Adventure Magazine Cover — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

56 | _ Adventure “Go. fast!’ said Tros. ‘Bid Glendwyr hasten! Say, if he fails this night, I will never again trust him. And you likewise! Fail me, and you will find Cesar a more forgiving man than me! Serve me, and I am more generous than Ceesar!”’ Orwic opened a side gate, standing behind it, so that she did not catch sight of him, although her appraising eyes swept every corner of the yard, and Tros was sure she knew the count of chariots that stood pole- upward, the number of restless horses in the long sheds, and how many serfs played knuckle-bones under the eaves. Those eyes of hers missed nothing, except that Tros laughed when her chariot went plunging through the gate, and that it was Orwic, Caswallon’s nephew and his right- hand-man, who slammed the gate shut be- hind her. “A mare’s nest!’ said Orwic, rather mel- ancholy. “There will be no eggs in it! I know Glendwyr; bold when it pays to lie low, coward at smiting time! If he had come to fight the Northmen, yes, he might have won a following against Caswallon afterward. “But he lay low then, and he will lie low now, until Caswallon has an army at his back. Then the fool will have at us—Lud help him! He shall lie low then for all time!’ Tros’ amber eyes glanced at the sky. “Northeast wind backing to the north!” he answered; but what he meant by that he did not say, any more than he knew what Orwic’s air of information in reserve might mean. He returned to where Helma waited whispering to Sigurdsen. The Northman looked at Tros with new appraisal in his eyes, and actually smiled at last. “Can he fight?” Tros asked. for an adventure?”’ sigurdsen nodded and talked back to Helma in a singsong growl that sounded like the sea on jasper beaches, but Tros did not wait for all that outburst to be inter- preted; when Helma turned to speak he took her by the shoulders and, in short, hurried phrases told her of the plan in mind. 50 she told Sigurdsen, and he, laughing, told the others, bidding one of them help him strip off all the bandages that impeded his arms and his huge shoulder-muscles. Tros led the way then toward the yard, “Ts he fit but Conops met him in the door, gesturing secrecy, mysterious as if he came roma snooping in a graveyard. | “Master! One word!” “Aye! And I will count the word! Be swilt!” Conops drew him back into the room and whispered: ‘““Master! Women are no good! I know! I never dallied with a woman but she robbed me! That one you have sent away would sell her lover to a press-gang for the price of a drop of scent! This one, this yellow- haired young one will scold you, day in, day out! When she is older she will be like Fflur, who scolds Caswallon until he daren’t even drink without her leave, and drinks because she worries him! Master, don’t marry her! Don’t! Don’t! And your father not yet in his grave!”’ Tros took him by the neck, laughed, shook him until his teeth clattered like castanets. “Stand by!” he said. “Stand by! You hear me? Stand by for dirty weather, if you smell the wind! I she should scold me, I will take it out on your hide, little man, you little one-eyed, split-lipped, red- haired, freckled, dissolute, ugly, faithful friend o’ mine! Belay advice! “Out oars, you knife-nasty, wharf-run- ning, loyal old dirty-weather sea-dog! Stow that tongue and stand by me as I endure you, dock-rat, drunkard, shame of the Levant, impertinent, devoted trusty that you are! No back-talk, or Pll break your head! Ill buy a wife for you, and make you keep her! Now, are you satisfied?” , TROS banged his head against ~ the wall by way of clinching argu- ment and strode at the head of his Northmen to the stable-yard, they tramping in his wake like henchmen who had served him since the day they car- ried arms, with Conops fussing along behind them ragging Sigurdsen because he did not keep step. But Sigurdsen was too proud to fall into the rhythm of the tramp, and rather too long-legged; also, he was not at all disposed to do what Conops told him, or even to take notice of him, or to admit that he under- stood. When they reached the great barn where Caswallon’s Northmen were confined, Or- wic was waiting and unlocked the compli- cated wooden contrivance that held the Gomichbooks.com