters were spent
by his mother's side, while she and her maids spun the wool of the last clipping. She was a fair
woman out of the Western Isles, all brown and golden as it seemed to him, and her voice was softer
than the hard ringing speech of the Wick folk. She told him island stories about gentle fairies
and good-humoured elves who lived in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be
wistful as if she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs which
had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a rougher stock, and they stuck to
the Wicking lullaby which ran something like this:
Hush thee, my bold one, a boat will I buy thee,
A boat and stout oars and a bright sword beside, A helm of red gold and a thrall to be nigh
thee,
When fair blows the wind at the next wicking-tide.
There was a second verse, but it was rude stuff, and the Queen had forbidden the maids to
sing it.
As he grew older he was allowed to sit with the men in the hall, when bows were being
stretched and bowstrings knotted and spear-hafts fitted. He would sit mum in a corner, listening
with both ears to the talk of the old franklins, with their endless grumbles about lost cattle and
ill neighbours. Better he liked the bragging of the young warriors, the Bearsarks, who were the
spear-head in all the forays. At the great feasts of Yule-tide he was soon sent packing, for there
were wild scenes when the ale flowed freely, though his father, King Ironbeard, ruled his hall
with a strong hand. From the speech of his elders Biorn made his picture of the world beyond the
firths. It was a world of gloom and terror, yet shot with a strange brightness. The High Gods
might be met with in beggar's guise at any ferry, jovial fellows and good friends to brave men,
for they themselves had to fight for their lives, and the End of All Things hung over them like a
cloud. Yet till the day of Ragnarok there would be feasting and fine fighting and goodly
fellowship, and a stout heart must live for the hour.
Leif the Outborn was his chief friend. The man was no warrior, being lame of a leg and lean
and sharp as a heron. No one knew his begetting, for he had been found as a child on the high
fells. Some said he was come of the Finns, and his ill-wishers would have it that his birthplace
had been behind a foss, and that he had the blood of dwarves in him. Yet though he made sport for
the company, he had respect from them, for he was wise in many things, a skilled leech, a maker of
runes, and a crafty builder of ships. He was a master hand at riddles, and for hours the
housecarles would puzzle their wits over his efforts. This was the manner of them. "Who," Leif
would ask, "are the merry maids that glide above the land to the joy of their father; in winter
they bear a white shield, but black in summer?" The answer was "Snowflakes and rain." Or "I saw a
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corpse sitting on a corpse, a blind one riding on a lifeless steed?" to which the reply was "A
dead horse on an ice-floe." Biorn never guessed any of the riddles, but the cleverness of them he
thought miraculous, and the others roared with glee at their own obtuseness.
But Leif had different moods, for sometimes he would tell tales, and all were hushed in a
pleasant awe. The fire on the hearth was suffered to die down, and men drew closer to each other,
as Leif told of the tragic love of Helgi and Sigrun, or how Weyland outwitted King Nidad, or how
Thor went as bride to Thrym in Giantland, and the old sad tale of how Sigurd Fafnirsbane, noblest
of men, went down to death for the love of a queen not less noble. Leif told them well, so that
his hearers were held fast with the spell of wonder and then spurred to memories of their own.
Tongues would be loosened, and there would be wild recollections of battles among the skerries of
the west, of huntings in the hills where strange sights greeted the benighted huntsman, and of
voyaging far south into the lands of the sun where the poorest thrall wore linen and the cities
were all gold and jewels. Biorn's head would be in such a whirl after a night of story-telling
that he could get no sleep for picturing his own deeds when he was man enough to bear a sword and
launch his ship. And sometimes in his excitement he would slip outside into the darkness, and hear
far up in the frosty sky the whistle of the swans as they flew southward, and fancy them the
shield-maids of Odin on their way to some lost battle.
His father, Thorwald Thorwaldson, was king over all the firths and wicks between Coldness in
the south and Flatness and the mountain Rauma in the north, and inland over the Uplanders as far
as the highest springs of the rivers. He was king by more than blood, for he was the tallest and
strongest man in all the land, and the cunningest in battle. He was for ordinary somewhat grave
and silent, a dark man with hair and beard the colour of molten iron, whence came his by-name. Yet
in a fight no Bearsark could vie with him for fury, and his sword Tyrfing was famed in a thousand
songs. On high days the tale of his descent would be sung in the hall--not by Leif, who was low-
born and of no account, but by one or other of the chiefs of the Shield-ring. Biorn was happy on
such occasions, for he himself came into the songs, since it was right to honour the gentle lady,
the Queen. He heard how on the distaff side he was sprung from proud western earls, Thorwolf the
Black, and Halfdan and Hallward Skullsplitter. But on the spear side he was of still loftier kin,
for Odin was first in his pedigree, and after him the Volsung chiefs, and Gothfred the Proud, and--
that no magnificence might be wanting--one Karlamagnus, whom Biorn had never heard of before, but
who seemed from his doings to have been a puissant king.
