Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  Dipping up a good quantity in his cap, he climbed the after companion to the roundhouse, which served as the armory. Here he filled a small sack with bullets, nails, and scraps of iron. Here, too, he found flint and steel and a slow match.

  Back at the gun again he rammed home the loose powder, stuffed in wadding and his shot. Then he primed the touch hole and drew Kyrger back with him to the far angle of the roundhouse where they could not be seen by the natives climbing up the starboard ladder.

  It did not take long to strike a spark that ignited the long fuse in his hand. Nursing the slow match, he waited, listening to the chattering talk of the Ostiaks and smiling at the sudden silence that fell when the first of them saw the dead helmsman.

  Then he walked out to the quarterdeck rail. Nine pairs of small, bleared eyes fastened on him instantly and a spear whirred through the air, striking the chest of his fur jacket. The heavy skin and the leather jerkin under it broke the bone point of the spear, which did no more than shake him.

  For a second he looked down into flat, swollen faces, fringed by ragged and greasy hair. About each neck was coiled a string of something whitish, the entrails of deer, he discovered a moment later, which served the Ostiaks for food as well as ornament. Then he trained the gun and touched it off as two more spears flashed by his head.

  Kyrger bounded his own height from the deck when the murderer roared. Coughing, as the dense powder fumes swirled back, the Samoyed saw that three of the nine Ostiaks who had come over the rail were stretched on the deck and that two others were limping around in the smoke, yelling with pain.

  Never before had Kyrger heard a gun go off, and he was struck with the awfulness of his leader's magic. Perceiving that he himself was without hurt, he plucked up heart and glided to the side bulwark, from which point of vantage he shot one of the natives who had remained on the ice, before they recovered from their astonishment.

  Meanwhile Thorne had descended to the waist, sword in hand. Four of the Ostiaks snarled at him, and rushed through the eddying smoke. They had thrown their spears and wielded knives or clubs, and Thorne ran the first one through the body before they realized the length of his sword.

  Then a thin man came forward, armed with the shank-bone of some animal. He wore a woman's leather skirt and his long black hair hung to his shoulders, over a kind of crude armor-so Thorne judged it to be. A multitude of iron images were suspended on cords slung from neck and waist. These images were of dogs and sheep and birds, crudely wrought, but covering his emaciated body completely.

  Thorne remembered that this leader of the Ostiaks had been in the very path of the cannon's discharge, but had come through unharmed.

  "So you are for your long home, my iron rogue," he gibed, for it was his way to talk when steel was out.

  He stepped forward and thrust at the Ostiak's side. But his blade seemed to pass through air, or the loose tunic of the strange man, who screamed at him and struck with the bone club.

  Thorne would have been brained if he had not ducked instinctively, the club smashing down on his shoulder blade.

  He recovered for a second thrust, but the old native glided away from him, and disappeared under the waistcloth. The armiger sought for him along the rail, but saw him presently running over the ice.

  Turning quickly, he was just in time to ward the knife of an Ostiak who had crept up from behind. Slashing at the throat of this newest antagonist, he sprang after the man of the iron apron, seeing that the few surviving tribesmen were fleeing in as many different directions.

  "Shoot him!" he cried to Kyrger, who had been watching the annihilation of the remaining foemen with interest.

  Believing that Thorne was aided by supernatural powers, it had not occurred to the Samoyed to join in the melee. Now he shook his head.

  "Shaman menkva," he grunted. "A wizard and a devil."

  It would have been quite useless to send an arrow after a wizard, Kyrger knew. Had not his friend and the wizard tried to slay each other and failed? How then could Kyrger be expected to slay the shaman?

  Thorne swore under his breath and started in pursuit of the Ostiak. The lanky shaman seemed to float over ice ridges and rocks, his long hair flying out behind, his iron tunic rattling. Gaining the shore, he shrieked at his dogs and set to work to tie the second team by a leather thong to the first sled.

  When this was done he hopped into the rear sled, cracked his whip, and glided off as the beasts dug their claws into the trail and strained at the traces. The sleds picked up speed and presently whirled out of sight in a smother of snow, the shaman peering back at his pursuer, his pointed teeth gleaming between writhing lips.

