Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Lord Tros, that is not true,” she retorted. “We are Vikings. Our ships sailed to Utica six generations back. There is a stone by my father’s hearth in Viborg that came from Carthage. We know who Romans are. I fear and hate them because you do, and I know you are right to hate them for what Caesar did to your father and to you and to all the crew of that ship you sailed from Samothrace. But Sigurdsen says—”

  “You mean Skell says!” Tros broke in scornfully.

  “Sigurdsen says, we build a great ship. And how shall we trade? How shall we earn a profit or have food, unless the Romans are our friends? Sigurdsen says these Britons are no friends to count on, and they have no trade-goods fit to load into a ship. Moreover, he says Glendwyr and those other British rebels that Caswallon handed over to you to man the oar-benches are useless. They can neither use the adze nor are they sailors. They will all be seasick, and they can never be trusted in a British harbor, but will run away and leave you.”

  Tros showed his teeth. That kind of talk exasperated him beyond the power of speech, as Helma well knew. She was beginning to know Tros, woman fashion, from the inside. She continued:

  “Sigurdsen says it is the Norse custom, that when one builds a ship he shall command her while she is at sea. While out of sight of the home port his word is law. But before the ship is launched, before they set sail, there are many conferences between him and the friends who have helped him build the ship, who are to sail with him and obey him. They agree as to the destination and the cargo and many other things.”

  Tros swore under his breath. He had given Sigurdsen his freedom and had no right to treat him as a slave, nor even as a prisoner of war. Besides, Sigurdsen knew ships and how to build them. Without his skillful aid there would be no hope of finishing the great trireme whose frame stood half- completed on the ways.

  “Sigurdsen says it is time to speak of all these things,” said Helma. “He says this Roman comes offering a good prospect under Caesar and good money. He advises you to take it. He says, ‘Why build a ship unless we are to use her like wise men?’”

  The Northmen at the far side of the table were standing now, those on the near side sitting with their backs to it, all of them openly, eagerly listening and ready to take part in the discussion at the first hint of encouragement.

  “Lud’s blood!” Tros thundered, using the Britons’ favorite oath. Even in a tantrum he was careful how he took in vain the names of his own familiar deities. “I have fought you once. Must I split your head again?”

  Sigurdsen sprang to his feet. Tros strode toward him, feeling for his sword; but it wasn’t there. He had forgotten that he left it at his own fireside. But Sigurdsen, too, was unarmed. The other Northmen began calling to him to protect himself, while Helma stood back against the wall, pale-faced, her eyes wide with terror, yet determined. It was she who had brought the issue to a head. If Tros should have the worst of it Caswallon might avenge him, but her standing among the Northmen would be gone forever. They would call her a weakling’s wife. And if Tros were killed —

  “Ashore or afloat I am captain. Cry out when you believe it!” Tros shouted.

  He struck at Sigurdsen with his fist in the way they used the caestus at the Olympic games, a great sledge-hammer blow that beat down the Northman’s guard and sent him staggering. Sigurdsen bellowed from surprise, not pain. He had not thought Tros would try the issue so swiftly as all that. But Tros knew he had to assert and prove supremacy that instant or forevermore yield to the opinions of his men. He was an autocrat, must be one. Autocrats must fight or become mere figureheads.

  He struck at Sigurdsen again amid a roar of voices from the forty at the table. Sigurdsen, swinging his fist like an ax, sprang in and rained blows at his head, his own body jerking and his breath in gasps as Tros pounded his ribs and stomach. They used fists for lack of room, Tros not daring to give ground and Sigurdsen, his back toward the wall, unable. Tros had to be swift to settle the business then and there before the other Northmen rallied to their man’s aid. It had to be a downright victory, no half-won fight. He feinted, then clubbed with his fist at the Northman’s ear, sending him staggering sidewise away from the wall.

  There was room then for the game Tros understood. He closed, and now the Northmen did not try to interfere; their own man was a champion who could wrestle two of them at once. They yelled, roared, upset table and benches, but kept a ring clear, crowding Helma to the outside where she could not see, until she seized a firebrand and beat her way back between them to the midst.