On such occasions there would follow a braggingmatch among the warriors, for a recital of the
past was meant as an augury for the future. The time was towards the close of the Wicking-tide,
and the world was becoming hard for simple folk. There were endless bickerings with the Tronds in
the north and the men of More in the south, and a certain Shockhead, an upsetting king in Norland,
was making trouble with his neighbours. Likewise there was one Kristni, a king of the Romans, who
sought to dispute with Odin himself. This Kristni was a magic-worker, who clad his followers in
white linen instead of byrnies, and gave them runes in place of swords, and sprinkled them with
witch water. Biorn did not like what he heard of the warlock, and longed for the day when his
father Ironbeard would make an end of him.
Each year before the coming of spring there was a lean season in Hightown. Fish were scarce
in the ice-holes, the stock of meal in the meal-ark grew low, and the deep snow made poor hunting
in wood or on fell-side. Belts were tightened, and there were hollow cheeks among the thralls. And
then one morning the wind would blow from the south, and a strange smell come into the air. The
dogs left their lair by the fire and, led by the Garm the old blind patriarch, made a tour of
inspection among the outhouses to the edge of the birch woods. Presently would come a rending of
the ice on the firth, and patches of inky water would show between the floes. The snow would slip
from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and the river would break its frosty
silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood to the sea. The swans and geese began to fly northward,
and the pipits woke among the birches. And at last one day the world put on a new dress, all steel-
blue and misty green, and a thousand voices woke of flashing streams and nesting birds and tossing
pines, and the dwellers in Hightown knew that spring had fairly come.
Then was Biorn the happy child. All through the long day, and through much of that twilight
which is the darkness of a Norland summer, he was abroad on his own errands. With Grim the Hunter
he adventured far up on the fells and ate cheese and bannocks in the tents of the wandering
Skridfinns, or stalked the cailzie-cock with his arrows in the great pine forest, which in his own
mind he called Mirkwood and feared exceedingly. Or he would go fishing with Egil the Fisherman,
spearing salmon in the tails of the river pools. But best he loved to go up the firth in the boat
which Leif had made him--a finished, clinker-built little model of a war galley, christened the
Joy-maker--and catch the big sea fish. Monsters he caught sometimes in the deep water under the
cliffs, till he thought he was destined to repeat the exploit of Thor when he went fishing with
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the giant Hymi, and hooked the Midgard Serpent, the brother of Fenris-wolf, whose coils encircle
the earth.
Nor was his education neglected. Arnwulf the Bearsark taught him axe-play and sword-play, and
he had a small buckler of his own, not of linden-wood like those of the Wick folk, but of
wickerwork after the fashion of his mother's people. He learned to wrestle toughly with the lads
of his own age, and to throw a light spear truly at a mark. He was fleet of foot and scoured the
fells like a goat, and he could breast the tide in the pool of the great foss up to the very edge
of the white water where the trolls lived.
There was a wise woman dwelt on the bay of Sigg. Katla was her name, a woman still black-
browed though she was very old, and clever at mending hunters' scars. To her house Biorn went with
Leif; and when they had made a meal of her barley-cakes and sour milk, and passed the news of the
coast, Leif would fall to probing her craft and get but surly answers. To the boy's question she
was kinder. "Let the dead things be, prince," she said. "There's small profit from foreknowledge.
Better to take fates as they come sudden round a turn of the road than be watching them with an
anxious heart all the way down the hill. The time will come soon enough when you must stand by the
Howe of the Dead and call on the ghost-folk."
But Leif coaxed and Biorn harped on the thing, as boys do, and one night about the midsummer
time her hour came upon Katla and she spoke without their seeking. There in the dim hut with the
apple-green twilight dimming the fells Biorn stood trembling on the brink of the half-world, the
woman huddled on the floor, her hand shading her eyes as if she were looking to a far horizon. Her
body shook with gusts of passion, and the voice that came from her was not her own. Never so long
as he lived did Biorn forget the terrible hour when that voice from beyond the world spoke things
he could not understand. "I have been snowed on with snow," it said, "I have been beaten with the
rain, I have been drenched with the dew, long have I been dead." It spoke of kings whose names he
had never heard, and of the darkness gathering about the Norland, and famine and awe stalking upon
the earth.
Then came a whisper from Leif asking the fortune of the young prince of Hightown.
"Death," said the weird-wife, "death--but not yet. The shears of the Norns are still blunt
for him, and Skuld has him in keeping."
