Brandewyne, Rebecca by Swan Road Page A

knowing how another in his place would have roared with
laughter at Olaf's tumble and made him the butt of many a jest far and wide.
"You'd have pulled your own self out of the water had I not happened
along— for surely, 'tis Odinn's fondest desire that a jarl such as Olaf
the Sea Bull die in battle, to be borne by the Valkyries to Valhöll."
    "You
know me, then, do you?" Olaf inquired, obviously flattered and pleased.
    "Why,
who does not, lord? 'Tis said from shore to shore of the Northland that a man
may count himself lucky to serve as thegn to Olaf the Sea Bull— and so I
would count myself, lord, if you would have my pledge."
    "What,
lad? You've not yet sworn oath? Why, what ails you?"
    "Naught,
lord, save that I came late to the festivities," Wulfgar lied boldly,
realizing suddenly that Olaf was not only still slightly drunk and dazed, but
also short of sight and so had not recognized him. With his mustache and beard
shaved off, Wulfgar thought that Olaf, in his stupor, had probably mistaken him
for one of the younger, untried men who had come to the midspring blót in search of a jarl. "And no
matter a man's worth, there is only so much space on a longship— and much of
that has already been claimed by those who arrived sooner than I."
    "Well,
by the gods, my Dragon's
Fire has
room for one more, if you're of a mind to bend knee before me!" Drawing
the broadsword at his back, Olaf plunged it, point down, into the soft earth
along the stream, so the blade stood upright, quivering a little before him.
"So, kneel you, then, lad, and set your right hand to her hilt and swear
your fealty."
    This,
Wulfgar did, and when he rose, he was at long last a Víkingr.

Chapter
Five
    The Taking of
the Bride
     
    What
Olaf the Sea Bull thought when he sobered up and discovered the trick Wulfgar
had played him, Wulfgar never knew. Olaf said naught of the matter to him— or
indeed to anyone Wulfgar knew— doubtless because the older man would have been
made to look worse than a fool in light of Ragnar's open enmity toward Wulfgar.
Although Olaf was drunk more often than not, he had both vanity and pride; and
so in the end, he put on a brave face and declared that he would not be told
how to stoke his own hearth fire, not even by his king, and that it would be a
sorry day in the Northland when the jarlar could not count
themselves masters of their own marklands. So unexpectedly shrewd and
potentially incendiary were these words that afterward, doubtless fearing the hue
and cry that would be set up against him by every freeman entitled to speak at
the Thing, Ragnar prudently offered no challenge to Olaf, but chose
instead to bide his time, pretending as though the entire business of Wulfgar's
oath-swearing were beneath notice.
    Wulfgar
strove mightily to ensure that Olaf should have no other cause, save that of
Ragnar's animosity, to regret accepting his fealty. Wulfgar rose earlier and
worked harder than half a dozen of Olaf's other men, which was not difficult,
considering how shiftless and lazy they had grown, serving a lord who seldom
made his authority felt.
    Olaf's
longship, the Dragon
Fire, was
beached on the shores of the Skagerrak, where she had ridden out the winter;
and now, the first thing his thegns did after the
midspring blót was
to clean and to repair the vessel to make certain she would be ready to sail,
come summer. That was the time when the Víkingrs rode the seas.
They set sail for home when the first of the trees began to change color, so as
not to be caught without winter quarters, or upon the seas when they turned
rough and stormy with winter winds so cold that sometimes, to the west, the
Baltic Sea froze and the Kattegat became a solid mass of ice between Smaland,
Sjælland, and Jutland.
    The thegns carefully
scraped the Dragon
Fire's sides
free of the now-dead marine life and debris, recaulked her strakes, and
retouched her paint where necessary. Then they shoved her over log rollers into
the harbor and moored