by Harold Lamb
Only one of the ship’s company (Peter explained) showed fear on the island.
When the frost came, this solitary man, Biorn by name, sat much by the fire with his bearskin cloak across his back. A far-wandering man, Biorn, who kept his long-hafted ax close to his hand and his thoughts to himself. Mildly he thanked the girl Kristi when she brought him a bowl of broth and fresh bread at mealtime.
Kristi was pleased because they had found much good on the island, including the silvery bark from which she made cups. She made herself a bower of branches apart from the men, because she was then of an age to be wed. Yet the solitary Biorn looked up at the pattern of stars over the fir forest and said there was ill as well as good to be found in this land where no men before them had made a road.
First he spoke his fear when Kristi put on the dress of gossamer cloth and the necklet of silver that Thord had given her, both. Kristi wore mittens that she had made herself from sheep's wool, and they were wet and cold with the night dew.
This Biorn looked up at her with his crooked smile. "Give them to me and I will hang them on a rainbow to dry.”
"There is no rainbow.” Kristi smiled at the odd, wild way he had. "Now it seems to me, Drowsy Biorn, you do not like my dress, because you say nothing about it.”
She was then childlike, thinking much of her appearance and the things she had to herself in her bower. Biorn ran his fingers through her hair, shining in the firelight.
"The dress is fair,” he conceded, "but not so fair as this.”
And he stroked the hair back fondly from her shoulder. She let him do it. Still, the sight irked Thord, who watched them. This Thord was a man of mark, a wielder of weapons and part owner of the lading of our ship. His messmates called him Thinking Thord because he could think of a way out of trouble.
Thord came over to stand between the twain of them and the fire. "Now it is to be seen, Biorn,” said he, "that you have a hand more skilled in stroking a woman’s tresses than in using a weapon.”
"It is pleasanter to do,” agreed Biorn, not taking his hand from Kristi’s head.
Thinking Thord had a mind to make a bride of Kristi, and he had made gifts to her to set her mind that way. She was kindly and quick and ripe for love. "Men say that you have skill to use that poleax. Is it true?” He set his foot on the long haft of the ax that Biorn cherished.
At once Biorn sprang up, pulling his ax clear. And their messmates of the ship hurried to form a ring around them to see the better. For this Biorn was lonely and apart from them by reason of his nature. Aye, he was berserk-born. He had in him the berserk wildness that drives a man to cast off what covers him in battle and rush in where the blood is running to slay whatever stands in his way.
When Biorn stepped back and swung his ax the bright steel whined. He could make it sing like that in the air. Watching him; Thord stepped back and picked up a shield. His sword was heavier than most, but no sword could turn the sweep of a poleax in a berserk’s hand. "Now I see that you have a strong body,” said he, "and I am ready to make a test of it.”
But Biorn turned aside and struck the blade of the ax deep into the trunk of the nearest tree. The haft quivered when he loosed it.
"Then pull it away, man,” he urged.
After looking at the imbedded ax, Thord shook his head. "A trick is easy to play. You will find it harder to stand against my sword.”
"That I will never do.”
So it seemed to the messmates watching them that Biorn, berserk or not, had a weak heart. He pulled the ax blade clear himself and it whined as it came away. Then, with no more words spoken, he had put some coals from the fire into the small iron pot he carried and took up his bearskin to go away.
"Why do you leave us?” Kristi asked him.
Then Biorn spoke of the fear in him. "Harm will come if I do not, little Kristi,” said he with his crooked smile. "Good is this land, with fish in the streams and wine berries in the thickets, but ill is the company gathered upon its shore. . . . Now, hear me,” said he to Thord, the man of mark, and to the messmates, "if any harm comes to Kristi, I will come back among you.”
"Easy to say,” Thord mocked him, "harder to do.”
