Prisoners of War/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
A MAN NAMED SKELL RETURNS FROM GAUL
CASWALLON returned to the forest battlefield to count Norse prisoners and to look after wounded Britons, without speaking again to Tros. Even Orwic only waved a noncommittal farewell, and Tros was left alone with two ships, fifteen prisoners, and only Conops to help him manage them. The twenty hired seamen had returned from over river, but they were certain to be enemies, not friends.
The seamen demanded weapons, intimating that the prisoners might make a break for liberty; but their own only reason for staying was that Tros had not paid them, and he more than suspected they would try to pay themselves if provided with more than their own short, seamen's knives.
Even unarmed they were deadly unreliable; Caswallon's men who had gone down the riverbank in pursuit of the one boat-load of Northmen that escaped Tros' arrow-fire would be sure to pass news along, so it would be only a matter of time before scores of longshore pirates would come hurrying in hope of loot.
Tros' hirelings would help them strip away everything portable, after which they would probably burn both ships in a wanton passion of destruction.
Meanwhile, tide was flowing; both ships lay fast on the mud, no hope of moving either of them until long after dark. The druids carried wounded and dead ashore; chariots arrived, as by a miracle, from nowhere and galloped away with their burden around a clump of trees and over the skyline.
There was no road in that direction, therefore, no prospect of assistance; the tracks the wheels cut in the turf were new, nearly at right angles to the riverbank, and not even approximately parallel to the direction from which the chariots had arrived.
To reach Lunden would take several hours of drifting, and the distance very likely was too great for one tide, which would have to rise to three-quarters of its flow before it could lift the ships; and even so, the bireme would have to be pumped out.
So Tros took a course few men would have dared to take; he returned their weapons to his prisoners, and brought them all up on the bireme's poop, where they could have overwhelmed him easily. He could not understand their speech, nor they his; there was only Helma to act interpreter, and her smile proved that she understood Tros' predicament. Her words confirmed it—
"I have pledged no friendship!"
"Have I asked it?" Tros demanded, staring at her.
He felt inclined to box her ears, hardly knew why he refrained.
Her eyes challenged his, but Tros seized the upper hand of her abruptly:
"Make me a bandage for this cut on my cheek!"
"There is Zorn's wife!"
"I commanded you."
He pointed to a box of loosely woven linen stuff that the druids had left on the deck.
"Very well."
She smiled in a way that implied a threat, which Tros perfectly understood; he had heard that the Norse women were adept with poison.
"Tell a seaman to carry it here," she added; and for the space of ten more seconds she defied him.
"You fetch it!"
Tros' amber eyes met hers more steadily than any man's had done and there was that behind them that Fflur, Caswallon's wife had called the "ancient wisdom," although Tros was only conscious of it as determination; he knew he must master this woman or lose control of all his prisoners. Far more than Sigurdsen, her brother, she was the pivot of opinion, although her brother doubtless thought he ruled the clan.
Suddenly she made him a mock curtsey and went down on deck to bring the bandages, carrying the box back on her head as if she were a bond-woman, avoiding the eyes of her own folk, artfully obliging them to see that Tros was making her a menial.
But Tros sat down on the up-turned arrow-basket and submitted his face to be bandaged as if he had noticed nothing, pulling off the heavy gold band that encircled his forehead and tossing it from hand to hand while she opened his wound with her fingers and sponged it. She understood him.
That gold band, though it might hang too loosely on her neck if he should place it there, would be a mark of servitude forever. There were letters and symbols graven on it, and although she could not read them she had no doubt they were his name and title.
She could not make a bandage stay in place without wrapping folds of linen under his jaw and around his forehead, so he could not replace the band when she had finished. He gave it to her to hold for him and three of the Northmen made comments that brought blushes to her cheek. She answered savagely, tongue-lashing them to silence. Tros turned his back to her and roared to the hired seamen to man the water-hoist.
Mutiny—instant and unequivocal! Maybe the bandage and the absence of the gold band made him look less like a king. The coolness toward him of Caswallon's men had had effect, too; and none knew better than those hirelings that longshore pirates would arrive ere long.
Why labor at the hoist when they would need their strength for looting presently, and for carrying away the loot to villages up-river? The tousle-headed, ragged, skin-clad gang defied him noisily, and Conops hurled a wooden belaying pin at the head of the nearest.
