by John Norman
"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 Blue Tooth. "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 under 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 collar girl, 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 himself up 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, standing 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 claws 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 hand 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 fell 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 of the hall. 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 recognition 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 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 the membrane in one of the windows and crawl through and, in the confusion outside, make away.
The Forkbeard, to my surprise, momentarily reappeared from 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 with 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 similar 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 which would k
ill a man.
Rollo disappeared within the small room.
From my right I heard the scream of a bond-maid. I saw a Kur leash her. He pulled her struggling, by the neck, choking, to a place to the left of the door. There there waited another Kur, who held in his tentacled hand the leashes of more than twenty bond-maids, who knelt, terrified, about its legs. The Kur who had leashed his catch then handed the leash to the other Kur, who accepted it, adding it to the others. The girl knelt swiftly among the others. I knew human females were regarded as delicacies by Kurii. The Kur who had taken the girl then took another leash from the interior of his shield, where there were several wrapped about the shield straps; and surveyed the hall. A girl, kneeling in the dirt, near the long fire, saw him, and ran screaming away. Methodically, moving her toward a corner of the hall, leash swinging, he followed her.
Behind me I heard the blows of axes. I fought to free myself of the throng.
The axes behind me were the axes of men, and striking on wood. Turning, I saw Svein Blue Tooth and four others trying to splinter their way from the hall. They had difficulty, though, for many men pressed against them.
I saw Ivar Forkbeard nearby. He had not chosen to escape.
His sword was drawn, but it would prove of little efficacy against the great metal shields, the sweeping axes of the Kurii. They could cut a man down before he could approach them, even with the long blade of the North.
The Forkbeard looked about.
There had been more than a thousand men in the hall Surely at least two or three hundred lay dead, most at the walls, at the foot of the walls, under the weapons which, for the most part, they had been unable to touch.
I saw the Kur who had pursued the bond-maid now again going toward that holding area near the door. On her back, then on her side, then on her stomach, rolling and squirming eyes wild, her fingers hooked inside the collar, trying to keep it from choking her, was dragged the bond-maid. Then her leash was surrendered into the keeping of the Kur who held the others, and then the first Kur, leaving his prize in the care of the other, turned about, to hunt yet another delicacy from the herd within the hall.