Rognor grinned. "Aye, in Hell I caught him, for in many ways Byzantium is Hell, where the Greeks break and twist the bodies of babes that they may grow into such blasphemies as this, to furnish sport for the emperor and his nobles. What now Anzace?"
"Great lord," wheezed the creature in a shrill, loathly voice, "tomorrow you take this girl, Tarala, to wife-is it not? Aye-oh, aye! But, mighty lord, what if she loves another?"
Tarala had turned back and now bent on the dwarf a wide-eyed stare in which aversion and anger vied with fear.
"Love another?" Rognor drank deep and wiped his beard. "What of it? Few girls love the men they have to marry. What care I for her love?"
"Ah, sneered the dwarf, "but would you care if I told you that one of your own men talked to her last night-aye, and for many nights before that-through the bars of her window?"
Down crashed the drinking-jack. Silence fell over the hall and all eyes turned toward the group at the head of the table. Hakon rose, flushing angrily.
"Rognor-" his hand trembled on his sword-"if you will allow this vile creature to insult your wife-to-be, I at least-"
"He lies!" cried the girl, reddening with shame and rage. "I-"
"Be silent!" roared Rognor. "You, too, Hakon. As for you-" his huge hand shot out and closed like a vise on the front of Anzace's tunic-"speak, and speak quickly. If you lie-you die!"
The dwarf's dusky hue paled slightly, but he shot a spiteful glance of reptilian malice toward Hakon. "My lord," said he, "I have watched for many a night since I first saw the glances this girl exchanged with he who has betrayed you. Last night, lying close among the trees without her window, I heard them plan to flee tonight. You are to be robbed of your fine bride, master."
Rognor shook the Greek as a mastiff shakes a rat. "Dog!" he roared. "Prove this or howl under the blood-eagle!"
"I can prove it," purred the dwarf. "Last night I had another with me-one whom you know is a speaker of truth. Tostig!"
A tall, cruel-visaged warrior came forward, his manner one of sullen defiance. He was one of those on whom Cormac had proved his swordsmanship.
"Tostig,", grinned the dwarf, "tell our master whether I speak truth-tell him if you lay in the bushes with me last night and heard his most trusted man-who was supposed to be up in the hills hunting-plot with this yellow-haired wench to betray their master and flee tonight."
"He speaks truth," said the Norseman sullenly.
"Odin, Thor and Loki!" snarled Rognor, flinging the dwarf from him and crashing his fist down on the board. "And who was the traitor?-tell me, that I may break his vile neck with my two hands!"
"Hakon!" screamed the dwarf, a quivering finger stabbing at the young Viking, his face writhing in a horrid contortion of venomous triumph. "Hakon, your right hand man!"
"Aye, Hakon it was," growled Tostig.
Rognor's jaw dropped, and for an instant a tense silence gripped the hall. Then Hakon's sword was out like a flash of summer lightning and he sprang like a wounded panther at his betrayors. Anzace screeched and turned to run, and Tostig drew back and parried Hakon's whistling stroke. But the fury of that headlong attack was not to be denied. Hakon's single terrific blow shivered Tostig's sword and flung the warrior at Rognor's feet, brains oozing from his cleft skull. At the same time Tarala, with the desperate fury of a tigress, snatched up a bench and dealt Anzace such a blow as to stretch him stunned and bleeding on the floor.
The whole hall was in an uproar. Warriors roared their bewilderment and indecision as they shouldered each other and snarled out of the corners of their mouths, gripping their weapons and quivering with eagerness for action, but undecided which course to follow. Their two leaders were at variance, and their loyalty wavered. But close about Rognor were a group of hardened veterans who were assailed by no doubts. Their duty was to protect their chief at all times and this they now did, moving in a solid hedge against the enraged Hakon who was making a most sincere effort to detach the head of his former ally from its shoulders. Left alone, the matter might have been in doubt, but Rognor's vassals had no intention of leaving their chief to fight his own battles. They closed in on Hakon, beat down his guard by the very weight of their numbers and stretched him on the floor, bleeding from a dozen minor cuts, where he was soon bound hand and foot. All up and down the hall the rest of the horde was pressing forward, exclaiming and swearing at each other, and there was some muttering and some black glances cast at Rognor; but the sea-king, sheathing the great sword with which he had been parrying Hakon's vicious cuts, pounded on the board and shouted ferociously. The insurgents sank back, muttering, quelled by the blast of his terrific personality.
Anzace rose, glassy-eyed and holding his head. A great, bleak woman had wrested the bench away from Tarala and now held the blond girl tucked under her arm like an infant, while Tarala kicked and struggled and cursed. In the whole hall there was but one person who seemed not to share the general frenzy-the Gaelic pirate, who had not risen from his seat where he sipped his ale, with a cynical smile.
"You would betray me, eh?" bellowed Rognor, kicking his former lieutenant viciously. "You whom I trusted, whom I raised to high honor-" Words failed the outraged sea-king and he brought his feet into play again, while Tarala shrieked wrathful protests:
"Beast! Thief! Coward! If he were free you would not dare!"
"Be silent!" roared Rognor.
"I will not be silent!" she raged, kicking vainly in the old woman's grasp. "I love him! Why should I not love him in preference to you? Where you are harsh and cruel, he is kind. He is brave and courteous, and the only man among you that has treated me with consideration in my captivity. I will marry him or no other-"
With a roar Rognor drew back his iron fist, but before he could crash it into that defiant, beautiful face, Cormac rose and caught his wrist. Rognor grunted involuntarily; the Gael's fingers were like steel. For a moment the Norseman's flaming eyes glared into the cold eyes of Cormac and neither wavered.
"You cannot marry a dead woman, Rognor," said Cognac coolly. He released the other's wrist and resumed his seat.
The sea-king growled something in his beard and shouted to his grim vassals: "Take this young dog and chain him in the cell; tomorrow he shall watch me marry the wench, and then she shall watch while with my own hands I cut the blood-eagle in his back."
Two huge carles stolidly lifted the bound and raging Hakon, and as they started to bear him from the hall, he fell suddenly silent and his gaze rested full on the sardonic face of Cormac Mac Art. The Gael returned the glance, and suddenly Hakon spat a single word: "Wolf!"
Cormac did not start; not by the flicker of an eyelash did he betray any surprise. His inscrutable gaze did not alter as Hakon was borne from the halclass="underline"
"What of the wench, master?" asked the woman who held Tarala captive. "Shall I not strip her and birch her?"
"Prepare her for the marrying," growled Rognor with an impatient gesture. "Take her out of my sight before I lose my temper and break her white neck!"
A torch in a niche of the wall flickered, casting an indistinct light about the small cell, whose floor was of dirt and whose walls and roof were of square-cut logs. Hakon the Viking, chained in the corner furthest from the door, just beneath the small, heavily-barred window, shifted his position and cursed fervently. It was neither his chains nor his wounds which caused his discomfiture. The wounds were slight and had already begun to heal-and, besides, the Norsemen were inured to unbelievable physical discomforts. Nor was the thought of death what made him writhe and curse. It was the reflection that Rognor was going to take Tarala for his unwilling bride and that he, Hakon, was unable to prevent it…
He froze as a light, wary step sounded outside. Then he heard a voice say, with an alien accent: "Rognor desires me to talk with the prisoner."