We brushed through the scrabbling workers and saw before us the wharf, and the serpent, sleek and swift, of Ivar Forkbeard, at its moorings.Ten men had remained at the ship.Eight held bows, with arrows at the string; none had dared to approach the ship; the short bow of the Gorean north, wit its short, heavy arrows, heavily headed, lacks the range and power of the peasant bow of the south, that now, too, the property of the rencers of the delta, but at short range, within a hundred and fifty yards, it can administer a considerable strike.It has, too, the advantage that it is more manageable in close quarters than the peasant box resembling somewhat the Tuchuck bow of layered horn in this respect.It is more useful in close combat on a ship, for example, than would be the peasant bow. Too, it is easier to fire it through a thole port, the oar withdrawn.The two other men stood ready with knives to cut the ooring ropes.

The men of Ivar Forkbeard threw their bulging cloaks, filled with gold and plate, into the ship.

Ivar Forkbeard looked back.

We heard, in the distance, a muffle d crash.A wall of the temple had fallen. Then, amoment later, we heard the falling of another wall.Smoke, in angry billows, black and fiery, climbed the sky above Kassau.

“I shall fetch a belonging or two,” I said, “ and be with you presenlty.”

“Do not delay overlong,” suggested Ivar Forkbeard.

“Very well,” I said.

I ran to the yard of a tavern near the docks.There I unsaddled, unbridled and freed the tarn I had ridden north.“Fly!” I commanded it.It smote the air with its wings, and beat its way into the smoky skies of Kassau.I saw it turn toward the southeast.I smiled.In such a direction, I knew, lay the mountains of Thentis.In those mountains had the borebearers of the bird been bred.I thought of the webs of spiders and turtles running to the sea.How fantastic, how strange, I thought, is the blood of beasts, and I realized, too, that I wasa beast, and wondered on what might be the nature of those instincts which must be my own.

I hurled a golden tarn disk to the ground, to pay for lodging in Kassau, and the care of the bird. I would leave the saddle.

But from it I took the saddlebags, containing some belongings, and some gold, and, too, the bedroll of fur and boskhide.From it, too, I took, in its waterproof sheath, the great bow, and its arrows, forty arrows flight and sheaf.

I looked after the tarn. Already it had gone, disappearing in the smoking sky above Kassau.

I had booked better passage to Torvaldsland.

I turned and ran back to the wharf.

Eight bows were trained on me; eight arrows lay ready at the taut string.

“Do not fire,” called Ivar Forkbeard to his bowmen.He grinned. “ He plays Kaissa.”

I threw my gear into the ship, and, bow in hand, leaped into the serpent.

“Cast off,” said Ivar Forkbeard.

The two mooring ropes were flung free of the mooring cleats.They were not cut. The bowmen took their places, with their fellows, on the benches.The serpent backed from the pier and, in the harbor, turned. The red-and-white striped sail, snapping, unfolding, was dropped from the spar.

Between the benches, amidships, among piles of loot, their wrists fettered behind them, sat the naked bondmaids, and Aelgifu, in her torn, black velvet.They were still in throat coffle.Their ankles had been crossed, and lashed tightly with binding fiber.Aelgifus shoes, I noted, had been removed, and her woolen hose; this was done that her ankles and feet, bared now like those of the bond-maids, might be as securely tied.No Gorean puts binding fiber over shoes or hose.It seemed Aelgifu, proud and rich, would go barefoot, like a peasant wench or a stripped bon-maid, by the will of Ivar Forbeard, until her ransom was paid on the skerry of Einar five nights from this night, by the rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark.She alone of the women, though fettered and bound, and in coffle, did not seem unduly upset.

Ivar Forbeard went to the bond-maids.He looked down on the blond, slender gir.The coffle loop was on her throat.She sat, with her legs drawn up, her ankles crossed moved her wrists in the fetters;there was small sound as the three-inch joining link moved in the welded rings of the fetters.

“It seems your bondage,” said he, “pretty maid, will not be as short as you had hoped.”

She looked down.

“There is no escape,” he tole her.

She sobbed.

The men of Torvaldsland began to sing at the oars.

Ivar Forkbeard reached down to the planking on the deck and picked up Aelgifu’s shoes and hose, where they had been discarded when they had been removed and her ankle bound.He threw them over the side.

Then he joined me at the stern. We could see ment at the docks.Some were even attempting to rig a coasting vessel to purseu the serpent.But they would not rig it.

It was pointless.

The men of Torvaldsland sang with great voices.The oars, two men to an oars lifted and dipped.The helmsman leaned on the tiller of the great steering oar.

Behind us we could see the smoke of the burning temple.Too, it seemed, the fires had spread elsewhere in Kassau, doubtless carried by the wind.

We could now see those at the dock, and even those who had been bestirring themselves with the coasting vessel, returning to the town.We heard the ringing of the great bar which hung on its timber frame outside the temple. The town was afire.The men of Kassau left the docks, hurrying up the dirt streets, to take up their new labors.

Behind us, amidhsips, we heard the weeping of women fettered bon-maids being carried north to serve harsh massters.

The smoke billowed high in the sky above Kassau.We could hear, clearly, carrying over the water, the ringing of the great bar outside the temple.

The men of Torvaldsland singing, the oars lifting and dipping, the serpent of Ivar Forkbeard took its way from the harbor of Kassau.

Chapter 4 THE FORKBEARD AND I RETURN TO OUR GAME

Ivar Forkbeard, leaning over the side of his serpent, studied the coloring of the water.Then he reached down and scooped up some in the palm of his hand, testing its temperature.

“We are one day’s rowing,” said he, “from the skerry of Einar and th rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark.”

“How do you know this?”I asked.

We had been out of sight of land for two days, and, the night preceding, had been, with shortened sail, swept eastward by high winds.

“There is plankton here,” said Ivar, “that of the banks south of the skerry of Einar, and the temperarutre of the water tells me that we are now in the stream of Torvald, which moves eastward to the coast and then north.”

The stream of Torvald is a current, as a broad river in the sea, pasangs wide, whose temperature is greater than that of the surrounding water.Without it, much of Torvaldsland, bleak as it is, would be only a forzen waste.Torvcliffs, inlets and mountasin. Its arable soilis thin and found in patches.The size of the average farm is very small.Good farms is often by sea, in small boats.Without the stream of Tovald it would probably be I possible to raise cereal crops in sufficient quantity to fee even its relatively sparse population.There is often not enough food under any conditions, particularly I n northern Torvaldsland, and famine is not known.In such cases men feed on bark, and lichens and seaweed.It is not strange that the young men of torvaldsland often look to the sea, and beyond it, for their fortunes.The streamof Torvald is regarded by the men of Torvaldsland as a gift of Thor, bestowed upon Torvald, legendary founder and hero of the land, in exchange of a ring of gold.

Ivar Forkgeard went to the mast.Before it sat Aelgifu.She was chained to it by the neck.Her wrist, in the black, iron fetters of the north, were now fastened before her body that she could feed herself.There was salt in her hair.She still wore her black velvet but now it was stained with sea water, and slat, and was discolored, and stiff, and creased.She was barefoot.