After Biorn had become outcast in this way to go into the forest, the affairs of those who remained at the ship went well enough. Some of the vikings said that they had heard how Biorn once in his wanderings served as axman in the guard of the emperor at Mikligard, and there, when drunk, Biorn had taken up his ax and hewed through the body of a messmate, swearing when the wine went out of his head that he would never again take up his weapon against a messmate. It may be that the tale had reached the ear of Thinking Thord.
However that might be, Thord did well for himself in the island of the sea. Great weight of timber he had cut and dried for the lading of the ship. Many kegs of wine berries Kristi crushed and strained to make a sweet wine. Thick wool grew on the sheep that fed in the rich pastures. Still Thord was not satisfied, because they had done no worthwhile trading.
He wanted furs to take back when they voyaged home. He promised Kristi she would have a gift of a white robe of gossamer to be wed in. Yet the only furs of the island were in the hands of the skraellings, the shy, beastlike natives who came only to the forest’s edge. They had long tufts of hair on their heads and the soft skins of animals fastened around their bodies.
"Tell Biorn you want to traffic with them,” Kristi suggested.
It seemed to her that if Biorn dwelt alone in the forest he might know how to treat with the islanders, but Thord did not think so. Carefully Thord devised a method of his own for trading, putting out small gifts where the skraellings could see them and take them; then making clear that they should do the same. It was a common method in the new lands, and by degrees the skraellings of their island began to leave fine furs to exchange for milk and kegs which had little value. Then Thord wanted greatly to have the gold armbands of the skraellings, who ventured now close to his hut to trade.
In their turn they craved a sword such as his, which he was not willing to yield up. So it came to this, that Thord snatched one of the gold bands while he kept his sword, frightening the skraellings with the flash of it.
Then they began to run about, crying out and snatching up their possessions. When they fled they caught up Kristi from her small bower and carried her off. They ran like deer back into the forest.
Thord and his messmates followed after the woman. In the forest they found no road nor did they see hide nor hair of the angered skraellings. When they scattered to search over hill and dale arrows flew out at them. There was nothing more they could do in the forest, so they turned back to the shore.
It happened otherwise with the berserk, Biorn, who was roused by the hue and cry. Because he had hunted the forest he knew its tracks, and swiftly he ran to the town of the skraellings.
Night had fallen when he walked through the paling, at the entrance where the fire blazed. Since he was only one man with an ax on his shoulder, no one stood in his way, although scores watched him.
When he walked past the fire to where Kristi lay, bound fast at the knees, the skraellings cast a loop of a rope woven from vine tendrils around his body; when he strained at the tightening rope, an arrow struck his side.
He called out, "Are you hurt, little Kristi? I have a splinter in me.”
Then he heard the howling of the savage folk, and saw them running at him with hatchets and clubs. The wildness in him swept up like a flood. He freed an arm from the rope and swung the long ax about him. He leaped to the side, spinning the ax; he leaped back to the fire, and the blade of it crushed the bones of those in his way. Arrows missed him as he shouted and sprang about in berserk rage.
Fear came into the skraellings at this slaying among them. They ran from the fire. Biorn caught up Kristi, setting her upon his shoulder. Out from the paling he ran into the forest the way he had come. But he breathed heavily because of the hurt in his side. No one followed them.
When they came to a running stream he set her down and lay down to drink. In the water flickered the light of the stars by which he was taking his way. Kristi looked at the water, waiting for him to get back his strength.
She asked him, "If I wanted a rainbow to set in my hair, could you get me one?”
"Certainly,” Biorn said.
In the dim light Peter Duns lifted his thin arms, tense as if they were steel to carry a woman through the forest. For an instant I had a queer impression that Margie and not the woman of the island was lying waiting helplessly in the forest.
The ringing of the telephone startled me because I had not thought Peter owned anything so modern. Before he could answer it, Margie darted over and untangled the instrument from a pile of magazines.
"Margaret Grier speaking,” she said, and after a moment . . ."yes, I want to. Thank you for calling.”
