“Then you shall come with me,” said Orm, “and join with me in my homecoming feast. You are good men, and it may be that I can find sleeping-room for you all until the spring. Then you can ride forth on a new adventure if you feel so inclined, and thus live as long as you want to.”
Sone’s sons accepted this offer gladly and promised each other that it would be a long while before they revisited their father. Their best plan, they thought, would be to make another voyage to Gardarike.
“If that is your intention, come as my men,” said Blackhair. “It will not be long before Ulf and I return there.”
“You are young to use the words of a chieftain,” said Orm. “You must wait awhile yet.”
As they drew near to Gröning, Orm’s impatience increased, and he and Olof rode ahead of the others. The first sight that met their eyes was that of men repairing the great gate. Then they saw that the church had been burned. At this, so great a fear came over Orm that he scarcely dared to ride up to the house. Then the men working on the gate saw him and uttered a glad cry, and Ylva came running from the house. It was good for him to see that she, at least, was safe.
“It is good that you have come home at last,” she said. “But it would have been better if you had returned five days earlier.”
“Has bad luck come upon the house?” asked Orm.
“Bandits attacked us during the night,” she said, “four days ago. Harald is wounded and Rapp dead, and three others besides. They took Ludmilla, and the necklace, and much else, and three of my women. Father Willibald was clubbed on the head and is lying half-dead. I managed to escape with the little ones and Oddny and Asa. We spent all the next day hiding in the forest. They were Smalanders; that I know. They took the cattle too, but the hounds went after them and came back with fourteen head. Asa thinks that things might have been unluckier, and I think so too, now that you have come safe home.”
“They are unlucky enough,” said Orm. “Rapp dead, Ludmilla stolen, and the priest wounded almost to death.”
“And the necklace,” said Ylva.
“Do not grieve for that,” said Orm. “You shall have all the trinkets you need. It is lucky that I have so many men still with me, for this business shall not go unavenged.”
“You speak the truth, Orm,” said Olof Summerbird. “It shall not go unavenged. Does anyone know where the robbers came from?”
“Nobody knows anything,” said Ylva. “Harald was wounded in the beginning of the fight and dragged himself to the bathhouse and remained lying there. Only Father Willibald may have something to tell us, if he ever recovers sufficiently to be able to do so. The strangest thing is that they set fire to the church only; he was down there when they hit him. They stole all they could lay their hands on, and we could tell from their voices that they were Smalanders. There were very many of them. They took their dead with them; five were killed by Rapp and his men as they fought at the gate. That is all I know.”
Orm’s men had by now reached the house, and Ylva laughed with joy to see Blackhair safe. The first thing Orm did was to send men on horseback to rich neighbors to beg them to lend him food, for there was little left in the storehouse, and nothing at all in the brewhouse, as the result of the bandits’ depredations.
Then he turned his attention to the wounded. Harald had received a spear in his chest and an ax-wound in his shoulder, but was in good heart. He assured them that he would soon be strong again, and said that what he most wanted was to hear Glad Ulf and Blackhair tell him of the adventures that had befallen them.
Asa sat with the priest, nursing him like a son. His head was swathed in bandages, and he was still half senseless. When he saw Orm, his eyes lightened, and he said in a weak voice: “Welcome home!” but then drowsed back into unconsciousness. Asa said that he often mumbled to himself as he lay there, but that nobody could understand what he was saying.
The sight of Orm greatly revived her spirits, and she straightway began to reproach him for not having returned in time to avert this calamity. But when she heard that he had Are’s treasure with him, her temper softened, and she thought that this had been a trivial attack compared with some she could remember from her young days. That Ludmilla had been stolen, she said, was only what she had always said would happen, because of the unlucky name they had given her. Father Willibald, she was sure, would recover, though he had been near to death, for sometimes now he understood what she said to him, which was a good sign. What worried her most was the empty storehouse and all the cattle that had been stolen.
Toke, Spof, and Blackhair took men and followed the tracks of the bandits to see whither they led; Sone’s sons assured them that they would not be difficult to follow, since there had been no rain since the attack. While they were gone, Orm questioned the survivors of Rapp’s men closely, in the hope of discovering more about the identity of the bandits; but they could add little to what he had already learned from Ylva.
The day before the attack, they told him, had been the holiday that the priest called All Saints’ Day; he had preached a great sermon to them all, and in the evening they had drunk to the honor of the saints. Then they had all slept soundly until the gray dawn, when the bandits had fallen on them. The hounds had begun to bay, and almost at once the bandits had attacked the gate with rams made of tree trunks and had broken it open.
Rapp and Harald had been the first to engage them, though the rest of the men had quickly joined them; they had done what they could, so that most of the women had succeeded in escaping with the children out of the back of the house and then down the river and into the forest. But they had been heavily outnumbered and had not been able to hold the gate long. The priest, who had begun of late to grow harder of hearing, had not awakened immediately, despite the hubbub, and when he at last came out, Rapp had been killed and the bandits were everywhere. He had seen them set fire to the church, and at the sight of this had cried in a loud voice and run down toward it, so that the hounds had not been slipped in time to achieve anything.
This, they said, was all they knew; for, on seeing Rapp fall, and others with him, they had realized they were hopelessly outnumbered, and had given up the battle and taken to their heels. Later, when the bandits had gone, the hounds had been released; the bandits had not dared to approach them. The hounds had followed their traces and, after being away for a whole day, had returned with some of the cattle.
Orm listened blackly to all this, thinking that things had been poorly handled; but there seemed little point in upbraiding them now for what could not be mended, and he did not reproach them for saving their own lives after they had seen Rapp killed and Harald wounded.
He hardly knew whether to grieve more over Ludmilla’s fate or Rapp’s; but the more he thought about the business, the greater his anger waxed, and he determined to lose no time in settling accounts with this rabble of bandits. He thought it likeliest that they were men from Värend, though there was peace between them and the Göings and he could not remember that he had enemies there.
The next day Father Willibald was conscious again, though still very weak, and had important news to tell them.
By the time he came out of the house, he said, the bandits had already stormed the gate, and the first sight that met his eyes was flames leaping from a pile of straw that the bandits had heaped against the church and ignited. Rushing toward the flames, he had cried to them to leave God’s church in peace.
“Then,” he continued, “a man with a black beard strode toward me. He laughed, and cried in a loud voice: ‘God’s church shall burn, for I have renounced God. This is my third sin. Now I can sin no more.’ Those were his words; then he laughed again, and I recognized him. It was Rainald, the priest who lived here long ago, and gave himself up to the Smalanders at the Thing. He it was, and none other; we had already heard, you remember, that he had turned himself over to the Devil. I cursed him and ran to the blazing straw to pull it clear; but then a man struck me, and I knew no more.”