by Talbot Mundy
“Why?” demanded Skell.
“Because I like to have my enemies where I can see them.”
“And if I will not come?”
“You are afraid to come. You fear Caswallon. You know Caswallon knows you have intrigued with Caesar. Yet you would like to go to Lunden because your house is there, and there are men who owe you money, whom you would like to press for payment.
“However, it may be that lure is not strong enough, so I will add this: Am I a man of my word, Skell? Yes? You are sure of that? Then listen: if you refuse to come to Lunden I will spend, if I must, as much as half of Caesar’s money that became mine when I took this bireme. I will spend it in cooking your goose for you!
“I will set Caswallon by the ears about you. And if all else fails me, I will seek you out and slay you with my own sword, much though it would irk me to defile good steel in such a coward’s heart! Do you believe me?”
“And if I come to Lunden?” Skell inquired.
He was smiling. He enjoyed to talk of the issues of life and death when there was no presently impending danger.
“Then I will concede this: I will not move hand or tongue against you while you do the same by me. I will tell Caswallon you are a harmless rogue whose bark is far worse than his bite, for, as the gods are all around us, Skell, that is my honest judgment of you.
“I will tell Caswallon you have done us all a service, for that is true: Unless you had gone to Gaul in the hope of betraying me to Caesar, I could never have annoyed the Roman there at Seine-mouth.
“Skell, I almost captured him. So I will beg Caswallon to ignore your treachery; and if he should refuse, I will protect you with my own guest- privilege.”
Skell meditated that for a while. His foxy, iron eyes kept shifting from face to face, avoiding Tros but constantly returning to study Helma, who was kneeling beside Sigurdsen, aiding his distracted wife to soak the stiffening bandages.
“I mistrust your words,” Skell said at last. “You are a man who keeps a bargain, but you bind one craftily and I suspect a trick. You must swear to me that there is nothing hidden in those terms of yours.”
“Not I,” Tros answered. “I expect to make my profit. So do you, Skell. I will change no word of the agreement. Either you come to Lunden, subject to my stipulation, or you go your own way and I will rid the earth of you as swiftly as that first duty can be done. Now choose — for I hear oars — and the tide is turning.”
Skell also heard oars, thumping steadily downstream toward the bireme.
“I agree!” he said, snapping his mouth shut, looking bold and almost carefree; but Tros’s amber eyes discerned the nervousness that underlay that mask.
Conops whispered in Tros’s ear. Tros stood and glanced over the stern.
“Druids,” he said, and began straightening his garments to receive them with proper dignity. “They will be coming for my father’s body. Heh! But Caswallon is a true host, friendship or no friendship. See in what state the druids come!”
CHAPTER 32. “A pretty decent sort of god!”
Ye who look for a profit from a friendship, ye are ten times overpaid before a reckoning begins. Ye are thieves, and in the day of reckoning your lot shall be betrayal and humiliation. Friendship is free, and its gifts are as free as the sunlight that demands no recompense. Otherwise it is not friendship, but bait within a hidden trap. They are not gifts, wherein the hooks of avarice lie hidden.
— from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan
THE DRUIDS sang as they approached the bireme. In the bow of a long barge, under a bower of yew-branches, there stood an ancient of days, bald-headed, a white beard flowing to his waist, a golden sickle in his girdle, his white robe touching sandals laced with golden thongs.
He led the chant; young voices in the stern caroled joyful, almost bird- like, regular responses; fourteen rowers droned a harmonied accompaniment, pulsing to the rhythm of the gilded oars. Serenely, solemnly they hymned the ever-nearness of eternity; there was not one note of grief.
The barge was draped in purple cloth and the rowers wore sleeveless purple tunics over their white smocks. They who stood singing in the stern were robed, like the ancient in the bow, in white from head to foot; and all, rowers included, wore wreaths of mistletoe.
In the midst of the barge, between the rowers, was a platform draped in white with a wide gold border, and over that a canopy was raised on gilded rods. The sides of the barge were white, adorned with gilded scroll-work.
