Prisoners of War/Chapter 6

HE druids sang as they approached the bireme. In the bow of a long barge, under a bower of yew-branches, there stood an ancient of days, bald-headed, a white beard flowing to his waist, a golden sickle in his girdle, his white robe touching sandals laced with golden thongs.

He led the chant; young voices in the stern caroled joyful, almost bird-like regular responses; fourteen rowers droned a harmonied accompaniment, pulsing to the rythm [sic] of the gilded oars. Serenely, solemnly they hymned the ever-nearness of eternity; there was not one note of grief.

The barge was draped in purple cloth and the rowers wore sleeveless purple tunics over their white smocks. They who stood singing in the stern were robed, like the ancient in the bow, in white from head to foot; and all rowers included, wore wreaths of mistletoe.

In the midst of the barge, between the rowers, was a platform draped in white with a wide gold border, and over that a purple canopy was raised on gilded rods. The sides of the barge were white, adorned with gilded scroll-work.

The rowers tossed oars and the barge swung to a standstill under the bireme's stern; but the chant continued. Tros and his prisoners stood respectfully, Olaf Sigurdsen supporting himself on the shoulders of two men; the Northmen's lips moved as if they were trying to fit their own familiar words to druid music, that stirred their pagan hearts as only battle, and the North Sea storms and elemental mysteries could ever do.

Skell kept covering his face nervously; some half-familiar phantom had returned to haunt his brain. The women, except Helma sobbed as if the sobbing brought relief to tortured heart-strings; but she stood still, beside Tros, brave-eyed, almost glistening with emotions that not she herself could have explained.

Her shoulder touched Tros' arm and he could feel a thrill that made his flesh creep pleasantly. He drew his arm away.

The hireling Britons at the water-hoist ceased work and stood by the bulwark. Conops, irreverent and practical, threw a rope over the stern, but the druids ignored it; they held the barge to the bireme with gilded boat-hooks while two of the rowers drove long poles into the river-bed to serve for an anchor at either end.

Then they raised a wooden ladder with bronze hooks that caught the bireme's stern rail, and up that the old High-Druid came, pausing at every step to roll out his majestic hymn and wait for the response. He came over the taffrail, singing, moving his right hand in centuries-old ritual, as calmly as if that were a temple threshold. He hardly touched Tros' proffered arm as he stepped down to the poop.

There, eyes on the horizon, he stood booming his hymn to eternity until eight druids followed him over the stern. He needed no advice from Tros; Caswallon must have told him where the greater-than-a-druid's body was that he had come to bear away with ancient honors.

He strode forward, and down the short ladder to the deck, the other druids keeping step behind him; and when Tros, summoning all his dignity, swung himself down to the deck to open the cabin door and show the way, a druid motioned him aside. They let no uninitiated hand have part, let no untaught eye see the rites they entered to fulfil, let none but druids hear their whispered liturgy.

Two druids stood outside the door, their backs to it, lips moving, signifying with a nod to Tros that he should keep his distance.

So Tros stood, leaning on his drawn sword, his head bowed, until they came forth at last bearing the body between them. It was no longer covered with Cæsar's scarlet cloak, but robed in druid's garments under a purple sheet and laid on a gilded stretcher.

The old High-Druid swayed ahead of the procession, chanting. They ascended the poop-ladder, hardly pausing, skilfully passing the stretcher from hand to hand so that the body they honored was always feet first, always horizontal, paused on the poop to chant a changed refrain, then descended the ladder to the barge, with the rear end of the stretcher hung in slings, and no commotion or mismovement to disturb the dead man's dignity.

The chanting rose to higher melody, as if they welcomed a warrior home, when they laid the body on the platform in the barge's midst. Then the old High-Druid took his stand beneath the canopy; the rowers cast off from the anchor-poles; the barge moved out into the stream, and to a new chant, wilder and more wonderful, the oarsmen swung in unison, until they vanished in a crimson glow of sunset between autumn-tinted oaks, up river.

Then, Tros broke silence.

"Thus, not otherwise, a soul goes forth," he said. "None knoweth whither. They bear it forth; and there are they who shall receive it."

He spoke Greek; only Conops could have understood the words, and Conops' senses were all occupied in watching Skell and Helma, trying to guess what mischief they were brewing. Quietly he plucked Tros' sleeve, whispering:

"Master; better give me leave to kill that sly-eyed fox! Coax him forward of the cook-house. Slip the knife in back of his ear! As for the

He did not offer to kill the woman; he was thrifty; he knew her value.

