Chapter 10 A Kur will address the Thing
Roped together by the wrist, on the turf of the thing-fair, we grappled.
His body slipped in my hand. I felt my right wrist drawn back, at the side of m head, his two hands closed on it. He grunted. He was strong. He was Ketil, of Blue Tooth’s high farm, champion of Torvaldsland.
My back began to bend backward; I braced myself as I could, right leg back, bent, left leg forward, bent.
The men about cried out. I heard bets taken, speculations exchanged.
Then my right wrist, to cries of wonder, began to lift and straighten; my arm was then straight, before my body; I began, inch by inch, to lower it, toward the ground; if he did retain his grip; he would, at my feet, be forced to his knees. He released my wrist, with a cry of fury. The rope between us, a yard in length, pulled taut. He regarded me, astonished, wary, enraged.
I heard hands striking the left shoulders; weapons struck on shields.
Suddenly the champion’s fist struck toward me, beneath the rope. I caught the blow, turning, on the side of my left thigh.
There were cries of fury from the watchers.
I took then the right arm of the champion, his wrist in my right hand, my left hand on his upper arm, and extended the arm and turned it, so that the palm of his hand was up.
Then, at the elbow, I broke it across my right knee. I had had enough of him.
I untied the rope from my waist and threw it down. He knelt on the turf, whimpering, tears streaming down his face.
The hands of men pounded on my back. I heard their cries of pleasure.
I turned about and saw the Forkbeard. His hair was wet; he was drying his body in a cloak. He was grinning. “Greetings, Thorgeir of Ax Glacier,” said i. “Greetings, Red Hair,” said he. Ax Glacier was far to the north, a glacier spilling between two mountains of stone, taking in it’s path to the sea, spreading, the form of the ax. The men of the country of Ax Glacier fish for whales and hunt snow sleen. They cannot farm that far to the north. Thorgeir, it so happened, of course, was the only man of the Ax Glacier country, which is usually taken as the northern border of Torvaldsland, before the ice belts of Gor’s arctic north, who was at the thing-fair. “How went the swimming?” I asked him. “The talmit of skin of sea sleen is mine!” he laughed. The talmit is a headband. It is not unusual forthe men of Torvaldsland to wear them, though none of Forkbeard’s men did… They followed an outlaw. Some talmits have special significance. Special talmits sometime distinguish officers, and Jarls; or a district’s lawmen, in the pay of the Jarl; the different districts, too, sometimes have different styles of talmit, varying in their material and design; talmits, too, can be awarded as prizes. That Thorgeir of Ax Glacier had won the swimming must have seemed strange indeed to those of the thing-fair. Immersion in the waters of Ax Glacier country, unprotected, will commonly bring about death by shock, within a matter of Ihn. Sometimes I wondered if the Forkbeard might be mad. His sense of humour, I thought, might cost us all our lives. There was probably not one man at the thing-fair who took him truly to be of Ax Glacier; most obviously he did not have the epicanthic fold, which helps to protect the eyes of the men of Ax Glacier against extreme cold; further, he was much too large to be taken easily as a man of Ax Glacier; their diet does not produce, on the whole, large bodies; further, their climate tends to select for short, fat bodies, for such, physiologically, are easiest to maintain in the therostatic equilibrium in great cold; long, thin bodies, of course, are easiest to maintain therostatic equilibrium in great heat, providing more exposure for cooling. Lastly, his coloring, though his hair was dark, was surely not that of the far north, but, though swarthy, more akin to that of Torvaldsland, particularly western Torvaldsland. Only a madman, or a fool, might have taken seriously his claim to be of the Ax Glacier country. Much speculation had coursed among the contest fields as to the true identity of the smooth-shaven Thorgeir.
