Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  But there were noises along the shadowy, marshy shoreline. Owls, half a dozen of them, rose into the night and vanished with the weird, swift flight that signified they were afraid of something. Presently sparks, then a blaze, then a whirl of red fire as a man waved a torch to get it properly alight.

  Torch after torch was lighted from the first one, until the darkness fifty yards back from the river line grew aglow with smoky crimson. The commotion in the ship’s waist ceased and Conops came aft, leaning elbows on the low poop-deck.

  “All ready, master,” he said calmly; but he was breathing hard, and he snuffled because his nose was bleeding.

  “Find a warp and come up here,” Tros ordered.

  Conops disappeared again. Tros sang a “Yo-ho” song to time the oarsmen, giving just sufficient way to bring the ships abreast. Then, backing port-oars with the aid of Helma’s voice, he swung the longship’s stern until it almost touched the bireme. Conops appeared then, dragging a wet rope, cursing its religion in outrageous longshore Levantine — which was a mixture of a dozen languages. Helma pounced on it and helped him haul, her muscles cracking like a firebrand.

  “Jump and make fast!”

  Conops nearly missed, for the longship’s stern was swinging. But he had tied a small rope to the heavy warp and tied that to his waist, so he had two hands to clutch the bireme’s stern. He clambered up it like a monkey and hauled the warp after him, Helma paying out the coils as the longship drifted away, beam to the tide, Tros straightening her with slow dips of the port-oars.

  “Make fast!”

  Helma, sea-king’s daughter to the marrow of her young bones, took three turns around an oaken bollard in the stern and held that until the warp began to feel the strain, paying out a foot or two until vibration ceased, before she made fast to the other bollard.

  “Both banks — way!” Tros thundered and began his “Yo-ho” song, while Helma beat time and the mud boiled blue around them. But the bireme stuck fast, though the longship swung and swayed, heeling to one side or the other as the humming warp took the strain to port or starboard. Conops yelled suddenly. A torch came curving out of darkness to the bireme’s deck, followed by yells from the longshore Britons as Conops caught that one and tossed it overboard. Then another torch, and another.

  “Row! Yo-ho! Yo-ho!”

  The ash oars bent and the rowers sweated in the dark. Helma ran between the benches, whirling a rope’s end, beating the Britons’ backs. No need to urge the Northmen; they were working for dear life, whereas the Britons were in favor of the longshore pirates.

  Tros labored at the helm to keep the longship straight and haul the bireme off the mud at the same angle that she struck. But the warp hummed and nothing happened, except that torch followed torch so fast that Conops could hardly toss them overboard.

  Then Conops yelled again and vanished like a bat toward the bireme’s bow. There was shouting, splashing and a red glare in the darkness at her bow-end — a thump of wood and iron as Conops levered the great anchor clear and dropped it overside — yells as it fell on heads below.

  Then the glare increased; they were bringing more torches and burning brushwood. A dozen arrows flitted through the darkness; near the longship’s poop. Tros roared, bull-throated, to the rowers for the final effort; but they ceased, drooped, gasping at their oars, and the longship swung inshore as the warp held her stern against the tide.

  Tros did not dare to let his crew of Britons get too near the riverbank; they would mutiny and join their friends. Nor could he let the warp go; he would have died rather than leave Conops at the mercy of drunken savages.

  “Now if Lud of Lunden would give me a south wind—”

  But Lud did better. He made some one mad. Tros would have needed time to set the sail. A shadowy boat flitted through the darkness and shot close up to the bireme’s bow. A flat blast on a cow-horn split the night. Followed yelling. The red glare faded, giving place to moving shadows and din or argument. Conops returned in leaps to the bireme’s stern and shouted, waving both hands.

  “Way! Way! Yo-ho!” Tros thundered.

  Helma plied the rope’s end; the exhausted oarsmen strained, half- mutinous; the longship heeled and turned her head to midstream, until suddenly Tros laid his whole weight and strength on the steering-oar and the bireme slid gently backward off the mud. The tide had lifted her at last.

  They towed her stern-first for a mile, until the longshore shouting died in the distance. Then Tros backed oars in a wide reach of river and lay alongside until Conops could make the warp fast in the bow, so as to bring the bireme’s head upstream.

