The horsemen came on in close array, and in their rear followed men with fire-cauldrons, pots of pitch, and faggots. A bolt from Sira Hallbjörn’s bow was so truly aimed that one of the fire-pots dropped on the ground and turned over.
Ivar Jonsson and his men had propped up the doors and wreckage in the gateway. They stood behind with long spears, clubs, and cudgels with scythe-blades, and in their rear the bridge was filled with men, waiting to go forward as those in the front rank fell.
The third attack thundered against the gate and the shaking walls of the barbican. Once more Ivar Jonsson and his yeomen succeeded in beating back the assault, and the sullen little fire that smouldered at the base of the tower was put out by the men on the roof with the cauldron of water from the cold fireplace in the tower—no one had managed to keep the fire in.
Again the Swedes withdrew a little way, and the noise died down. From the barbican they could see the leaders ride round the ranks and come together for a consultation. Then all at once the priest cried: “Look!”
Olav turned and looked where the other pointed.
“Ay, now we can make an end and sing Nunc dimittis,” said Sira Hallbjörn.
Teams of horses broke through the copsewood yonder—they drew the great catapults and heavy siege engines.
Ivar Jonsson ordered the horn to be blown. He stood on the bridge and called up to the men on the barbicans—his silken surcoat hung in strips outside his harness. They could do no more now but retire and see if they could break down the bridge after them.
Then came the sound of a horn from the hill behind them—in notes that answered Ivar’s. A bright, resonant ribbon unwound itself in the blue and white light of the winter day. Olav turned round—up behind the churchyard fence the morning sun flashed on a close array of spear-points.
The shouts of joy from the little force about the bridge were met by a fresh blast of the horns. This was an ancient call—folk named it the Andvaka strain or King Sverre’s dance. Little as Olav Audunsson was minded to praise old King Sverre, there was yet no tune he would so gladly have heard in this hour.
Sira Hallbjörn had laid hold of Olav’s arm—the priest’s hand was bloody. Olav saw with surprise that the other’s cheeks were ashy white, his face was distorted in a wild luxury of pain:
“That is our horn! My father’s, I mean—I should know it above all others. Then they must be here, my brothers—Finn or Eystein.”
And as the horn sounded anew the Andvaka strain, Sira Hallbjörn joined in, singing in his fine and powerful voice the ancient stave that went to that tune:
“Cattle die,
kinsmen die,
last dies the man himself;
one thing I know
that never dies:
the fame of each man dead!” 5
They took it up and sang with him, all those who knew the stave, while the Raumrikings tore down the obstacle before the first mounted troop—there were at any rate fifty men on horseback, armed after the fashion of the King’s men. They rode across the bridge, and after them swarmed the footmen, country folk, but most of them handsomely armed. Olav saw Sira Hallbjörn running out into the fields by the side of a high brown horse, holding on to the saddle-bow—the man who rode it wore a closed helm and a fluttering blue silken surcoat over his armour.
What the new-comers meant to do he could not rightly guess; it looked as if they would try to drive back the enemy in open fight out in the fields. They had already surrounded the body of Swedes who were on their way to the bridge, and with the knights who led them at their head, the men from the west were now advancing, far off, against the main body who stood by the siege engines at the brow of the wood.
Ivar Jonsson had mounted the barbican with Markus of Lautin, one of his captains.
“Can they do that—drive back German mercenaries with a rabble of peasants—then anything may happen!”
“There must be two thousand of them at least,” said Olav. They continued to pour down the hill below the church and across the bridge.
“And not one in twenty can get back over the bridge if they are beaten,” said Markus.
The attack of the Norwegian knights had already broken down—two of them were dragged from their horses and carried away as prisoners. But the Lidungs simply went on—if one body was thrown back, another troop dashed forward. Time after time the German mercenaries rode into the mass, trampled them down, and used their lances, but the Norwegians ran in upon them from the other side, hammering at men and horses with clubs and axes, cutting and thrusting with hafted scythe-blades and spears. They had pressed up to the edge of the wood in great numbers and managed to hold the enemy there, so that his catapults were of little use against them; but neither could the men in the barbicans support the Lidungs to any extent—they were fighting out of bowshot.
