The Axe Read Free Page B

was well secured, whether from King Magnus or from Alf Erlingsson.
    In the course of the summer Audun with his ship joined the King in Herdluvaag and followed him westward oversea. And when the King died in the Orkneys before Yule—it was in the winter of 1263—Audun commanded the ship that brought the news to Norway. Then he journeyed on to the east, home to his manor. In the summer he came back to King Magnus’s bodyguard. His wife had then died in giving birth to a son, who lived. Audun had grown even more silent than before, but now he uttered one thing and another of his affairs to Steinfinn. At Hestviken dwelt his grandfather; he was old and somewhat self-willed. He had been against his grandson’s marriage with a foreign wife without kindred. Besides him there was in the house an old uncle of Audun; he was mad. Most of the time Cecilia had lived at Hestviken she had been left alone with these two old men: “It misgives me she had no happy life there in the east,” said Audun. In the great-grandfather’s honour Cecilia had named the child after him—it was the Danish custom—but Olav Olavsson was greatly angered thereat: “In Norway no child is called after a living man—save with the thought of putting him out of life,” said he. It fell out that Audun was left sole heir to these two old men, but he let it be known that he would not go home to Hestviken for a while; he was minded to bide in Björgvin with King Magnus.
    It was a short time after this that Steinfinn carried off Ingebjörg, and since then he had neither heard nor sought tidings of Audun Ingolfsson until he met the man at the Thing. Audun was leading a boy of seven years by the hand and was asking for certain men from Soleyar whom he was to meet there. He looked very sick. Audun was a tall man and had always been very spare and slim, with a narrow face, a thin and sharp hooked nose, and his skin and hair were fair to whiteness. Now he was bent in the back and gaunt as a skeleton, wan-faced and blue about the lips. But the boy was a strong and comely child, broad-shouldered and of good build; he was as fair of hue as his father, but in other ways he bore him no great likeness.
    Steinfinn embraced his friend with riotous joy, but it filledhim with grief to see that Audun was so sick. He would hear of naught else but that Audun must go with him to the house where Steinfinn and his following lived while the Thing lasted.
    On the way thither Audun told him that these men he was to have met were the sons of his grandfather’s nephew: “And nearer kinsmen have I none; it will fall to them to be the guardians of Olav here, when I am dead.” The two old men at Hestviken were still living, but they were clean decrepit; and for himself he had an inward scathe in his stomach, so that he had no good of meat or drink; he could not live many weeks more. He had been with King Magnus all these years until lately, before Yule; then he went home to Hestviken, being very sick. He had not seen his own house more than once since his wife’s death, so it was only this winter that he had come to know his son. But now the child’s future lay heavily on his heart—and here these kinsmen from Soleyar had failed to come, and he scarce had the strength to ride up to them, it gave him such pain to ride—and this was the last day but one of the Thing. “The Fathers of Hovedöwould gladly take him—but should the boy have a mind to stay there when he grows up and make himself a monk, then our kin would die out with him.”
    When Ingebjörg saw the fair child who would soon be both motherless and fatherless, she was fain to kiss the boy. But Olav wrested himself from her and fled to his father, while he stared at the lady with his great blue eyes, full of ill humour and surprise.
    “Will you not kiss my wife, Olav?” asked Steinfinn with a mighty laugh.
    “No,” answered the lad. “For Aslaug kisses Koll—”
    Audun smiled somewhat uneasily—these were two old