“Should the Forkbeard not have returned by now?” I asked.
“He is coming now,” said Gorm.
I peered through the darkness. Some hundred yards away, difficult to see, was the longboat. I heard the oars, in good rhythm, lifting and dipping. The oar stroke’s spacing was such that I knew them not in flight.
Then I saw the Forkbeard at the tiller. The longboat scraped gently at the side of the serpent.
“Did you obtain the ransom money?” I asked.
“Yes,” said he, lifting a heavy bag of gold in his hand.
“You were long,” I said.
“It took time to weigh the gold,” he said. “And there was some dispute as to the accuracy of the scales.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the Forkbeard. “The weights of Gurt of Kassau were too light.”
“I see,” I said.
“Here is the gold,” he said, hurling the sack to Gorm. “One hundred and twenty pieces.”
“The scales of Gurt of Kassau, I see,” I said, “weighed lightly indeed.”
“Yes,” laughed the Forkbeard. He then threw other purses to Gorm.
“What are these?” I asked.
“The purses of those who were with Gurt of Kassau,” he said.
I heard a moan from the longboat, and saw something, under a fur of sea sleen, move.
The Forkbeard threw off the fur, revealing the proud Aelgifu, bound hand and foot, gagged, lying in the bottom of the boat. She still wore her black velvet. She looked up, her eyes terrified. The Forkbeard lifted her up to Gorm. “Put her in the coffle,” he told him.
Aelgifu was carried to where the bond-maids, perfectly restrained, lay. The binding fiber on her wrists was removed. Her hands were fettered behind her. The coffle rope was looped about her throat, and knotted. Gorm left her ankles, like those of the bond-maids, securely bound.
I helped the Forkbeard and his men lift the longboat to the deck. It was tied down on the after quarter, keel up.
Suddenly an arrow struck the side of the ship.
“Free the serpent!” called the Forkbeard. “Benches!” The two anchor hooks, fore and aft, were raised. They resemble heavy grappling hooks. Their weight, apiece, is not great, being little more than twenty-five Gorean stone, or about one hundred Earth pounds. They are attached to the ship not by chain but by tarred rope. The men of the Forkbeard scurried to their benches. I heard the thole-port caps turned back, and the oars thrust through the wood.I could see, from the shore, black and dark, more than a dozen small boats, containing perhaps ten or fifteen men each, moving towards us. Two more arrows struck the ship. Others slipped past in the darkness, their passage marked by the swift whisper of the feathers and shaft.
“To sea!” called the Forkbeard. “Stroke!”
The serpent turned its prow to sea, and the oars moved down, entered the water, and pulled against it.
“Stroke!” called the Forkbeard.
The serpent slipped away. The Forkbeard stood angrily at the rail, looking back at the small flotilla of boats, dark in the night.
He turned to his men. “Let this be a lesson to you,” he called to them, “never trust the men of Kassau!”
At the oars the men struck up a rowing song.
“And what did you do with Gurt and those with him on the skerry?” I asked.
“We left them naked,” said the Forkbeard. Then he looked aft, at the small boats falling behind. “It seems these days,” he said, “one can trust no one.”
Then he went to the bond-maids. “Remove their gags,” he sald.
Their gags were removed, but they dared not speak. They were bond-maids. Their bodies, bound, loot, prizes of the Forkbeard lying in the darkness, among the glint of the gold taken in the sack of Kassau’s temple, were very beautiful.
The Forkbeard freed Aelgifu of her gag.
“It seems,” he said, “that last night was not the last night which you will spend in my bondage.”
“You took ransom money! “ she cried. “You took ransom! “
“I have taken more than ransom money,” said he, “my large-breasted beauty.”
“Why did you not free me?” she cried.
“I want you,” he said. Then he looked at her. “I said only, you might remember,” said he, “that I would take your ransom money. Never did I say that I would exchange you for those paltry moneys. Never did I say, my pretty one, that I would permit you, so luscious a wench as you, to escape my fetters.”