  “Who was it saved us?” he asked Conops.

  “Tide and a madman, master! Skell came over-river, blew a horn-blast, startled them, told them that he knew Caesar’s gold was in the bireme, offered them half of it if they would cut the warp and scare you off before they set fire to anything, kept them talking until the tide crept under her. This Lud of Lunden is a pretty decent sort of god!”

  “Aye, Lud of Lunden! Aye,” Tros muttered. “Aye. I knew there was a reason for preserving Skell. Lud of Lunden! I will make a little giftlet to that godlet. I believe he smiles on effort. He shall laugh!”

  CHAPTER 33. In Lunden Pool

  Shall I condone your treasons to renew my peace? How often have I told you that the qualities of faith and obedience evoke Wisdom in your rulers, aye, and in you also. Ill-faith and disobedience are clouds that hide Wisdom from you and, from them. Ye have the government ye have earned. Ye suffer from the destiny that ye yourselves created. Ye may look in vain to me to hide you from the consequences of your treasons, for which I know no other remedy than good faith. See ye to it, each for himself.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  A GRAY, wet dawn was paling in the sky when Tros dropped anchor in the pool below the ford by Lunden Town. Caswallon’s mouse-hued wooden roof, green-splashed with lichen, loomed through drifting mist between the autumn-tinted oaks.

  Tros sighed for his sunlit Mediterranean, but he noticed that his Northmen prisoners, oar-weary though they were and stiff from the fighting of the day before, were in an environment they liked.

  They sniffed the autumn air, leaned overside and praised the lush green meadows, nodded to one another sleepily as wooden and thatched roofs, barns and neat enclosures peeped out of the mist a moment to vanish again like dreams of fairyland. The lowing of cows asking to be milked appeared to fill them with excitement. They spoke of wealth in whispers.

  Sigurdsen’s high fever had abated. He had slept like a child and now seemed hardly to understand what had happened to him; his wife was talking in low tones, he answering in grunts, fingering the edge of the great battle-ax that lay across his knees and glancing from his wife to Helma, who sat facing him. The other woman was still keening her dead husband.

  The Lunden Britons were late sleepers. Not a human being stirred along the waterfront on either side of the river, although a dog howled a general alarm and a whole pack joined him, galloping from house yards to patrol the river and bay indignant, challenge to the skies. There were several rotting ships among the reeds, all smaller than the longship, and not one even river- worthy.

  “This will never be a nation,” Tros reflected. “There is no hope for them. Think of bringing two ships into Ostia, Tarentum, and Piraeus, Smyrna, Alexandria, and none but a pack of dogs to give the challenge! They will be overwhelmed by foreigners. They will cease. A hundred years hence none will know the name of Britain.”

  But he was nearly as tired out as his oarsmen and as Conops, in no true mood for prophecy. Unlike them, he might not curl himself to sleep under the benches. He had no more fear on account of his British hirelings, who would stick like leeches now until he paid them. But he did not propose to be caught asleep by any of Caswallon’s men, who might remove his prisoners, might even execute them, especially if Caswallon should be away from home; and that seemed likely.

  He thought it strange, otherwis
e, that there should be none to receive him and bid him welcome, for the sake of good manners, however unfriendly they might feel. Caswallon must have known he would bring both ships up-river. Or — the thought stirred Tros to rumbling anger — had Caswallon left him purposely hard and fast on the river mud in hope that longshore pirates would wipe a difficulty off the slate? To be roundly punished for it afterward, no doubt, since kings must punish criminals and friendships must be honored. When the first hot flush of indignation died he decided to give Caswallon the benefit of that doubt; but he found it difficult, knowing that kings have harder work than other men to keep faith, subtler means of breaking it, and more excuse. There was Caesar’s gold, for instance.

  When he had watched shore-bearings for a while to make sure the anchor held, he turned to Helma, hoping to take his mind off one worry by considering another.

  “How did you learn Gaulish?” he asked.

  “Some of us always do,” she answered. “Don’t we need it when we raid the coasts? I learned it from my nurse, who was a Briton taken in a raid and carried off to Malmö. Britons are good servants, once they yield. She worked hard, I loved her.”

