Cormac's eyes roved to where Hakon sat. To the casual watcher the young Viking seemed disinterested, almost bored. But the Gael's stare centered on the angle of his firm jaw as he caught the sudden, slight ripple of muscle that betrays controlled tenseness. The Gael's cold eyes flickered momentarily.
Three women entered the feasting-hall, closely followed by the two carles Rognor had sent for them. Two of the women led the third before Rognor, then fell back, leaving her facing him alone.
"See, Cormac," rumbled the Viking: "is she not fit to bear the sons of a king?"
Cormac's eyes traveled impersonally up and down the girl who stood panting with anger before him. A fine, robust figure of young womanhood she was, quite evidently not yet twenty years old. Her proud bosom heaved with angry defiance, and her bearing was that of a young queen rather than a captive. She was clad in the rather scanty finery of a Norse woman, but she was quite apparently not of their race. With her blond hair and blazing blue eyes, coupled with her snowy skin, she was evidently a Celt; but Cormac knew that she was not one of the softened and Latinized people of southern Britain. Her carriage and manner were as free and barbaric as that of her captors.
"She is the daughter of a chief of the western Britons," said Rognor; "one of a tribe that never bowed the neck to Rome and now, hemmed between the Saxons on one side and the Picts of the other, holds both at bay. A fighting race! I took her from a Saxon galley, whose chief had in turn taken her captive during an inland raid. The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she was the girl who should bear my sons. I have held her now for some months, having her taught our ways and language. She was a wildcat when we first caught her! I gave her in charge of old Eadna, a very she-bear of a woman-and by the hammer of Thor, the old valkyrie nearly met her match! It took a dozen birchings across old Eadna's knee to tame the spit-fire-"
"Are you done with me, pirate?" flamed the girl suddenly, defiantly, yet with a tearful catch, barely discernible, in her voice. "If so, let me go back to my chamber-for the hag-face of Eadna, ugly as it is, is more pleasant to my sight than your red-bearded swine-face!"
A roar of mirth went up, and Cormac grinned thinly.
"It seems that her spirit is not utterly broken," he commented dryly.
"I would not count her worth a broken twig if it were," answered the sea-king, unabashed. "A woman without mettle is like a scabbard without a sword. You may return to your chamber, my pretty one, and prepare for your nuptials on the morrow. Mayhap you will look on me with more favor after you have borne me three or four stout sons!"
The girl's eyes snapped blue fire, but without a word she turned her back squarely on her master and prepared to leave the hall-when a voice suddenly cut through the din:
"Hold!"
Cormac's eyes narrowed as a grotesque and abhorrent figure came shambling and lurching across the hall. It was a creature with the face of a mature man, but it was no taller than a young boy, and its body was strangely deformed with twisted legs, huge malformed feet and one shoulder much higher than the other. Yet the fellow's breadth and girth were surprising; a stunted, malformed giant he seemed. From a dark, evil face gleamed two great, yellow eyes.
"What is this?" asked the Gael. "I knew you Vikings sailed far, but I never heard that you sailed to the gates of Hell. Yet surely this thing had its birth nowhere else."
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.<
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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 hall:
"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."
"How do I know you speak truth?" grumbled the guard.
"Go and ask Rognor; I will stand guard while you go. If he flays your back for disturbing him, don't blame me."
"Go in, in the name of Loki," snarled the guard. "But do not tarry too long."
There was a fumbling of bolts and bars; the door swung open, framing a tall, lithe form; then it closed again. Cormac Mac Art looked down at the prostrate Hakon. Cormac was fully armed, and on his head he wore a helmet with a crest ornamented with flowing horse hair. This seemed to make him inhumanly tall and, in the flickering, illusive light which heightened the darkness and sinisterness of his appearance, the Gaelic pirate seemed not unlike some sombre demon come to taunt a captive in a shadowy corner of Hell.
"I thought you would come," said Hakon, rising to a sitting position. "Speak softly, however, lest the guard outside hear us."
"I came because I wished to know where you learned my language," said the Gael.
"You lie," replied Hakon cheerfully. "You came lest I betray you to Rognor. When I spoke the name men have given you, in your own tongue, you knew that I knew who you really were. For that name means 'Wolf' in your language, and you are not only Cormac Mac Art of Erin, but you are Cormac the Wolf, a reiver and a killer, and the right-hand man of Wulfhere the Dane, Rognor's greatest enemy. What you are doing here I know not, but I do know that the presence of Wulfhere's closest comrade means no good for Rognor. I have but to say a word to the guard and your fate is as certain as mine."
Cormac looked down at the youth and was silent for a moment.
"I might cut your throat before you could speak," he said.
