She was going toward the sea-shore and presently I saw her slight form outlined against the cloud-flecked sky. She was standing upon a great rock, gazing sea-ward, her rippling hair floating in the sea-breeze.
A dainty, lovely thing, scarce more than a girl-child – and she was to marry the son of the chief.
Had those beautiful eyes seen in me more than a common artizan of the village? Had there been a certain wistfullness in their gaze?
I, but an ordinary Pictish tribesman, he, the son of the chief of the tribe – yet I had seen her shrink from him.
He was a cruel man, was Neroc, son of the chief and Mea-lah was made to be caressed and used tenderly. But her father was councilor –
I shrugged my shoulders and bent to work on the spear.
But now and again I looked up, to gaze at Mea-lah, standing on the rock by sea-shore.
From the sea came merchants, in those days, and traders. Tyrians and Phoenecians from Spain.
We were not a sea-faring people, but to us the sea was all that was strange and romantic, for the merchants and traders told us of lands afar off and of strange people and strange seas.
Mea-lah had always spent much time on the sea-shore, playing with the wavelets, tripping about the beach or lying upon the sand, gazing toward the blue haze that marked the far horrizon, dreaming dreams.
And I watched the girl dumbly, dreaming my own dreams, yearning for her.
And one I came to the door of my wattle hut, to see strange, long, black ships sweeping in from the sea. Long oars and sail swept them them swiftly forward. And they were crowded with men strange to us, huge, fierce men, with winged helmets and fair hair and long, fair, beards, who shook spears and long swords and roared strange, heathen, war-cries.
The ships swung inshore. These were no Phoenecian traders, no African merchants. They were warriors, pirates, from the far North.
They were Norsemen, Vikings. Some of the first of the fierce races that harried the coasts of Britain for centuries after.
They swept down on the Pictish village with fire and sword.
The Picts were not warriors. They could not stand before the giant Vikings with their iron and bronze armor and their great swords.
We fled from the village, men, women and children, the men but seeking to cover the retreat of the women and children.
The Norsemen took the offensive, ever, hurling themselves into the battle with a recklessness that the Picts had never seen equalled. The Picts, on the other hand, fought only on the defensive, ever retreating, and when the women and the children had found safety in the forest, the Pictish men broke away and fled in every direction. Many of them were cut down, among them Neroc, the chief’s son.
I was making for the forest, with some speed, glancing back from time to time toward the village, where the Norsemen were tearing the wattle huts to pieces in search of loot and women who might be hiding.
Some of them were leaping and branishing their weapons in some kind of a wild dance, others roaring uncouth war-songs, others applying the torch to the huts.
Nearer to me were scattered groups of warriors, pursuing the fleeing Pictish men and any Pictish women who had not dissapeared into the forest.
The screams of women rose above the clash of swords and the savage war-cries.
And then I heard my name called.
“Merak! Merak!”
And I saw who called me. Mea-lah struggled in the arms of a huge Norseman who carried her as if she was an infant.
Her beautiful dark eyes were wide, her lovely face white with terror and the horror of fear. Her soft arms were out-streched to me, appealingly, imploringly.
And I saw the red mist of rage and charged the Norseman, silently, savagely.
The Norseman, turning, saw but a Pict armed with a long bronze dagger, rushing at him.
With a roaring laugh, he shifted the struggling girl, and holding her helpless under one mighty arm, with the other raised a great sword to exterminate the presumptious Pictish fool that dared to charge a Norseman.
He was arrogantly over-confident and could not have gaged the speed at which I was coming. The great sword had scarcely reached the highest point of its upward arc, when I darted in under his arm and stabbed him thrice, driving the dagger through crevices in his corselet of iron.
With a bellow he staggered backward, his sword spinning from his grasp. He crashed to the ground, his thick, yellow beard pointing upward, the girl dropping from his arms as he fell.
I snatched her up and pushed her toward the forest. Without pausing to see whether sh made for it or not, I turned to meet the rush of three other Norsemen, who were charging down upon me with savage shouts.
But I had learned one thing. I was much quicker than the Norsemen and lighter on my feet.
As they swept down upon me, I ducked under the side-swing of a sword and tripped the wielder so that he fell sprawling. The flat of another’s sword struck me a staggering blow across the head but I rallied and lunging forward, I plunged my dagger to the hilt in the Norseman’s breast, wrenching it out as he fell.
The other Viking had stopped several yards away and was poising a long spear over his shoulder to throw.
I flung my dagger with all my force against his breast. As he lunged forward he hurled the spear but the shaft only struck me a glancing blow on the forest.
I staggered and someone caught me, supporting me. It was Mea-lah.
My senses were reeling, but I caught her by the hand and we fled into the forest.
The Norsemen did not care to follow the Picts into the thick forest and soon we were safe.
Then I leaned against a great tree, spent and weak, but happy.
And then I felt soft arms about my neck, soft hair falling about my face and rippling down over my shoulders, a soft, slender, girl-ish form clinging and nestling in my arms, soft lips against mine. Mea-lah.
I was Lakur the archer in the land of Kita. We were a war-like people and many and many a time have I marched through the great gates of Carchemish, with hundreds and sometimes thousands, of bowmen and swordmen and spearmen and chariot drivers.
We fought in defense of our country, for the most part, and we had wars enough at that.
Sometimes the armies came back through the great gates of Carchemish, straggling, defeated; more often with long trains of loot-filled wains and captives, strong men, handsome children and young women for slaves.
In the first-mentioned event, old men and women and the soldiers of the city manned the wall and prepared to hold the city.
In the latter, the whole great populace turned out and made a gala day and the loot was distributed and the slaves sold.
Speaking of slaves, there was a proverb, “Better a slave among the Hittites than a free man in Assyria.”
For we Hittites were famous for our mild treatment of prisoners and slaves. Fierce and savage we were in war, but in peace we were a fair and just people. We had none of the Semitic cruelty, and we were of a different race than the other tribes of Canaan.
It is not recorded in history that captives taken in war begged to be sold among the Hittites but it is the truth.
It was no law that caused the indulgence of slaves, but the leniency of the Hittite nature. I cannot explain why the Hittites were more kindly disposed than the other tribes of Canaan but the fact remains that they were.
Once we marched through the gates of Carchemish to oppose a mighty army that came from the East across the desert, laying waste the country as they came.
Assyrians they were, the warriors of of the fiercest and most war-like nation that early Asia ever knew.
They were led by a great general, a mighty man of valour, whose skill was so great that few tribes dared resist his army, and whose savage cruelty surpassed his skill and valour.
Where e’re the Assyrian army went, looting, murder, fire and rapine were. They slew men, women and children, sparing only the most beautiful of the young women for slaves and concubines.