Marauders of Gor (12 page)

           
Forkbeard put his First Singer to his own Ax four, threatening my Ax. I covered my piece with my own First Singer, moving it to my own Ax five. He exchanged, taking my Ax at Jarl six, and I his First Singer with my First Singer. I now had a Singer on a central square, but he had freed his Ax four, on which he might now situate the Jarl for an attack on the Jarl's Woman's Ax's file.

           
The tempo, at this point, was mine. He had played to open position; I had played to direct position.

           
The Ax is a valuable piece, of course, but particularly in the early and middle game, when the board is more crowded; in the end game when the board is freer, it seerns to me the Singer is often of greater power, because of the greater number of squares it can control. Scholars weight the pieces equally, at three points in adjudications, but I would weight the Ax four points in the early and middle game, and the Singer two, and reverse these weights in the end game. Both pieces are, however, quite valuable. And I am fond of the Ax.

           
"You should not have surrendered your Ax," said Forkbeard.

           
"In not doing so," I said, "I would have lost the tempo, and position. Too, the Ax is regarded as less valuable in the end game."

           
"You play the Ax well," said Forkbeard. "What is true for many men may not be true for you. The weapons you use best perhaps you should retain."

           
I thought on what he had said. Kaissa is not played by mechanical puppets, but, deeply and subtly, by men, idiosyncratic men, with individual strengths and weaknesses. I recalled I had, many times, late in the game, regretted the surrender of the Ax, or its equivalent in the south, the Tarnsman, when I had simply, as I thought rationally, moved in accordance with what were reputed to be the principles of sound strategy. I knew, of course, that game context was a decisive matter in such considerations but only now, playing Forkbeard, did I suspect that there was another context involved, that of the inclinations, capacities and dispositions of the individual player. Too, it seemed to me that the Ax, or Tarnsman, might be a valuable piece in the end game, where it is seldom found. People would be less used to defending against it in the end game; its capacity to surprise, and to be used unexpectedly, might be genuinely profitable at such a time in the game. I felt a surge of power.

           
Then I noted, uneasily, the Forkbeard moving his Jarl to the now freed Ax four.

           
The men with the net drew it up. In it, twisting and flopping, silverish, striped with brown, squirmed more than a stone of parsit fish. They threw the net to the planking and, with knives, began to slice the heads and tails from the fish.

           
"Gorm," said the Forkbeard. "Free the first bond-maid on the coffle. The lazy girl has rested too long, and send her to me with a bailing scoop."

           
Gorm was bare-chested and barefoot. He wore trousers of the fur of sea sleen. About his neck was a golden chain and pendant, doubtless taken once from a free woman of the south.

           
As he approached the bond-maids they shrank back from him, fearing him, as would any bond-maid one of the men of Torvaldsland. I looked upon the eyes of the first girl on the coffle, who was the slender, blondish girl, who had worn the red vest and jacket. I recalled how disappointed she had been in the men of Torvaldsland, when, heads hanging, they had accompanied the Forkbeard to the temple at Kassau. She had then, with amusement, regarded them with contempt. But it was neither amusement nor contempt which shone in her eyes now as she, shrinking back from him, looked upon Gorm. She now saw the men of Torvaldsland in their mightiness, in their freedom, and strength and power, and she, a stripped, fettered bond-maid, coffled, feared
 
them. She knew that she belonged to them, such fierce and mighty beasts, and that she, and her beauty, lay at their mercy, that she, and her beauty, were theirs to do with as they pleased. Roughly Gorm unknotted the coffle rope from her neck. He then gestured that she, kneeling, should lift her fettered wrists to him; she did so; he, with a key from his belt, opened the fetters which held her; he thrust them in his belt; he then pulled her by the arm roughly to her feet and thrust her toward the Forkbeard. She stumbled across the loose deck planking and stood, hair before her face, before us. She thrust her hair back with her right hand, and stood well. A bailing scoop was thrust into her hands. It has four sides. It is ùmade of wood. It is about six inches in width. There is a diagonally set board in its bottom, and the back and two sides are straight. It has a straight, but rounded handle, carved smaller at the two ends, one where it adjoins the scoop, the other in back of the grip.

           
Gorrn moved aside eight narrow planks from the loose decking. Below, some two inches deep, about a foot below the deck planking, about two inches over the keel beam, black and briny, shifted the bilge water. There was not much water in the bilge, and I was surprised. For a clinker built ship, the serpent of Ivar Forkbeard was extraordinarily tight. The ship, actually, had not needed to be bailed at all. Indeed, it had not been bailed since Kassau. The average ship of Torvaldsland is, by custom, bailed once a day, even if the bilge water does not necessitate it. A ship which must, of necessity, be bailed three times in two days is regarded as unseaworthy. Many such ships, however, are sailed by the men of Torvaldsland, particularly late in the season, when the ship is less tight from months of the sea's buffeting. In the spring, of course, before the ships are brought from the sheds on rollers to the sea, they are completely recalked and tarred.

           
"Bail," said the Forkbeard.

           
The girl went to the opened planking and fell to her knees beside it, the wooden scoop in her hands.

           
"Return to me," said the Forkbeard, harshly.

           
Frightened the girl did so.

           
"Now turn about," said he, "and walk there as a bondmaid."

           
Her face went white.