  Thinking of Joan and Peter bound in the camp, Thorne settled down grimly to the trail. His heavy boots made clumsy going on the hard sur face, and the cries of the wizard and the snapping of the whip drew farther away from him.

  Kyrger had lingered on the Confidentia to visit each of the wounded Ostiaks, and when he dropped from the ladder of Durforth's ill-fated ship, had added to her crew of dead men.

  Chapter XV

  Darkness

  By the fire that Kyrger had built, Thorne found Peter stretched like a stout log in the snow, his arms bound to his side, and a blue bruise swelling in his tangle of red hair. He was still breathing, and Thorne dragged him into the Samoyed's sledge, covering him up with the skin of the white bear to keep him from freezing to death. Joan was gone; so were the dogs and their master, and the reindeer. After a little Kyrger appeared and took in the scene with a comprehensive glance.

  As best he could, Thorne explained to the attentive hunter that they must follow the dogsleds. All other matters must wait until he had set Joan free from the creature in the leather apron.

  "Sinym-sinym thusind," muttered Kyrger, nodding assent, for he saw that the outlander was very angry. "Young sister-the pursuit of blood atonement."

  He lifted his head and called shrilly, and Thorne saw the two reindeer appear from the nearest thicket, munching at the branches as they came. They had been driven off by the shaman or had run away from the dogs. Thorne learned thereafter that dogs and reindeer were as hostile as the two tribes that were served by each animal.

  Kyrger lost no time in putting the reindeer into the leather traces, tying the guiding thong attached to their off horns to the hand bar of the sledge. Then he beckoned Thorne, who discovered that the savage had picked up a pair of the wooden skates dropped by one of the Ostiaks. They were shorter than the Samoyed's and heavier, and Kyrger bound them firmly to Thorne's boots.

  Then he led the outlander to the rear of the sledge and made him put his hands on the waist-high bar at the back.

  "Thus," he murmured to himself, "we will go as swiftly as the white pigeon flying before the wind. Be quiet my master! Let your spirit be strong when we meet new enemies who dwell where winged things cannot enter and things with bones cannot pass. Kai-it will be a long journey, 0 Thunderer, 0 Leaner-Against-the-Wind."

  He glided off and picked up the two staffs, which, pointed and bearing sizeable crosspieces a foot from the point, enabled him to push himself along rapidly where the snow surface was level, as if he were poling a light canoe through shallows.

  Alone, he would never have started after the wizard, who could make the long journey to the hall of Erlik in the spirit world of the cold, underground region, or invoke ermecin the white bear.

  But after the fight on the bark, Kyrger had immense confidence in Thorne. He believed that the armiger as well as the shaman was possessed by a spirit, whether the reindeer, the gull, the bear, or the eagle, he did not know. How else had he scattered eleven Ostiaks?

  He went ahead of the deer, running at times, but oftener thrusting himself onward a dozen paces with the staffs. Faster he went and faster, squatting on his haunches when the head of a slope was reached and flashing down with the speed of a flying thing.

  The reindeer struck into their loose-limbed trot that covered distance amazingly. Thorne for a while had all
he could do to hang on and keep his feet. Once the toe of his skis caught in a fallen branch and he was thrown heavily. But he soon learned how to lift himself over obstacles and to keep his feet together.

  The gray obscurity of the day merged into the flickering radiance of night with its attendant fires in the northern sky. Kyrger looked like a winged gnome, speeding over the slot in the snow; Peter was no more than a motionless bulk under the fur pelt. Thorne could not stop and make camp for the shipman's sake. Joan, somewhere ahead of them, was flying through this wilderness of unmarked snow.

  The reindeer no longer seemed to him to be running. They flew through the air, their whitish bodies invisible in the smother of powdered snow, their black-muzzled heads laid back so that the horns rested along their shoulders.

  How long they raced through the night he did not know. They were sliding down a winding gully where a few stunted larches thrust up through the drifts, when Kyrger whirled to a halt and strung his bow. His arrow sped and struck something invisible to Thorne. But the hunter pushed himself to where it lay and brought back a long white hare.