BUT the pin was hardly more abrupt than Tros. He left the poop, cloak flying in the wind, like a great birds wooping down on them, seizing the heads of two and beating them against a third, discarding those—they lay unconscious on the deck—hurling a fourth man broadside into half a dozen of his friends, and pouncing on the ring-leader, who had been captain of a vessel of his own until Tros hired him. Tros twisted an arm behind his back until he yelled, then rubbed his nose along the beam of the waterhoist, leaving a smear of blood the length of it.
"Man that beam or eat it!" he commanded. "I will chop and stuff it down your throats if there's a drop of water in the bilge at sunset, or one backword from one of you meanwhile!"
So they went to work and Tros rolled the three unconscious men toward the trough until the outpour drenched their heads and they recovered, when he cuffed and shoved them toward the beam and they began to labor at it, too dazed to know what they were doing. Then, returning to the poop, he grinned at Sigurdsen, not glancing at Helma but signing to her to come near and interpret.
"Did you build your longship, Sigurdsen?"
The Northman nodded. He was sunk deep in a northern gloom and too dispirited to use his voice.
"Who did the labor? These?"
Sigurdsen nodded again, but a trace of pride betrayed itself as he glanced at his fellow-prisoners.
"I—I taught them all!" he grunted.
"Good! Then bid them calk this bireme from the inside as the water leaves the hold; use linen, clothing, frayed rope, anything, so be she floats to Lunden, where we'll beach her on the mud."
"Your ship is no good," Sigurdsen said gloomily.
"Hah! But her beak sunk Volstrum!" Tros retorted. "She has some virtues. We will pick her as the crows pick a horse's ribs, and you and I will build a ship together that shall out-sail all of them!"
Sigurdsen stared—hardly believed his ears—grinned at last, coming out of his gloom to order his men to work, with the three women to help them unravel rope to stuff into the leaking seams. But Tros bade Helma stay there on the poop; and when Conops had found rope and cloth enough, and the hammering began below deck, he stood in front of her, folding his arms on his breast.
She supposed he intended to use her again as interpreter between himself and Sigurdsen and made ready to accept that duty willingly enough; it made her feel indispensable and the earlier look of ironic challenge returned into her eyes. But Tros surprized her.
"Can you cook?" he demanded.
She nodded, stung, indignant.
"Then do it! These Britons have rotted my belly with cindered deer-meat until poison would taste like golden oranges from Joppa! Go! The cook-house is in the citadel. I hunger. Cook enough for sixteen people."
Her eyelids trembled, brimming with indignant tears, but she bit her lip and not a tear fell. She held out Tros' gold forehead-band.
"Keep it," he said, "for your wages."
That chance thrust brought tears at last; she choked a sob. Tros knew then he had conquered her, although her friendship might be yet to win, and deadlier than her anger!
"I don't work for wages!" she blurted.
There was more passion in her voice than when she had screamed to Sigurdsen while the fight waged on the poop. She could endure to be a prisoner, to fetch and carry for her brother's conqueror; but as one whose "fathers were kings when ice first closed in on the North and it was dark at noonday" death looked better than earned money.
"Keep it as my gift then," Tros retorted with an air of huge indifference.
"No!"
She thrust the thing toward him and, since he would not take it, flung it at his feet, then, sobbing, hurried down the ladder and disappeared into the citadel, whence smoke presently emerged.
Tros did not want to talk to Sigurdsen; he wanted to think. It suited him best to have no interpreter at hand. Sigurdsen, whose wounds were painful, soused his bandages with water and lay down in a corner of the poop, his eyes alight with fever.
Tros leaned against the rail, facing the river bank, whence longshore plunderers might come, yet thinking less of them than of the blue-eyed, fair-haired Helma. She annoyed him. He was vaguely restless at the thought of having to provide for her. Some spark of tyranny within him, not yet gritted out against the rocks of destiny, stirred him toward cruelty, and it was blended with an instinct to defend himself against all women's wiles.
The custom of the whole known world, as regarded prisoners, was even more rigid and compulsory than written law. He, Tros, was answerable for the fate of fifteen people; they were his property, to do with as he pleased, dependent on him, obliged to be obedient on penalty of death, their only remaining right, that of looking to him for protection.
