• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2141 0

broth. Even so, Jon Andres and his friends had little notion of household economy, and by Yule much of this food was eaten, or wasted, and Ofeig and Mar and the others were impatient at the prospect of shorter meals and eking things out as their neighbors did. Mar, in particular, could not stop talking of what there was to eat at Gunnars Stead, and urging Jon Andres to get some of it from his mother. But Jon Andres paid him no attention. After the argument at the church, Jon Andres had been avoiding his friends, and one evening he told Ofeig that it was tiresome to have these boys around him. “Indeed,” he said, “they are not boys anymore, but men with no occupations and no inclination to return to the steadings of their fathers, where they might be made to do some work,” and this was true. For some years, Jon Andres had fancied his band to be something on the order of a band of Vikings, Harald Finehair and his hirdmen was what they were called in the neighborhood, and Jon Andres did not mind this nickname, but after the conflict at the church he grew impatient, and spoke to his friends sharply if at all.

One day he came among them where they were lounging on the benches of the steading, and he said that it was his desire to send them away, back to their fathers, for the life he had been leading oppressed him, and he wished to change it. As a going away gift, he would give them each a suit of clothes, the horse that each had been riding, and some dried meat to take away with them to their fathers’ steadings.

Ofeig Thorkelsson was not the only one of these men to be on bad terms with his father. Mar and Einar, who were brothers, had neither spoken to nor heard news of their father, who lived in the southern part of the district, since the summer, and they feared that he with much of his household had died in the hunger, for the steading was not a prosperous one. Even so, Jon Andres told them, they must find another place to live, for his intention was fixed, and he intended to be free of them by the evening, or at the latest, the next morning. Andres Bjartsson and Halldor Bessason now got up and began to gather their belongings together, and it seemed to Jon Andres that Halldor was actually relieved and pleased to go, while Andres was resigned, as he had had news of his father at Yule, and all had been well at his father’s steading at that time.

Mar and Einar began to grumble. Jon Andres said, “After these years of friendship, it would not please me to throw you out, or for us to part with ill feelings. But it is the case that times are different now than they have been, and such bands as ours do not repay in good fellowship what they cost in wasted provisions and trouble with neighbors, for I will not hide from you the fact that folk in this district are angry at me for the mischief we all have done, and they speak against me, and declare that I have incited you. Arnkel Thorbergsson is especially angry at the seduction of his daughter and threatens action against me if he and she do not chance to starve before the Thing. But I knew nothing of this seduction until he told me of it.” And Jon Andres glared at Einar Marsson, for he was to blame in this.

Ofeig settled back against the wall, and Jon Andres turned to him. “Do not think, Ofeig, that I exclude you from these arrangements. Although we have been companions since boyhood, your pranks no longer amuse me. I think it would be well for you to reform your character, and apply to your father for forgiveness, for after tonight you will get nothing more at Ketils Stead.” He paused, then went on. “When I heard the priest pray over you not so long ago, my eyes were opened, though yours were not. It has seemed to me for these last days that I look damnation in the face and am too ignorant to recognize it, but if I did I would be a hundred times more terrified than I am now, and right now I am terrified enough.” Jon Andres saw that Halldor was nodding a bit in his corner, as if he had had similar thoughts, and he went on, “Folk in the district will say that it was I who led