She struggled, her head turned to one side, her wrists locked behind her in the black iron of the north.
Her ankles were bound. The coffle rope was on her throat. She was miserable.
“Welcome to the coffle,” said he.
“I am free,” she cried.
“Now,” he said.
She shuddered.
“You are too pretty to ransom,” he informed her, and turned away. To Gorm, he said, “Feed her on the gruel of bond-maids.”
Chapter 6 Ivar Forkbeard’s long hall
There was a great cheer from the men of Ivar Forkbeard. The serpent turned slowly between the high cliffs, and entered the inlet. Here and there, clinging to the rock, were lichens, and small bushes, and even stunted trees. The water below us was deep and cold.
I felt a breeze from inland, coming to meet the sea.
The oars lifted and fell. The sail fell slack, and rustled, stirred in the gentle wind from inland. Men of Torvaldsland reefed it high to the spar. The rowing song was strong and happy in the lusty throats of the crew of the Forkbeard. The serpent took its way between the cliffs, looming high on each side. Ivar Forkbeard, at the prow, lifted a great, curved bronze horn and blew a blast. I heard it echo among the cliffs. Amidships, crowded together, standing, facing the starboard side of the vessel, were the bond-maids and Aelgifu. She wore still her black velvet. They were in throat coffle; their wrists were fettered before their bodies. They looked upon the new country, harsh, forbidding, which was to be their home.
I heard, perhaps from a pasang away, up the inlet, between the cliffs, the winding of a horn.
Soon, I gathered, we would be at Forkbeard’s landfall.
“Put her,” said Forkbeard, indicating the slender, blond girl, “at the prow.”
She was quickly removed from the coffle and unfettered. Gorm put a rope on her neck and pulled her to the prow, She was held by another crewman, he fastened her at the prow. Her back was bent over it. Her wrists and ankles drawn back, were tied at its sides. She was roped to it, too, at the belly and throat.Again Ivar Forkbeard winded the great bronze horn. In several seconds an answering blast echoed between the cliffs. The oars lifted and dipped. The men sang.
“Hang gold about the ship!” he cried.
Candlesticks and cups were hung on strings from the prow. Plates, with iron nails, were pounded against the mast. Golden hangings were draped like banners at the gunwales. Then the ship turned a bend between the cliffs, and, to my astonishment I saw a dock, of rough logs, covered with adzed boards, and a wide, sloping area of land, of several acres, green, though strewn with boulders, with short grass. There was a log palisade some hundred yards from the dock. High on the cliff, I saw a lookout, a man with a horn. Doubtless it had been he whom we had heard. From his vantage, high on the cliff, on his belly, unseen, he would have been able to see far down the inlet. He stood now and waved the bronze horn in his hand. Forkbeard waved back to him.
I saw four small milk bosk grazing on the short grass. In the distance, above the acres, I could see mountains, snow capped. A flock of verr, herded by a maid with a stick, turned, bleating on the sloping hillside. She shaded her eyes. She was blond; she was barefoot; she wore an ankle-length white kirtle, of white wool, sleeveless, split to her belly. About her neck I could see a dark ring.
Men were now running from the palisade and the fields down to the dock. They were bare-headed, and wore shaggy jackets. Some wore trousers of skin, others tunics of dyed wool. I saw too, fields, fenced with rocks, in the sloping area. In them were growing, small at this season, shafts ol Sa-Tarna; too, there would be peas, and beans, cabbages and onions, and patches of the golden sul, capable of surviving at this latitude. I saw small fruit trees, and hives, where honey bees were raised; and there were small sheds, here and there, with sloping roofs of boards; in some such sheds might craftsmen work; in others fish might be dried or butter made. Against one wall of the cliffwas a long, low shed; in that the small bosk, and the verr, might be housed in the winter, and there, too, would be stored their feed; another shed, thick, with heavy logs, in the shadow of the cliff, would be the ice house, where ice from the mountains, brought down on sledges to the valley, would be kept, covered with chips of wood.