There was silence for a space, for the fit was passing from Katla. But the voice came again
in broken syllables. "His thread runs westward--beyond the Far Isles . . . not he but the seed of
his loins shall win great kingdoms ... beyond the sea-walls.... The All-Father dreams.... Nay, he
wakes ... he wakes . . ."
There was a horrible choking sound, and the next Biorn knew was that Leif had fetched water
and was dashing it on Katla's face.
It was nearly a week before Biorn recovered his spirits after this adventure, and it was
noticeable that neither Leif nor he spoke a word to each other on the matter. But the boy thought
much, and from that night he had a new purpose. It seemed that he was fated to travel far, and his
fancy forsook the homely life of his own wicks and fells and reached to that outworld of which he
had heard in the winter's talk by the hall fire.
There were plenty of folk in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There were the Bearsarks, who
would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and the green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns
he heard of the bitter country in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and the
frost split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires the dwarves were hammering
gold. But these were only old wives' tales, and he liked better the talk of the sea-going
franklins, who would sail in the summer time on trading ventures and pushed farther than any
galleys of war. The old sailor, Othere Cranesfoot, was but now back from a voyage which had taken
him to Snowland, or, as we say, Iceland. He could tell of the Curdled Sea, like milk set apart for
cheese-making, which flowed as fast as a river, and brought down ghoulish beasts and great dragons
in its tide. He told, too, of the Sea-walls which were the end of the world, waves higher than any
mountain, which ringed the whole ocean. He had seen them, blue and terrible one dawn, before he
had swung his helm round and fled southwards. And in Snowland and the ports of the Isles this
Othere had heard talk from others of a fine land beyond the sunset, where corn grew unsown like
grass, and the capes looked like crusted cow-pats they were so thick with deer, and the dew of the
night was honey-dew, so that of a morning a man might breakfast delicately off the face of the
meadows.
Full of such marvels, Biorn sought Leif and poured out his heart to him. For the first time
he spoke of the weird-wife's spaeing. If his fortune lay in the west, there was the goal to seek.
He would find the happy country and reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard the
story before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost, the Rainbow Bridge, like the Gods.
I know of the place. It is called Gundbiorn's Reef and it is beyond the world."
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All this befell in Biorn's eleventh summer. The winter which followed brought ill luck to
Hightown and notably to Ironbeard the King. For in the autumn the Queen, that gentle lady, fell
sick, and, though leeches were sought for far and near, and spells and runes were prepared by all
who had skill of them, her life ebbed fast and ere Yule she was laid in the Howe of the Dead. The
loss of her made Thorwald grimmer and more silent than before, and there was no feasting at the
Yule high-tide and but little at the spring merry-making. As for Biorn he sorrowed bitterly for a
week, and then, boylike, forgot his grief in the wonder of living.
But that winter brought death in another form. Storms never ceased, and in the New Year the
land lay in the stricture of a black frost which froze the beasts in the byres and made Biorn
shiver all the night through, though in ordinary winter weather he was hardy enough to dive in the
ice-holes. The stock of meal fell low, and when spring tarried famine drew very near. Such a
spring no man living remembered. The snow lay deep on the shore till far into May. And when the
winds broke they were cold sunless gales which nipped the young life in the earth. The ploughing
was backward, and the seed-time was a month too late. The new-born lambs died on the fells and
there fell a wasting sickness among the cattle. Few salmon ran up the streams, and the sea-fish
seemed to have gone on a journey. Even in summer, the pleasant time, food was scarce, for the
grass in the pastures was poor and the cows gave little milk, and the children died. It foreboded
a black harvest-time and a blacker winter.
With these misfortunes a fever rose in the blood of the men of Hightown. Such things had
happened before for the Norland was never more than one stage distant from famine; and in the old
days there had been but a single remedy. Food and wealth must be won from a foray overseas. It was
years since Ironbeard had ridden Egir's road to the rich lowlands, and the Bearsarks were growing
soft from idleness. Ironbeard himself was willing, for his hall was hateful to him since the
Queen's death. Moreover, there was no other way. Food must be found for the winter or the folk
would perish.
So a hosting was decreed at harvest-tide, for few men would be needed to win the blasted
crops; and there began a jointing of shields and a burnishing of weapons, and the getting ready of
the big ships. Also there was a great sortilege-making. Whither to steer, that was the question.