So she had been waiting for a telephone call. "They won’t tell me anything yet,” she informed Peter, "but the nurse said I can come back now if I’ll not be emotional and try to talk.” Drawing a mirror and lipstick from her bag, she said evenly, "Thanks for the bedtime story, Peter . . . after I pulled you out of bed to talk to me.” Then she dropped her bag and gadgets to throw her arms around the little man. "Oh, Peter!”
And she hurried out the door, her slippers sliding in the snow. Although Margie didn’t seem to realize that I existed, I followed her. I couldn’t very well let a young woman in a state of quiet hysteria walk the streets alone at two in the morning.
Margie kept on hurrying, skirting the elms of the university to follow the snowed-in car track up to the hospital. She went on to the light over the door with the sign, Emergency.
"Thank you for walking me home,” she whispered, and glanced up at my face for the first time, "Doctor Marly.” It felt as if she had flung me a kiss,so flushed and radiant her face was under the light.
I only knew there must have been an accident, and Margie was unhappy and terribly frightened. Back in my library I switched on the reading lights to look at the familiar rare maps framed on the walls above the books in their fine French leather bindings and the examination papers piled on my desk. Then I thought, This has been my world; I have never been outside it.
Because Margie’s hurrying wet feet and the echo of the sirens and Peter’s chanting voice still preoccupied my mind, I went outside my door for the morning paper, which I rarely bother to read. I was thinking that Peter must have mastered the style of the viking sagas—he had one edition of the so called Flatey Book on his shelves—when the story of the shooting at the Mariners’ Nook leaped out of the newsprint at me. At once I called Phil Kennedy, my source of information as to campus matters. He was not surprised.
"Yes, I’d been wondering about Steve Ordvik’s record myself. Maybe he ought to have been a poet, with that wild streak in him. The football trouble was with his own team, the Pre-Flight one. A guy was tackled by two or three of them. I can’t name the game, but Steve made that tackle, low, on the one-yard line. It happens about once a year, but it does happen. The guy’s spine was splintered at his skull and he died about the time Steve washed out as an Army pilot. Yes, Steve walked off the field and out of football. Period. Some fellows get all the bad breaks and don’t know what to do about it. They just quit. Did you hear about last night?”
Between the garrulous Kennedy and the reticent morning paper I was able to reconstruct what happened at the roadhouse on Route 7, the Mariners’ Nook.
It was not far out of town, but students do not frequent it as a rule. Steve had been there alone, drinking beer at a small table near the door. When Margie Grier came in with her party after the theater, the only vacant large table had been the one next him. Steve was wearing his usual old corduroys and wind jacket, while the girl was dressed for Mike’s party, and when she said hello to him he only answered a word or two. Mike wanted him to join the crowd, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he started to leave.
Before he could pay for his beers, the stick-up, as Kennedy called it, happened. Very rapidly too. The police conjectured that the car with the New York license was headed up Route 7 toward Canada, and the two men in it stopped at the Nook to get money.
One of them stayed at the door. The other had trouble for a moment convincing the people at the tables that the whole thing wasn’t a gag. The larger gunman inside the room caught up the bills from the nearest tables. Steve handed over about two dollars that he had in change, quietly enough. Mike, however, had quite a bit in his wallet, and he argued until the bigger man ripped open his coat and pulled out his wallet entire.
Until then they had not bothered Margie. "All of you,” said the big man, "stay where you are for ten minutes. Don’t get ideas.” He looked around once more and nodded at Margie. "Sunny-hair, you come with us.”
No one else said anything. Mike only stared, trying to get back into his coat. The gunmen were so quiet about it, some people still thought it was a stunt.
"We only want to borrow you, sunny-hair,” said the same man. "In half an hour you can be calling a taxi.”
It was the police theory that they wanted the girl as a shield until they got out of town. Steve had been standing up, waiting for his change.
"You two have enough spending money,” he said. "Let the woman alone.”
The man nearest him caught Margie’s wrist. And Steve did a crazy thing. He was standing with his hands empty. He flung himself low at the big fellow, striking him below the knees and smashing him back against the other at the wall.