He might set them free, but if he did so Caswallon, should he see fit, could punish him for succoring and aiding public enemies. If he should keep them in Lunden, it would probably be months before the Britons would begin to treat them civilly; they would be in danger of mob-violence.
Yet, if he should imprison them their usefulness would vanish; they would cease to feel beholden to himself and would either seek to escape or else intrigue against him with any personal enemy who might evolve out of the political tangle.
Britain was full of rival factions; hundreds of Northmen had found shelter and prosperity in Britain by lending themselves to one faction or another, and these new prisoners might find friends easily enough.
The probability was that Caswallon had met with political trouble during Tros' absence; some aspirant for power very likely had accused him of assisting Tros with provisions and men at a time when the tribe could ill afford it.
If Caswallon's power were in jeopardy the chief would be a fool not to consider his own interests and might even feel compelled to show him enmity. Skell, who was of Norse extraction and a natural born treason-monger, might easily enough have stirred such disaffection as would shake Caswallon's chieftainship.
The long and the short of all that was, Tros needed friends, and the only available possible friends in sight were his Northmen prisoners, whose gratitude he proposed to earn and keep. Not that he placed much faith in gratitude—at any rate, not too much.
Homeless men, beaten in battle and reduced to the status of serfs, can hardly be blamed for disloyalty if offered opportunity to regain independence.
Tros began to wonder just to what extent he himself was morally beholden to Caswallon. He even meditated taking the longship, which, having the lighter draught, would be first off the mud, and sailing down-Thames with his Northmen to seek safety on the Belgian coast. His only reason for dismissing the idea was his obligation to bury his father with proper obsequies.
He was particularly thoughtful about the young girl Helma. Instinct told him to beware of her, to give her no chance to ensnare him, to treat her with less than courtesy; intuition—which is as different from instinct as black from white—warned him that she was a friend worth winning, but that nothing could be won by a display of weakness.
Tros was no horseman, but he had picked up British terms from Orwic.
"She's a finely bred mare that must be broke before she'll handle," he reflected, grinning slyly at the smoke emerging through the cook-house window, grinning again as he thought of his lack of experience with women.
He wondered to whom he should marry her, the only ultimate solution that occurred to him.
AND while he thought of that, a boat came up the river, paddled furiously by eight men, keeping to the far bank to avoid the flowing tide, but crossing on a long slant presently and making straight for the two ships. A man sat in the stern whose features seemed vaguely familiar—a man in a fever of haste, who shifted restlessly and scolded at the straining crew.
"Skell!" Tros muttered. "Impudence—infinity—the two are one!"
He started for the arrow-engine, but thought better of it; he could deal with Skell single-handed, and there was Conops to help; the boat's crew were longshore Britons, of the type that might murder unarmed men, but would scamper away at the first threat of serious fighting, men of the sort that had been serfs for generations.
Skell came hand over hand uninvited up the ladder on the bireme's stern, and stood still on the poop with his back to the rail, surveying the scene, his foxy eyes avoiding Tros and his restless hands keeping ostentatiously clear of the sword and dagger he wore.
His fox-red beard was newly trimmed, and he wore good Gaulish clothes under a smock of dressed brown-stained deer-hide that came to his knees. He would have looked too well dressed if it had not been for the stains of travel.
"Tros, he said, meeting his eyes suddenly, "you and I should cease enmity. I did you a little harm, and you had revenge. Cæsar can employ us both, and I have word for you from Cæsar."
"Speak it," Tros answered.
He despised Skell, but he was not fool enough to shut his ears to news.
Skell might be Cæsar's man in theory, but a child could tell by his expression that it was Skell's advantage he was seeking first and last. He paused, picking words, and Tros had time to wonder how far such a reader of men's minds as Cæsar actually trusted him.
"I heard of these Northmen. They attacked Hythe," Skell said presently, "and I came overland to the Thames in hope of getting word with them, for I heard they were making for Lunden. I would have persuaded them to cross to Gaul with me and talk with Cæsar. Cæsar could have used such allies as these."
Tros nodded. Cæsar would ally himself with any one to turn an adversary's flank, and would reduce the ally to subjection afterward. But had Cæsar had time to say so much to Skell? Tros thought not; it was likelier that Skell was speculating on his own account.