There were the rich coasts of England, but they were well guarded, and many of the Norland race
were along the wardens. The isles of the Gael were in like case, and, though they were the easier
prey, there was less to be had from them. There were soon two parties in the hall, one urging
Ironbeard to follow the old track of his kin westward, another looking south to the Frankish
shore. The King himself, after the sacrifice of a black heifer, cast the sacred twigs, and they
seemed to point to Frankland. Old Arnwulf was deputed on a certain day to hallow three ravens and
take their guidance, but, though he said three times the Ravens' spell, he got no clear counsel
from the wise birds. Last of all, the weird-wife Katla came from Sigg, and for the space of three
days sat in the hall with her head shrouded, taking no meat or drink. When at last she spoke she
prophesied ill. She saw a red cloud and it descended on the heads of the warriors, yea of the King
himself. As for Hightown she saw it frozen deep in snow like Jotunheim, and rime lay on it like a
place long dead. But she bade Ironbeard go to Frankland, for it was so written. "A great kingdom
waits," she said--"not for you, but for the seed of your loins." And Biorn shuddered, for they
were the words spoken in her hut on that unforgotten midsummer night.
The boy was in an agony lest he should be left behind. But his father decreed that he should
go. "These are times when manhood must come fast," he said. "He can bide within the Shield-ring
when blows are going. He will be safe enough if it holds. If it breaks, he will sup like the rest
of us with Odin."
Then came days of bustle and preparation. Biorn was agog with excitement and yet solemnised,
for there was strange work afoot in Hightown. The King made a great festival in the Gods' House,
the dark hall near the Howe of the Dead, where no one ventured except in high noon. Cattle were
slain in honour of Thor, the God who watched over forays, and likewise a great boar for Frey. The
blood was caught up in the sacred bowls, from which the people were sprinkled, and smeared on the
altar of blackened fir. Then came the oath-taking, when Ironbeard and his Bearsarks swore
brotherhood in battle upon the ship's bulwarks, and the shield's rim, and the horse's shoulder,
and the brand's edge. There followed the mixing of blood in the same footprint, a rite to which
Biorn was admitted, and a lesser oath for all the people on the great gold ring which lay on the
altar. But most solemn of all was the vow the King made to his folk, warriors and franklins alike,
when he swore by the dew, the eagle's path, and the valour of Thor.
Then it was Biorn's turn. He was presented to the High Gods as the prince and heir.
Old Arnwulf hammered on his left arm a torque of rough gold, which he must wear always, in
life and in death.
"I bring ye the boy, Biorn Thorwaldson When the Gods call for Thorwald it will be his part to
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lead the launchings and the seafarings and be first when blows are going. Do ye accept him, people
of Hightown?"
There was a swelling cry of assent and a beating of hafts on shields. Biorn's heart was
lifted with pride, but out of a corner of his eye he saw his father's face. It was very grave, and
his gaze was on vacancy.
Though it was a time of bustle, there was no joy in it, as there had been at other hostings.
The folk were too hungry, the need was too desperate, and there was something else, a shadow of
fate, which lay over Hightown. In the dark of night men had seen the bale-fires burning on the
Howe of the Dead. A grey seal had been heard speaking with tongues off Siggness, and speaking ill
words, said the fishermen who saw the beast. A white reindeer had appeared on Sunfell, and the
hunter who followed it had not been seen again. By day, too, there was a brooding of hawks on the
tide's edge, which was strange at that season. Worst portent of all, the floods of August were
followed by high north-east winds that swept the clouds before them, so that all day the sky was a
scurrying sea of vapour, and at night the moon showed wild grey shapes moving ever to the west.
The dullest could not mistake their meaning; these were the dark horses, and their riders, the
Helmed Maidens, mustering for the battle to which Hightown was faring.
As Biorn stared one night at the thronged heavens, he found Leif by his elbow. In front of
the dark company of the sky a white cloud was scudding, tinged with the pale moon. Leif quoted
from the speech of the Giant-wife Rimegerd to Helgi in the song:
"Three nines of maiden, ride,
But one rides before them,
A white maid helmed:
From their manes the steeds shake
Dew into the deep dales,
Hail upon the high woods."
"It bodes well," said Biorn. "They ride to choose those whom we slay. There will be high
doings ere Yule."
"Not so well," said Leif. "They come from the Norland, and it is our folk they go to choose.
I fear me Hightown will soon be full of widow women."
At last came the day of sailing. The six galleys of war were brought down from their sheds,
and on the rollers for the launching he-goats were bound so that the keels slid blood-stained into
the sea. This was the 'roller-reddening,' a custom bequeathed from their forefathers, though the
old men of the place muttered darkly that the ritual had been departed from, and that in the great
days it was the blood not of goats, but of captive foemen that had reddened the galleys and the
tide.
The thralls sat at the thwarts, for there was no breeze that day in the narrow firth. Then
came the chief warriors in short fur jackets, splendid in glittering helms and byrnies, and each
with his thrall bearing his battle-axe. Followed the fighting commonalty with axe and spear. Last
came Ironbeard, stern as ever, and Biorn with his heart torn between eagerness and regret. Only
the children, the women, and the old men were left in Hightown, and they stood on the shingle
watching till the last galley had passed out of sight beyond Siggness, and was swallowed up in the
brume that cloaked the west. There were no tears in that grim leave-taking. Hightown had faced the
like before with a heavy heart, but with dry eyes and a proud head. Leif, though a cripple, went
with the Wickings, for he had great skill of the sea.