They fired two shots. The first must have hit Steve as he made the tackle, the second when all three were on the floor. They pulled out of Steve’s grip and ran out the door. But they did not wait to take Margie with them.
When I hurried over to the emergency ward of the hospital to see if there was anything I could do, I found Steve lying very still, with his face a gray mask and an oxygen tank rigged by his cot.
Margie was by the window where he could watch her, and she still had on her party dress, without the jacket. She motioned me not to say anything.
Steve blinked up at me, moving his head toward her. "Doc, she should be in mental therapy, not here. She wants a wedding, to have one room and a gas stove.”
"Not a gas stove, Doctor Marly,” she told me. "I do my cooking in the tireless way, with gadgets that work while I don’t.... Now hush up, Steve.”
He kept on looking at her, squinting against the sunlight that streamed in around her head. "Rainbow round her shoulder,” he said.
It sounded like an echo of Peter’s words. Margie looked up at me quickly, and tried to answer Steve, but she was not able to speak.
The map is back again in Peter Duns’ dusty window. I no longer try to question him about it, because I know how it was made, with the uncharted island standing in the middle of the sea, far out from our prosaic coast. It was made by Peter Duns himself, cut with careful skill by his sharp little knives on a wood block and printed, that one copy, to hang where it would catch the eyes of students. Or anyone in the press of people passing through Perry Street.
One question I did ask him. "How many times have you told the story of that island, Peter?”
It surprised him. "Quite often, Doctor Marly.” And he explained in his apologetic way. "It’s lonely here, with only myself and all these books. I—I like to imagine things.”
I wonder if any other map maker ever managed to start ordinary people to voyaging out to the uncharted sea of life that he had never known.
The Lady and the Pirate
As soon as the elderly admiral stepped ashore from his launch at Istanbul, the pretty dark girl showed him the tomb. Since he was senior naval officer of the American Mission for Aid to Turkey, she had been chosen to show him the sights on his arrival to become technical renovator of the very small Turkish navy. She did not realize, and Terence McGowan had no chance to warn her, that she was making a mistake in introducing the admiral to anything as old as the gray tomb smack against the
blue water of the Bosporus.
When the dapper and slightly deaf admiral peered obligingly through the window of the tomb, he noticed something unusual, a pair of lanterns of massive wood gilded over, the sort of things that had been stern lights on corsair craft or galleons of Spain long ago. He said so.
"Sir, they are old as you say," explained the brunette, Miss Mary Hisarbey, brushing back her shoulder-length bob; "four centuries old. But they are not Spanish. They are the lanterns of the Captain of the Sea."
Now the admiral had a fetish for exactitude and a chronic dislike for anything out of date—after being present in the engagement of the Coral Sea. Until then, his observation of Istanbul had revealed only old minarets and a coal-burning flagship, a battle cruiser christened Yavuz Sultan Selim, that, in his opinion, might as well have been Noah's ark.
"Never heard of the rank," he grumbled.
"It was Barbarossa's," prompted his aide, Lieutenant Commander Terence McGowan, who had been a year at the Istanbul station and had grown very fond of Mary Hisarbey.
The name sounded familiar. But the admiral, unlike Terence McGowan, had read few books about the East except the Arabian Nights. Hearing the name mentioned, the crowd behind him craned forward eagerly, as if expecting him to lay a wreath. McGowan had warned him that these Turks had a great deal of pride.
"Why, he was the pirate!" cried Mary Hisarbey.
A pirate laid to rest in a tomb under galleon lanterns made no kind of sense to the admiral. Unless—"H'm-unh." He cleared his throat. "Somebody out of the Arabian Nights, eh?"
The dark girl looked as if she were going to cry, in spite of the flower spray on her shoulder lapel, and the crowd acted as if something they'd been looking for hadn't happened. Hastily, McGowan suggested they proceed up the Bosporus.