“It is beginning,” said Ivar Forkbeard to me.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Be quiet,” said he. “It is beginning.”

I saw then Svein Blue Tooth, the mighty jarl of Torvaldsland, lift his own head, but it did not seem, then, to be him.

It seemed rather a face I had not seen before. The eyes did not seem those of the noble Blue Tooth, but of something else, unaccountable, not understood. I saw him suddenly thrust his left forearm against the broad blade of his spear. To my horror I saw him sucking at his own blood.

I saw a man, fighting the frenzy, tear handfuls of his own hair from his head. But it was coming upon him, and he could not subdue it.

Other men were restless. Some dug at the earth with their boots. Others looked about themselves, frightened. The eyes of one man began to roll in his head; his body seemed shaken, trembling; he muttered incoherently.

Another man threw aside his shield and jerked open the shirt at his chest, looking into the valley.

I heard others moan, and then the moans give way to the sounds of beasts, utterances of incontinent rage.

Those who had not yet been touched stood terrified among their comrades in arms. They stood among monsters.

“Kurii,” I heard someone say.

“Kill Kurii,” I heard. “Kill Kurii.”

“What is it?” I asked Ivar Forkbeard.

I saw a man, with his fingernails, blind himself, and feel no pain. With his one remaining eye he stared into the valley. I could see foam at the side of his mouth. His breathing was deep and terrible.

“Look upon Rollo,” said the Forkbeard.

The veins in the neck, and on the forehead, of the giant bulged, swollen with pounding blood. His head was bent to one side. I could not look upon his eyes. He bit at the rim of his shield, tearing the wood, splintering it with his teeth.

“It is the frenzy of Odin,” said the Forkbeard. “It is the frenzy of Odin.”

Man by man, heart by heart, the fury gripped the host of Svein Blue Tooth.

It coursed through the thronged warriors; it seemed a tangible thing, communicating itself from one to another; it was almost as though one could see it, but one could not see it, only its effects. I could trace its passage. It seemed first a ghastly infection, a plague; then it seemed like a fire, invisible and consuming; then it seemed like the touching of these men by the hands of gods, but no gods I knew, none to whom a woman or child might dare pray, but the gods of men, and of the men of Torvaldsland, the dread, harsh divinities of the cruel north, the gods of Torvaldsland. And the touch of these gods, like their will, was terrible.

Ivar Forkbeard suddenly threw back his head and, silently, screamed at the sky.

The thing had touched him.

The breathing of the men, their energy, their rage, the fury, was all about me.

A bowstring was being drawn taut. I heard the grinding of teeth on steel, the sound of men biting at their own flesh.

I could no longer look on Ivar Forkbeard. He was not the man I had known. In his stead there stood a beast.

I looked down into the valley. There were the lodges of the Kurri. I recalled them. Well did I remember their treachery, well did I remember the massacre, hideous, merciless, in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth.

“Kill Kurii,” I heard.

Within me then, irrational, like lava, I felt the beginning of a strange sensation.

“I must consider the beauty of the Torvaldsberg,” I told myself. But I could not look again at the cold, bleak beauty of the mountain. I could look only into the valley, where, unsuspecting, lay the enemy.

“It is madness,” I told myself. “Madness!” In the lodges below slept Kurii, who had killed, who had massacred in the night. In my pouch, even now, there lay the golden armlet, which once had been worn by the woman, Telima.

Below, unsuspecting, they lay, the enemy, the Kurii.

“No,” I said. “I must resist this thing.”

I drew forth the golden armlet which had been worn by Telima.

On a bit of fiber I tied it about my neck. I held it. Below lay the enemy.

I closed my eyes. Then I sucked in the air between my teeth.

Somewhere, far off, on another world, lit by the same star, rnen hurried to work.

I fought the feelings which were rearing within me. As well might I have fought the eruption of the volcano, the shifting of the strata of the earth.

I heard the growling, the fury, of those about me.

Below us lay the Kurii.

I opened my eyes.

The valley seemed to me red with rage, the sky red, the faces of those about me. I felt a surge of frenzy building within me. I wanted to tear, to cut, to strike, to destroy.

It had touched me, and I stood then within its grip, in that red, burning world of rage.

The bowstring was taut.

There was foam at the mouth of Svein Blue Tooth. His eyes were those of a madman.

I lifted my ax.

The thousands of the men of Torvaldsland, on either side of the valley, made ready. One could sense their seething, the unbearable power, the tenseness.

The signal spear, in the hand of the frenzied Blue Tooth, its scarlet talmit wrapped at the base of its blade, was lifted. The breathing of thousands of men, waiting to be unleashed, to plunge to the valley, for an instant was held. The sun flashed on the shield. The signal spear thrust to the valley.

With one frenzied cry the host, in its fury, from either side of the valley, plunged downward.

“The men of Torvaldsland,” they cried, “are upon you!”

Chapter 18 What then occurred in the camp of the Kurii

The Kur dropped back from the blade. Howling I leapt upon another, striking it before it could rise, and then another.

Simultaneously with the attack from the slopes the girls in the cattle pen, following the orders of masters, conveyed to them by Hilda, crying out, fled in their hundreds from the pen, streaming throughout the camp. The herd sleen rushed among them but, confused in the numbers, found lt diffcult to single out women for returning to the pen. Similarly the marine predator attacking a school of shimmering flashing bodies makes fewer successful strikes than he would if he were able, undistracted, to single out individual quarries. A sleen would no sooner mark out a girl for return to the pen than three or four others would constantly enter and disappear from his ken, often luring him into their pursuit, while the first slips free, in her turn later perhaps to save another similarly. Furthermore, when a sleen would fasten on a given girl she would permit herself, rapidly, to be returned to the pen. Thus the sleen, obedient to its training, would not harm her. As soon as she was back in the pen, of course, she would leave it again, escaping from a different sector. Any girl found remaining in the pen by a man of Torvaldsland, seeking her own safety, unless she had been ordered there by a free attacker, was to be summarily slain. I was pleased to note that the women feared more the men of Torvaldsland than even sleen and Kurii. Danger to them was of no interest to us. Their lives were unimportant. They were slaves. Accordingly, we used them to create a diversion. Many Kurii, springing from their tents, emerging from the leather and fur shelter tunnels, confused, first saw only the sleek, two-legged cattle streaming past, until perhaps axes fell upon them. The nature of the attack, and its extent, would not be clear to them.

A Kur lifted its great ax. I charged him, my ax swift before he could strike.

I wrenched free the blade of the ax, as it slumped down, breaking it free from its jawbone and shoulder.

“Tarl Red Hair!” I heard cry. It was the voice of a girl, wild, slender. I turned. I realize now it was Thyri, but I did not recognize her at the time. I stood mighty and terrible, the ax ready, my clothes drenched with blood, the Kur rolling and jerking at my feet. She put her hand before her mouth, her eyes terrified, and fled away.