To Halle and Rapp, he gave a fistful of gold each. Then, while all the officers of the army were still drawn up before him, he bade Orm step forward. Almansur stared at him, and said: ‘Red-bearded man, you have laid your hand upon your master, which it is forbidden for any soldier to do. What answer have you to make to this charge?’
Orm replied: ‘The air was alive with spears, and there was naught else to be done. But it is my belief, lord, that your honour is so great that what has happened cannot harm it. Besides which, you fell with your face towards your enemies, so that no man can say that you shrank from them.’
Almansur sat fingering his beard silently. Then he nodded and said: ‘It is a good answer. And you saved my life; and I have work yet to accomplish.’
He ordered a neck-chain to be brought from his coffers; it was of gold, and heavy. He said: ‘I see that a spear found your shoulder. Perchance it may prove painful. Here is balm for the pain.’
So saying, he hung the chain around Orm’s neck, which was an exceedingly rare honour for him to grant. After this incident, Orm and his men stood even higher in Almansur’s favour than before. Toke examined the chain, and expressed his delight that Orm had won so rich a gift.
‘Without doubt,’ he said, ‘this Almansur is the best master that a man could wish to serve. All the same, I think it was lucky for you, and for the rest of us, that you did not push him on to his back.’
Next day, the army continued its march; and at length they came to the holy city of the Christians, where the apostle James lay buried, with a great church built over his grave. Here there was heavy fighting, for the Christians, believing that the apostle would come to their aid, fought to the limit of their endurance; but in the end, Almansur overcame them, and the city was taken and burnt. Hither, Christians from all parts of their country had brought their most valuable treasures for safe keeping, for the city had never before been threatened by any enemy; consequently, an enormous quantity of booty was captured, together with many prisoners. It was Almansur’s especial wish to raze the great church that stood over the apostle’s grave, but this was of stone and would not burn. Instead, therefore, he set his prisoners, aided by men from his own army, to pull it down. Now, in the tower of this church, there hung twelve bells, each one bearing the name of an apostle. They had a most melodious note, and were greatly prized by the Christians, in particular the largest of them all, which was called James.
Almansur commanded that these bells should be taken back to Cordova by the Christian captives, there to be placed in the great mosque with their mouths facing upwards, so that they might be filled with sweet-scented oil and burn perpetually as great lamps to the glory of Allah and the Prophet. They were enormously heavy, and great litters were built to hold them; sixty prisoners were set to carry each bell in one of these litters, working in shifts. But the James bell was so heavy that no litter could be built to take it, and they knew it would not be possible to convey it by ox-cart across the mountain passes. Almansur, however, was very unwilling to leave it behind, for he regarded it as the finest item of spoil that he had ever won.
Accordingly, he had a platform built for the bell to be placed upon, in order that this platform might be dragged on rollers to a nearby river, whence it and the bell could be removed to Cordova by ship. When the platform was ready, and the rollers had been placed beneath it, iron bars were passed through the hasps of the bell, and a number of men tried to lift it on to the platform; but the southerners lacked either the strength or the enthusiasm for the work; and, when longer bars were tried, so that more men might help with the lifting, the bars broke and the bell remained on the ground. Orm and his men, who had come to watch the work, began to laugh; then Toke said: ‘Six grown men ought to be able to lift that without much trouble,’ and Orm said: ‘Four should be able to manage it.’
Then he and Toke and Ogmund and Rapp the One-Eyed walked up to the bell, ran a short bar through the hasps, and lifted the bell up and on to the platform.
Almansur, who had been riding past on his horse, stopped to watch them do this. He called Orm to him, and said: ‘Allah has blessed you and your men with great strength, praised be His name! It would seem that you are the men to see that this bell is safely conveyed to the ship, and to guard it on its passage to Cordova; for I know no other men capable of handling it.’
Orm bowed, and replied that this task did not appear to him to be difficult.
Then Almansur had a body of good slaves chosen from among the prisoners, and ordered them to draw the bell down to the river at a point where it began to be navigable, after which they were to serve as oarsmen on a ship awaiting them there, which had been captured from the Asturians. Two officials from Almansur’s staff were sent with them, to be in charge during the voyage.
Ropes were tied to the platform, and Orm and his men set off with the bell and its slaves, some of the prisoners drawing it, and others placing rollers before it. It was a tedious journey, for the path they had to follow led, for the most part, downhill, so that sometimes the bell slid forwards under its own momentum, and in the early stages some of the slaves who were changing the rollers were crushed. Orm, however, made them fasten a drag-rope to the rear of the platform, so that they might be able to control it where the going was steep. Thereafter, they made better progress, and so eventually came down to the river where the ship lay at anchor.
It was a merchant ship, smallish, but strongly built, with a good deck, ten pairs of oars, a mast and a sail. Orm and his men lifted the bell aboard, and made it fast with ropes and chocks; then they put the slaves in their places at the oars, and moved off down the river. This river ran westwards, north of that river up which Krok’s ships had rowed on their way to the margrave’s fortress; and the Northmen were happy to find themselves once again in charge of a ship.
The Vikings took it in turns to keep an eye on the rowers, whom they found mulish and very clumsy at their work. They were disappointed to find that there were no ankle-chains in the ship, for this meant that someone had to keep watch throughout the night; and in spite of this, a couple of the prisoners, who had felt the whip, managed to escape. Orm’s men agreed that they had never seen such miserable rowing before, and that, if it went on like this, they would never reach Cordova.
When they came to the mouth of the river, they found there many of Almansur’s great warships, which had been unable, on account of their size, to sail up the river, although most of the soldiers from them had marched inland to join in the general plundering. Orm’s men were glad to see these ships, and he immediately sent both the officials to borrow as many ankle-chains as possible from the various captains, until he had obtained all that he needed. Then the slaves were fettered to their places. Orm also took this opportunity of laying in stores for the voyage, for it was a long way to Cordova. Having done this, they lay at anchor by the warships in a sheltered bay, to wait for good sailing weather.
In the evening Orm went ashore, together with Toke and Gunne, leaving the rest of his men to guard the ship. They walked down the shore in the direction of some small warehouses, in which traders had established themselves for the purpose of bargaining for the loot that had been won, and to sell necessaries to the ships. They had all but reached the first warehouse when six men from one of the ships entered it, and Gunne suddenly halted in his tracks.
‘We have business to transact with those men,’ he said. ‘Did you notice the first two?’
Neither Orm nor Toke had observed their faces.
Gunne said: ‘They were the men who killed Krok.’
Orm paled, and a tremor ran through his body.
‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘they have lived long enough.’
They