There was not a breath of wind for three days and three nights, as they coasted southward,
with the peaks of the Norland on their port, and to starboard the skerries that kept guard on the
firths. Through the haze they could now and then see to landward trees and cliffs, but never a
human face. Once there was an alarm of another fleet, and the shields were slung outboard, but it
proved to be only a wedding-party passing from wick to wick, and they gave it greeting and sailed
on. These were eerie cheerless days. The thralls sweated in shifts at the oars, and the betterborn
talked low among themselves, as if the air were full of ears. "Ran is heating her ovens," said
Leif, as he watched the warm fog mingle with the oarthresh.
On the fourth morning there came a break in the clouds, and the sight of a high hill gave
Leif the clue for his reckoning. The prows swung seaward, and the galleys steered for the broad
ocean. That afternoon there sprang up the north-east wind for which they had been waiting. Sails
were hoisted on the short masts, oars were shipped and lashed under the bulwarks, and the thralls
clustered in the prows to rest their weary limbs and dice with knucklebones. The spirits of all
lightened, and there was loud talk in the sterns among the Bearsarks. In the night the wind
freshened, and the long shallow boats rolled filthily so that the teeth shook in a man's head, and
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over the swish of the waves and the creaking of the sheets there was a perpetual din of arms
clashing. Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and made sport for the seasoned voyagers.
"It will not hold," Leif prophesied. "I smell rime ahead and quiet seas."
He had spoken truly, for the sixth day the wind fell and they moved once more over still,
misty waters. The thralls returned to their oars and the voices of the well-born fell low again
These were ghoulish days for Biorn, who had been accustomed to the clear lights and the clear
darkness of his own land. Only once in four days they saw the sun, and then it was as red as
blood, so that his heart trembled.
On the eleventh day Ironbeard summoned Leif and asked his skill of the voyage. "I know not,"
was the answer. "I cannot steer a course except under clean skies. We ran well with the wind
aback, but now I am blind and the Gods are pilots. Some day soon we must make landfall, but I know
not whether on English or Frankish shores."
After that Leif would sit in long spells of brooding, for he had a sense in him of direction
to which he sought to give free play--a sense built up from old voyages over these very seas. The
result of his meditations was that he swung more to the south, and events proved him wise. For on
the fifteenth day came a lift in the fog and with it the noise of tides washing near at hand on a
rough coast. Suddenly almost overhead they were aware of a great white headland, on the summit of
which the sun shone on grass.
Leif gave a shout. "My skill has riot failed me," he cried. "We enter the Frankish firth.
See, there is the butt of England!"
After that the helms were swung round, and a course laid south by west. And then the mist
came again, but this time it was less of a shroud, for birds hovered about their wake, so that
they were always conscious of land. Because of the strength of the tides the rowers made slow
progress, and it was not till the late afternoon of the seventeenth day that Leif approached
Ironbeard with a proud head and spoke a word. The King nodded, and Leif took his stand in the prow
with the lead in his hand. The sea mirroring the mist was leaden dull, but the old pilot smelt
shoal water.
Warily he sounded, till suddenly out of the gloom a spit of land rose on the port, and it was
clear that they were entering the mouth of a river. The six galleys jolted across the sandbar,
Leif in the foremost peering ahead and shouting every now and then an order. It was fine weather
for a surprise landing. Biorn saw only low sand-dunes green with coarse grasses and, somewhere
behind, the darkness of a forest. But he could not tear his eyes from it, for it was the long-
dreamed-of Roman land.
Then a strange thing befell. A madness seemed to come on Leif. He left his pilot's stand and
rushed to the stern where the King stood. Flinging himself on his knees, he clasped Ironbeard's
legs and poured out supplications.
"Return!" he cried. "While there is yet time, return. Seek England, Gael-land, anywhere, but
not this place. I see blood in the stream and blood on the strand. Our blood, your blood, my King!
There is doom for the folk of Thorwald by this river!"
The King's face did not change. "What will be, will be," he said gravely. "We abide by our
purpose and will take what Thor sends with a stout heart. How say you, my brave ones?"
And all shouted to go forward, for the sight of a new country had fired their blood. Leif sat
huddled by the bulwarks, with a white face and a gasp in his throat, like one coming out of a
swoon.
They went ashore at a bend of the stream where was a sandy cape, beached the galleys, felled
trees from the neighbouring forest and built them a stockade. The dying sun flushed water and wood
with angry crimson, and Biorn observed that the men wrought as it were in a world of blood. "That
is the meaning of Leif's whimsies," he thought, and so comforted himself.