The rowers tossed oars and the barge swung to a standstill under the bireme’s stern; but the chant continued. Tros and his prisoners stood respectfully, Olaf Sigurdsen supporting himself on the shoulders of two men; the Northmen’s lips moved as if they were trying to fit their own familiar words to druid music, that stirred their pagan hearts as only battle and the North Sea storms and elemental mysteries could ever do.
Skell kept covering his face nervously; some half-familiar phantom had returned to haunt his brain. The women, except Helma, sobbed as if the sobbing brought relief to tortured heart-strings; but she stood still, beside Tros, brave-eyed, almost glistening with emotions that not she herself could have explained.
Her shoulder touched Tros’s arm and he could feel a thrill that made his flesh creep pleasantly. He drew his arm away.
The hireling Britons at the water-hoist ceased work and stood by the bulwark. Conops, irreverent and practical, threw a rope over the stern, but the druids ignored it; they held the barge to the bireme with gilded boat-hooks while two of the rowers drove long poles into the river-bed to serve for an anchor at either end.
Then they raised a wooden ladder with bronze hooks that caught the bireme’s stern rail, and up that the old High Druid came, pausing at every step to roll out his majestic hymn and wait for the response. He came over the taffrail, singing, moving his right hand in centuries-old ritual, as calmly as if that were a temple threshold. He hardly touched Tros’s proffered arm as he stepped down to the poop.
There, eyes on the horizon, he stood booming his hymn to eternity until eight druids followed him over the stern. He needed no advice from Tros; Caswallon must have told him where the greater-than-a-druid’s body was that he had come to bear away with ancient honors.
He strode forward, and down the short ladder to the deck, the other druids keeping step behind him; and when Tros, summoning all his dignity, swung himself down to the deck to open the cabin door and show the way, a druid motioned him aside. They let no uninitiated hand have part, let no untaught eye see the rites they entered to fulfill, let none but druids hear their whispered liturgy.
Two druids stood outside the door, their backs to it, lips moving, signifying with a nod to Tros that he should keep his distance. So Tros stood, leaning on his drawn sword, his head bowed, until they came forth at last bearing the body between them. It was no longer covered with Caesar’s scarlet cloak, but robed in druid’s garments under a purple sheet and laid on a gilded stretcher. The old High Druid swayed ahead of the procession, chanting. They ascended the poop-ladder, hardly pausing, skillfully passing the stretcher from hand to hand so that the body they honored was always feet first, always horizontal, paused on the poop to chant a changed refrain, then descended the ladder to the barge, with the rear end of the stretcher hung in slings, and no commotion or mismovement to disturb the dead man’s dignity.
The chanting rose to a higher melody, as if they welcomed a warrior home, when they laid the body on the platform in the barge’s midst. Then the old High Druid took his stand beneath the canopy; the rowers cast off from the anchor-poles; the barge moved out into the stream, and to a new chant, wilder and more wonderful, the oarsmen swung in unison, until they vanished in a crimson glow of sunset between autumn-tinted oaks, up-river. Then, Tros broke silence.
“Thus, not otherwise, a soul goes forth,” he said. “None knoweth whither. They bear it forth; and there are They who shall receive it.”
He spoke Greek; only Conops could have understood the
words, and Conops’ senses were all occupied in watching Skell and Helma, trying to guess what mischief they were brewing. Quietly he plucked Tros’s sleeve, whispering:
“Master, better give me leave to kill that sly-eyed fox! Coax him forward to the cook-house. Slip the knife in back of his ear. As for the woman—”
He did not offer to kill the woman; he was thrifty; he knew her value.
“ — whip her. Whip her now, before she thinks you easy and does you a damage! Take my advice, master, or she will cook a mischief for you quicker than she burned the stew.”
The sun went down; and in a haze of purple twilight Tros drew Helma to the starboard rail, backing her against it.
“What did Skell say this time?” he demanded.
