Tigers Of The Sea

II.

Wulfhere of the Danes fingered his crimson beard and scowled abstractedly. He was a giant; his breast muscles bulged like twin shields under his scale mail corselet. The horned helmet on his head added to his great height, and with his huge hand knotted about the long shaft of a great axe he made a picture of rampant barbarism not easily forgotten. But for all his evident savagery, the chief of the Danes seemed slightly bewildered and undecided. He turned and growled a question to a man who sat near.

This man was tall and rangy. He was big and powerful, and though he lacked the massive bulk of the Dane, he more than made up for it by the tigerish litheness that was apparent in his every move. He was dark, with a smooth-shaven face and square-cut black hair. He wore none of the golden armlets or ornaments of which the Vikings were so fond. His mail was of chain mesh and his helmet, which lay beside him, was crested with flowing horse-hair.

"Well, Cormac," growled the pirate chief, "what think you?"

Cormac Mac Art did not reply directly to his friend. His cold, narrow, grey eyes gazed full into the blue eyes of Donal the minstrel. Donal was a thin man of more than medium height. His wayward unruly hair was yellow. Now he bore neither harp nor sword and his dress was whimsically reminiscent of a court jester. His thin, patrician face was as inscrutable at the moment as the sinister, scarred features of the Gael.

"I trust you as much as I trust any man," said Cormac, "but I must have more than your mere word on the matter. How do I know that this is not some trick to send us on a wild goose chase, or mayhap into a nest of our enemies? We have business on the east coast of Britain-"

"The matter of which I speak will pay you better than the looting of some pirate's den," answered the minstrel. "If you will come with me, I will bring you to the man who may be able to convince you. But you must come alone, you and Wulfhere."

"A trap," grumbled the Dane. "Donal, I am disappointed in you-"

Cormac, looking deep into the minstrel's strange eyes, shook his head slowly.

"No, Wulfhere; if it be a trap, Donal too is duped and that I cannot believe."

"If you believe that," said Donal, "why can you not believe my mere word in regard to the other matter?"

"That is different," answered the reiver. "Here only my life and Wulfhere's is involved. The other concerns every member of our crew. It is my duty to them to require every proof. I do not think you lie; but you may have been lied to."

"Come, then, and I will bring you to one whom you will believe in spite of yourself."

Cormac rose from the great rock whereon he had been sitting and donned his helmet. Wulfhere, still grumbling and shaking his head, shouted an order to the Vikings who sat grouped about a small fire a short distance away, cooking a haunch of venison. Others were tossing dice in the sand, and others still working on the dragonship which was drawn up on the beach. Thick forest grew close about this cove, and that fact, coupled with the wild nature of the region, made it an ideal place for a pirate's rendezvous.

"All sea-worthy and ship-shape," grumbled Wulfhere, referring to the galley. "On the morrow we could have sailed forth on the Viking path again-"

"Be at ease, Wulfhere," advised the Gael. "If Donal's man does not make matters sufficiently clear for our satisfaction, we have but to return and take the path."

"Aye-if we return."

"Why, Donal knew of our presence. Had he wished to betray us, he could have led a troop of Gerinth's horsemen upon us, or surrounded us with British bowmen. Donal, at least, I think, means to deal squarely with us as, he has done in the past. It is the man behind Donal I mistrust."

The three had left the small bay behind them and now walked along in the shadow of the forest. The land tilted upward rapidly and soon the forest thinned out to straggling clumps and single gnarled oaks that grew between and among huge boulders-boulders broken as if in a Titan's play. The landscape was rugged and wild in the extreme. Then at last they rounded a cliff and saw a tall man, wrapped in a purple cloak, standing beneath a mountain oak. He was alone and Donal walked quickly toward him, beckoning his companions to follow. Cormac showed no sign of what he thought, but Wulfhere growled in his beard as he gripped the shaft of his axe and glanced suspiciously on all sides, as if expecting a horde of swordsmen to burst out of ambush. The three stopped before the silent man and Donal doffed his feathered cap. The man dropped his cloak and Cormac gave a low exclamation.

"By the blood of the gods! King Gerinth himself!"

He made no movement to kneel or to uncover his head, nor did Wulfhere. These wild rovers of the sea acknowledged the rule of no king. Their attitude was the respect accorded a fellow warrior; that was all. There was neither insolence nor deference in their manner, though Wulfhere's eyes did widen slightly as he gazed at the man whose keen brain and matchless valor had for years, and against terrific odds, stemmed the triumphant march of the Saxons to the Western sea.