  “Love? Or was it belly-yearning?” Tros asked. “I have heard tell that Northmen think of nothing else but fighting, feasting and taking wives.”

  “None has had me to wife,” she retorted, and there was pride in her eyes such as Tros had never seen.

  “Well — well you behaved last night,” he said, looking straight at her. “You are a poor cook, for you burned the stew; but you shall cook no more for me. What shall be done with you? Speak, Will you return to Malmö?”

  She bit her lip, then stabbed out words like dagger-blades.

  “The men of Helsing drove my brother forth. Shall I return and serve them, saying that with my brother’s ship I bought myself to give to them?”

  “You hate me. Why did you stand by me in the pinch last night?” Tros asked.

  “I am a sea-king’s daughter. Should I side with pirates?” she demanded.

  “What were you when you raided the Thames or when you burned a south coast village?” Tros inquired.

  “Good Norse stock,” she retorted. “We are Vikings!”

  Tros was puzzled.

  “What if I should take you back to Malmö, and try an issue with the men of Helsing, and reestablish you? What then?”

  “Ah, you laugh at me.” But there was no laughter in his eyes, and she was watching them. “You might make my brother a king again, for you are a bold man and you can handle a ship. But the skalds would call me a black-haired foreigner’s wife until the very serving-wenches mocked me.”

  “Said I one word about wifeing?” Tros asked, astonished. But she was astonished, too; backed away two steps from looking as if he had struck her with a whip.

  “I am a prisoner by my brother’s oath of battle. I must abide that,” she answered. “You are a prince? Have you a wife?”

  “No,” said Tros, watching her.

  He knew now she was much more puzzled than he had been.

  “You will not degrade me,” she said with an air of confidence.

  She implied they had both been talking in a foreign tongue and so could hardly understand each other. Biting her lip again, she calmed herself, made a nervous effort to be patient with him.

  “I will speak with Olaf Sigurdsen,” said Tros, and strode to where the Northman leaned against the stern all swathed in, bandages, nervously thumbing his ax-hilt.

  But Sigurdsen knew no Gaulish other than the words for mast and oar, beef, beer and a dozen place-names. Helma had to stand there and interpret.

  “What shall I do with her?” Tros asked, signifying Helma with a sidewise motion of his head.

  “She is yours!” said the Northman, astonished. “You won her!”

  Helma interpreted, mimicking even the voice-note. Suddenly, as if she thought Tros had not understood yet, she pulled off her amber-and-gold shoulder-ornaments and thrust them toward him.

  “Have you a wife?” asked Sigurdsen.

  Helma translated. Sigurdsen’s wife stood up beside her husband, staring at Tros as if he were some new kind of creature she had never heard of. She began whispering, and Sigurdsen nodded, spoke, with a note of grandeur in his voice.

  “What does he say?” Tros demanded.

  “He says — you returned him his weapon; you accepted his oath as a free man; but you did not say you returned me to him. Nevertheless, perhaps you meant that. Therefore, he being my brother and a king’s son although without fief or following, and you his conqueror in battle and his sworn friend, he swears by Thor and Odin and his ax-blade I am born in noble wedlock and a fit bride; and he gives me to you, to be wife and to share your destiny on land and sea.”

  “Zeus!”

  No thought of marrying had ever entered Tros’s head, except as something he would never do. He had sworn no vow, but he had seen too many men grow fat and lazy in the meshes of a family not to promise himself he would die free of woman’s ministering. He had something of his father’s conviction that marriage was earthy of the earth, a good enough thing for the rabble but a trap that kept a strong soul from aspiring to the heights.

  Sigurdsen spoke again, not knowing who Zeus might be, not understanding the explosion. He had never heard of a man’s refusing a king’s daughter.

  “She is fair. She is young. She is a virgin. Call her wife before the Britons come and men speak ill of her.”

  Helma had to translate. She did it womanly-wise, her blue eyes — they were more blue than the northern sky — accepting destiny as something to be met and very proudly borne.

  “I think you did not understand me yesterday,” she said.

  “Nor I you. You are a brave man, Tros, and I will bear you sons of whom you shall not be ashamed.”