  Now was a trial of chieftainship that Northmen could appreciate. They valued cunning, but they worshiped muscle and the will to win. They had never felt that when Tros had conquered Sigurdsen in fight, sword against ax, the two had been fairly matched, because on that day Sigurdsen was weary from a battle with the Britons. The sword was longer than the ax. The deck on which they fought was slippery. There were a hundred other reasons. First of them that Sigurdsen was a bigger man than Tros, had been their chief and looked the stronger.

  They kept the ring, at first, because it looked as if Sigurdsen must win by sheer strength, weight, reach and fury. Then, presently, Helma beat at their faces with the firebrand. Fury availed nothing against Tros’s sudden shifts and desperate determination. Nine times in succession he threw the Northman crashing to the stamped earth floor, until all the breath was gone from him, his bellowing ceased and he was jarred into a state of almost helplessness.

  Then, the ninth time, when Sigurdsen lay and looked at him as if walls and roof were spinning before his eyes, Tros seized him by neck and leg before he could recover and hurled him into the embers on the hearth. And that was a stroke of genius.

  He rolled clear, and a Northman dowsed him with a waterbucket, but the other Northmen laughed, howled derision at him, mocked him for a fallen chief. And that gave Tros, breathless and exhausted, the one opening he would have asked for if the gods had offered him his choice that minute of all the miracles they had in store.

  “You laugh?” he gasped at them. They ceased to laugh. “You dogs! You dare to laugh at my lieutenant? I will show you who laughs last!”

  He turned to the hearth, deliberately chose a length of burning oak, rejecting one piece, then another, until he had a club that balanced neatly. He took time to breathe deep, giving Sigurdsen time to recover. He judged he knew Sigurdsen. With the corner of his eye he could see Helma, on her knees by the fallen giant. She was whispering to him. He gave them time to gather into one mob and get in one another’s way.

  “Dogs! Laugh, will you, at my man Sigurdsen!”

  He charged suddenly, beating with the firebrand at their bearded faces, those in front retreating backward against the men behind until they were all crowded against the farther wall and there was nothing for it but to defend themselves or cry submission. Then half-a-dozen sprang at him. But that gave Sigurdsen his chance. Sigurdsen stood to lose all if Tros were conquered by any but himself. Helma had made that much clear to his dazed brain.

  So Sigurdsen took another firebrand and came roaring to Tros’s aid, beating his own blood relations right and left, helping Tros to scatter them and thrash them thoroughly in detail, Helma screaming to them all the while to get down on their knees and cry submission. There were a dozen of them down, unconscious from blows on the head, when the riot began outside. The din within was nothing.

  The wooden walls thundered like a drum as men in the outer dark threw clods and sticks against them from three sides. Some one pounded on the door, which made Tros laugh, because the door was not locked. Mingled with the shrieking of the wind under the eaves there was a tumult of men’s voices.

  “Hold!”

  Tros threw his hand up. The gods, it seemed the very universe was on his side that night! The Northmen rallied to him instead of to one another, rallied against a common danger.

  “Sticks!” he commanded, and they ran to rake the faggots over, crying to him he should have let them keep their weapons where they ate
and slept. Whereat he laughed again.

  “Helma!” he commanded. She stood beside him.

  “Go to that door and open it. Have speech with them.”

  No doubt who they were. Glendwyr, the British rebels and the sentenced prisoners whom Caswallon had spared and given to him to labor in the shipyard and man oar-benches afterwards, were outside clamoring, eager to take the winning side, whichever that might be. If they had had weapons —

  Tros motioned to Sigurdsen and half-a-dozen Northmen to stand between him and the door. He did not want it known too soon which side had won the argument. Helma opened the door, shielding her face against the blast of icy wind. But the man who entered first was Conops, ducking low and running. He blinked at the light, caught sight of Tros behind the Northmen, ran to him breathless and said hoarsely:

  “Quick, master, before they burn the ship!”

  “Have they started to burn it?”