"whip her! Whip her now, before she thinks you easy and does you a damage! Take my advice, master, or she will cook a mischief for you quicker than she burned the stew!"

The sun went down; and in a haze of purple twilight Tros drew Helma to the starboard rail, backing her against it.

"What did Skell say this time?" he demanded.

Conops was listening, hand on knife-hilt, watching Skell, who leaned over the far rail whistling to himself. The hireling seamen having pumped the bireme dry had gone to the bow, where they were half-invisible, like fantoms herded in the gloom. The tide was rising fast; the broken oars between the ships already creaked to the longship's motion, but the bireme was still hard and fast.

Helma laughed mirthlessly, but she seemed to have recovered something of her former spirit.

"You are arrogant, and I obey you, Tros, but I don't know for how long! Skell says you are among enemies in Britain. He says they will not let you keep your prisoners or the longship. He bade me notice how the druids said no word to you.

Tros laughed. He knew the druids took no part in personal disputes, not interfering much in politics. The same law governed all their ceremony; nothing was allowed to interrupt it.

"Go on," he said. "What was Skell's proposal?"

"Skell said, if I go with you I shall be sold in open market by Caswallon's order."

Tros knew that Skell knew better. Even should Caswallon claim the prisoners despite his recent gift of them to Tros, he could not dispose of them like cattle without incurring the wrath of the druids and the scorn of a whole countryside. But it was a likely enough lie for Skell to tell to a prisoner, who might not know the British customs, though she could speak the tongue.

"So what did Skell suggest?"

"He said the Britons will come and loot these ships. They will kill the men and seize us women. Skell said, if I obey him, he will protect me and take me to Gaul."

Tros whistled softly, nodding to himself. There was no hurry; the longship floated; he could move her whenever he chose. Meanwhile, Skell had broken the guest-law and he had excuse to kill him or to kick him overboard. Conops read his gesture, took a step toward Skell, drawing his knife eight gleaming inches from the sheath.

"Stay!"

ROS seized him by the shoulder. It was a dangerous game to deal roughly with a guest in Briton. Skell had eaten from Tros' dish by invitation, all the crew had seen it. A prisoner's word that Skell had voided privilege could carry no weight against a free man's unless given under torture.

"What answer did you make to Skell?" he demanded, turning, but keeping hold of Conop's shoulder.

The girl laughed, mirthlessly again. "I would liefer die beside my brother than go, a half-breed's property, to Cæsar."

"Come here, Skell!" Tros commanded.

But he spoke too suddenly, too fiercely. There was a splash as Skell sprang overside. Then Tros' ears caught what Skell probably had heard first—song and splashing in the distance, down stream. He thought of the arrow-engine but refrained and pushed Conops away from it. Conops urged, but Tros knew his own mind.

"Let the rat run! I have a notion not to kill him."

"Notion!" Conops muttered. "I've a notion too! We'll all be gutted by pirates, that's my notion!"

Skell's boat left the bireme's side in response to his shouts and the Britons who had brought him hauled him out of water. Straight away he set them paddling toward the farther bank, where he could lurk in shadow out of sight of the approaching boats, whose crews sang drunkenly and splashed enough for a considerable fleet. But there was no moon, no stars, only the ghostly British gloaming deeply shadowed, and Tros could not see them yet.

"Into the longship!" he commanded. "All hands!"

The hirelings in the bow demurred. They knew the time was come for looting. Tros charged them, beat them overside with the flat of his long sword. Conops cut the lashings that held the ships together. There was no talk needed to persuade the Northmen to flee from drunken longshoremen; they were overside before Tros could count their flitting shadows, and Tros had hardly time to run for Cæsar's cloak before the longship yielded to the tide and drifted out into the river.

For a while he let her drift and listened. He could still hardly see the approaching boats, but it was evident that their occupants had seen the longship's movement; they had stopped and were holding a consultation, paddling to keep their craft from drifting nearer until they could decide what the movement meant.

There was no wind; the longship lay helpless on the tide, useless unless Tros could set his prisoners to work and make the hirelings help them; and if he should put the Northmen to the oars there would be none to help him repel boarders.

Yet there was no knowing what the end might be if he should employ his prisoners to defend a ship that had been theirs a dozen hours ago! They, too, might force the hirelings to the oars and make a bid for freedom! He had given them back their weapons; they could overwhelm him easily.