Prior to his winning the swimming he had won talmits for climbing the “mast”, a tall pole of needle wood, some fifty feet high, smoothed and peeled: for jumping the “crevice”, actually a broad jump, on level land, where marks are made with strings, to the point at which the back heel strikes ther earth; wlking the “oar”, actually, a long pole; and throwing the spear, a real spear I am pleased to say, both for distance and accuracy; counting the distance and the accuracy of the spear events as two events which they are, he had thus, prior to the swimming, won five talmits.
He had done less well in the singing contest, though he much prided himself on his singing voice; he thought, in that one, the judges had been against him; he did not score highly either in the composition of poetry contest nor in the rhyming games; “I am not a skald,” he explained to me later; he did much better, I might mention, in the riddle guessing; but not well enough to win; he missed the following riddle; “What is black, has eighty legs and eats gold?”; the answer, though it might not seem obvious, was Black Sleen, the ship of Thorguard of Scagnar; the Forkbeard’s answer had been Black Shark, the legendary ship of Torvald, reputed discoverer and first Jarl of Torvaldsland; he acknowledged his defeat in this contest, however, gracefully; “I was a fool.” He grumbled to me. “I should have known!” Though I attempted to console him, he remained much put out with himself, and for more than an Ahn afterward.
In spite of his various losses, he had, even in his own modest opinion, done quite well in the contests. He was in excellent humor.
Perhaps the most serious incident of the contests had occurred in one of the games of bat and ball; in this contest there are two men on each side, and the object is to keep the ball out of the hands of the other team; no one man may hold the ball for more than the referee’s count of twenty; he may, however, throw it into the air, provided it is thrown over his head, and catch it again himself; the ball may be thrown to a partner, or struck to him with the bat; the bat, of course, drives the ball with incredible force; the bats are of heavy wood, rather broad, and the ball, about two inches in diameter, is also of wood, and extremely hard; this is something like a game of “keep away” with two men in the middle. I was pleased that I was not involved in the play. Shortly after the first “knock off”, in which the ball is served to the enemy, Gorm, who was Ivar’s partner, was struck cold with the ball, it driven from the opponent’s bat; this, I gathered, is a common trick; it is very difficult to intercept or protect oneself from a ball struck at one with great speed from a short distance; it looked quite bad for Ivar at this point, until one of his opponents, fortunately, broke his leg, it coming into violent contact with Ivar’s bat. This contest was called a draw.Ivar then asked me to be his partner. I declined.
“It is all right,” said Ivar, “even the bravest of men may decline a contest of bat-and-ball.”
I acceded to his judgment. There are various forms of ball game enjoyed by the men of Torvaldsland; some use bats, or paddles; in the winter, one such game, quite popular, is played, men running and slipping about, on ice; whether there is any remote connection between this game and ice hockey, I do not know; it is, however, ancient in Torvaldsland; Torvald himself, in the sagas, is said to have been skilled at it. Ivar Forkbeard, or Thorgeir of Ax Glacier, as we might call him, had won, all told, counting the swimming talmit, six talmits.
He was much pleased.
In the morning talmits would be awarded personally by the hand of Svein Blur Tooth.
“Let us, this afternoon,” said Ivar Forkbeard, “give ourselves to strolling.”
That seemed to me not a bad idea, unless a better might have been to flee for our lives.
In the morning we might find ourselves chained at the foot of cauldrons of boiling tharlarion oil.
But soon I, following the Forkbeard, together with some of his men, pressed in among the throngs of the thing.
I carried my short sword. I carried, too, the great bow, unstrung, with quiver of arrows.
The Forkbeard, too, and his men, were armed. Blows are not to be struck at the thing, but not even the law of the thing, with all its might, would have the termerity to advise the man of Torvaldsland to arrive or move about unarmed. The man of Torvaldsland never leaves his house unless he is armed; and, within his house, his weapons are always near at hand, usually hung on the wall behind his couch, at least a foot beyond the reach of a bond-maid whose ankle is chained. Should she, lying on her back, look back and up she sees, on the wall, the shield, the helmet, the spear and ax, the sword, in its sheath, of her master. They are visible symbols of the force by which she is kept in bondage, by which she is kept only a girl, whose belly is beneath his sword.