Before the bridge all was quiet. A few horses and men lay stretched in the brown and bloody slush, and one of the horses moved and struck out with its hoofs now and then. A young lad came walking toward the bridge, supporting his right arm, from which the blood dripped, in his left, and he jogged homeward with a curiously peaceful, solitary air, as though he were carrying something he had been out to buy.
But now the first groups of yeomen were being driven back over the lands of Fors. Olav grasped his crossbow; as he put his foot in the stirrup and drew it, he noticed for the first time that his body was stiff with tiredness.
Once more the flying Lidungs rallied in the fields, and once more the enemy rode forward. At that moment something struck Olav on the right cheek-piece of his helmet—there was a crash inside his head, and he fell backward into Ivar’s arms. For a moment everything went round. When he stood up again and took his bow, he felt his mouth full of blood and pulpy flesh; he spat out blood and splinters of teeth and shot again with his crossbow.
Now the Lidungs had retreated so far that the Swedes could reach them with their catapults; stones and other missiles fell among the knots of men, and the first fugitives began to make, some for the bridge, others for the forest to the northward. Olav had stopped using his bow; he stood gazing intently at the conclusion of the fight, while all the time, without thinking, he had to feel with his tongue the sharp edge of steel that had penetrated his cheek and the broken molar in his upper jaw. But soon his tongue grew stiff and swollen and the wound filled his whole mouth like a bloody sponge. But he gave little attention to it as he watched the fight drawing to its end.
The horn of the Valdres knight sounded the assembly, untiringly, and once more the main body of the western men formed up just below the barbican. The Raumrikings in the towers had now been relieved by fresh men with bags and quivers full of bolts and stones. Olav tried to speak to those who had come up and stood around him, but it was no more than a blob-blob-blob and a croaking in the throat, with all the blood and spittle that filled his mouth. He could scarcely believe his eyes, but the Swedes were not advancing; it looked as if they were about to retire into the woods—had they had enough of the game?
Awhile after, he walked back across the bridge, as in a dream, so heavy was his head—amid the stream of strangers who were returning. But he had bethought him of his axe before going down from the tower; as in a dream he remembered striding over dead bodies that lay inside the barbican at the bottom of the ladder, and as in a dream he heard the shouts of the men who manned the towers, making ready to defend them again, if there were need. He had to make way for two men who were carrying a third by the shoulders and knees. Drowsily he noticed that the planks of the bridge were dark and slippery with blood, and he turned a little giddy at the sight of the black water that rushed under the bridge and thundered over the fall.
When he had come a little way up the hill toward Aker church he stopped and laid down his axe—he wanted to take off the helmet that pressed so painfully on his head, and it was horrible with this splintered steel among the torn and tender flesh of his mouth. A man stopped and helped him with it. The sweat burst out anew a
ll over his sweat-drenched body, and the tears came into his eyes, before the other had got the helmet off him, and his cheek was gashed worse than before. The stranger offered to take him under his arm, but Olav shook his head, tried to laugh, but could not, for his face had grown so stiff and seemed enormous. Then the other picked up the axe and the helmet and gave them to him, said something, with a laugh, and went on. Olav tried to wipe away some of the blood that trickled down his neck, it made him so disgustingly wet underneath his clothes.
The sun was now high in the heavens, he noticed; it was past midday and had turned to the clearest and finest of winter days. The tree-tops round the church shone against the blue sky as though it were springtime, but the light hurt his eyes.
He came up to a farm on the hill and went into one of the houses. It was packed full of men, but he saw none he knew. Several spoke to him when they saw his shattered face, but he could not get out a word. Some of them made room so that he could sit on the floor in front of a bench, and one who sat on the bench took his head in his lap, and then weariness overcame him. He did not really sleep, for the pains in his head increased, as though tearing out his very skull, and he felt himself growing chilled and numb, but he sank into a sort of lethargy.