But out of the darkness down the river movement grew again. The Britons were advancing on the bireme, keeping silence. It was more than Tros could stomach to see pirates loot a valuable ship.

"Oars!" he ordered in a low voice. "Out oars!"

Conops leaped into the ship's waist, clawing, cuffing, beating with his knife-hilt, until presently a dozen hirelings manned the benches, the remainder hugging bruises in the dark.

"Too few!" Tros muttered.

Unused to those oars and that ship, a dozen men could hardly have provided steerage way against the tide. He could count nearly a dozen boats creeping close up to the bireme.

"Helma!" he commanded, turning his head to look for her.

The Northmen, except Sigurdsen, who lay murmuring in delirium, stood and grinned at him. Helma was behind them, urging something, speaking Norse in sibilant undertones.

"Helma!" he said again; and his hand went to his sword, for the Northmen's grins were over-bold.

One of them was arguing with Helma, with what sounded like monstrous oaths.

"To your oars!" he ordered, gesturing.

None obeyed. He seized the nearest Northman hurled him into the ship's waist, spun around again to fight for dear life, drawing sword and lunging as he turned.

"Hold Tros!"

That was Helma's voice. Ears were swifter than his eyes; he heard her in mid-lunge and checked barely in time to let a man give ground in front of him. Helma sprang to his side then, seized his sword-hilt in both hands, bearing down on it, screaming at the prisoners in Norse.

He understood she was fighting for him, scolding, screaming at her kinsmen to obey and man the oars. He caught the word Sigurdsen two or three times. She was invoking her brother's name.

Suddenly she let go Tros' sword and fairly drove the Northmen down in front of her, hurling imprecations at them, then watched Tros, watched what he would do, stood back in silence as he strode toward the helm, laughed when he seized it and stood at gaze, his left hand raised over his head ready to signal the rowers.

The longship had drifted away from the bireme stern-first and was now nearly beam to the tide. He signaled to the port oars first, to straighten her, then tried three strokes, both sides together, to feel what strength and speed he could command. The tide was strong, but they could move her better than he hoped, and he headed half a dozen easy strokes inshore where there was more or less slack water, due to reeds and lily-pads.

He could count nine boats now nosing toward the bireme. Two or three had disappeared, inshore probably. They were creeping cautiously as if expecting ambush. As their noses touched the bireme's shadow Tros shouted, bringing down his left hand:

"Row! Yo-ho! Yo-ho! Yo-ho!"

The longship leaped. Before the Britons in the boats could guess what the shout portended, a high prow, notched against the sky, came boiling down on them, jerking to the strain of ash oars as Conops beat time with a rope's end on the hirelings' backs. Three boats backed away in time; but six crowded ones were caught by the longship's prow, swept sidewise between the ships and crushed against the bireme's hull.

There were screams, and a splintering crash, grinding of broken timber, oaths, confusion in the longship where the rowers on the port side fell between the benches, a long, ululating cry from Helma and the longship swung alone down-river with a boiling helm as Tros threw all his weight against the steering oar.

"Now again!" he shouted, laughing. "Easier this time—with the tide!"

But the rowers needed minutes to recover equilibrium and breath. There were two men knocked unconscious by their own oar-handles. It took time to swing the longship, head up-stream. Tros roared his orders, Helma screamed interpretation of them; Conops plied the rope's end; but before the longship could be headed on her course again Tros saw the remnant of the fleet of boats scoot out of the bireme's shadow and race for the riverbank.

"Easy! Easy all!" he shouted; and again Helma studied him curiously, puckering her eyes to see his face more clearly in the gloom.

There were thumps, oaths, commotion in the ship's waist, where Conops fought three Britons. Unwisely they had sprung out of the darkness from behind to pay him for the rope's end, but they missed with their first onslaught, so the outcome was inevitable and Tros paid no attention to that minor detail. He was studying the bireme, measuring with his eye the height of water up her side. She was still heeled just a trifle, bow-end firmly on the mud.

UT there were noises along the shadowy, marshy shoreline. Owls, half a dozen of them, rose into the night and vanished with the weird, swift flight that signified they were afraid of something. Presently sparks, then a blaze, then a whirl of red fire as a man waved a torch to get it properly alight.