The Dane saw a tall, slender man with a weary aristocratic face and kindly grey eyes. Only in his black hair was the Latin strain in his veins evident. Behind him lay the ages of a civilization now crumbled to the dust before the onstriding barbarians. He represented the last far-flung remnant of Rome's once mighty empire, struggling on the waves of barbarism which had engulfed the rest of that empire in one red inundation. Cormac, while possessing the true Gaelic antipathy for his Cymric kin in general, sensed the pathos and valor of this brave, vain struggle, and even Wulfhere, looking into the far-seeing eyes of the British king, felt a trifle awed. Here was a people, with their back to the wall, fighting grimly for their lives and at the same time vainly endeavoring to uphold the culture and ideals of an age already gone forever. 'The gods of Rome had faded under the ruthless heel of Goth and Vandal. Flaxen-haired savages reigned in the purple halls of the vanished Caesars. Only in this far-flung isle a little band of Romanized Celts clung to the traditions of yesterday.

"These are the warriors, your Majesty," said Donal, and Gerinth nodded and thanked him with the quiet courtesy of a born nobleman.

"They wish to hear again from your lips what I have told them," said the bard.

"My friends," said the king quietly, "I come to ask your aid. My sister, the princess Helen, a girl of twenty years of age, has been stolen-how, or by whom, I do not know. She rode into the forest one morning attended only by her maid and a page, and she did not return. It was on one of those rare occasions when our coasts were peaceful; but when search parties were sent out, they found the page dead and horribly mangled in a small glade deep in the forest. The horses were found later, wandering loose, but of the princess Helen and her maid there was no trace. Nor was there ever a trace found of her, though we combed the kingdom from border to sea. Spies sent among the Angles and Saxons found no sign of her, and we at last decided that she had been taken captive and borne away by some wandering band of sea-farers who, roaming inland, had seized her and then taken to sea again.

"We are helpless to carry on such a search as must be necessary if she is to be found. We have no ships-the last remnant of the British fleet was destroyed in the sea-fight off Cornwall by the Saxons. And if we had ships, we could not spare the men to man them, not even for the princess Helen. The Angles press hard on our eastern borders and Cerdic's brood raven upon us from the south. In my extremity I appeal to you. I cannot tell you where to look for my sister. I cannot tell you how to recover her if found. I can only say: in the name of God, search the ends of the world for her, and if you find her, return with her and name your price."

Wulfhere glanced at Cormac as he always did in matters that required thought.

"Better that we set a price before we go," grunted the Gael.

"Then you agree?" cried the king, his fine face lighting.

"Not so fast," returned the wary Gael. "Let us first bargain. It is no easy task you set us: to comb the seas for a girl of whom nothing is known save that she was stolen. How if we search the oceans and return empty-handed?"

"Still I will reward you," answered the king. "I have gold in plenty. Would I could trade it for warriors-but I have Vortigern's example before me."

"If we go and bring back the princess, alive or dead," said Cormac, "you shall give us a hundred pounds of virgin gold, and ten pounds of gold for each man we lose on the voyage. If we do our best and cannot find the princess, you shall still give us ten pounds for every man slain in the search, but we will waive further reward. We are not Saxons, to haggle over money. Moreover, in either event you will allow us to overhaul our long ship in one of your bays, and furnish us with material enough to replace such equipment as may be damaged during the voyage. Is it agreed?"

"You have my word and my hand on it," answered the king, stretching out his arm, and as their hands met Cormac felt the nervous strength in the Briton's fingers.

"You sail at once?"

"As soon as we can return to the cove."

"I will accompany you," said Donal suddenly, "and there is another who would come also."

He whistled abruptly-and came nearer to sudden decapitation than he guessed; the sound was too much like a signal of attack to leave the wolf-like nerves of the sea-farers untouched. Cormac and Wulfhere, however, relaxed as a single man strode from the forest.

"This is Marcus, of a noble British house," said Donal, "the betrothed of the princess Helen. He too will accompany us if he may."

The young man was above medium height and well built. He was in full chain mail armor and wore the crested helmet of a legionary; a straight thrusting-sword was girt upon him. His eyes were grey, but his black hair and the faint olive-brown tint of his complexion showed that the warm blood of the South ran far more strongly in his veins than in those of his king. He was undeniably handsome, though now his face was shadowed with worry.

"I pray you will allow me to accompany you." He addressed himself to Wulfhere. "The game of war is not unknown to me-and waiting here in ignorance of the fate of my promised bride would be worse to me than death."

"Come if you will," growled Wulfhere. "It's like we'll need all the swords we can muster before the cruise is over. King Gerinth, have you no hint whatever of who took the princess?"

"None. We found only a single trace of anything out of the ordinary in the forests. Here it is."

The king drew from his garments a tiny object and passed it to the chieftain. Wulfhere stared, unenlightened, at the small, polished flint arrowhead which lay in his huge palm. Cormac took it and looked closely at it. His face was inscrutable but his cold eyes flickered momentarily. Then the Gael said a strange thing:

"I will not shave today, after all."