crackle of the fires and torches. The men, and the thralls and bond-maids,
parted. From the doors to the hall, swung wide, now approaching, came four
figures, Ottar, who had accompanied the Forkbeard to the thing, two of the
Forkbeard's men, with spears, and, between them, clad in rich robes of
concealment, such as are worn in the south, even to the veils, the figure of a
girl. These four stopped before the table, opposite the high seat of Svein Blue
Tooth. The girl stood among the gold, and the heaped sapphires. Her robes were
marvously wrought, subtle, soft, seeming almost in their sheens, like the
jewels, to shift their colors in the light of the lamps and the flickering
torches. The robes were hooded; she was twice veiled, once in white silk and,
under it, in purple silk. "What mockery is this?" demanded the Blue Tooth,
sternly. "No mockery, my Jarl," said the Forkbeard. He extended his hand toward
the girl. "May I present to my Jarl," he asked, "Hilda, daughter of Thorgard of
Scagnar?" The girl reached to her hoods and brushed them back, freeing her hair,
and then, pin by pin, she unfastened the two veils, one after the other, and
dropped them. - "It is she," whispered a man at the table of Svein BlueTooth. "I
was once in the hall of Thorgard. It is she!' "Are you-are you," asked Svein
Blue Tooth, "the daughter of Thorgard, Thorgard of Scagnar?" "Yes, my Jarl," she
said. "Before Thorgard of Scagnar had the ship Black Sleen," said Svein, slowly,
"he had another ship. What was its name ?" "Horned Tharlarion," she said. "He
still has this ship, too," she added, "but it does not now serve as his
flagship." "How many oars has it?" he asked. "Eighty," said she. "Who keeps the
fisheries of Thorgard?" asked a man. "Grim, once of Hunjer," she said. "Once in
battle," said Svein Blue Tooth, "I wounded Thorgard of Scagnar." "The scar," she
said, "is on his left wrist, concealed unde a studded wristlet." Svein leaned
back. "In this same engagement," she said, "he wounded you, and more grievously.
You will bear the scar in your left shoulder." Bera flushed. "It is true," said
Svein Blue Tooth. "I tell you," cried the man at the table, "it is Hilda,
daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar. I have been in his hall. It is she!" The women
of the north, commonly, do not veil themselves. "How were you taken?" asked
Svein Blue Tooth. "By trickery, my Jarl," said she. "In my own compartments was
I taken, braceleted and hooded." "How were you conveyed past guards?" asked the
Blue Tooth. "From the window of my compartments, braceleted and hooded, late at
night, helpless, in darkness. I was hurled into the sea, more than a hundred
feet below. A boat was waiting. Like a fish I was retrieved and made prisoner,
forced to lie on my belly in the boat, like a common maid. My captors followed."
There was a great cheer from the men in the hall, both those of Ivar Forkbeard
and those of Svein Blue Tooth. "You poor, miserable girl," cried Bera. "It could
happen to any female," said Hilda, "even you, great lady." "Men are beasts,"
Bera cried. She regarded Ivar, and me, and his men, with fury. "Shame be upon
you, you beasts!" she cried. "Svein Blue Tooth, Jarl of Torvaldsland, meet
Hilda, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar," said Ivar. "Hilda, daughter of Thorgard
of Scagnar, meet Svein Blue Tooth, Jarl of Torvaldsland." Hilda inclined her
head in deference to the Jarl. There was another great cheer in the hall. "Poor
girl," cried Bera, "how you must have suffered!" Hilda lowered her head. She did
not respond to Bera. I thought she smiled. "Never had I thought to have Hilda,
daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, stand prisoner before me, before the high seat
of my house," said Svein Blue Tooth. "Before you I stand more than prisoner, my
Jarl," said she. "I do not understand," said Svein Blue Tooth. She did not raise
her head. "You need not address me as your Jarl, my dear," said Svein Blue
Tooth. "I am not your Jarl." "But every free man is my Jarl," she said. "You
see, my Jarl," said she, lifting her head proudly and pulling her rich,
glistening robes some inches down upon her shoulders, "I wear the collar of Ivar
Forkbeard." The collar of black iron, with its heavy hinge, its riveted closure,
its projecting ring of iron, for a chain or padlock, showed black, heavy,
against the whiteness of her lovely throat. "You have dared to collar the
daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar!" cried Bera to Ivar Forkbeard. "My master does
what he pleases, Lady," said Hilda. I wondered what Bera would say if she knew
that Hilda had been put at the oar, and taught to heel; that she had been
whipped, and taught to obey; that she had been caressed, and taught to respond.