Most of the men at the thing were free farmers, blond-haired, blue-eyed and proud, men with strong limbs and work-roughened hands; many wore braided hair; many wore talmits of their district; for the thing their holidy best had been donned; many wore heavy woolen jackets, scrubbed with water and bosk urine, which contains ammonia as it’s cleaning agent; all were armed, usually with ax or sword; some wore their helmets; others had them, with their shields, slung at their back. At the thing, to which each free man must come, unless he work his farm alone and cannot leave it, each man must be present, for the inspection of his Jarl’s officer, a helmet, shield and either sword or ax or spear, in good condition. Each man, generally, save he in the direct hire of the Jarl, is responsible fot the existence and condition of his own equipment and weapons. A man in direct fee with the Jarl is, in effect, a mercenary; the Jarl himself, from his gold, and stores, where necessary or desirable, arms the man; this expense, of course, is seldom necessary in Torvaldsland; sometimes, however, a man may break a sword or lose an ax in battle, perhaps in the body of a foe, falling from a ship; in such a case the Jarl would make good the loss; he is not responsible for similar losses, however, among free farmers. Those farmers who do not attend the thing, being the sole workers on their farms, must, nonetheless, maintain the regulation armament; once annually it is to be presented before a Jarl’s officer, who, for this purpose, visits various districts. When the war arrow is carried, of course, all free men are to respond; in such a case the farm may suffer, and his companion and children know great hardship; in leaving his family, the farmer, weapons upon his shoulder, speaks simply to them. “The war arrow has been carried to my house,” he tells them.
We saw, too, many chieftains, and captains, and minor Jarls, in the crowd, each with his retinue. These high men were sumptuously garbed, richly cloaked and helmeted, often with great axes, inlaid with gold. Their cloaks were usually scarlet or purple, long and swirling, and held with golden clasps. They wore them, always, as is common in Torvaldsland, in such a way that the right arm, the sword arm, is free.
Their men, too, often wore cloaks, and, about their arms, spiral rings of gold and silver, and, on their wrists, jewel-studded bands.
In the crowd, too, much in evidence, were brazen bond-maids; they had been brought to the thing, generally, by captains and Jarls; it is not unusual for men to bring such slaves with them, though they are not permitted near the law courts or the assemblies of deliberation; the voyages to the thing were not, after all, ventures of raiding; they were not enterprises of warfare; there were three reasons for bringing such girls; they were for the pleasure of men; they served, as display objects, to indicate the wealth of their masters; and they could be bought and sold.
The Forkbeard had bought with him, too, some bond-maids. They followed us. Their eyes were bright; their steps were eager; they had been long isolated on the farm; rural slave girls, the Forkbeard’s wenches, they were fantastically stimulated to see the crowds; they looked upon the thing-fields with pleasure and excitement; even had they been permitted, some of them, to look upon certain of the contests. It is said that such pleasures improve a female slave. Sometimes, in the south, female slaves are dressed in the robes of free women, even veiled, and taken by their masters to see the tarn races, or games, or songs-dramas; many assume that she, sitting regally by his side, is a companion, or being courted for the companionship; only he and she know that their true relation is that of master and slave girl; but when they return home, and the door to his compartment closes, their charade done, she immediately strips to brand and collar, and kneels, head to his feet, once again only an article of his property; how scandalized would have been the free woman, had they known that, next to them perhaps, had been sitting a girl who was only slave; but there were no disguises in Torvaldsland; there was no mistaking thatthe girls that followed the Forkbeard, or “Thorgeir of Ax Glacier,” were bond; to better display his pets, and excite the envy of others, the Forkbeard had had his girls drop their kirtles low upon their hips, and hitch them high, that their beauty might be well exhibited,