"I met Britons down-river who told me you had sunk Volstrum's ship and captured this one," Skell went on, glancing repeatedly at the Northman who lay ten feet away from him clutching with fevered fingers at the haft of his great ax. "And I happen to know, Tros, that Caswallon has been turned against you by a new intrigue. Believe me, I know that surely."
"Aye," Tros answered, "none should know better than the man who managed the intrigue!"
Skell laughed; it began like a fox-bark but ended in a cackle like an old hen's; there was no more mirth in it than comes of greed and insincerity. But there was a note, that had nothing to do with mirth, which set Tros studying the fear in Skell's eyes.
"That is true, Tros!" Skell went on. "I sent a message to Caswallon. I brought a woman from Gaul with me, one of Cæsar's light o' loves. She will make all Britain too hot to hold you! But Cæsar thinks, and I think, you are a man of sense. Cæsar bade me win you over to his side, if I can. The Britons have turned against you, Tros."
Tros grinned. He grinned like an oger. Mirth oozed from him.
"Hah! Go and tell your new master, Skell, that I have his bireme and his gold; I gave him a cold swim at Seine-mouth, sunk his boats, drowned his men and wrecked his fleet! Say that is all preliminary! Tell him I'm minded to make friends with him at about the time of the Greek Calends! Cæsar will know what that means, he talks Greek very well."
"Would you care to trust me?" Skell asked.
"No," said Tros.
"Because," Skell continued, as if he had not noticed the refusal, "for my part I would rather trust you than Cæsar or the Britons. I have lived my life in Britain, but my father was Norse and I feel among these Britons like a fish on land. As for Cæsar"
"He is another alien, like me!" said Tros. "He and you were not bred under the same stars. Nor was I!"
"Cæsar is playing Cæsar's hand," Skell answered. "He would use you and me, and then forget us."
"He shall never forget me!" Tros remarked with conviction, grinning again hugely.
"I see you like Cæsar no more than I do," Skell began again; but Tros' laugh interrupted him.
"Like Cæsar? I admire him more than all the kings I ever met! He is the greatest of Romans. Compared to him, Skell, you are a rat that gnaws holes in a rotten ship! Cæsar is a scoundrel on a grand scale—a gentleman who measures continents, a gold-and-scarlet liar whom you can't understand, you who would tell lies just because your belly ached!"
Skell looked a mite bewildered, but Tros' grin was good natured, so he tried again:
"Let bygones be, Tros! I am no such fool as to believe in Cæsar's friendship; I would sooner trust you, though you call me liar to my face. Why not pretend with me to be Cæsar's catspaws, and snatch out a nice fortune for ourselves?"
Tros stroked his beard reflectively. It formed no part of his philosophy to refuse to make use of a rascal, provided he could keep his own hands clean. Skell was a mere pawn in fortune's game, not like Cæsar, who used fortune for his mistress and debauched her with cynical assurance. There was nothing to be gained by trusting Skell, but not much sense in incurring his spite; better to kill him and have done with it than to cultivate his enmity, and Tros preferred never to kill if he could help it.
"You are afraid to go to Lunden?" he suggested, by way of plumbing Skell's thoughts.
SKELL was about to answer when the door of the cook-house opened and the blue-eyed Helma came carrying a wooden dish of wheat and meat, her eyes fixed on it for fear of spilling. Skell whistled softly to himself.
"That girl is no serving wench!" he remarked, eying the amber shoulder-ornaments and the gold wire on her girdle.
He seemed amused, and before Tros could prevent him he was speaking to her in the Norse tongue, she standing still because she could not carry the dish and look upward at the poop. What he said did not please her; Tros noticed that.
Skell jumped down from the poop and took the dish from her, holding it while she climbed the ladder and then reaching up to set it on the poop edge; she had lifted it again in both hands and was facing Tros before Skell could climb up behind her.
She appeared to be trying to shame Tros by her meekness, she a sea-king's daughter and he making her cook and fetch and carry! But Tros curtly bade her set the dish down, sniffing, for he could smell the stuff was burned.
"What did Skell say?" he demanded, glaring at Skell across her shoulder, silently daring him to interrupt.
"Does it matter what he says?" she retorted. "He is neither fish nor bird, a Briton who talks Norse!"