Conops was listening, hand on knife-hilt, watching Skell, who leaned over the far rail whistling to himself. The hireling seamen having pumped the bireme dry had gone to the bow, where they were half-invisible, like phantoms herded in the gloom. The tide was rising fast; the broken oars between the ships already creaked to the longship’s motion, but the bireme was still hard and fast.
Helma laughed mirthlessly, but she seemed to have recovered something of her former spirit.
“You are arrogant, and I obey you, Tros, but I don’t know for how long. Skell says you are among enemies in Britain. He says they will not let you keep your prisoners or the longship. He bade me notice how the druids said no word to you.”
Tros laughed. He knew the druids took no part in personal disputes, not interfering much in politics. The same law governed all their ceremony; nothing was allowed to interrupt it.
“Go on,” he said. “What was Skell’s proposal?”
“Skell said, if I go with you I shall be sold in open market by Caswallon’s order.”
Tros knew that Skell knew better. Even should Caswallon claim the prisoners despite his recent gift of them to Tros, he could not dispose of them like cattle without incurring the wrath of the druids and the scorn of the whole countryside. But it was a likely enough lie for Skell to tell to a prisoner, who might not know the British customs, though she could speak the tongue.
“So what did Skell suggest?”
“He said the Britons will come and loot these ships. They will kill the men and seize us women. Skell said, if I obey him, he will protect me and take me to Gaul.”
Tros whistled softly, nodding to himself. There was no hurry; the longship floated; he could move her whenever he chose. Meanwhile, Skell had broken the guest-law, and he had excuse to kill him or to kick him overboard. Conops read his gesture, took a step toward Skell, drawing his knife eight gleaming inches from the sheath.
“Stay!”
Tros seized him by the shoulder. It was a dangerous game to deal roughly with a guest in Britain. Skell had eaten from Tros’s dish by invitation; all the crew had seen it. A prisoner’s word that Skell had voided privilege could carry no weight against a free man’s unless given under torture.
“What answer did you make to Skell?” he demanded, turning, but keeping hold of Conops’ shoulder.
The girl laughed, mirthlessly again. “I would liefer die beside my brother than go, a half-breed’s property, to Caesar.”
“Come here, Skell!” Tros commanded.
But he spoke too suddenly, too fiercely. There was a splash as Skell sprang overside. Then Tros’s ears caught what Skell probably had heard first — song and splashing in the distance, downstream. He thought of the arrow-engine but refrained and pushed Conops away from it. Conops urged, but Tros knew his own mind.
“Let the rat run. I have a notion not to kill him.”
“Notion!” Conops muttered. “I’ve a notion, too. We’ll all be gutted by pirates, that’s my notion!”
Skell’s boat left the bireme’s side in response to his shouts, and the Britons who had brought him hauled him out of the water. Straight away he set them paddling toward the farther bank, where he could lurk in shadow out of sight of the approaching boats, whose crews sang drunkenly and splashed enough for a considerable fleet. But there was no moon, no stars, only the ghostly British gloaming deeply shadowed, and Tros could not see them yet.
“Into the longship,” he commanded. “All hands!”
The hirelings in the bow demurred. They knew the time was come for looting. Tros charged them, beat them overside with the flat of his sword. Conops cut the lashings that held the ship together. There was no talk needed to persuade the Northmen to flee from drunken longshoremen; they were overside before Tros could count their flitting shadows, and Tros had hardly time to run for Caesar’s cloak before the longship yielded to the tide and drifted out into the river.
For a while he let her drift and listened. He could still hardly see the approaching boats, but it was evident that their occupants had seen the longship’s movement; they had stopped and were holding a consultation, paddling to keep their craft from drifting nearer until they could decide what the movement meant.
There was no wind; the longship lay helpless on the tide, useless unless Tros could set his prisoners to work and make the hirelings help them; and if he should put the Northmen to the oars there would be none to help him repel boarders.
Yet there was no knowing what the end might be if he should employ his prisoners to defend a ship that had been theirs a dozen hours ago. They, too, might force the hirelings to the oars and make a bid for freedom. He had given them back their weapons; they could overwhelm him easily.
