Adventure Magazine Cover — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

58 brewing and then, because Orwic appeared well pleased, adding their own shouts to the tumult. All the Northmen kissed Helrha and did fealty to Tros, each touching the hilt of his long sword and murmuring hoarse words that sounded like an echo of a longship launching off the ways. There was a roll of thunder in it, and the names of Thor and Odin. (2, HELMA smiled through tears, a ) gleam of grandeur on her face. <“gaesy But she was serious when she re- TEI peated to Tros what Sigurdsen had sung, she. walking hand-in-hand with him toward Caswallon’s hall, with the Northmen tramping in the rear supporting the wounded between them. It did not appear to occur to her that there might be any untruth in Tros’ pedi- gree as Sigurdsen unfolded it, or that there might be anything far-fetched in the ac- count of Tros’ wanderings and battles at the far rim of the world. That he was not so old as Sigurdsen and could not possibly have done a hundredth part of all that Sigurdsen ascribed to him, meant nothing to her. | She was proud of her new lord beyond the limit of expression, far beyond the common- place dimensions of such tawdry facts as time and space. She walked beside him worshiping, her young, strong, virgin heart aglow with such emotion as no years can limit. “Lord Tros,” she said. Her voice thrilled. There was vision in her eyes. ‘My brother saw beyond the veil of things. The gods sang through his mouth. It is honor and joy to me beyond words that I will bear your sons.”’ Whereat Tros went searching in his mind for words such as he had never used to man or woman, marveling how lame a thing is language and how a tongue, not given to too much silence, can so hesitate between one sentence and another, falling between both into a stammering confusion. So that he felt ashamed. “Whether I be this or that, and a strong man or a weak one, I will do that which is in me, so that you be not sorry if my best may make you glad,” he said at last. And he took comfort from the speech, al- though it irked him to be picking and choos- mg, yet to find no-proper words. And he did not think of his father at all, although he Adventure was conscious that he did not think of him— which would have puzzled him still more if he had pondered it. The sun went down and servants lighted the oil-fed wicks in long bronze sconces on the wall when they all came to Caswallon’s table and the noisy men-at-arms filed in— Caswallon’s relatives by blood or marriage, most of them—heaping their arms in the racks in the vestibule and quarreling among themselves for right of place at table. Some of them had wives who sat each be- side her husband, because Fflur was at table, beside Caswallon’s great gilded throne-chair that had been pulled forward from under the balcony. Unmarried wo- mien served the food, receiving it from serfs at the kitchen door. Tros sat next to Fflur, with Helma on his, right; beyond her, Sigurdsen, his. wife and all the Northmen faced curiously aimiable Britons, who seemed to think it a good joke to be eating and drinking on equal terms with men whom they had beaten in battle recently. Conops stood behind Tros, se- lecting the best dishes as they came and snatching them to set before his master. First came the mead in beakers that the women carried in both hands. Caswallon struck the table with his fist for ‘silence, then, beaker in hand, stood up and made the shortest wedding-speech that Tros—and surely Britain—had ever heard: “Men of Lunden, we go presently to where the druids speed brave comrades, through the darkness men call death, into a life that lies beyond. And none knows what the morrow shall bring forth; so there are acts that should be done now, lest death first fall on us, like rain that shuts off a horizon. Hear ye all! This is my brother, Tros. To him I give this woman Helma to be wife, and all these Northmen, who were mine by victory, to be his faithful men-at- arms and servants. Tros!”’ He raised his beaker and drank deep, up-ending it in proof there were no dregs. And when that swift ceremony was complete they all drank, except Tros and Helma, then cheered until the great hall crashed with sound. Fflur, rising, gave a golden flagon into Tros’ hands, from which he and Helma drank in turn, Tros finishing the mead with one huge draught that left him gasping when he set the flagon bottom-up. Then he spoke, and was briefer than Caswallon: “Lord Caswallon, you have named meé Gomichbooks.com