"Silence, Bond-maid!" cried Bera. Hilda put down her head. "To think," cried
Bera, "that I expressed solicitude for a collar-girl!" Hilda dared not speak.
For a bond-maid to speak in such a situation might be to invite a sentence of
death. She shuddered. In fury, Bera, lifting her skirt from about her ankles,
took her way from the long table, retiring to her own quarters. "You collared
her!" laughed Svein Blue Tooth. "Of course," said the Forkbeard. "Superb!"
laughed Svein Blue Tooth, rubbing his hands together. "Lift your head, Wench,"
he said. His attitude toward Hilda had changed, completely. She did so. She had
a beautiful face, blue eyes, long, loose blond hair. "Is she pretty?" asked
Svein Blue Tooth. "Remove your slippers," said the Forkbeard. The girl did so.
She stepped from them. She did not wear stockings. Roughly the Forkbeard, then,
his hands at her shoulders, tore away the robes of concealment. The men, and the
bond-maids, cried out with pleasure, with admiration. Hilda stood proudly, her
head high, amidst the heaped gold, jewels, sapphires, in the dirt about her
feet. She had been branded. It had been done by the hand of Ivar Forkbeard
himself, before dawn, some days ago, shortly before the ship had left for the
thing. She had been carried weeping, over his shoulder, her brand fresh, aboard
his ship, The collar, too, before the brand, that very morning, had been closed
about her neck, and riveted shut. I observed the brand. She was now only another
girl whose belly lay beneath the sword, a property-girl, a collargirl, a slave,
a bond-maid. The eyes of Svein Blue Tooth, and those of his men, glistened as
they feasted upon her bared beauty. "It seems," said Svein Blue Tooth, "that the
wergild has been well met." "Yes," said the Forkbeard, "it might seem so." "In
the morning I shall proclaim the lifting of your outlawry," said the Blue Tooth.
I relaxed. It seemed we would come alive, after all, out of the hall of the Blue
Tooth. I had only feared some treachery, or trickery, upon his part, some
northern trick. Yet he had now, before his men, spoken. And I knew him, by this
time, to be one who stood with his word, and stood well with it, and proudly.
His word was to him as his land, and his sword, as his honor and his ship; it
would be kept; it would be neither demeaned nor broken. "I think there is some
mistake," said Ivar Forkbeard. Inwardly I groaned. "How is that?" asked the Blue
Tooth. "How is it that the wergild is met?" asked Ivar Forkbeard. The Blue Tooth
looked puzzled. He pointed
to the jewels, the gold, the girl. "You have that
here wherewith to meet the wergild," said he. "That is true," said the
Forkbeard. Then he drew himselfup to a not inconsiderable full height. "But who
has told you that I choose to meet it?" Suddenly the men in the hall, both those
of the Forkbeard and of Svein Blue Tooth, began to cheer. I, too, was on my feet
among them. None of us had suspected it, and yet it was what one should have
expected of such a man as the Forkbeard. Never in the north had there been such
a coup of honor! Though it might mean the death of us all, those who followed
the Forkbeard, and that of perhaps hundreds of the men of Svein Blue Tooth, we
cheered. My heart bounded, my blood raced. I struck, again and again, my left
shoulder with the palm of my right hand. I heard swords clashing against the
sides of plates, spear blades clattering on shields, and ringing, one against
the other. Slowly Svein Blue Tooth rose to his feet. He was livid with rage.
