“Wait,” said Olga. “Do not permit her to go alone.”
“How is this?” asked Ivar.
“Recollect you, my Jarl,” asked Olga, “the golden girl, she with ringed ears, from the south, who lost in the assessments of beauty to Gunnhild?”
“Well do I do so,” responded Ivar, licking his lips.
“Behold,” laughed Olga. She went to a piece of tent canvas, which, casually, loosely, was thrown over some object. She threw it back. Lying in the dirt, her legs drawn up, her wrists tied behind her back, was the deliciously bodied littlewench,dark-haired, in gold silk, now dirtied and torn, in golden collar, and gold earrings, who had exchanged words with Ivar’s wool-kirtled wenches at the thing. She was the trained girl, the southern silk girl. In fury, she squirmed to her feet.
“I am not a Kur girl,” she cried. Indeed, she did not wear the heavy leather collar, with ring and lock, which Kurii fastened on their female cattle. She wore a collar of gold, and earrings, and, torn and muddied, a slip of golden silk, of the sort with which masters sometimes display their girl slaves. It was incredibly brief. “I have a human master,” she said, angrily, “to whom I demand to be imrnediately returned.”
“We took her, Honey Cake and I,” said Olga.
“Your master,” said Ivar, thinking, recollecting the captain behind whom he had seen her heeling at the thing, “is Rolf of Red Fjord.” Rolf of Red Fjord, I knew, was a minor captain. He, and his men, had participated in the fighting.
“No!” laughed the girl. “After the contest of beauty, in which, through the cheating of the judges, I lost, I was sold to the agent of another, a much greater one than a mere Rolf of Red Fjord. My master is truly powerful! Release me this instant! Fear him!”
Olga, to the girl’s outrage, tore away her golden silk, revealing her to the Forkbeard. “Oh!” she cried, in fury. Gunnhild had won the contest, and won it fairly. But I was forced to admit that the wench now before us, struggling to free her wrists, now revealed to us, luscious, sensuous, short, squirming, infuriated, was incredibly desirable; we considered her body, her face, her obvious intelligence; she would bring a high price; she would make a delicious armful in the furs.
“How is it that you have dared to strip me!” demanded the girl.
“Who is your master?” inquired Ivar Forkbeard.
She drew herself up proudly.She threw back her shoulders. Inher eyes, hot with fury, was the arrogance of the high-owned slave. She smiled insolently, contemptuously. Then she said, “Thorgard of Scagnar.”
“Thorgard of Scagnar!” called a voice, that of Gorm. We turned. Thorgard of Scagnar, raiment torn, bloodied, a broken spear shaft bound behind his back and before his arms, his wrists pulled forward, held at the sides of his rib cage, fastened by a rope across his belly, herded by men with spears, stumbled forward. A length of simple, coarse tent rope, some seven feet in length, had been knotted about his neck. By this tether Gorm dragged him before Ivar Forkbeard.
The golden girl regarded Thorgard of Scagnar with horror. Then, eyes terrified, she regarded Ivar Forkbeard, of Forkbeard’s Landfall. “You are mine now,” said the Forkbeard. Then he said to Honey Cake, “Take my new slave to the pen.”
“Yes, Master,” she laughed. Then she took the golden girl, the southern girl, by the hair. “Come, Slave,” she said. She dragged the bound silk girl, bent over, behind her. “I think,” said Ivar Forkbeard, “I will give her for a month to Gunnhild, and my other wenches. They will enjoy having their own slave. Then, when the month is done, I will turn her over to the crew, and she will be, then, as my other bond-maids, no more or less.”
Ivar turned to regard Thorgard of Scagnar. He stood proudly, bound, feet spread.
Hilda, naked, in her collar, knelt to one side and behind the Forkbeard. She covered herself with her hands as best she could, her head down.
The Forkbeard gestured to the several captive slave girls, loot from Thorgard’s tent, kneeling, wrists bound behind their backs, in their brief, mired silk, in throat coffle, those girls Olga, light-heartedly, had secured for him. “Take them to the pen,” he said to Olga.Olga slapped her switch in the palm of her hand. “On your feet, Slaves,” she said. The girls struggled to their feet. “To the pen, hurry!” she snapped. “You will be given to men!” The girls began to run. As each one passed Olga, she, below the small of the back, was expedited with a sharp stroke of the switch. Then Olga, much pleased, laughing, trotting beside them, herded the running, weeping, stumbling coffle toward the pen.
Now the Forkbeard returned his attention to Thorgard of Scagnar, who regarded him evenly.
“Some of his men escaped,” said Gorm. Then Gorm said, “Shall we strip him?”
“No,” said the Forkbeard.
“Kneel,” said Gorm to Thorgard of Scagnar, roughly. He prodded him with the butt of a spear.
“No,” said the Forkbeard.
The two men faced one another. Then the Forkbeard said, “Cut him loose.”
It was done.
“Give him a sword,”said the Forkbeard.
This, too, was done, and the men, and the girl, too, Hilda, stepped back, clearing a circle for the two men. Thorgard gripped the hilt of the sword. It was cloudy. “You were always a fool,” said Thorgard to the Forkbeard.
“No man is without his weakness,” said Ivar.
Suddenly, crying with rage, his beard wild behind him, Thorgard of Scagnar, a mighty foe, now armed, rushed upon the Forkbeard, who fended away the blow. I could tell the weight of the stroke by the way it fell on the blade, and how the Forkbeard’s blade responded to it. Thorgard was an immensely strong man. I had little doubt that he could beat the arm of a man to weakness, and then, when it was slowed, tired, no longer able to respond with sureness, with reflexive swiftness, in a great attack, he would hack through tothe body. I had seen such men fight before. Once the sheer weight of the attacker’s blows had turned and driven, interposed, his opponent’s sword half through the man’s own neck. But I did not think the Forkbeard would weary. On his own ship he, not unoften, drew oar. He accepted the driving blows, like iron thunderbolts, on his own blade, turning them aside. But he struck little. Hilda, her hand before her mouth, eyes frightened, watched this war of two so mighty combatants. Too, of course, the weight of such blows, particularly with the long, heavy swords of Torvaldsland, take their toll from the striking arm, as well as the fending arm.
Suddenly Thorgard stepped back. The Forkbeard grinned at him. The Forkbeard was not weakened. Thorgard stepped back another step, warily. The Forkbeard followed him. I saw stress in the eyes of Thorgard, and, for the first time, apprehension. He had spent much strength.
“It is I who am the fool,” said Thorgard.
“You could not know,” said the Forkbeard.
Then Ivar Forkbeard, as we followed, step by step, drove Thorgard back. For more than a hundred yards did he drive him back, blow following blow.
They stopped once, regarding one another. There seemed to be now little doubt as to the outcome of the battle.
Then we followed further, even up the slope of the valley, and to a high place, cliffed, which overlooked Thassa.
It puzzled me that the Forkbeard had not yet struck the final blow.
At last, his back to the cliff, Thorgard of Scagnar could retreat no further. He could no longer lift his arm.
Behind him, green and beautifill, stretched Thassa. The sky was cloudy. There was a slight wind, which moved his hair and beard.