Once he was roused from it—a bulky, elderly woman had told of him. A half-grown girl with solemn, staring eyes stood by, holding a bowl from which steam rose, and the woman dipped a towel, which was now stained brown, and washed the blood from his face and neck with lukewarm water. Dizzy and impatient with fatigue and pain, he had to submit to be helped up, so that he could sit on the bench—gazing the while with longing at the great blaze on the hearth, for he was shivering. The woman and a man stripped away his elkskin hauberk, peeled off his jerkin and shirt, which stuck fast to the skin; naked to the middle, he sat shivering as they washed him and tended his wound, a cut reaching upward to below the left nipple; and then they drew on his clothes again, which were now soaking wet.
He staggered to his feet and tried to go and sit by the fire, but a woman who was like Torhild took him by the arm and led him to a bed that had been made on the floor. When once he had lain down, it was good indeed to stretch out his limbs and lean his back and neck against the big sacks of hay. She who looked like Torhild spread a thin coverlet over him and offered him a warm drink, but he could not take much into his mouth and it was too painful to swallow. But soon he felt the warmth of the rug, and of a big, black-bearded man against whom he was lying, and the warmth was an unspeakable relief, though his head felt as if it would burst with pain.
After a while he was again roused from his doze; they wanted him to go out with them. He went. It was almost dark outside, the southern sky a greenish yellow; great white stars were shining in the frosty evening. Up by the church great red bonfires were burning, around which moved black figures—the stables and the church barn were crowded with men. The main door of the church stood wide open, and he saw that many candles were lighted in the choir, a flood of song welled out, but his companion led him past, to a group of houses.
He came into a room where many men were assembled—he recognized Ivar Jonsson and one or two from home. Some of them were busy about a bench, and on it lay a naked corpse they were washing. Olav stepped up and saw that it was Sira Hallbjörn.
He lay on his back, long and white, with his arms hanging down so that the hands rested on the clay floor with the palms upward. The left arm was broken, so that the bones protruded above the elbow. They were just washing the blood out of his grizzled red hair, and there was a faint crackling of broken bone—the skull had been shattered above the left temple. Beside the bench stood a bucket of steaming red water.
Ivar Jonsson came up to Olav. He told him in a whisper that they had found the priest’s body in a thicket of briers close up to where the Swedes’ catapults had been posted—half-naked and plundered: his arms were missing, as was his seal-ring and the gilt Agnus Dei that Olav remembered Sira Hallbjörn always wore about his neck.
His brother, the knight Finn Erlingsson, was among those the Swedes had taken prisoner, but his sons, Eindride and Erling, were here, Ivar went on to tell him. Olav looked at the two slight red-haired lads who stood by their uncle’s body, and nodded. Ivar was still talking—there had been Lidungs, Ringerikings, and men from Modheim parish among the levies, and a little band from Valdres led by Sir Finn.
The dead man’s face was grey and calm as a stone image. The men who stood by were discussing what the scars could be that the priest carried on his body: the left shoulder and upper arm were scored as though the flesh had been torn, and on the left pectoral muscle were four deep little pits; from there a silver-white furrow ran down across the stomach. But the scars were old, so it was hard to say what kind of wild beast he had been at grips with.
Olav knelt down together with some others, but his wound and his whole head ached so that he could say no prayer. When he rose to his feet they had dressed the corpse and moved it to the bier. Now Sira Hallbjörn lay like a priest, dressed in an alb and an old chasuble, with sandals on his feet and a pewter chalice between his clasped hands: some of the priests of Aker church had provided what was fitting for their dead brother.
Olav accompanied the bier as it was carried down to the church; several other biers were already standing before the chancel arch. But he had not the strength to stay and hear the vigil. The man who had accompanied him to the mortuary chamber took him under the arm and led him back to the farm where he had found shelter; it was Little Aker, the other told him.
