Late and fully were we feasting when the thrall-boy, tugging on the sleeve of Ivar Forkbeard, said to him, “MyJarl, the wench in the ice shed begs to be freed.”
“How long has she begged?” asked the Forkbeard.
“For more than two Ahn,” said the boy, grinning. He was male.
“Good boy,” said the Forkbeard, and tore him a piece of neat.
“Thank you, my Jarl,” said the boy. The boy, unlike the adult male thralls, was not chained at night in the bosk shed Ivar was fond of him. He slept, chained, in the kitchen.
“Red Hair, Gorrn,” said the Forkbeard. “Fetch the little Ubara of Scagnar.”
We smiled.
“Gorm,” said the Forkbeard. “Before she is freed, see that her thirst is assuaged.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Gorm.
We carried a torch to the ice shed. We opened the heavy door, lined with leather, and lifted the torch, closing the door behind us.
In the light of the torch we saw Hilda. We approached more closely.
She lay on her side, in misery, across great blocks of ice; she could lift her head and shoulders no more than six inches from the ice; she could draw her ankles toward her body no more than six inches; small chips of wood, in which the ice is packed, clung about her body; she was bound, hand and foot, her wrists behind her, her ankles crossed and tied. Two ropes prohibited her from struggling to either a sitting or kneeling position, one running from her right ankle across the ice to a ring in the side of the shed, the other runnin,~ from her throat across the ice to a similar ring on the other side of the shed.
“Please,” she wept.
Her teeth chattered; her lips were blue.
She lay before us, on her back.
“Please,” she wept, piteously, “I beg to be permitted to run to the furs of Ivar Forkbeard.”
We looked down on her. “I beg!” she cried. “I beg to be permitted to run to his furs!”
Gorm unbound the rope from her ankle, that which hadheld her legs straight, and that on her throat, which had prevented her from lifting her shoulders and head.
He did not unbind her wrists and ankles. He lifted her to a sitting position. She trembled with cold, whimpering. “I have brought you a drink,” he said. ‘Drink it eagerly, Hilda the Haughty.”
“Yes, yes!” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
Then, holding her head back, and lifting the cup to her mouth, he gave her of the drink he had brought with him.
And eagerly, whimpering, shuddering with cold, did Hilda tke Haughty drink down the slave wine.
Gorm unbound her and threw her over his shoulder; so stiff and trembling with cold, and stiff from the ropes, was she that she could not stand.
I put my hand on her body; it was like ice. She was whimpering with cold, her head hanging down, over Gorm’s back; her long hair fell to the back of his knees.
I lit the way with the torch, and we took her to the hall of the Forkbeard.
We carried her through the darkness and smoke of the hall, between the posts.
The Forkbeard was sitting on the end of his couch, his boots on the fioor.
Gorm threw her, on her knees, at the feet of the Forkbeard. Her head was down; her hair was over his boots. She trembled with cold.
Men and bond-maids gathered about.
The left side of her body was illuminated dully, redly, from the coals of the fire pit. The right side of her body was in darkness.
“Who are you?” demanded the Forkbeard.
“Hilda,” she wept, “daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.”
“Hilda the Haughty?” he asked.
“Yes,” she wept, head down, “Hilda the Haughty.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To share your furs,” she wept.
“Are you not a free woman?” he asked.
“I beg to share your furs, Ivar Forkbeard,” she wept.
He rose to his feet and shoved back a long table, and a bench, on the other side of the fire pit. With his heel he drew in the dirt of the floor a bond-maid circle.
She looked at him.
Then he gestured that she might enter his couch. Gratefully, she crawled upon the couch, his section of that furcovered, dirt sleeping level, and, trembling, shuddering with cold, drawing her body up, drew the furs about her. She lay huddled in the furs. Her body shook beneath them. We heard her moan.
“Mead!” called Ivar Forkbeard, returning to the table. Pudding was first to reach him, with a horn of mead.
“Please come to my side, Ivar Forkbeard!” wept Hilda. “I freeze! Hold me! Please hold me!”
“Let that be a lesson in passion to you other bond-maids,” laughed Ottar.
There was much laughter, and most from the beautiful, nude slaves of the men of TorvaldsIand, hot, collared, and eager in their brawny arms.
The Forkbeard, laughing, drained the horn. “Mead!” he cried. Gunnhild served him.
After this second horn of mead the Forkbeard, wiping his mouth with his arm, turned about and went to his furs.
He howled with misery.
“She is the coldest of women!” laughed Ottar.
“Hold me, Forkbeard!” she wept. “Hold me please!”
“Will you serve me well?” asked the Forkbeard.
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
But the Forkbeard did not make her serve him then but, firmIy, held her body, locked in his arms, that of his prisoner, to his, warming her. After half of an Ahn I saw her, delicately, eyes frightened, lift her head and put her lips to his shoulder; softly, timidly, she kissed him; and then looked into his eyes. Suddenly she was flung on her back and his huge hand, roughened from the hilt of the sword, the handle of the ax, was at her body. “Oh no!” she cried. “No!”
Bets were made at the table. I bet on Ivar Forkbeard. Within an Ahn, Hilda the Haughty, to the jeers of men, the taunts of bond-maids, on her hands and knees, head down, hair falling forward, crept to the circle of the bond-maid, which Ivar Forkbeard had drawn in the dirt of the hall floor between the posts. The coals of the fire pit illuminated the left side of her body. She crawled before the bond-maids the oarsmen. She entered the circle, and then, within the circle, stood up. She stood very straight, and her head was up. “I am yours, Ivar Forkbeard,” she said. “I am yours!”
He gestured to her, and she fled from the circle, to join him, to throw herself at his side, to beg his touch, his bondmaid.
I collected nine tarn disks and two pieces of broken plate, plundered two years ago from a house on the eastern edge of Skjern.
Gunnhild had been given by the Forkbeard to Gorm for the night. I saw him holding her by the arm and pushing her ahead of him to his furs. This night her ankle wouId be held by his fetter, — not that of the Forkbeard. The Forkbeard had offered me Pudding, but, generously, thinking to have Thyri, I had, after using her once, given her for the night to Ottar. Even now she was, kneeling on his furs, being fettered by the keeper of Ivar Forkbeard’s farm. You can imagine my irritation when I saw Thyri led past me, her left wrist in the grip of an oarsman. She looked over her shoulder at me, agonized. I blew her a kiss in the Gorean fashion, kissing and gesturing, my fingers at the right side of my mouth, almost vertical, then, with the kiss, brushing gently toward her. I had no special claim on-the pretty little bond-maid, no more than any other among t~he Forkbeard’s men. The delicious little thing, like the other goods of the hall, was, for most practical purposes, for the use of us all. I heard the movements of chain, the moans of the bondmaids in the arms of their masters, men of-Torvaldsland.
I thought I would sleep alone this night.
“Tarl Red Hair,” I heard.
I followed the sound of the voice and, to my delight, as Ottar had left her, she slipping his mind apparently, as she had mine, her hands still tied before her, about the post, kneeling in the dirt, was Olga.
“I hate you, Tarl Red Hair,” she said.
I knelt beside her. I had intended to permit her to smolder for a time, she much aroused, and then later, when she had been much heated with need and desire, when, cruelly deprived, she had been aching to break into flame, throw her to my furs, but, unfortunately, I had forgotten about her.