That night the Northmen slept in peace, but the scouts brought back word of a desert country,
no men or cattle, and ashes where once had been dwellings.
"Our kinsfolk have been here before us," said King Ironbeard grimly. He did not love the
Danes, though he had fought by their side.
Half the force was left as a guard by the ships, and next day the rest went forward up the
valley at a slant from the river's course. For that way, ran the tale, lay a great Roman house, a
palace of King Kristni, where much gold was to be had for the lifting. By midday they were among
pleasant meadows, but the raiders had been there, for the houses were fired and the orchards
hacked down. Then came a shout and, turning back, they saw a flame spring to the pale autumn
skies. "The ships!" rose the cry, and the lightest of foot were sent back for news.
They returned with a sorry tale. Of the ships and the stockade nothing remained but hot
cinders. Half the guard were dead, and old Arnwulf, the captain, lay blood-eagled on the edge of
the tide. The others had gone they knew not where, but doubtless into the forests.
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"Our kinsfolks' handiwork," said Ironbeard. "We are indeed forestalled, my heroes."
A council was held and it was resolved to make a camp by the stream and defend it against all
comers, till such time as under Leif's guidance new ships could be built.
"Axes will never ring on them," said Leif under his breath. He walked now like a man who was
fey and his face was that of another world.
He spoke truth, for as they moved towards the riverbank, just before the darkening, in a
glade between two forests Fate met them. There was barely time to form the Shield-ring ere their
enemies were upon them--a mass of wild men in wolves' skins and at their head mounted warriors in
byrnies, with long swords that flashed and fell.
Biorn saw little of the battle, wedged in the heart of the Shield-ring. He heard the shouts
of the enemy, and the clangour of blows, and the sharp intake of breath, but chiefly he heard the
beating of his own heart. The ring swayed and moved as it gave before the onset or pressed to an
attack of its own, and Biorn found himself stumbling over the dead. "I am Biorn, and my father is
King," he repeated to himself, the spell he had so often used when on the fells or the firths he
had met fear.
Night came and a young moon, and still the fight continued. But the Shield-ring was growing
ragged, for the men of Hightown were fighting one to eight, and these are odds that cannot last.
Sometimes it would waver, and an enemy would slip inside, and before he sank dead would have
sorely wounded one of Ironbeard's company.
And now Biorn could see his father, larger than human, it seemed, in the dim light, swinging
his sword Tyrfing, and crooning to himself as he laid low his antagonists. At the sight a madness
rose in the boy's heart. Behind in the sky clouds were banking, dark clouds like horses, with one
ahead white and moontipped, the very riders he had watched with Leif from the firth shore. The
Walkyries were come for the chosen, and he would fain be one of them. All fear had gone from him.
His passion was to be by his father's side and strike his small blow, beside those mighty ones
which Thor could not have bettered.
But even as he was thus uplifted the end came. Thorwald Thorwaldson tottered and went down,
for a hurled axe had cleft him between helm and byrnie. With him fell the last hope of Hightown
and the famished clan under Sunfell. The Shield-ring was no more. Biorn found himself swept back
as the press of numbers overbore the little knot of sorely wounded men. Someone caught him by the
arm and snatched him from the mellay into the cover of a thicket. He saw dimly that it was Leif.
He was giddy and retching from weariness, and something inside him was cold as ice, though
his head burned. It was not rage or grief, but awe, for his father had fallen and the end of the
world had come. The noise of the battle died, as the two pushed through the undergrowth and came
into the open spaces of the wood. It was growing very dark, but still Leif dragged him onwards.
Then suddenly he fell forward on his face, and Biorn, as he stumbled over him. found his hands wet
with blood.
"I am for death," Leif whispered. "Put your ear close, prince. I am Leif the Outborn and I
know the hidden things.... You are the heir of Thorwald Thorwaldson and you will not die.... I see
a long road, but at the end a great kingdom. Farewell, little Biorn. We have been good comrades,
you and I. Katla from Sigg spoke the true word. . . "
And when Biorn fetched water in his horn from a woodland pool he found Leif with a cold brow.
Blind with sorrow and fatigue, the boy stumbled on, without purpose. He was lonely in the
wide world, many miles from his home, and all his kin were slain. Rain blew from the south-west
and beat in his face, the brambles tore his legs, but he was dead to all things. Would that the
Shield Maids had chosen him to go with that brave company to the bright hall of Odin! But he was
only a boy and they did not choose striplings.
Suddenly in a clearing a pin-point of light pricked the darkness.
The desire for human companionship came over him, even though it were that of enemy or
outcast. He staggered to the door and beat on it feebly. A voice spoke from within, but he did not
hear what it said.
Again he beat and again the voice came. And now his knocking grew feebler, for he was at the
end of his strength.
