“I would speak!” called Svein Blue Tooth, rising to his feet, lifting a horn of mead. “Outlawry,” said he, “once proclaimed by the hall of Blue Tooth against the person of Ivar Forkbeard, he of Forkbeard’s Landfall, is herewith, in this hall, in this place, in the name of Svein Blue Tooth, Jarl of Torvaldsland, lifted!”
There was a great cheer.
“Charges appertaining thereto,” roared the Blue Tooth, spilling mead, “are revoked!”
There were more cheers among the ashes, the blackened, fallen timbers, of the Blue Tooth’s razed hall, amidst which the benches and tables of the feast were set. Many were the lamps, bowls on spears, which burned, and torches, too. And brightly glowed the long fire in the hall, over which tarsk and bosk, crackling and glistening with hot fat, roasted, turned heavily on spits by eager, laughing bond-maids.
“Svein Blue Tooth and I,” said Ivar Forkbeard, rising, spilling Hilda from his lap, “have had our differences.”
There was much laughter. The Forkbeard had had a price on his head. The Blue Tooth had sought his life.
“Doubtless,” said he, “it is possible we shall have them again.”
There was again much laughter.
“For a man, to be great, needs great enemies, great foes.” The Forkbeard then lifted his mead to Svein Blue Tooth. “You are a great man, Svein Blue Tooth,” said he, “and you have been a great enemy.”
“I shall now,” said the Blue Tooth, “if it be within my power, prove to be so good a friend.”
Then the Blue Tooth climbed to the table’s top and stood there, and the Forkbeard, astonished, climbed, too, to the surface of the table. Then the men strode to one another, meeting one another and, weeping, embraced.
Few eyes, I think, in the ruins of that hall, under the torchlight, beneath the stars, the height of the Torvaldsberg in the distance, illuminated in the light of the three moons, were dry.
Svein Blue Tooth, his arms about the Forkbeard, cried out, hoarsely. “Know this, that from this day forward, Ivar Forkbeard stands among the Jarls of Torvaldsland!?’
We stood and cheered the fortune, the honor, that the Blue Tooth did unto the Forkbeard.
Ivar, no longer outlaw, now stood among the Jarls of the north.
Spear blades rang on shields. I stood proudly, strong in my happiness for the fortune of my friend.
But as the men cried out, and cheered, and the weapons clashed on shields, I looked to a place in the hall where, mounted on a great stake, was the huge, savage head of the Kur, which I had slain on the Skerry of Vars. For a man to be great, had said Ivar Forkbeard, he must need great enemies. I looked at the huge, somber, shaggy head of the Kur, mounted on its stake, some eight feet from the ground. I wondered if men, truly, knew how great their enemies were. And I wondered if men, in ways so weak, so puny, were adequate to such foes. The Kur, it seemed to me, in virtue of its distant, doubtless harsh evolution, was well fitted to be a dominant form of life. It would prove indeed to be a great foe. I wondered if man could be so great a foe, if he in his own terribleness, his ferocity, his intelligence, could match such a beast. Onhis own worlds, in a sense, man had no natural enemies, save perhaps himself. I regarded the huge, somber head of the Kur. Now he had one, a predator, a foe. Could man be a match for such a beast? I wondered on what might be the magnitude of man.
“Gifts!” cried Ivar Forkbeard. His men, bearing boxes, trunks, bulging sacks, came forward. They spilled the contents of these containers before the table. It was the loot of the temple of Kassau, and the sapphires of Schendi, which had figured in the wergild imposed upon himby Svein Blue Tooth in the days of his outlawry. Knee deep in the riches waded Ivar and, laughing, hurled untold wealth to those in the hall. Then his men, too, distributed the riches. Then, too, naked slave girls were ordered to the riches, to scoop up sapphires in goblets and carry them about the tables, serving them to the men, kneeling, head down, arms extended, as though they might be wine, and the warriors, iaughing, reached into the cups and seized jewels. I saw Hrolf, from the East, the giant, mysterious Torvaldslander, take one jewel from the goblet proffered him, kneeling, by a naked, collared beauty. He slipped it in his pouch, as a souvenir. Ivar Forkbeard himself came to me, and pressed into my hand a sapphire of Schendi. “Thank you,” said “Ivar Forkbeard,” I, too, slipped the sapphire into my pouch. To me, too, it was rich withmeaning.
“Ivar!” called Svein Blue Tooth, when the loot was distributed, pointing to Hilda, who, in her collar, stripped cuddled at the Forkbeard’s side, “are you not, too, goingto give away that pretty little trinket?”
“No!” laughed the Forkbeard. “This pretty little trink this pretty little bauble, I keep formyself!” He then took Hilda in his arms and, holding her across his body, kissed her. She melted to him, in the fantastic, total yielding of the slave girl.
“Guests!” shouted a man. “Guests to enter the hall Svein Blue Tooth!”
We looked to where once had stood the mighty portals the hall of Svein Blue Tooth.
“Bid them welcome,” said the Blue Tooth, and he himself left the table, taking a bowl of water and towel to meet the guests at the portal. “Refresh yourselves,” said he to them, “and enter.”
Two men, with followers, acknowledged the greeting Svein Blue Tooth; they washed their hands, and theirfaces and they came foward. I stood.
“We have sought you,” said Samos of Port Kar. “Ihad feared we might be too late.”
I did not speak.
He turned to regard the huge, shaggy head of the Kurmounted on its stake.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Grendel,” I said to him.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“It is a joke,” I said. Beside me, naked, in her collar,Leah shrank back, her hand before her mouth. I look at her. “Yes,” I said. She had been of Earth, a free girl until brought as a slave to Gor. She understood my meaning. New understanding, new recognition, figured in her eyes. The wars of Priest-Kings and Others, the Kurii, were of an cient standing. I did not know, nor I suppose did others, outside the Nest, when the first contacts had been made, the first probes initiated, the first awareness registered on the part of Priest-Kings that there were visitors within their system, strangers at the gates, intruders, dangerous and unwelcome, threatening, bent upon the acquisition of territories, planetary countries. It seemed to me not unlikely that the Grendel of legend had been a Kur, a survivor perhaps of a forced landing or a decimated scouting party. Perhaps, even, as a punishment, perhaps for impermissible murder or for violation of ship’s discipline, he had been put to shore, marooned.