"You might," agreed Hakon, "but you won't. It is not in you to slay a defenseless man thus."
Cormac grinned bleakly. "True. What would you have of me?"
"My life for yours. Get me free and I keep your secret till Ragnarok."
Cormac seated himself on a small stool and meditated.
"What are your plans?"
"Free me-and let me get my hands on a sword. I'll steal Tarala and we will seek to gain the hills.. If not, I'll take Rognor with me to Valhalla."
"And if you gain the hills?"
"I have men waiting there-fifteen of my closest friends, Jutes, mainly, who have no love for Rognor. On the other side of the island we have hidden a longboat. In it we can win to another island where we can hide from Rognor until we have a band of our own. Masterless men and runaway carles will come to us and it may not be long until I can burn Rognor's skalli over his head and pay him back for his kicks."
Cormac nodded. In that day of pirates and raiders, outlaws and reivers, such a thing as Hakon suggested was common enough.
"But first you must escape from this cell."
"That is your part," rejoined the youth.
"Wait," said the Gael. "You say you have fifteen friends in the forest-"
"Aye-on pretext of a wolf hunt we went up into the hills yesterday and I left them at a certain spot, while I slipped back and made the rest of my plans with Tarala. I was to spend the day at the skalli, and then, pretending to go for my friends tonight, I was to ride forth, returning stealthily and stealing Tarala. I reckoned not on Anzace, that Byzantium he-witch, whose foul heart, I swear, I will give to the kites-"
"Enough," snapped Cormac impatiently. "Have you any friends among the carles now in the steading? Methought I noted some displeasure among them at your rough handling."
"I have a number of friends and half-friends," answered Hakon, "but they waver-a carle is a stupid animal and apt to follow whoever seems strongest. Let Rognor fall, with his band of chosen henchmen, and the rest would likely as not join my forces."
"Good enough." Cormac's eyes glittered as his keen brain began racing with an idea. "Now, listen-I told Rognor truth when I said my galley was dashed on the rocks last night-but I lied when I said only I escaped. Well hidden beyond the southern point of this island, where the sand spits run out into the surf, is Wulfhere with, fifty-odd swordsmen. When we fought through the madness of the breakers last night and found ourselves ashore with no ship and only a part of our band left alive-and on Rognor's island-we took council and decided that I, whom Rognor was less likely to know, should go boldly up to his skalli and, getting into his favor, look for a chance to outwit him and seize one of his galleys. For it is a ship we want. Now I will bargain with you. If I help you to escape, will you join your forces with mine and Wulfhere's and aid us to overthrow Rognor? And, having overthrown him, will you give us one of his long ships? That is all we ask. The loot of the skalli and all Rognor's carles and the rest of his ships shall be all yours. With a good long ship under our feet, Wulfhere and I will soon gain plunder enough-aye, and Vikings for a full crew."
"It is a bargain," promised the youth. "Aid me and I aid you; make me lord of this island with
your help and you shall have the pick of the long ships."
"Good enough; now attend me. Is your guard likely to be changed tonight?"
"Scarcely, I think."
"Think you he could be bribed, Hakon?"
"Not he. He is one of Rognor's picked band."
"Well, then we must try some other way. If we can dispose of him, your escape will hardly be discovered before morning. Wait!"
The Gael stepped to the door of the cell and spoke to the guard.
"What sort of a watchman are you, to leave a way of escape for your prisoner?"
"What mean you?" The Viking's beard bristled.
"Why, all the bars have been torn from the window."
"You are mad!" growled the warrior, entering the cell. He raised his head to stare at the window, and even as his chin rose at an angle following his eyes, Cormac's iron fist, backed by every ounce of his mighty body, crashed against the Viking's jaw. The fellow dropped like a slaughtered ox, senseless.
The key to Hakon's chains were at the guard's girdle. In an instant the young Viking rose, free of his bonds, and Cormac, having gagged the unconscious warrior and chained him in turn, handed it to Hakon who grasped it eagerly. No word was said as the two stole from the cell and into the shadows of the surrounding trees. There Cormac halted. He eyed the steading keenly. There was no moon but the starlight was sufficient for the Gael's purposes.
The skalli, a long rambling structure of logs, faced the bay where Rognor's galleys rode at anchor. Grouped about the main building in a rough half circle were the store houses, the huts of the carles and the stables. A hundred or so yards separated the nearest of these from the skalli, and the hut wherein Hakon had been pent was the furthest away from the hall. The forest pressed closely on three sides, the tall trees overshadowing many of the store houses. There was no wall or moat about Rognor's steading. He was sole lord of the island and expected no raid from the land side. At any rate, his steading was not intended as a fortress but as a sort of camp from which he swooped down on his victims.
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