  “No, master. It snows and—”

  “Find Skell and bring him here alive to me!” Tros answered.

  Conops vanished, ducking out again into the storm. Then Glendwyr stood in the doorway, peering past Helma, with the wild look in his eyes that reckless men of breeding have who foresee opportunity to rewin freedom. He looked ragged in his sheepskins. He was like a wild man.

  “Have you killed him?” he asked, for he had seen Conops run, and he interpreted that to mean what he hoped it did.

  “Northmen! Join me! I will lead you to the woods and freedom! We will seize a town and—”

  Tros stepped forward. The sight of him froze the word on the youngster’s lips; he turned to shout to the men behind him, but not soon enough. Tros charged, with Sigurdsen and all the Northmen at his back, sweeping Helma to one side. They poured through the door as if the place were on fire behind them, striking right and left at shadowy Britons, who broke and ran, screened almost instantly from vision by the driving snow. Young Glendwyr struggled in Tros’s grasp. Tros had him by the throat and shook him as he rolled and swayed toward the long huts that were the Britons’ quarters shook and choked him half unconscious, then dragged him, his heels leaving ruts in the snow.

  The snow had put the fires out. There was no light except what came through the open door behind them, where Helma stood framed in the glow. The Northmen were quartering the darkness, calling, pursuing a few Britons who had lagged behind the rest. Sigurdsen raced through the murk to make sure the ship was all right. Then, light ahead and a stream of Britons pouring into the biggest of their own huts.

  “Fools!” Tros muttered. “Why didn’t they fire the thatch?”

  Fire was the one danger that he dreaded.

  Glendwyr was senseless. Tros hove him over-shoulder, carried him, head and toes down, like a half-filled sack.

  “Northmen!” he roared. “Northmen!”

  They began to gather toward him, looming in twos and threes out of the murk. Then Sigurdsen came, floundering and slipping, to report the ship unharmed. The light vanished suddenly.

  “Open that door!” Tros commanded.

  Sigurdsen and two others kicked the door inward, breaking the leather hinges. Tros hove young Glendwyr in both hands and pitched him through the opening into the midst of his discouraged friends. Then he strode in, Sigurdsen and all the Northmen following.

  It was a big room, nearly a hundred feet long, with mud and wattle walls, except in the midst of one long side, where there was a stone hearth and a section of stone wall for the fire to burn against, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. There was a big fire, damped by snow that blew in through the hole, and all the space under the thatch was blue with stinging smoke. The floor was a litter of blankets, sheep-skins with the fleece on, wolf-skins, anything that would serve for bedding and, as in the other hut, there was a long, strong table down the midst.

  The Britons backed away beyond the table, crowding at the far end of the room, where their faces, framed in the smoke and in their own long hair, scowled and gaped like bodyless phantoms. Some of them had dragged young Glendwyr with them. He was standing now, feeling his throat where Tros’s fingers had wrenched it, leaning against two men, gagging and gasping, but recovering his wits.

  Tros took a stick from Sigurdsen and rapped the table with it. Silence fell, in which hardly a man breathed.

  “Are you all here?” he demanded. “Or are there Britons in the other huts?”

  None answered. He sent a Northman to go and look. The Northman came back at the end of a couple of minutes with his scalp bleeding where some one had cracked it open with a stick.

  “Sigurdsen, take ten men and bring me those Britons here!” Sigurdsen went, taking the ten who were nearest to him. Then Helma came bringing Tros’s sword, and he buckled it on with the hilt well forward, but did not draw it from the sheath.

  “Let the rest of us bring weapons!” said a Northman in his ear, but he brushed the man aside and did not answer. He had the armory key in the pouch under his tunic and proposed to keep it there until this fight was won.

  There was nothing more said until Sigurdsen and his ten came driving thirty Britons in a herd in front of them. The new-comers protested noisily that they had had nothing to do with the riot. But Tros demanded which of them had split a Northman’s scalp and, receiving no answer, seized the nearest. The man yelled denial, offering to name the culprit, but Tros shook him until his teeth chattered and then flung him toward the far end of the room. He fell on all fours and crawled the remainder of the distance.