There was not a man in the hall but knew that his kinsman, a distant cousin,
Finn Broadbelt, whom the Forkbeard had slain, had fallen in fair duel, and that
wergild should not have been levied; and there was not a man in that hall but
knew that the Blue Tooth had decreed, even were such justified, a wergild to the
deed of the Forkbeard whose conditions were outrageous, deliberately formulated
to preclude their satisfaction, a wergild contrived to make impossible the
meeting of its own terms, a wergild the intent of which was, in its
spitefulness, to condemn the Forkbeard to perpetual outlawry. Then, to the
astonishment of all Torvaldsland, and most to that of Svein Blue Tooth, the
Forkbeard, redoubtable, after earning six talmits in the contests, delivered to
his hall the very wergild no man had supposed it possible to pay, and had then,
arrogantly, before the high seat of the Blue Tooth itself, refused to pay! "In
this land," said Ivar Forkbeard, "rather than accept pardon at the hands of such
a Jarl, one such as you, Svein Blue Tooth, I make what choice a free man must. I
choose the sleen, the forest and the sea!" Svein Blue Tooth regarded him. "I do
not pay the wergild," said the Forkbeard. "I choose to remain outlaw." Once
again there was much cheering. I clapped the Forkbeard about the shoulders.
Gorm, and Ottar, too, stood with him, and his other men. Hilda knelt at his
feet, among the gold, the jewels, her lips pressed to his furred boots. "My
Jarl! My Jarl!" she wept. Then there was silence in that high-roofed hall. All
eyes turned to Svein Blue Tooth. He stood before the high seat of his house,
standlng before the long table; behind him, on each side, were the high-seat
pillars of his house. He prepared to speak. Suddenly he lifted his head. I, too,
and several of the others, at the same time, detected it. It was smoke. "The
hall is afire!" cried one man. Flames, above and behind us, crept at the
southeast corner of the interior roof, above and, as we faced it, to the right
of the doors. Smoke, too, began to drift in from one of the side rooms. We saw
something move within it. "What is going on?" cried a man at one of the tables.
The doors behind us, both of them, great, carved doors, suddenly thrust open. In
the doorway, silhouetted against flames behind them, we saw great, black, shaggy
figures. Then one leapt within the hall. In one hand it carried a gigantic ax,
whose handle was perhaps eight feet long, whose blade, from tip to tip, might
have been better than two feet in length; on its other arm it carried a great,
round, iron shield, double strapped; it lifted it, and the ax; its arms were
incredibly long, perhaps some seven feet in length; about its left arm was a
spiral band of gold; it was the Kur which had addressed the assembly. It threw
back its head and opened its jaws, eyes blazing, and uttered the blood roar of
the aroused Kur; then it bent over, regarding us, shoulders hunched, its cIaws
leaping from its soft, furred sheaths; it then laid its ears back flat against
the sides of its great head. No one could move. Then, other Kurii behind it,
crowding about it, past it, it shrieked, lips drawn back, with a hideous sound,
which, somehow, from its lips and mien, and mostly from its eyes, I took to be a
sign of pleasure, of anticipation; I would learn later that this sound is
instinctively uttered by Kurii when they are preparing to take blood. This cry,
like a stimulus, acted upon the others, as well; almost instantly, with the
velocity that the stranger signal can course through a pack of urts, this shriek
was picked up by those with it; then, the hall filled with their horrid howling,
eyes blazing, led by the Kur with the golden band, frenzied by the blood shriek,
they leaped forward, great axes flailing. Chapter 14 The Forkbeard and I depart
from the hall of Svein Blue Tooth I saw half of the body of a man spinning
crazily past. Kurii leapt down the long sides of the hall, slashing, cutting men
down as they fled to their weapons The wooden shields of Torvaldsland no more
stopped the great axes than dried skins of larma fruit, stretched on sewing
frames, might have resisted the four-bladed dagger cestus of Anango or the
hatchet gauntlet of eastern Skjern. More than once the blades of the Kurii axes