  With his knife he stripped the skin off its back and offered it to the outlander. There was no time to stop to make a fire, even if wood had been at hand. The ache of hunger was strong enough for him to suck some of the blood from the hare; but then he handed it back to Kyrger, who ate the raw flesh, still steaming hot, without a qualm.

  Meanwhile Thorne satisfied himself that Peter was breathing. From the gully they descended to the level surface of a frozen lake, down which the trail of the dogsleds ran. Here the reindeer, refreshed by the brief halt, made fast time and Thorne peered ahead for a sight of the Ostiak.

  For hours they followed the windings of the lake, which grew steadily narrower. Trees appeared on either hand and soon they were moving between the solid walls of a forest of spruce and fir. When the strip of water was no more than a stream, Kyrger slowed down and halted his reindeer, which had been running the last few miles with tongues lolling out.

  Coming to Thorne's side, the Samoyed pointed above the trees ahead of them and to the right, and after a moment the armiger made out what his companion had seen, a wavering line of smoke rising against the gray sky.

  For the first time Kyrger turned aside from the trail, leading his deer into a grove of spruce where they were sheltered from the wind. Then he took up the crossbow that he had placed in the sledge, and the two advanced through the timber in the direction of the smoke, the hunter circling to keep away from the stream.

  They heard voices, distinct in the thin air, and crawled warily to the summit of a ridge. Here they crouched, motionless. Below them within stone's throw were three large dog sledges and a half-dozen Ostiaks. Seated on a log beside the embers of a fire, Master Cornelius Durforth and Joan Andrews were talking. Squatting on a white horse skin near his two dog teams was the wizard they had pursued from the Ice Sea.

  Joan had been freed of her bonds by Durforth, who sent the shaman away from the maiden, and prepared food for her, with hot, spiced wine. Refreshed, she gazed curiously at the man who sat by her in his coat of black foxskin with an ermine collar. Joan knew the value of such things.

  She saw, too, that the powerful fingers of his left hand played with the links of a gold chain at his throat; that his strong teeth glimmered through the tangle of his jutting beard. His brown eyes, utterly without expression, moved restlessly as if instinct made him uneasy. A sudden foreboding gripped Joan, who was as sensitive as a child, and fear burned in her veins more fiercely than when the shaman had thrown her into his sled.

  She had seen that gold chain before, and the face that reminded her of a wolf. Too few events had come into the life of the daughter of John Andrews that she should forget one of them. Two years before at Yuletide, when the candles were lighted in the windows of Cairness-a ship driving into the haven for refuge-a stranger sitting in the tavern, listening to the tales of John Andrews of gold to be found by one who could pass south of the Ice Sea.

  "Oh," she cried, "you are the master of the black pinnace!"

  Cornelius Durforth did not take his eyes from the fire.

  "I have had many ships to my command."

  "The black pinnace with the dragon's head, which was manned by Burgundians."

  "Ah. Then you-" he looked at her-"would be John Andrews's daughter."

  "Aye, so. And so was my father slain by your churls."

  "How?"

  "Your pinnace entered the haven of Wardhouse-" Joan faltered, but passionate anger, long pent up, was rife in her-"and your knaves looted it over the body of John Andrews, who once gave you shelter."

  "Did they so? By the Three Dead Men of Cologne, they were not my knaves. The boat once carried my flag and was made a prize by pirates out of Danemarke."

  His lips drew back in a soundless laugh.

  "They paid in good coin for their frolic; I saw the boat with their bodies hanging like ripe fruit, drifting down the coast."

  His words carried conviction, but the girl drew back from his face.

  "Who are you?" she barely whispered.

  "Cornelius Durforth, the Burgundian. What, wench, have you never heard of the merchant of Ghent?"

  Her mind flitted among questions. What was Durforth doing on the Ice Sea? How had he escaped alone from the stricken ships of the English? Why had the Ostiak brought her to him?

  He thrust out his hand to take her chin and study her face.

  "Nay, wench, you wear your heart upon your sleeve. You are fair as a golden eaglet, but, on my faith, only a hooded falcon may sit on perch at its master's table. Weigh well your answer to this question: Do you trust me? Are you friend or unfriend?"

  Whereat she sighed and dropped her gaze to the chain of gold about his neck.