But out of the darkness down the river movement grew again. The Britons were advancing on the bireme, keeping silence. It was more than Tros could stomach to see pirates loot a valuable ship. “Oars!” he commanded in a low voice. “Out oars!”
Conops leaped into the ship’s waist, clawing, cuffing, beating with his knife-hilt, until presently a dozen hirelings manned the benches, the remainder hugging bruises in the dark.
“Too few!” Tros muttered.
Unused to those oars and that ship, a dozen men could hardly have provided steerage way against the tide. He could count nearly a dozen boats creeping close up to the bireme.
“Helma!” he commanded, turning his head to look for her.
The Northmen, except Sigurdsen, who lay murmuring in delirium, stood and grinned at him. Helma was behind them, urging something, speaking Norse in sibilant undertones.
“Helma!” he said again; and his hand went to his sword, for the Northmen’s grins were overbold.
One of them was arguing with Helma, with what sounded like monstrous oaths.
“To your oars!” he ordered, gesturing.
None obeyed. He seized the nearest Northman, hurled him into the ship’s waist, spun around again to fight for dear life, drawing sword and lunging as he turned.
“Hold, Tros!”
That was Helma’s voice. Ears were swifter than his eyes; he heard her in mid-lunge and checked barely in time to let a man give ground in front of him. Helma sprang to his side then, seized his sword-hilt in both hands, bearing down on it, screaming at the prisoners in Norse.
He understood she was fighting for him, scolding, screaming at her kinsmen to obey and man the oars. He caught the word Sigurdsen two or three times. She was invoking her brother’s name.
Suddenly she let go Tros’s sword and fairly drove the Northmen down in front of her, hurling imprecations at them, then watched Tros, watched what he would do, stood back in silence as he strode toward the helm, laughed when he seized it and stood at gaze, his left hand raised over his head ready to signal the rowers.
The longship had drifted away from the bireme stern-first and was now nearly beam to the tide. He signaled to the port-oars first, to straighten her, then tried three strokes, both sides together, to feel what strength and speed he could command. The tide was strong, but they could move her better than he hoped, and he headed half a dozen easy strokes inshore where there was more or less slack water, due to reeds and lily-pads.
He could count nine boats now nosing toward the bireme. Two or
three had disappeared, inshore probably. They were creeping cautiously as if expecting ambush. As their noses touched the bireme’s shadow Tros shouted, bringing down his left hand:
“Row! Yo-ho! — Yo-ho! Yo-ho!”
The longship leaped. Before the Britons in the boats could guess what the shout portended, a high prow, notched against the sky, came boiling down on them, jerking to the strain of ash oars as Conops beat time with a rope’s end on the hirelings’ backs. Three boats backed away in time; but six crowded ones were caught by the longship’s prow, swept sidewise between the ships and crushed against the bireme’s hull.
There were screams, and a splintering crash, grinding of broken timber, oaths, confusion in the longship where the rowers on the port side fell between the benches, a long, ululating cry from Helma and the longship swung alone down-river with a boiling helm as Tros threw all his weight against the steering oar.
“Now again!” he shouted, laughing. “Easier this time — with the tide.”
But the rowers needed minutes to recover equilibrium and breath. There were two men knocked unconscious by their own oar-handles. It took time to swing the longship, head upstream. Tros roared his orders, Helma screamed interpretation of them; Conops plied the rope’s end; but before the longship could be headed on her course again Tros saw the remnant of the fleet of boats scoot out of the bireme’s shadow and race for the riverbank.
“Easy! Easy all!” he shouted; and again Helma studied him curiously, puckering her eyes to see his face more clearly in the gloom.
There were thumps, oaths, commotion in the ship’s waist, where Conops fought three Britons. Unwisely they had sprung out of the darkness from behind to pay him for the rope’s end, but they missed with their first onslaught, so the outcome was inevitable and Tros paid no attention to that minor detail. He was studying the bireme, measuring with his eye the height of water up her side. She was still heeled just a trifle, bow-end firmly on the mud.