  Brave! Tros felt as weak as a seasick landsman! He was ashamed. He might refuse, and he would hate himself. He might accept and learn to hate the woman! He might give her to some other man and evermore regret it! Why had he taken prisoners? Why hadn’t he made a gift of them to Caswallon when he had the chance?

  Slowly — he was striving to hear the inner voice that usually guided; but either the inner man was deaf or the voice was sleeping — he let his left hand leave his sword-hilt; he did not know why. She stepped closer, smiling. Both arms stretched toward the girl before he knew it. She came into them, her head on his breast and at that very moment Conops wakened.

  “Master!”

  It was the exclamation of a man bereft of faith in the one eye that Caesar’s torturers had left him. Love-and-run in half the ports of the Levant was Conops’ history, brief interludes of lazy days and tavern-haunting nights between long spells of hardship and service to Tros on land and sea. Loose, superstitious morals for himself but rigorous aloofness for his master from all worldly ways, was his religion. He had but one eye because he had dared to rebuke Caesar for insulting Tros. He rubbed the other one, crestfallen, as if the Tros he knew were gone and some one substituted whom he could not recognize.

  Tros with a girl in his arms? He could not believe it. He came and glared, the tassel of his red cap down over his empty eye; the long tooth sneering through the slit in his upper lip; blood on his nose from yesterday. He fingered his long knife. He sidled three-quarters of a circle around Helma as if looking for an un-witch-protected opening through which to drive his knife.

  “Master! And your father not buried!” he said, hardly reproachfully, rather as if he did not believe his senses.

  He was jealous — jealous as a harbor-strumpet of a rival light o’ love. The slobber blew in bubbles on his lean lips.

  Tros was in no mood to be reproved by a servant. He let out a lick with his fist — caught Conops on the ear and sent him sprawling between the oar-benches.

  “Dog!” he thundered. “Will you judge your betters?”

  Conops did not hear that. He lay hugging his bruised head, grateful for it, glad of anything that drove the greater angu
ish out of mind, rocking himself, moaning, knees and elbows bunched.

  Angry — for emotions such as Tros had come through turn to anger as the sour milk to whey — Tros swung his hands behind him and stood breast out, grim chin high, staring at the shore, ignoring Helma. She was the real irritant. He told himself it was not born in him to love a woman. If he had thought he loved her — had he? — that was only the emotion of a drunken sailor. Worse! it was sordid backsliding. A descent from his own Olympian heights of manhood to the common level of unmoral fools like Conops!

  What would old Perseus have said to it? Hah! Old father Perseus did the same thing, didn’t he? Tros wondered who his own mother had been, and by what means she had wheedled a middle-aged saint into the snares of marriage!

  Tros knew she had died when he was born, but others had told him she was a royal woman, born of a line of kings whose throne was overturned by Rome. Perseus had forbidden speech of her, and as usual Tros had obeyed, only listening when other men dropped information.

  Her death, as far as Perseus was concerned, had closed a life’s chapter; thenceforth he had preached celibacy, not failing to instill into his son a wholesome — was it wholesome? — dread of women, or rather of the love of women and the loss of spiritual vision that ensued from it.

  “Yet here am I,” said Tros, his hands clenched tight behind him. “But for Perseus and a woman, I should not have been! I live! By Zeus and the immortal gods, I laugh!”

  But he did not laugh. It irked him that Helma’s eyes were on his back. He wished he had struck Conops harder. He wished all Lunden would awake and come down to the waterside. He would have welcomed anything just then, anything to save necessity of speech with Helma. He hated the girl! She and destiny between them had made a fine fool of him!

  Yet as he turned to meet her gaze a new shame reddened his cheeks under the bronze. He realized he did not hate her. He knew he would be ashamed to withdraw the unspoken pledge he had made when he took her in his arms. She was his wife! He wished he had killed Conops!

  He held out his hand to her with a stubborn gesture, drew her beside him, made her stand hand-in-hand with him there on the ship’s stern, gesturing to Olaf Sigurdsen to rouse his Northmen. And when they had rubbed sleep out of their eyes they stood up, grinning, until it dawned on them that something else was due.