“Hold it, Doc,” he said. “Put the pail down before someone gets hurt.”
The words or the stunt man’s waiting figure penetrated Lyn’s anger and he slowed to a halt, lowering the bucket. “What went wrong?” he asked loudly. “Where have you been?”
“Getting the production rolling, what else?” Barney said. “It’s only been a couple of days since I dropped you, for us that is, though I realize that for you it has been two months—”
“Two months!” Jens bellowed, “it’s been over a year! What went wrong?”
Barney shrugged. “I guess the Prof made a mistake. All those instruments, you know…”
Jens Lyn grated his teeth together so hard that the sound could clearly be heard across the intervening space. “A mistake… that’s all it is to you. While I’ve been stranded here with these louse-ridden barbarians, taking care of their filthy animals. Five minutes after you were gone Ottar hit me in the side of the head, took all my clothes and supplies and all the whiskey.”
“Why work for whiskey when it just there to take it,” Ottar said with simple Viking logic.
“What’s done is done,” Barney said. “You’ve served your year here, but I’ll see you don’t suffer for it. Your contract is still valid and you’ll get a full year’s pay. That’s not bad money for a couple of days’ work, and you still have your sabbatical coming up and a full year’s pay for that. You did your job and taught Ottar English…”
“His thirst did that. He was repellently drunk for almost a month and when he recovered he remembered about the English lessons. He made me teach him every day so he could get some whiskey if you ever returned.”
“Ottar speak pretty good, that’s right. Where’s whiskey?”
“We have plenty, Ottar, just relax,” Barney said, then turned back to Jens, thoughts of law suits dancing darkly in his head. “What do you say we call it even, Doc? A year’s salary for teaching Ottar English and you’re still working for us while we shoot the picture. I’m sure it’s been an interesting experience…”
“Aaaarh!”
“And one you won’t easily forget, plus the fact I bet you’ve learned a lot of Old Norse…”
“Far more than I ever wanted to know.”
“So let’s call it quits. How about it?”
Jens Lyn stood for a long moment, fists clenched, then he dropped the bucket and savagely kicked it to pieces.
“All right,” he said. “Not that I have much choice. But I don’t do one moment’s work until I have a shower, a delousing and a change of clothes.”
“Sure, Doc. Well drive you back to the company in a few minutes, we’re right around the headland…”
“I’ll find it myself if you don’t mind,” he said, stamping off down the beach.
“Whiskey,” Ottar said.
“Work,” Barney told him. “If you’re on a whiskey salary you’re going to earn it. This picture starts rolling tomorrow and I want some information from you first.”
“Sure. Come in house.”
“Not on your life,” Barney said, shying away. “I remember what happened to the last guy who did that.”
8
“Stand still,” Gino shouted. “All you got to do is stand still and you can’t even do that.”
“Need a drink,” Ottar grumbled, and petulantly shook the housecarl with the matted hair who was standing in for Slithey. The man bleated and almost collapsed.
Gino swore and turned away from the viewfinder of the camera. “Barney,” he pleaded, “talk to those Stone Age slobs. This is supposed to be a love scene and they’re moving around like some kind of wrestling match on the hill there. They’re the worse stand-ins I ever worked with.”
“Just set up the shot, well be with you in a minute, Gino,” Barney said, turning back to his stars. Ruf had his arms folded, staring vacantly into space, looking very impressive indeed in the Viking outfit and blond beard. Slithey was leaning back in her safari chair while her wig was being combed, and she looked even more impressive with about twelve cubic feet of rounded flesh rising from the low-cut top of her dress.
“I’ll give it to you once more,” Barney said. “You’re in love and Ruf is leaving to go to battle and you may never see him again, so you are saying good-bye on the hill, passionately.”
“I thought I hated him?” Slithey said.
“That was yesterday,” Barney told her. “We’re not shooting in sequence, I explained this to you twice already this morning. Let me do it once more, briefly, and if I might have a small amount of your attention, too, Mr. Hawk. The picture opens when Thor, who is played by Ruf, comes with his Viking raiders to capture the farm on which you live, Slithey. You are Gudrid, the daughter of the house. In the battle all are killed by the Vikings except you, and Thor takes you as his prize. He wants you but you fight him because you hate him. But slowly he wins your heart until you fall in love with him. No sooner does this happen than he goes away on a Viking raid again and leaves you to wait for his return. That’s the scene we’re shooting now. He has left you, you run after him, you call to him, he rums and you come to him on the bill, right here. Is that clear…”
“Look,” Ruf said, pointing out to sea. “Here comes a ship.”
They all turned to look and, sure, enough, there was a Viking longship just clearing the headland and coming into the bay. The sail was furled, but the dragon’s head on the bow rose and fell as the oarsmen on each side hauled the ship through the water.
“Tomorrow!” Barney shouted. “Lyn, where are you? Didn’t you and Ottar arrange with this Finnboggi to bring his ship tomorrow?”
“They have a very loose sense of time,” Lyn said.
Barney hurled his hat to the ground and ran to the camera. “What about it, Gino?” he asked. “Is there a shot here? Anything you can get?”
Gino spun the turret to the big telescopic lens and jammed his face against the eyepiece. “Looks good,” he said, “a really nice shot.”
“Get it then, maybe we can salvage something from this.”
Ottar and the other northmen were running down the hill toward the house, nor did they stop when Barney shouted at them to keep out of the shot.
“What are they doing?” he asked, when they began to stream out, clutching weapons.
“I am sure I would not know,” Lyn told him. “Perhaps it is some custom of greeting I am not familiar with.”
Ottar and his men stood on the shore shouting and the men in the Viking ship shouted back.
“Get all this, Gino,” Barney ordered. “If it’s any good we can write it into the script.”
Under the thrust of the oars the longship ran up onto the beach, the dragon prow towering above the men waiting there. Almost before the ship had stopped moving the men aboard her had grabbed up the shields that were slung along the gunwales and jumped into the water. Like the men ashore, they also waved over their heads a varied collection of short swords and axes. The two groups met.
“How does it look?” Barney asked.
“Santa Maria!” Gino said. “They are killing each other.”
The clang of metal mingled with the hoarse cries as the men fought. No details could be made out of the turmoil by the watchers above—it was just a mass of struggling figures—until one man broke from the crowd and ran haltingly down the beach. He had been disarmed, he appeared to be wounded, and his antagonist was right behind him swinging an ax in wide circles. The chase was brief and the end was sudden. As the gap closed, the ax swooped down and the first man’s head jumped from his shoulders and bounded along the beach.
“They play for keeps…” Barney said in a choked voice.
“I do not think that this is Finnboggi and his men,” Lyn said. “I think this is a different ship that has arrived.”