           
Then she turned and walked to the opened planking as a bond-maid. The other bond-maids gasped. The men watching her hooted with pleasure. I grinned. I wanted her. "Bond-maid!" scorned Aelgifu, from where she was fettered and chained to the mast. I gathered that these two, in Kassau, had been rival beauties. Then, sobbing, the blondish girl, who had been forced to walk as a bond-maid, fell to her knees beside the opened planking. Once she vomited over the side. But, on the whole, she did well.

           
Once the Forkbeard went to her and taught her to check the scoop, with her left hand, for snails, that they not be thrown overboard. Returning to me he held one of the snails, whose shell he crushed between his fingers, and sucked out the animal, chewing and swallowing it. He then threw the shell fragments overboard.

           
"They are edible," he said. "And we use them for fish bait."

           
We then returned to our game.
 

           
Once the blond girl cried out, the scoop in her hand. "Look!" she cried, pointing over the port gunwale. A hundred yards away, rolling and sporting, were a family of whales, a male, two females, and four calves. Then she returned to her bailing.

           
"Your
 
hall is taken," said the Forkbeard. His Jarl had moved decisively. The taking of the hall, in the Kaissa of the North, is equivalent to the capture of the Home Stone in the south.

           
"You should not have surrendered your Ax," said the Forkbeard.

           
"It seems not," I said. The end game had not even been reached. The hall had been taken in the middle game. I would think more carefully before I would surrender the Ax in the future.

           
"I am finished," said the slender girl, returning to where we sat, and kneeling on the deck.

           
She had performed her first task for her master, the Forkbeard, drying, as it is said, the belly of his serpent. It had been the first of her labors, set to her by her master in her bondage.

           
"Give Gorrn back the scoop," said the Forkbeard, "and then carry water to my men."

           
"Yes," she said.

           
The Forkbeard looked at her.

           
"Yes," she said "-myJarl." To the bond-maid the meanest of the free men of the North is her jarl. We heard Aelgifu laugh from the mast.The bond-haired girl rose to her feet and surrendered the scoop to Gorm, who put it away, and then closed the deck planking. She then went to one of the large, wooden, covered water buckets, roped to the deck, and in it submerged a water-skin. I heard the bubbling as the skin filled.

           
The men of Torvaldsland had not sought the whales. They had meat enough. They had barely taken notice of them. It was now late in the afternoon.

           
I noted the blondish girl, the water bag now, wet and heavy, over her shoulder, going to the men of the Forkbeard, to offer them drink.

           
She was quite beautiful.

           
The men who had fished with the net had now cleaned the catch of parsit fish, and chopped the cleaned, boned, silverish bodies into pieces, a quarter inch in width. Another of the bond-maids was then freed to mix the bond-maid gruel, mixing fresh water with Sa-Tarna meal, and then stirring in the raw fish.

           
"Let us have another game," said the Forkbeard.

           
I set up the pieces.

           
He went to Ael~ifu, who sat before the mast, her wr;sts fettered before her, her neck chained to the mast. He lifted her black, velvet dress up a little, revealing her ankle. She shrank back against the mast.

           
"Tomorrow night," he said, "I will have your ransom money."

           
"Yes," she said.

           
With his two large hands, he held her right ankle. She could not draw it away.

           
"I am free,' she whispered.

           
Holding her ankle with his left hand, he, with the fingers of his right hand, caressed, gently, her instep. She shuddered.

           
"I am free," she said. "Free!"
 

           
"Would you not, my large breasted beauty," said he, "like to spend the night with me in my bag of the skin of the sea sleen ?"

           
"No!" she cried. "No!'
 
Then she said, "If I am violated he will not pay the ransom! Too he will bring with him awoman, that determination on this matter be made! Surely you wish my ransom!"

           
"Yes," said the Forkbeard, putting down her ankle, "I do indeed want your ransom, and I shall have it."

           
"Then, Beast," said she, "do not touch me!"

           
"I am not touching you," said he, and got to his feet.

           
She turned away, and would not look at him. But she said to him, "Give me a covering for the night, that I may not be wet and cold."

           
"Go lie with the bond-maids," said he.

           
"Never!" she said.

           
"Then stay where you are," said the Forkbeard.

           
She looked up at him, her hair bedraggled, her eyes flashing. "Very well," said she, "I shall endure the night cheerfully. It will be my last in your bondage!"

           
The girl who had prepared the bond-maid gruel, had now been refettered and placed again in the coffle. The slender blond girl, who had been giving the men water from the skin bag, was now given the work of filling small bowls from the large wooden bowl, for the bond-maids. She used a bronze ladle, the handle of which was curved like the neck and head of a lovely bird. About the handle was a closed bronze ring, loose. It formed a collar for the bird's neck. The bond-maids did not much care for their gruel, unsweetened, mudlike Sa-Tarna meal, with raw fish. They fed, however. One girl who did not care to feed was struck twice across her back by a knotted rope in the hand of Gorm. Quickly then, and well, she fed. The girls, including the slender blondish girl, emptied rheir bowls, even to licking them, and rubbing them with their saliva-dampened fingers, that no grain be left, lest Gorm, their keeper in the ship, should not be pleased. They looked to one another in
 
fear, and put down their bowls, as they finished, fed bondwenches.

           
"Come here, Wench," called the Forkbeard.

           
The slender blondish girl quickly approached him, and knelt before him on the deck.

           
"Feed her," said the Forkbeard, gesturing over his shoulder.