Ottar stamped heavily through the sand and managed to look faintly surprised when de Carlo jumped out at him.
“Ho, Orlyg,” he said woodenly. “What are you doing here, what does this mean… Mikli Odinn![20] Look at that!”
“Cut!” Barney shouted. “That’s not your line, you know better than that…” He shut up abruptly as he looked out into the bay where Ottar was pointing.
One after another, small, dark boats were coming into sight from behind the island and soundlessly paddling toward the shore.
“Axir, sverd!”[21] Ottar ordered, and looked around for a weapon.
“Hold it,” Barney ordered. “No weapons and no fighting. We want to keep this friendly if we can, find something to trade with them. Those are potential extras out there and I don’t want them frightened off. Tex, keep your gun handy—but out of sight. If they start any trouble you finish it…”
“A pleasure.”
“But don’t start any yourself, and that’s an order. Gino, are you catching them?”
“In the bag. If you’ll clear the twentieth-century types off the set I’ll shoot the whole arrival, the landing, the works.”
“You heard him, move. Off camera. Lyn—get into Viking rig quick so you can get down there and translate.”
“How can I? Not a single word of their language is known.”
“You’ll pick it up. You’re translator—so translate. We need a white flag or something to show them we’re friendly.”
“We got a white shield here,” one of the propmen said.
“That’ll do, give it to Ottar.”
The little boats slowed as they neared the beach, nine of them in all, with two or three men in each boat. They were wary, most of them gripping spears and short bows, but they did not look as though they were going to attack. Some of the Norse women came down to the beach to see what was happening and their presence seemed to reassure the men in the boats, because they came closer. Jens Lyn hurried up, lacing on his leather jacket.
“Talk to them,” Barney said, “but stay behind Ottar so it looks like he’s doing all the work.”
The Cape Dorset came close, rocking up and down in the swell, and there was a good deal of loud shouting back and forth.
“Using up a lot of film on this,” Gino said.
“Keep it going, we can cut out what we don’t need. Move along the shore for a better angle when they come in. If they come in. We got to find something to attract them, something to trade with them.”
“Guns and firewater,” de Carlo said. “That’s what they always trade to the Indians in the Westerns.”
“No weapons! These jokers probably do well enough with what they got.” He looked around for inspiration and saw a comer of the commissary trailer sticking out from behind Ottar’s house, the largest of the sod buildings. “That’s an idea,” he said, and went over to it. Clyde Rawlston was leaning on it scribbling on a piece of paper.
“I thought you were doing additional dialogue with Charley?” Barney said.
“I find working on the script interferes with my poetry, so I went back to cooking.”
“A dedicated artist. What do you have in this thing?”
“Coffee, tea, doughnuts, cheese sandwiches, the usual stuff.”
“I don’t see the redskins getting excited over that. Anything else?”
“Ice cream.”
“That should do it. Dish it out into some of those Viking crockery pots and I’ll send someone up for it. I’ll bet those guys got a sweet tooth just like anyone else.”
It did work. Slithey carried a gallon of vanilla down to the shore where some of the aborigines were standing in the surf by now, still too wary to come onto the beach, and ladled it into their hands after eating some herself. Either the ice cream, or Slithey’s hormones, turned the trick, because within a few minutes the skin boats were beached and the dark-haired strangers, were mixing with the northmen. Barney stopped just outside of camera range and studied them.
“They look more like Eskimos than Indians,” he said to himself. “But a few feathers and some war paint will fix that.”
Though they had the flat faces and typical Asiatic features of the Eskimo, they were bigger men, erect and powerful-looking, almost as tall as the Vikings. Their clothing was made of stitched sealskin, thrown open now in the heat of the spring day to show their bronze skin. They talked rapidly among themselves in high-pitched voices, and now that they had landed safely they seemed to have forgotten their earlier fear and examined all the novelties with great interest. The knorr fascinated them the most; it was obviously a sailing vessel, but infinitely bigger than anything they had ever seen or imagined before. Barney caught Jens Lyn’s eye and waved him over.
“How are you coming? Will they do some work for us?”
“Are you mad? I think—I’m not sure mind you—that I have mastered two words of their language. Unn-nah appears to mean yes, and henne signifies no.”
“Keep working. We’ll need all these guys and more for the Indian attack scenes.”
There seemed to be a general mixing along the shore now, as some of the northmen investigated the bundles in the boats and the Dorset opened them to display their sealskins. The more curious of the newcomers had wandered in among the houses, peering closely at everything and talking excitedly to each other with their piping voices. One of them, still clutching a stone-headed spear, noticed Gino behind the camera and went over and looked into the lens in the front, providing a detailed close-up. He turned around quickly when he heard a bellow followed by shrill screams.
A cow had wandered across the boggy meadow that bordered the woods and the bull had followed her. Though small, the bull was a mean and surly beast, with a cast in one eye that gave it an even more evil appearance. It was allowed to roam freely and had been chased from the movie encampment more than once. It shook its head and bellowed again.
“Ottar,” Barney shouted. “Get that beast out of here before it upsets the Indians.”
It hadn’t upset the Cape Dorset—it had frightened them witless. They had never seen a roaring and snorting beast like this before and were rigid with fear. Ottar grabbed up a length of pole from the shore and ran, shouting, at the bull. It scraped at the ground with a hoof, lowered its head and charged Ottar. He stepped aside, called it a short and foul Old Norse name, then banged it across the flanks with the pole.
This did not have the desired effect. Instead of wheeling to get at its tormenter, the animal bellowed and charged toward the Cape Dorset, linking their dark and unfamiliar shapes with the present disturbance. The newcomers shrieked and ran.
The panic was catching and someone shouted that the skraelling were attacking and the northmen looked for their weapons. Two of the terrified Dorset were trapped in among the buldings and they ran to Ottar’s house and tried to force their way in, but the door was bolted. Ottar rushed to defend his home and when one of the men turned, with his spear raised, Ottar brought the pole down on his head, cracking the pole in two and crushing the man’s skull at the same time.
Within sixty seconds the scuffle was over. The bull, the cause of it all, had splashed through the brook and was calmly eating grass in the meadow on the other side. Driven by furiously wielded paddles the skin boats were heading toward the open sea, while many of the packs of sealskins had been left behind on the beach. One of the housecarls had an arrow through his hand. Two of the Cape Dorset, induing the one Ottar had hit, were dead.