Torch after torch was lighted from the first one, until the darkness fifty yards back from the riverline grew aglow with smoky crimson. The commotion in the ship's waist ceased and Conops came aft, leaning elbows on the low poop-deck.

"All ready, master," he said calmly; but he was breathing hard, and he snuffled because his nose was bleeding.

"Find a warp and come up here!" Tros ordered.

Conops disappeared again. Tros sang a "Yo-ho" song to time the oarsmen, giving just sufficient weigh to bring the ships abreast. Then, backing port oars with the aid of Helma's voice, he swung the longship's stern until it almost touched the bireme. Conops appeared then, dragging a wet rope, cursing its religion in outrageous longshore Levantine—which was a mixture of a dozen languages. Helma pounced on it and helped him haul, her muscles cracking like a firebrand.

"Jump and make fast!"

Conops nearly missed, for the longship's stern was swinging. But he had tied a small rope to the heavy warp and tied that to his waist, so he had two hands to clutch the bireme's stern. He clambered up it like a monkey and hauled the warp after him, Helma paying out the coils as the longship drifted away, beam to the tide, Tros straightening her with slow dips of the port oars.

"Make fast!"

Helma, sea-king's daughter to the marrow of her young bones, took three turns around an oaken bollard in the stern and held that until the warp began to feel the strain, paying out a foot or two until vibration ceased, before she made fast to the other bollard.

"Both banks—way!" Tros thundered and began his "Yo-ho" song, while Helma beat time and the mud boiled blue around them.

But the bireme stuck fast, though the longship swung and swayed, heeling to one side or the other as the humming warp took the strain to port or starboard. Conops yelled suddenly. A torch came curving out of darkness to the bireme's deck, followed by yells from the longshore Britons as Conops caught that one and tossed it overboard. Then another torch, and another.

"Row! Yo-ho! Yo-ho!"

The ash oars bent and the rowers sweated in the dark. Helma ran between the benches, whirling a rope's end, beating the Britons' backs. No need to urge the Northmen; they were working for dear life, whereas the Britons were in favor of the longshore pirates.

Tros labored at the helm to keep the long ship straight and haul the bireme off the mud at the same angle that she struck. But the warp hummed and nothing happened, except that torch followed torch so fast that Conops could hardly toss them overboard.

Then Conops yelled again and vanished like a bat toward the bireme's bow. There was shouting, splashing and a red glare in the darkness at her bow-end—a thump of wood and iron as Conops levered the great anchor clear and dropped it over-side—yells as it fell on heads below.

Then the glare increased; they were bringing more torches and burning brushwood. A dozen arrows flitted through the darkness near the longship's poop. Tros roared, bull-throated, to the rowers for a final effort; but they ceased, drooped, gasping on their oars, and the longship slowly swung inshore as the warp held her stern against the tide.

Tros did not dare to let his crew of Britons get too near the riverbank; they would mutiny and join their friends. Nor could he let the warp go; he would have died rather than leave Conops at the mercy of drunken savages.

"Now if Lud of Lunden would give me a south

But Lud did better. He made some one mad. Tros would have needed time to set the sail. A shadowy boat flitted through the darkness and shot close up to the bireme's bow. A flat blast on a cow-horn split the night. Followed yelling. The red glare faded, giving place to moving shadows and din or argument. Conops returned in leaps to the bireme's stern and shouted, waving both hands.

"Way! Way! Yo-ho!" Tros thundered.

Helma plied the rope's-end; the exhausted oarsmen strained, half-mutinous; the longship heeled and turned her head to mid-stream, until suddenly Tros laid his whole weight and strength on the steering-oar and the bireme slid gently backward off the mud. The tide had lifted her at last.

They towed her stern-first for a mile, until the longshore shouting died in the distance. Then Tros backed oars in a wide reach of the river and lay alongside until Conops could make the warp fast in the bow, so as to bring the bireme's head up-stream.

"Who was it saved us?" he asked Conops.

"Tide and a madman, master! Skell came over-river, blew a horn-blast, startled them, told them then he knew Cæsar's gold was in the bireme, offered them half of it if they would cut the warp and scare you off before they set fire to anything, kept them talking until the tide crept under her. This Lud of Lunden is a pretty decent sort of god!"

"Aye, Lud of Lunden! Aye," Tros muttered. "Aye. I knew there was a reason for preserving Skell! Lud of Lunden! I will make a little giftlet to that godlet. I believe he smiles on effort. He shall laugh!"