bit through the spines of men, reaching for their weapons, and splintered,
gouging, in the beams of the hall. I choked in the smoke. My eyes stung. Near me
a man screamed. I was knocked from my feet, buffeted in the crowd. For an
instant I was conscious only of the dirt floor, the reeds strewn upon it, the
mad forest of running feet. My left liand slipped in the dirt, in blood. I was
knocked again, but then managed to force my way to my feet. I was carried in the
panic-stricken throng a dozen yards in one direction, then, meaninglessly,
carried back in the other. I could not even draw my weapon. The Kur axes fel]
again and again. The hall rang with their howling. I saw a man-at-arms lifted,
back broken, in the black, furred, tentacled hand of one of the marauders. The
thing roared, head back. The white fangs seemed scarlet in the light of the
fires from the roof. Then it threw the man more than a hundred feet against the
back ot the llall. I saw another man-at-arms hanging from the jaws of a Kur. He
was still alive. His eyes betrayed shock, staring blindly outward. I do not
think he saw. I suspect he was in pain. He was alive, but I did not think he any
longer felt. He doubtless understood what was occurring but, to him, somehow, it
did not seem of concern. It was as though it were happening to someone else.
Then the Kur's jaws closed. For the least instant there was a terrifying
recognit:ion in the eyes. Then he was bitten through. I briefly saw Ivar
Forkbeard. He was trying to thrust Hilda, held by the arm, toward one of the
side rooms, between killing Kurii. He was shouting orders to his men, who
clustered about him. Svein Blue Tooth stood on the long table, behind which was
his high seat. I could not hear him in the shouting, the screams, the howling of
the frenzied Kurii. A great Kur ax swept near me. Four men, trying to back away,
but held as though against a wall by the throng, were cut down. Those nearest
&nbs
p; the Kurii tried to crawl back within the throng. The Kurii axes, in their
sweeps, at the edges of the throng, kept us helpless, crowded together. Few men
could as much as draw their weapons. Some men, behind Kurii, fled away, out of
the great, opened, double doors of the hall. I saw them fleeing, outlined
briefly against the fires outside. But outside, too, I saw, silhouetted against
the flames, waiting Kurii. Many fled into the axes of the Kurii in the yard of
the hall. Then Kurii stood before the threshold, snarling, axes lifted. Men came
before them and threw themselves to their knees, that they might be spared, even
were it but for the Ahn, but these, like others, no differences drawn between
them, were cut down, destroyed by strokes of the swift axes. Kurii take
prisoners only when it pleases them. I saw several of the Forkbeard's men manage
to slip into one of the side rooms. Gorm, and Ottar, were among them. I hoped
they might make good their escape. Perhaps they could tear out trhe membrane in
one of the windows and crawl through and, in the confusion outside, make away.
The Forkbeard, to my surprise, momentarily reappeared trom within the room,
looking about. His face looked red in the fires. He carried his sword. I did not
see Hilda. I assumed she had, with the men, entered the small room. It was my
hope that she, and the others, could manage to slip away somehow, perhaps
climbing to the catwalk, and dropping over the side of the palisade to the
ground below. I saw then the Forkbeard, one hand on the arm of the strange
giant, Rollo, leading him to the door of the small room. Rollo, though the room
about him was frenzied wlth Kurii and their killing, did not seem disturbed. His
eyes were vacant. He was led like a child to the small room. I noted that his
ax, which he always carried, was bloodied. The blood of Kurii, like that of men,
is red, and of simllar chemical composition. It is another similarity adduced by
Priest-Kings when they wish to argue the equivalence of the warring species. The
major difference between the blood content of the Kur and of men is that the
plasma of the Kur contains a greater percentage of salt, this acting in water
primarily as a protein solvent. The Kur can eat and digest quantities of meat
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