"Tell me!" Tros insisted.
She turned and looked at Skell, and it appeared that her contempt for him offset her indignation at Tros' bruskness.
"He said I should look to him for friendship."
"So!" said Tros. "Sit down then, Skell, and eat with us. I would like to hear more about friendship. Ho there, Conops! Come and eat, and bring the Northmen. Bid those Britons lay off pumping for an hour, unless the water makes too fast. Give them bread and dry meat."
The giant Sigurdsen refused food, although Helma tried to tempt him, but the other Northmen came and sprawled on deck, crowding the women away from the dish. Tros sent Conops for another plate and heaped food on it for Sigurdsen's wife and the widow, but he made Helma sit beside him, whereat Skell laughed.
"She will not eat with the men," he explained.
"She will obey!" Tros retorted, and then listened curiously while the Northmen sang a grace of some kind, a melancholy chant that had the dirge of seas in it and something of the roll of thunder.
When they had done he added a sunlit, wine-suggestive verse in Greek, being ever respectful of other men's religions.
For a while they ate enormously, using their fingers, Tros stuffing food into Helma' s mouth until she laughed and had to yield, with her face all smeared with gravy. But the laughter brought tears to her eyes, and she only kept on eating because Tros insisted; shame at being made to eat with men was swallowed by a greater grief, and Tros began to pity her in his own bull-hearted way.
"Your brother Sigurdsen has made choice and cast in his lot with me. These other Northmen have no choice, but are my men henceforth. Now you shall choose," he told her. "There is Skell, and here am I. Whose fortune will you follow? I will give you to Skell if you wish.
Her scorn for Skell was so intense she almost spat at him.
"That half-breed!" she sneered. "You may bestow me where you will, Tros, for that is your right. But I will not die, I will live to see you writhe in ruin if you treat me as less than a king's daughter! I have heard you are a prince's son, so I submit to you, although I hate you. If I should have to bear your children, they shall be a shame to me but a pride to you."
Tros laid his huge hand on her shoulder.
"Peace!" he ordered.
Talk of that kind was as foreign to him as the Northmen's language that contained no word he understood. He was more perplexed about the girl than ever, utterly unable to imagine what to do with her. Abruptly, gruffly, he changed the subject.
"Tell us this plan of yours, Skell. How would she and you make use of me? What is your friendship worth to her?"
Skell tried to grin ingratiatingly. Since he had eaten Tros' food he had no fear of violence; the laws of hospitality were rigid; it was greater sin to break them than to steal or to seduce a neighbor's wife, and unless Tros were willing to incur contempt of the meanest slave in Britain he would have to let Skell get clear away before resuming enmity.
"Cæsar might love her!" Skell answered slyly. "Cæsar likes them young and well-bred. Why not send her to Cæsar to love him a while and make your peace with him?"
"Who is Cæsar?" asked Helma, cheeks reddening.
"He will be emperor of all the world, unless I succeed against him better than the last two times!" Tros answered. "Cæsar and I are as fire and water, but as to which is which you must judge for yourself! I hate him as you hate me, young woman. Do you understand that?"
She actually laughed. Her whole face lighted with a new humor that transformed it.
"Cæsar might like you if you would let him," she answered, and then looked away.
"What else?" asked Tros, staring straight at Skell.
"Did I not speak of one of Cæsar's light o' loves?" Skell answered. "The woman crossed from Gaul with me, in a boat that lost its mast almost within hail of your bireme. Take my advice and be rid of this one before that one casts her hook into your heart! Put this one to a wise use!"
"The woman's name?" asked Tros.
"She was named Cartisfindda, but the Romans changed it to Cornelia. She carried Cæsar's message to Glendwyr the Briton. Glendwyr plots against Caswallon, is ready to pounce at the first chance. You understand now? Cæsar can use you or ruin you! You and I and a handful of Northmen to help Glendwyr—man! We can help ourselves to the loot of Lunden Town! For a beginning I say, send this girl to Cæsar with your compliments."
Tros looked hard at Helma. There was laughter in his eyes, but Skell could not see that because he sat at Tros' right hand.
"Will you go?" he asked her.
"As your enemy?" she answered. "Yes!"
