Chapter XV: Cormac Makes Ready

Cormac made this song, and sang it to himself as he wandered the fell:

Berse, you have dared impossibly,
Taking what I have feared to take--
Looking where I have feared to see,
Dipping where none may dip and be
Still man, within the lonely lake.

To have scaled the awful mountain pass,
To have seen unblencht the untrod snows,
Affronting with your front of brass
The heart of the everlasting rose--
You have dared enough and shall give o’er
Your daring. You have dared so much:
Let it suffice. No more, no more.
Yet seeing by that desperate touch
There is come glory on your brow;
And to your name the pride is such
The man who bears it he must die,
I tell you, Berse, the time is now
Before you’ve time to blur and dull it
With your gross brain and teeming eye
And tongue, when righteous hand shall clutch
Your throat and take you by the gullet
And wrench the life out, and the lie
You make of it--and here’s the sign--
The clutching hand writes this: ’tis mine.

He got great comfort out of these lines, but his brother looked askance at them, and his mother gave him other counsel.

“My son,” she said, “you have to confront a champion in a play which he knows by heart. Have you thought how you shall go to work?”

Cormac said that he had.

“Well,” said his brother, “have you considered with what weapon you will meet Berse?”

Cormac said, “I will have a heavy axe, with a long handle.”

“And he,” said Dalla, “will have Whiting, which is a sharp sword, and a charmed sword. It has a healing-stone in its hilt. It would turn any axe you could get.”

Cormac was put out. “I would trust my fingers to reach his windpipe,” he said, “and after that let Whiting bite the grass.”

“All this is foolishness,” his mother replied. “I am the widow of your father, who was a fighting man, and know what I am talking about. Now do you go to see Skeggi of Reykir and ask him for Shavening. That is a sword of renown.”

“I know it is,” said Cormac.

He thought after a while that he would go.

Skeggi was an elderly man who lived at Reykir, across the Mid-river. Melstead looked upon Reykir. Skeggi was also a heavy, ruminating man who, instead of answering a direct question directly, used to say, “Let us see,” or “Let us think about it.” That was just what he said when Cormac came for the loan of Shavening. He was threshing corn in his barn, and, having heard what Cormac wanted, said that they must think it over, and went on with his threshing. Cormac contained himself as well as he could, which was very little indeed; but Skeggi was not to be moved by finger-nail biting or ramping up and down the doorway.

Then, when he had done all he had a mind to do, he hung up his flail, and came to Cormac.

“My son,” he said, “it would never do.”

“Do you mean,” said Cormac, “that you will not lend me your sword?”

“My meaning,” said Skeggi, “is like this. You two would not get on together. That is what I mean.”

“I don’t understand that,” Cormac told him.

“Shavening, my sword,” said Skeggi, “is what we call a slow sword. It is a deliberate sword, a sword of queer temper. Now you, too, are of a queer temper, I can see; but the queerness of your temper is not the queerness of Shavening’s temper. Why, you would be for slicing and hewing before Shavening had made up his mind to quit the sheath. Tush! no good could come of it.” He shook his head, and felt the beard on his chin. He raised his head and stroked up the beard of his neck.

“My question, Skeggi, is, Will you or will you not lend me your sword?”

Skeggi looked at him, suspending his work at his beard.

“That’s a question!” he said. “We must think about that.”

“Pish!” said Cormac, and went away.

* * * * *

He came home in a red flurry of rage, and it was long before his mother could get a word out of him. Then she said, “You go to work madly, my son. Skeggi will lend you Shavening, but not that gait. You must take a man as a man takes you. If he is slow-minded, you must keep yourself slow. He will lend you Shavening.”

Cormac frowned. “It will be a fine thing for a man who is to meet a champion at the Holm that he owes his weapon to his mother.”

Dalla said, “He owes it to his mother that he is able to go there at all.”

* * * * *

After a few days she spoke to her unruly son again. “Go and see Skeggi,” she said, “and treat him fairly. He will lend you his sword.”

So Cormac rides over to Reykir a second time.

Skeggi was ready for him. He brought the sword out from under his bedding; it was wrapped up in a sheepskin. He unfolded the fleece and laid Shavening on his knees. Shavening had a long handle with a short guard. Attached to the handle by two leather thongs was a purse of leather sewn up. “This purse,” he said, “goes about with Shavening everywhere. Now, you must leave that alone.”

Cormac, frowning at the sword, nodded his head shortly.

Skeggi went on talking. “Now these are the matters to be known in your conduct of Shavening. First, the sun must not shine upon either hilt or guard: see first of all to that, and keep him in his sheepskin until you want him. Next, you shall not wear him until the morning of the day when you have use for him--not, indeed, until you are to ride out for the place of your battle. And when you get to your battle-place, this is what you shall do. You shall take yourself apart from all men, and draw Shavening slowly from his scabbard until you have him fair in the light. Stretch him out his length, hold him up, and blow upon him. Then watch him. A little snake will come forth from under the guard, with a flat head. He will come out half-way and look at you. Now you must hold Shavening steady, and in such a way that the snake can go back under the hilt. Do you follow me in every point?”

Cormac was frowning himself black. “I hear you,” he said, “and I understand you. But let me tell you that those are tricks for a wizard.”

Skeggi said, “It may be so; but you will either do as I tell you, or be sorry for it.” He wrapped Shavening again in his sheepskin and handed him over without another word.

Cormac rode home.

He thanked his mother for her help. “I was uncivil,” he said. “Without you I should never have got it.”

“So you _have_ got it?” she asked.

“Here is the wonder-brand,” he said, and took it out of the sheepskin. Dalla felt it up and down with her hands.

Cormac shook it, weighed it in his hand, and turned it about. Then he set his other hand to it and tried to draw it; but it would not budge. “A plague take it,” he said. “It works too stiff for me. It works as stiff as its master.”

“Take care,” said Dalla; “you are too rough with him.”

But Cormac was angry, and the more he tugged the angrier he got.

“A blight on wizardry!” he cried. He put his foot on the scabbard and tugged at the hilt. The purse got in his way: he tore it off. Then he pulled with all his might. Shavening screamed, but would not come out. Cormac flung it on the floor, and went out of the house. Dalla picked it up, mended the purse-strings, and wrapped Shavening again in his fleece.

Cormac took no further heed of it.