Bodily pain was a wholly new experience for Olav Audunsson. Wounds and scratches he had known many a time, with smarting and fever, but they had always been such as he counted for nothing—flesh wounds that healed rapidly and cleanly.
But this wound in his face was downright torture: a racking and shooting pain in his skull and an intolerable aching in the jawbone and in the root of the broken tooth. But worst of all was the loathsomeness of it—his mouth was always filled with the foul taste of matter from the wound.
Now and again he had high fever, and then it was as if the bed he lay in rose up and up and his body felt flat as an empty bladder, while something round and heavy that had been inside his head rolled down over him, and visions hovered along the ridge of his brows—creatures that were neither beast nor man, faces that he recognized without knowing who they were. In particular there was a beggar without feet who darted along at a terrible pace on boards fixed to his hands and knees; it tormented him more than anything when that vision came.
One night he saw Ingunn—she stood a little off the ground against the wall at the foot of his bed and leaned forward over him, so that her light-brown hair swept over her thin bare arms and fell forward like a mantle. He thought she was clad in nothing but a shift, which was embroidered at the neck with little green flowers, so that all the little coloured spots danced before his eyes. Olav raised his hands to keep her from coming nearer, for just in those days his wound was angry and stank foully; but she sank down upon him like a wave of warmth and sweetness, he was flooded as it were with the goodness of her—then he lost his senses, fell into a kind of swoon.
In the morning he was able to spit out a whole mass of matter and splinters that had worked out of his jaw; the woman who tended him could wash the wound fairly clean, and he felt better. He was weak and cold, and as he could only lie on the left side, it felt as if the bones were coming through the flesh there, so tender was it. At the same time he was famished; he had hardly been able to swallow anything of what they brought and tried to make him drink.
They had been to see him almost every day, one or another of his companions-in-arms, but he had not been fit to pay much attention to what they told him. But this morning came Ivar Jonsson himself and some more; they could scarce conceal their exultation. The Duke had withdrawn from Oslo at daybreak; it was clear he had lost his relish for trying his teeth on the walls of the castle of Aker, sick as he was himself, and with three thousand men o
f the country levies posted on the high ground. And Munan Baardsson had received reinforcements and was thought to have put the castle in excellent posture of defence.
The Duke had not lost much above half a hundred men in the fight at Frysja bridge; of the yeomen two hundred had fallen, and many had got wounds great and small. But it seemed Duke Eirik thought this might be enough; he had looked for no opposition at all, counting rather that the greater part of the Norwegian nobles would be so discontented with King Haakon that they would make common cause with him.
After his friends had left him, Olav lay feeling how his whole being was now permeated by the pent-up joy and confidence that had lain in the depths of his soul all these long days while his body was one mass of pain and fetid humours and burning fever. In spite of all, this joy had lived within him the whole time like a glow on the hearth of a ruinous house. No pain could take from him the joy of having had the chance to stand up and act and fight for his home and his native soil against the strangers who poured over it. Even if it had availed nothing, that could not have undone the joy it gave him that they had risen in defence, he and his fellows in the countryside. But now that it had availed, he lay here feeling his tortured body as but a thin and passing scab on sound, healing flesh.
He was glad, deeply and cordially glad, as he had not been since he was young. During all his long years at home, while it seemed as if his life had so shaped itself that in other men’s eyes he had nothing to complain of—had he not prosperity, health, and peace?—it had been with him in secret as though the snakes were striking and tearing at his heart, as in the image of Gunnar on the door of the closet at home. In his soul he had fought without hope, harried by a terrible dread, against powers that were not of flesh and blood.
He saw now it was not his suffering that destroyed the happiness of his life—a man may be happier while he suffers than when his days are good. And sufferings that are of some avail, they are like the spear-points that raise the shield on which the young king’s son sits when his subjects do him homage.