  “Down to the far end, all of you!”

  They backed away, forcing themselves into the crowd. None except young Glendwyr seemed to want to be in that front rank. But he, still holding to two men for support, stood so far in front that the smoke was like a pall between those three and the others. Tros rapped at the table again, but there was no need, there was already silence.

  “The next slave who strikes a freeman shall die!” he announced. There was a long pause while he let that ultimatum sink in.

  “Kill me now!” said Glendwyr.

  He could hardly speak for the contusion of his throat.

  Tros turned to look at Helma. He was curious to see what she might have to say to that request. But Helma was gone again. “This night I will kill no man,” Tros announced. “You are a slave, Glendwyr. You are all slaves. You have no right to live or die without my bidding. These Northmen are freemen. They were my prisoners of war. I set them free. You Britons were rebels against your lawful king; beaten rebels and traitors, given to me in bondage by the king you would have slain. But for me, you would have been burned alive in wicker baskets, six to a basket, tied and roasted slowly, as I am told the custom is with felons.”

  They could not gainsay that. He was talking in their own language truth that each man knew. They were lucky. Three good meals a day, and not such terribly hard work, although they did not like to work so regularly. Tros had not even supplied the Northmen overseers with whips. And strangely enough they did not mind having Northmen set over them. They had no sense of national hatred, although Northmen were hereditary enemies. Only Glendwyr retorted:

  “Lord Tros, I am a chief’s son!”

  “You were,” Tros answered. “You forfeited your heritage by treason. You have it to win again by good faith. I hold no man irretrievably a slave. I set him free when he deserves it. The task is yours to earn freedom. The right of judgment mine.”

  “How long?” asked Glendwyr.

  “Pluto! Is it I who stand at judgment?” Tros retorted. “Know this: I will never set one of you free as long as you rebel against me! I know what happened. Skell came, half a Northman and half Briton — false to both! To the Northmen he said, ‘Bid Tros join the Romans,’ hoping that would reach Caswallon’s ears and make the king my enemy. To you he said, ‘Tros has joined the Romans and Caswallon will slit his throat!’ Then when you thought my Northmen had slain me, you feared Caswallon would fall heir to you all again and throw you into Lunden jail. So you summoned the Nort
hmen to make common cause with you and take to the woods and be outlaws.”

  “Skell said you intended to sell us to the Romans for their galleys and receive trained rowers in our place,” a man piped up from the smoke-cloud behind Glendwyr.

  “And you fools listened to him! Well, that is no way to win freedom. Shall I put you in chains? Would you work better in fetters?”

  They murmured there was no need. Only Glendwyr was silent.

  “Now young Glendwyr,” said Tros, “shall I flog you?”

  “No,” said Glendwyr.

  But he did not say why not or inflect his voice at all persuasively. Tros stroked his beard.

  “I will make no bargain with you, and I will not kill you,” he said, speaking slowly. “But if you do not believe I am your master, you would better have your mind changed now, for it will hurt worse later on. Come here.”

  Glendwyr hesitated, but one of the other Britons pushed him from behind. He came forward slowly beside the long table, leaning his hand on it to support himself, for his legs were still unsteady.

  “You are a slave. I may not fight you, even if I would. Why shall I not flog you?” Tros asked.

  “There is no need,” Glendwyr answered. “I submit. If there were one man here who would stand with me, I would be in the woods now. But they ran, as they ran when I rebelled against Caswallon. I despise them. I submit.”

  “The man who despises his men always must submit,” Tros answered. He turned away from him because there was a new noise outside, seeming to come from beyond the picket fence. A squeaking of wheels in the snow, the stamp and snort of winded horses and a bold voice shouting, but what the words were Tros could not hear. Then there came a crash as part of the picket fence went down before an onslaught of some kind, horses and wheels, a shout again, and a man leaped through the doorway — none less than Caswallon, fur-clad, brandishing a spear.

  “How now, Tros?” he asked, laughing as he took in the situation. “Helma sent word by the slave-girl that you were in danger from your men.”