Then the bar was suddenly withdrawn and he was looking inside a poor hut, smoky from the wood-
fire in the midst of it. An old woman sat by it with a bowl in her hand, and an oldish man with a
cudgel stood before him. He did not understand their speech, but he gathered he was being asked
his errand.
"I am Biorn," he said, "and my father was Ironbeard, the King."
They shook their heads, but since they saw only a weary, tattered boy they lost their fears.
They invited him indoors, and their voices were kindly. Nodding with exhaustion, he was given a
stool to sit on and a bowl of coarse porridge was put into his hands. They plied him with
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questions, but he could make nothing of their tongue.
Then the thrall rose, yawned, and dropped the bar over the door. The sound was to the boy
like the clanging of iron gates on his old happy world. For a moment he was on the brink of tears.
But he set his teeth and stiffened his drooping neck.
"I am Biorn," he said aloud, "and my father was a king."
They nodded to each other and smiled. They though his words were a grace before meat.
CHAPTER 2. THE ENGLISHMAN
Part 1
The little hut among the oak trees was dim in the October twilight on the evening of St.
Callixtus' Day. It had been used by swineherds, for the earthen floor was puddled by the feet of
generations of hogs, and in the corner lay piles of rotting acorns. Outside the mist had filled
the forest, and the ways were muffled with fallen leaves, so that the four men who approached the
place came as stealthily as shades.
They reconnoitred a moment at the entrance, for it was a country of war.
"Quarters for the night," said one, and put his shoulder to the door of oak-toppings hinged
on strips of cowhide.
But he had not taken a step inside before he hastily withdrew.
"There is something there," he cried--"something that breathes. A light, Gil."
One of the four lit a lantern from his flint and poked it within. It revealed the foul floor
and the rotting acorns, and in the far corner, on a bed of withered boughs, something dark which
might be a man. They stood still and listened. There was the sound of painful breathing, and then
the gasp with which a sick man wakens. A figure disengaged itself from the shadows. Seeing it was
but one man, the four pushed inside, and the last pulled the door to behind him.
"What have we here?" the leader cried. A man had dragged himself to his feet, a short, square
fellow who held himself erect with a grip on a side-post. His eyes were vacant, dazzled by the
light and also by pain. He seemed to have had hard usage that day, for his shaggy locks were
matted with blood from a sword-cut above his forehead, one arm hung limp, and his tunic was torn
and gashed. He had no weapons but a knife which he held blade upwards in the hollow of his big
hand.
The four who confronted him were as ill-looking a quartet as Duke William's motley host could
show. One, the leader, was an unfrocked priest of Rouen; one was a hedge-robber from the western
marches who had followed Alan of Brittany; a third had the olive cheeks and the long nose of the
south; and the fourth was a heavy German from beyond the Rhine. They were the kites that batten on
the offal of war, and the great battle on the seashore having been won by better men, were
creeping into the conquered land for the firstfruits of its plunder.
An English porker," cried the leader. "We will have the tusks off him." Indeed, in the wild
light the wounded man, with his flat face and forked beard, had the look of a boar cornered by
hounds.
"'Ware his teeth," said the one they called Gil. "He has a knife in his trotter."
The evil faces of the four were growing merry. They were worthless soldiers, but adepts in
murder. Loot was their first thought, but after that furtive slaying. There seemed nothing to rob
here, but there was weak flesh to make sport of.
Gil warily crept on one side, where he held his spear ready. The ex-priest, who had picked up
somewhere a round English buckler, gave the orders. "I will run in on him, and take his stroke, so
you be ready to close. There is nothing to be feared from the swine. See, he is blooded and
faints."
The lantern had been set on the ground by the door and revealed only the lower limbs of the
four. Their heads were murky in shadow. Their speech was foreign to the wounded man, but he saw
their purpose. He was clearly foredone with pain, but his vacant eyes kindled to slow anger, and
he shook back his hair so that the bleeding broke out again on his forehead. He was as silent as
an old tusker at bay.
The ex-priest gave the word and the four closed in on him. He defeated their plan by hurling
himself on the leader's shield, so that his weight bore him backwards and he could not use his
weapon. The spears on the flanks failed for the same reason, and the two men posted there had well-
nigh been the death of each other. The fourth, the one from the south, whose business it had been
to support the priest, tripped and fell sprawling beside the lantern.
The Englishman had one arm round the priest's neck and was squeezing the breath out of him.
But the blood of the four was kindling, and they had vengeance instead of sport to seek. Mouthing
curses, the three of them went to the rescue of the leader, and a weaponless and sore-wounded man
cannot strive with such odds. They overpowered him, bending his arms viciously back and kicking
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his broken head. Their oaths filled the hut with an ugly clamour, but no sound came from their
victim.
