They'll be waiting for you in the morning if you don't drink.'
Hagdrall steadied himself. He knew that Casca meant what he said and that at least the cup offered him a quick death. He had heard the screams of those tied to the tidal stakes too many times to have any illusions about what awaited him. He raised the cup and swallowed it all in one draught.
'There, it's done, Roman pig.' Hatred filled his voice. 'Curse you and yours. I curse you until the end of time.'
Casca grinned, 'You're a little late for that, old man. It's already been done, but nice try anyway.'
Hagdrall slumped forward over the table. Casca prodded the body with his finger. 'Well, whatever it was that he drank, it sure works damn fast.'
He motioned for Glam to clear the old man's carcass off the table so that the feasting could continue. The silence around the Hall was broken by a laugh from Glam, and the rest of them joined in. Being good-natured sports, they appreciated a good joke and the one that Lady Lida had put over on the druid had been, 'By Mjolnir,' a good one. And besides, they hadn't really liked the old priest that much anyway.
Chapter Fifteen
When old Corio took the time off from building the ships Casca wanted, he would be teacher to the children of the hold. He was very patient with them and thoroughly enjoyed this task. In turn, the children grew to love and respect him. Corio would sit on the steps of the hold and try to press some knowledge into the heads of the children. It was hard going; the boys only wanted to hear of battles and glory. The fine art of mathematics was to them something they could see little use for. But they were ordered to attend the classes by the lord and as good little warriors they obeyed, if some what reluctantly. They made there marks on thin sheets of parchment from which the thin ink could easily be washed off and the parchment used over and over again. In spite of their inclinations, a few of them actually did learn to add and subtract.
For Corio it was a good life, although he sometimes missed the luxuries one could find in the boundaries of the empire. Certain foods he had had a fondness for he especially missed-oysters in clam sauce and some fish that could only be found in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean… and the wine. He sighed wistfully at the thought of how good a long draught of a cup of rich red Falernian would taste. Here he had to do with thin beer and mead. True, there was an occasional day when some of the scarce wine in the cellars of the hold would be brought out to celebrate some occasion or other. But those days were all too seldom.
Corio scratched his bald pate and leaned back to take his ease in the thin sunlight while the children did their lessons. This was the time when he could let his mind flow and thank the gods for the day when Casca found and bought him and then set him free. He had in turn tried to do as much as he could to make the confines of the hold more tolerable.
His greatest achievement was the toilet he had built, which used rainwater collected in cisterns on the roofs to wash away the human waste. To the villagers of the region this was an unheard-of luxury; on any given day you could find a number of them lined up outside the one he had built for general usage patiently waiting their turn to use the device. Corio knew that many of them didn't really have to go; they just liked to listen to the sound of the water flushing in the crapper. That and the baths were his proudest accomplishments. True, they did not equal the bathhouses of imperial Rome, but they did serve to relax and cleanse the body. And after the lord of the hold had set the example, there were even several of his warriors that had tried the hot soaks themselves, although they had been warned by their friends that washing off their outer layer of dirt would leave them more susceptible to sickness and bad health. It was also well-known that a good coating of grease and ash helped keep the body warmer in winter.
Lately Corio had been eyeing the shallow boats the northmen used for fishing and trading, thinking about how much more graceful they were riding in the wind than the cumbersome lumbering galleys of the empire. Their only fault was that they were of little use in the open sea and were confined to the rocky coasts, never going out of sight of land. But the design was sound; if there was just some way he could figure out how to combine some of the strength of the galleys with the handling capabilities of the long boats.
Often he and Casca had sat watching the sea otters off the rocky beaches, lying on their backs in the kelp beds or twisting and sliding their way into the waves. The sea otters didn't fight the water-they twisted their way through it. If only he could figure out how to make a ship do the same thing. Perhaps there was a way in which the planks could be joined that would give them at least some of the flexibility of the otters, even if the movement was only slight. In a ship like that a man could sail to where the oceans themselves dropped off the rim of the world into the abyss. Twisting? He must give that some more thought; perhaps a way could be found.
He roused himself from his reverie and returned his attention to his charges. He gave them only a halfhearted quiz on their lesson and then dismissed them. They went running off to the sea to gather crabs.
Crabs! He gave a shiver. He had heard about Casca being staked in the tidal pool for the crabs to feed on. It gave him a queasy feeling every time he ate one of the things.
Corio went back inside to find Casca sitting by Lida playing with some of the children in the Great Hall. Corio excused himself to Lida and took Casca off to the side to discuss the idea of building some completely new ships with some form of interlocking planks that would give them a tiny portion of the flexibility of the sea otters. Casca agreed and told Corio that he could start on the project the following spring. But he could give the orders now for a detail to cut trees and set them out to be cured so they would be seasoned when the time came for them to be used in laying the keels and decking.
Corio left Casca to Lida and the children and on his way back to his quarters he passed Glam heading out to do what he called a little raping and ravaging in the village below. He claimed it helped in clearing up the zits. Corio sometimes worried about Glam. He never knew how to take the bearish hulk. Glam would sometimes affect the most outlandish postures and you could never tell for sure if he was serious. One such example was that Glam considered himself to be an accomplished songwriter and poet, but what he claimed to be one of his best works was a filthy little ditty he titled 'You Broke My Heart Then I Broke Your Jaw.' Glam continued on his way and left a baffled Corio behind to return to his own spartan quarters where he began working out the design problems of his new ships.
Glam, on the other hand, was having problems of his own. His latest paramour was trying her best to get him married and he wasn't having any of it, so she had cut him off. Sulking over his lack of ability to change the lady's mind, he did his usual number and got blind staggering drunk and wrecked the tavern. It took seven of Casca's largest warriors to haul him off when they responded to the call for help from the terrified innkeeper.
Glam was properly remorseful the next day for the outrages he had performed on the hapless innkeeper, and his three serving wenches who were so sore that they wouldn't be able to serve anyone else for at least two days. However, no one could say that Glam wasn't a fair man and he made proper restitution by presenting the innkeeper with two kegs of wine and one of beer, which of course he borrowed from the hold's cellars. He helped his throbbing head by draining off at least a quarter of another keg. Burping, he made a mental note to tell Casca to put the stuff on his bill. But, as he knew, he was dreadfully absentminded and would probably forget before nightfall. But then, it was the thought that counted, wasn't it?
Glam stumbled his way upstairs to the main hall from the cellars to see if he could get anything to eat when he met Sifrit and conned him into going back into the village with him for another round. He complained all the way about his latest ladylove's lack of understanding and compassion for a high-spirited eagle such as himself.
Sifrit liked the hulk, but personally thought that Glam was carrying things a little too far and thought at his age that he should start to settle down and leave the hell raising to the younger men. Glam snorted so hard when Sifrit suggested this that he almost sucked his mustache up his own nostrils when he inhaled his next breath.
'Sifrit, I am wounded that you would even think of making such an observation. Leave it to the younger men indeed! Why, the mewling things barely can figure out how to mount a dead horse, much less a lively wench. No! It is my duty to set an example for the young to follow and emulate. Not that any of them could ever come close to matching my abilities with wenches or the bottle. But still, the darling little boys have to have some goals in life, don't they?'
Sifrit sighed deeply. There was no way to get through that bony mass that served Glam for a head and reach his brain with any kind of logic. Sifrit decided that he would just have to play dirty. After all, it was for Glam's own