  "Good my master, who am Ito stand against your will? Take me with you out of this forest to Christian folk, and I will thank you on my knees. But let us set out at once!"

  In silence Durforth considered her, until a flush mantled her cheeks and his beard bristled in a wide smile.

  "So! I am no wizard like Shatong the shaman-" he nodded at the Ostiak who was tapping on a drum between his knees, upon a white horse- hide-"yet can I read your mind. You fear me, you have no faith in me. A witless boy follows the track of your sled through the wilderness, and it is your thought that if he rushes in upon us here he will be slain, which, indeed is most true.

  "Under a cloak of meekness you would have us set out so that he will see our following and learn caution, which is a thing he never will learn. In another hour or so your armiger will be wolf meat."

  She drew away from the man, hands pressed against her cheeks.

  "Would you slay him shamefully in this pagan land?"

  "That will I, and he would do no less for me. By the eyes of -- you should know no land is wide enough to hold us twain. He serves his king, who is shent-aye, who lieth under sod ere now. Hath a man allegiance to the dead?"

  "Aye, so," the girl responded promptly.

  "Then is he a traitor. For-and here is a merry matter-the lord prince who laid command upon me to voyage hither is now your squire's lord."

  "That may not be," she cried passionately, "I think you are liegeman to Satan, prince of darkness."

  "Some do call him that. And, by the Three Dead Men, if Mephistoph- ele were anointed monarch on this earth, he would not lack for followers, being both sagacious, courteous, and untainted by remorse. Yet I serve Philip, son of the Emperor Charles, the mightiest lord in Christendom. And this same Philip will sit presently upon the throne of England."

  While he spoke he had been studying the maiden, marking the tawny hair held back by the hood, the slight, firm lips, and the pulse that beat in a white throat. Such beauty would command its price, and Durforth knew the very barons who would lighten their purses of a hundred gold crowns to possess her.

  Yet he was embarked upon a delicate mission, and it was necessary that her tongue should be silent as to what she had seen on the I
ce Sea, and what she would presently behold. He considered permitting Shatong to cut out her tongue; but she might be able to write.

  Women, he knew, were like hawks. Tamed and hooded, fed and wingclipped, they would be content under the hand of a master for a whileuntil he could be paid his price for the maiden. To tame her, she must first learn to fear him.

  Unclasping his cloak, he took from the breast of his doublet two papers, folded and sealed. These he held near the fire, for the light was dim under the trees, so that she could see the imperial signet on the seals. When he saw that she had recognized it, he put the letters back very carefully in a silk pouch attached to the end of his gold chain.

  "These letters missive," he said, "are from Charles of Spain to Ivan the Terrible, emperor of Muscovy, and they are my charge."

  "Sir Hugh's letters-"

  Durforth's head went back and he laughed from an open throat, a roaring laugh that reached to the ears of Thorne and the hunter who crouched behind the ridge, waiting until darkness could cover their approach to the fire. Yet they heard not the words of the agent of Philip.

  "Death of my life, wench, Sir Hugh's letters are ashes long since. Sir Hugh, gallant fool! Sir Hugh, lack-wit leader! Why, he ventured blindly into the Ice Sea. He sailed in circles when he lost company with Chancellor, and he proposed to winter in an open bay without fuel or food."

  Shivering, she looked up at him, and he took a savage pleasure in heightening the horror in her eyes.

  "I had ventured to the northern coast before this, and had talked with the Easterlings. I knew the peril of the khylden and the cold that stiffens a man's sinews and soul. So I baled me from the fleet, to the southeast where the tribe of Ostiaks had their dwelling. Before we could return to the ships the storms had snuffed out the Englishmen.

  "My pinnace had fallen foul of the Laps, and the lads that manned it were drying i' the wind. I had sent it to the Wardhouse so that I might sail in it to the inland sea, and thither into Muscovy. But it fell out otherwise.

  "So was I set afoot. And by mischance that murdering wight Thorne, who hath crossed my path twice before now, was journeying along the coast. My Ostiaks sighted your fire on Christmas night, and I sent Shatong with ten others to the ships to greet your comrades while I conveyed the goods I had taken from the Con fidentia hither and awaited the coming of the savages."