Suddenly a gust of air set the lantern flickering, and a new-comer stood in the doorway. He
picked up the light and looked down on the struggle. He was a tall, very lean man, smooth faced,
and black haired, helmetless and shieldless, but wearing the plated hauberk of the soldier. There
was no scabbard on his left side, but his right hand held a long bright sword.
For a second he lifted the light high, while he took in the scene. His eyes were dark and
dancing, like the ripples on a peat stream. "So-ho!" he said softly. "Murder! And by our own
vermin!"
He appeared to brood for a second, and then he acted. For he set the light very carefully in
the crook of a joist so that it illumined the whole hut. Then he reached out a hand, plucked the
ex-priest from his quarry, and, swinging him in both arms, tossed him through the door into the
darkness. It would seem that he fell hard, for there was a groan and then silence.
"One less," he said softly.
The three had turned to face him, warned by Gil's exclamation, and found themselves looking
at the ominous bar of light which was his sword. Cornered like rats, they took small comfort from
the odds. They were ready to surrender, still readier to run, and they stood on their defence with
no fight in their faces, whining in their several patois. All but the man from the south. He was
creeping round in the darkness by the walls, and had in his hands a knife. No mailed hauberk
protected the interloper's back and there was a space there for steel to quiver between his
shoulder blades.
The newcomer did not see, but the eyes of the wounded man seemed to have been cleared by the
scuffle. He was now free, and from the floor he snatched the round shield which the ex-priest had
carried, and hurled it straight at the creeping miscreant. It was a heavy oaken thing with rim and
boss of iron, and it caught him fairly above the ear, so that he dropped like a poled ox. The
stranger turned his head to see what was happening. "A lucky shot, friend," he cried. "I thank
you." And he addressed himself to the two pitiful bandits who remained.
But their eyes were looking beyond him to the door, and their jaws had dropped in terror. For
from outside came the sound of horses' hooves and bridles, and two riders had dismounted and were
peering into the hut. The first was a very mountain of a man, whose conical helmet surmounted a
vast pale face, on which blond moustaches hung like the teeth of a walrus. The said helmet was
grievously battered, and the nose-piece was awry as if from some fierce blow, but there was no
scar on the skin. His long hauberk was wrought in scales of steel and silver, and the fillets
which bound his great legs were of fine red leather. Behind him came a grizzled squire, bearing a
kite-shaped shield painted with the cognisance of a dove.
"What have we here?" said the knight in a reedy voice like a boy's. His pale eyes
contemplated the figures--the wounded man, now faint again with pain and half-fallen on the litter
of branches; his deliverer, tall and grim, but with laughing face; the two murderers cringing in
their fear; in a corner the huddled body of the man from the south half hidden by the shield.
"Speak, fellow," and he addressed the soldier. "What work has been toward? Have you not had your
bellyfull of battles that you must scrabble like rats in this hovel? What are you called, and
whence come you?"
The soldier lifted his brow, looked his questioner full in the face, and, as if liking what
he found there, bowed his head in respect. The huge man had the air of one to be obeyed.
"I am of the Duke's army," he said, "and was sent on to reconnoitre the forest roads I
stumbled on this hut and found four men about to slay a wounded English. One lies outside where I
flung him, another is there with a cracked skull, and you have before you the remnant."
The knight seemed to consider. "And why should a soldier of the Duke's be so careful of
English lives?" he asked.
"I would help my lord Duke to conquer this land," was the answer. "We have broken their army
and the way is straight before us. We shall have to fight other armies, but we cannot be fighting
all our days, and we do not conquer England till England accepts us. I have heard enough of that
stubborn people to know that the way to win them is not by murder. At fair fight, and then honest
dealing and mercy, say I."
The knight laughed. "A Solomon in judgment," he cried. "But who are you that bear a sword and
wear gold on your finger?"
The old squire broke in. "My lord Count, I know the man. He is a hunter of the Lord Odo's,
and has a name for valour. He wrought mightily this morning on the hill. They call him Jehan the
Hunter, and sometimes Jehan the Outborn, for no man knows his comings. There is a rumour that he
is of high blood, and truly in battle he bears himself like a prince. The monks loved him not, but
the Lord Odo favoured him."
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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/John%20Brunner%20-%20Path%20of\%20the%20King.txtTHEPATHOFTHEKINGbyJohnBuchanTOMYWIFEIDEDICATETHESECHAPTERSFIRSTREADBYACOTSWOLDFIRECONTENTSPROLOGUE1.HIGHTOWNUNDERSUNFELL2.THEENGLISHMAN3.THEWIFEOFFLANDERS4.EYESOFYOUTH5.THEMAID6.THEWOODOFLIFE7.EAUCOURTBYTHEWATE...

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