"Nay, I have enemies enough in Cæsar's camp!" said Tros. "Did you hear her, Skell? You must think of another means of making use of me!"
But it had occurred to him he might make use of Skell. "Are you afraid to come to Lunden?"
Skell looked frightened. For a moment he seemed to fear Tros might take him against his will, until he remembered that the ships were on the mud and he was Tros' guest, safe from violence.
"I am a stranger to all fear," he answered.
And he could look the part; he would have deceived a man who did not know him.
BUT the truth was, Skell was so full of fear that he could be trusted to change his plan at any moment and never to tell the truth where he had opportunity to weave a lie. His was the dread that makes misers and all meanness. He felt himself a toad beneath the harrow of misfortune, who could never afford to keep faith because of the initial handicap with which he started out in life.
He could recognize honesty—none more readily than he!—but only to try to take advantage of it; none less than he could cope with subtlety that uses truth for bait and candid explanations for a trap. But subtlety of that sort was Tros' instinctive weapon.
"Skell," he said, "you are a scoundrel who would slit your friend's throat for a woman's favor. I am not your friend; I have but one throat and I need it! I hope you are Cæsar's friend; yet I would hate to see a man like Cæsar brought to his end by a like you! However, that is Cæsar's problem and not mine."
Skell tried to look offended, but in his heart he felt flattered, as the smile in his eyes betrayed. Tros noticed that and continued the same vein of frankness:
"My difficulty, Skell, is this: That I have fed you. Therefore, you are my guest, and though I know you would never hesitate to kill me, if you could do it without danger, I dare not offend the gods by killing you. Therefore, I must make terms with you. But a bargain has two sides. I am minded you shall come to Lunden."
"Why?" demanded Skell.
"Because I like to have my enemies where I can see them!"
"And if I will not come?"
"You are afraid to come. You fear Caswallon. You know Caswallon knows you have intrigued with Cæsar. Yet you would like to go to Lunden because your house is there, and there are men who owe you money, whom you would like to press for payment.
"However, it may be that lure is not strong enough, so I will add this: Am I a man of my word, Skell? Yes? You are sure of that? Then listen: if you refuse to come to Lunden I will spend, if I must, as much as half of Cæsar's money that became mine when I took this bireme, I will spend it in cooking your goose for you!
"I will set Caswallon by the ears about you. And if all else fails me, I will seek you out and slay you with my own sword, much though it would irk me to defile good steel in such a coward's heart! Do you believe me?"
"And if I come to Lunden?" Skell inquired.
He was smiling. He enjoyed to talk of the issues of life and death when there was no presently impending danger.
"Then I will concede this: I will not move hand or tongue against you while you do the same by me. I will tell Caswallon you are a harmless rogue whose bark is far worse than his bite, for, as the gods are all around us, Skell, that is my honest judgment of you!
"I will tell Caswallon you have done us all a service, for that is true: Unless you had gone to Gaul in hope of betraying me to Cæsar, I could never have annoyed the Roman there at Seine-mouth.
"Skell, I almost captured him! So I will beg Caswallon to ignore your treachery; and if he should refuse, I will protect you with my own guest-privilege."
Skell meditated that a while. His foxy, iron eyes kept shifting from face to face, avoiding Tros but constantly returning to study Helma, who was kneeling beside Sigurdsen, aiding his distracted wife to soak the stiffening bandages.
"I mistrust your words," Skell said at last. "You are a man who keeps a bargain, but you bind one craftily and I suspect a trick. You must swear to me that there is nothing hidden in these terms of yours."
"Not I!" Tros answered. "I expect to make my profit. So do you, Skell. I will change no word of the agreement. Either you come to Lunden, subject to my stipulation, or you go your own way and I will rid the earth of you as swiftly as that first duty can be done! Now choose—for I hear oars—and the tide is turning."
Skell also heard oars, thumping steadily down-stream toward the bireme.
"I agree!" he said, snapping his mouth shut, looking bold and almost carefree; but Tros' amber eyes discerned the nervousness that underlay that mask.
Conops whispered in Tros' ear. Tros stood and glanced over the stern.
"Druids!" he said, and began straightening his garments to receive them with proper dignity. "They will be coming for my father's body. Heh! But Caswallon is a true host, friendship or no friendship! See in what state the druids come!"