‘Our duty to Krok comes before our duty to Almansur,’ said Orm. ‘All of us have vengeance to reap here. But mine comes first, because I am his successor as chieftain. You two run behind the warehouse, to stop them escaping that way.’
The warehouse had a door in each of its shorter walls. Orm entered through the nearest, and found the six men inside, talking to the trader. The latter, when he saw Orm enter with his sword drawn, slunk away behind some sacks, but the six men from the ship drew their weapons and shrieked questions at him. It was dark and confined in the warehouse, but Orm at once picked out one of the men who had killed Krok.
‘Have you said your evening prayer?’ he cried, and hewed at the man’s neck so that his head flew from his shoulders.
Two of the others immediately attacked Orm, so that he had his work cut out to defend himself. Meanwhile, the other three ran to the back door; but Toke and Gunne were there before them. Toke felled one of them on the spot, crying out Krok’s name, and aimed a savage blow at the next man; but there was little room to manoeuvre, because the warehouse was small and crowded with goods, to say nothing of the men who were fighting in it. One man jumped up on to a bench and tried to aim a blow at Orm, but his sword caught in a rafter, and Orm flung his shield into the man’s face. The spike on his shield entered the other’s eye, and he fell on his face and lay still. After that, the fight did not last much longer. The second of the two men who had killed Krok was felled by Gunne; of the others, Orm had killed two and Toke three; but the trader, who had burrowed himself almost out of sight in his corner, they allowed to escape unharmed, because he had nothing to do with this affair.
When they came out of the warehouse with their swords all bloody, they saw men approaching to discover what the noise had been about; but, on seeing the Viking’s aspect, they turned and ran. Toke held his sword erect before his face; thick blood ran down its blade and fell from the hilt in large drops.
‘Now I name thee, O sister of Blue-Tongue!’ he said. ‘Hereafter shalt thou be known as Red-Jowl.’
Orm stared after the men from the ships as they ran away into the distance.
‘We, too, must make haste,’ he said, ‘for now we are outlaws in this land. But it is a small price to pay for vengeance.’
They hastened to the ship, and told the others what had happened. Then, at once, although it had by now grown dark, they weighed anchor and put out to sea. They rejoiced in the knowledge that Krok had been avenged, though at the same time they realized that they had no time to lose in getting clear of this country and its waters. They did their best to whip up a good pace from the slaves, and Orm himself took over the steering-oar, while Almansur’s two secretaries, who were unaware of what had happened, hurled questions at him but received scant reply. At last, the ship came safely out of the bay into the open sea; and a wind sprang up from the south, so that they were able to raise a sail. They steered northwards and away from the land, until the day broke; and there was no sign of any ship pursuing them.
They saw a group of islands off their larboard bow, and Orm put in to one of them. Here, he sent both the secretaries ashore, bidding them convey his greetings to Almansur.
‘It would be churlish of us to quit the service of such a master,’ he said, ‘without wishing him farewell. Tell him, therefore, on behalf of us all, that it has been our fate to have killed six of his men in revenge for Krok, who was our chieftain; although six men’s lives are a small return for his death. We are taking this ship with us, and the slaves that man it, for we think that he will scarcely notice its loss. Also, we are taking the bell, because it makes the ship ride stable, and we have dangerous seas ahead of us. We all think that he has been a good master to us and, if we had not had to kill these men, we should gladly have remained longer in his service; but, as things have turned out, this is the only course left open to us, if we are to escape with our lives.’
The secretaries undertook to deliver this message, word for word as Orm had spoken it. Then, he added: ‘It would be well, too, if, when you return to Cordova, you could bear our greetings to a wealthy Jew called Solomon, who is a poet and a silversmith. And thank him from us for having befriended us so generously; for we shall never see him again.’
‘And tell the lady Subaida,’ said Toke, ‘that two men from the north, whom she knows, send her their thanks and greetings. Tell her, too, that the swords she gave us have served us well, and that their edges are yet undented, despite all the work that they have done. But, for your own sakes, do not deliver this message when Almansur is within hearing.’
The secretaries had their writing materials with them, and noted all this down; then, they were left on the island with enough food to sustain them until such time as some ship should find them, or they should manage to make their way to the mainland.
When the slaves working the oars saw that the ship was putting out towards the open sea, they made a noisy clamour and complaint, and it was evident that they wished to be left on the island with the secretaries. Orm’s men had to go round with switches and rope-ends to silence them and make them row; for the wind had dropped, and they were anxious to lose no time in getting clear of these dangerous waters.
‘It is lucky we have them fast in foot-irons,’ said Gunne, ‘or we should have had the lot of them overboard by now, for all our swords. It is a pity we did not borrow a proper scourge when we took the fetters. The teeth of these switches and rope-ends are too blunt for mules like these.’
‘You are right,’ said Toke, ‘strangely enough; for we little thought, in the days when we sat on the galley benches, that we should ever come to mourn the absence of an overseer’s whip.’
‘Well, they say that no back is so tender as one’s own,’ replied Gunne. ‘But I fear these backs will have to itch somewhat more sharply, if we are ever to escape from here.’
Toke agreed, and they went round the benches again, flogging the slaves smartly to make the ship move faster. But they still made laboured progress, for the slaves could not keep the stroke. Orm noticed this, and said: ‘Rope-ends alone will never teach men to row, if they are not used to oars. Let us see if we cannot persuade the bell to lend us her aid.’
As he spoke, he took an axe, and struck the bell with its blunt edge as the slaves dipped their oars. The bell gave out a great peal, and the slaves pulled in response. In this way, they soon began to keep better time. Orm made his men take turns in sounding the stroke. They found that if they struck with a wooden club padded with leather, the bell pealed more melodiously; and this discovery pleased them mightily.
After a while, however, a wind sprang up and they had no further need to row. The wind gradually increased, blowing more and more gustily, until it approached the gale strength; and things now began to look dangerous. Grinulf remarked that this was only what was to be expected if men put out to sea without first propitiating the people of the water. But others spoke against him, recalling the sacrifice they had offered on a previous occasion and how shortly afterwards they had encountered the ships of Almansur. Gunne ventured the opinion that they might perhaps sacrifice to Allah, for safety’s sake, and a few of the men supported this suggestion; but Toke said that, in his view, Allah had little pull in what went on at sea. Then Orm said:
‘I do not believe that any man can be certain just how powerful this or that god is, or how much he can do to help us. And I think we should be foolish to neglect one god for the sake of not offending some other. But one thing we know, that there is one god who has served us well on this enterprise; I mean, St James; for it is his bell that keeps our ship from turning turtle and, apart from this, it has helped the rowers to keep time. So let us not forget him.’
They agreed that this was well spoken, and sacrificed meat and drink to Agir, Allah and St James, which put them in better heart.
By this time they had little idea where they were, save only that they were a good way from Asturia. However, they knew that, if they held their course northwards, in the direction in which the storm was driving them, and avoided diverging too far to the west, they would be sure to