“There,” said Ivar, pointing.
They caught her north of the bosk herd. We could see her white body, and the dark, sinuous, furred shapes converging upon it. Then she was surrounded, and she stopped. Then the spleen opened a passage for her, indicating to her which direction she was to go. Where else she turned she was met with the fangs and hisses of the accompanying animals. When she tried to move in any direction other than that of the opened passage they snapped at her, viciously. A single snap could tear off a hand or foot. Then two of the sleen fell in behind her and, snarling and snapping at her heels, drove her before them. We saw her fleeing before them, trying to escape the swift, terrible jaws. We feared, more than once, that they would kill her. A female who cannot be herded is destroyed by the herding sleen.
In the northwest quadrant of the camp was the herd of verr; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. The bosk were penned at the southern end of the camp. Near the center of the camp but somewhat to the south and east of the center, behind its poles and crossbars, lashed together, was a different herd of Kurii livestock. It was to this pen that the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, running before the snapping, snarling sleen, was driven. She darted between the crossbars and, in a moment, no longer harried by sleen, found herself on the trampled turf within, another member of the herd. It was as we had planned. The sleen now resumed their rounds, patrolling the perimeter of the pen. The new animal had been added to the herd. They were no longer interested in it, unless it should attempt to leave the pen. We saw Hilda, a speck in the grayish light, hurrying to the herd within, it huddled on the damp, soiled, trampled turf.
“I wish,” said Ivar Forkbeard, “that I had such a herd.’
The herd, indeed, consisted of sleek, beautiful animals, fair and two-legged. There must have been three or four thousand chattels confined in the great pen.
“Some of the girls are yours,” I reminded him.
“And I intend to have them back,” he said. In that herd, I surmised, were several of our women, Thyri, Aelgifu or Pudding, Gunnhild, OIga, Pouting Lips, Pretty Ankles, the former Miss Stevens of Connecticut, now Honey Cake, the girl named Leah, from Canada, whose last name was of no interest, and others. Too, among them now, prisoner, was Hilda, perhaps Ivar’s preferred slave.
Hilda, even now, would be conveying our instructions to the frightened girls, for the most part, bond-maids. We would soon see if such feared sleen and Kurii more, or Goreanmales, their masters. If they did not obey, they would be slain. As slaves, they were commanded; as slaves, did they fail to comply, they would be put to death. They had no choice. They would obey.
The sun was now sharp and beautiful on the heights of the Torvaldsberg.
“Tie on the scarves,” said Svein Blue Tooth. The word slipped from man to man. On the other side of the valley, too, men would be performing the same action. Each of us tied about our left shoulder a yellow scarf. It was by such a device that the Kurii had recognized their confederates in the men of Thorgard of Scagnar. We would, too, wear such scarves. This was our vengeance on those who had betrayed their kind.
“Loosen your weapons,” said Svein Blue Tooth. The men shifted. Swords were withdrawn from scabbards; arrows were fitted to the string, spears more firmly gripped.
It seemed strange to me that men, only men, would dare to pit themselves against Kurii. I did not know then, of course, about the fury.
Svein Blue Tooth had his head down.
I sensed it first in the giant, Rollo. It was not a human noise. It was a snarl, a growl, like the sound of a larl, awakening from its sleep. The hair on my neck stood on end. I turned. The giant head was slowly lifting itself, and turning. Its eyes were closed. I could see blood beginning to move through the veins of its forehead. Then the eyes opened, and no longer were they vacant, but deep within them, as though beginning from far away, there seemed the glint of some terrible light. I saw his fists close and open. His shoulders were hunched down. He half crouched, as though waiting, tense, while the thing, the frenzy, the madness, began to burn within him.
“It is beginning,” said Ivar Forkbeard to me.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Be quiet,” said he. “It is beginning.”
I saw then Svein Blue Tooth, the mighty jarl of Torvaldsland, lift his own head, but it did not seem, then, to be him.
It seemed rather a face I had not seen before. The eyes did not seem those of the noble Blue Tooth, but of something else, unaccountable, not understood. I saw him suddenly thrust his left forearm against the broad blade of his spear. To my horror I saw him sucking at his own blood.
I saw a man, fighting the frenzy, tear handfuls of his own hair from his head. But it was coming upon him, and he could not subdue it.
Other men were restless. Some dug at the earth with their boots. Others looked about themselves, frightened. The eyes of one man began to roll in his head; his body seemed shaken, trembling; he muttered incoherently.
Another man threw aside his shield and jerked open the shirt at his chest, looking into the valley.
I heard others moan, and then the moans give way to the sounds of beasts, utterances of incontinent rage.
Those who had not yet been touched stood terrified among their comrades in arms. They stood among monsters.
“Kurii,” I heard someone say.
“Kill Kurii,” I heard. “Kill Kurii.”
“What is it?” I asked Ivar Forkbeard.
I saw a man, with his fingernails, blind himself, and feel no pain. With his one remaining eye he stared into the valley. I could see foam at the side of his mouth. His breathing was deep and terrible.
“Look upon Rollo,” said the Forkbeard.
The veins in the neck, and on the forehead, of the giant bulged, swollen with pounding blood. His head was bent to one side. I could not look upon his eyes. He bit at the rim of his shield, tearing the wood, splintering it with his teeth.
“It is the frenzy of Odin,” said the Forkbeard. “It is the frenzy of Odin.”
Man by man, heart by heart, the fury gripped the host of Svein Blue Tooth.
It coursed through the thronged warriors; it seemed a tangible thing, communicating itself from one to another; it was almost as though one could see it, but one could not see it, only its effects. I could trace its passage. It seemed first a ghastly infection, a plague; then it seemed like a fire, invisible and consuming; then it seemed like the touching of these men by the hands of gods, but no gods I knew, none to whom a woman or child might dare pray, but the gods of men, and of the men of Torvaldsland, the dread, harsh divinities of the cruel north, the gods of Torvaldsland. And the touch of these gods, like their will, was terrible.
Ivar Forkbeard suddenly threw back his head and, silently, screamed at the sky.
The thing had touched him.
The breathing of the men, their energy, their rage, the fury, was all about me.
A bowstring was being drawn taut. I heard the grinding of teeth on steel, the sound of men biting at their own flesh.
I could no longer look on Ivar Forkbeard. He was not the man I had known. In his stead there stood a beast.
I looked down into the valley. There were the lodges of the Kurri. I recalled them. Well did I remember their treachery, well did I remember the massacre, hideous, merciless, in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth.
“Kill Kurii,” I heard.
Within me then, irrational, like lava, I felt the beginning of a strange sensation.
“I must consider the beauty of the Torvaldsberg,” I told myself. But I could not look again at the cold, bleak beauty of the mountain. I could look only into the valley, where, unsuspecting, lay the enemy.
“It is madness,” I told myself. “Madness!” In the lodges below slept Kurii, who had killed, who had massacred in the night. In my pouch, even now, there lay the golden armlet, which once had been worn by the woman, Telima.