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    could reach. These men-wolves reveled in their bestiality. Now, as they
    watched the small fort lying below in the valley, they thought it easy
    pickings. They had watched long, and knew there were no more than forty men in
    the Hold. The others, as was the custom of this land, were on their farms with
    their families waiting for the spring thaw to set the fjord free from the ice,
    for then they could set sail to fish and trade-and occasionally raid an enemy
    land.
    These men-beasts had been careful to avoid any of the farmhouses. They took no
    chances of being spotted, of the warning being given so that the villagers
    could rally to the fort below.
    Their leader watched. Big. Singularly repulsive. His teeth were black and
    worn-down almost to the gums. He suffered constantly from toothache and had
    been known to bash in the skull of his nearest comrade just for being too
    close when the worst aching came. His beard was black, streaked with gray. He
    was not tall for one of his race, but he made up for it in width; his
    shoulders and hips were almost the same size, and his legs were like tree
    stumps in their fur wrappings. A hide of bearskin served to keep out the worst
    of the icy wind, but it failed to cover all the matted, dirty hair and skin
    beneath.
    The reason he had been cast out from his own tribe was that he was so cruel
    even his own kin could not tolerate him. He had been driven from their camps
    for killing all the members of his family in a black rage, even the children
    of his own body. Malgak the Killer, he was named, and he was so in truth. No
    man had ever stood before his axe and lived to speak of it. This well-used
    chunk of iron weighed over fifteen pounds, yet its owner handled it as a child
    would a toy.
    Malgak turned from watching the fort and grunted to his men to move back to
    the rude shelters they had set up. No fires for cooking. They would eat cold
    meat, most of it raw. Like wolves, they had developed a taste for blood ...
    and not only that of animals.... With the night they would take the Hold. Two
    hundred and eleven of them should be more than enough to settle with these
    farmers and fishermen.
    Malgak crawled on his knees into the small skin tent he called home and looked
    at the slender form of the young girl he had taken captive a week before when
    they burned out her home and put her family to the sword. Her face was dirty
    and frightened. She whimpered when he entered and drew back against the tent
    wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her hair had once been
    blonde and her skin fair, but now she was merely a dirty child, bruised, with
    matted hair and sores.
    Malgak stripped his breeches off and threw her under him, taking the
    fourteen-year-old girl as he would an animal. He thrust, grunted, and sweated
    over her, slapping her in a futile attempt to get some response. It did not
    take him long to finish. He looked at her then, thinking of the women they
    would have when they took the fort tonight. He no longer needed this one, so
    he took her small head in his hands and snapped her neck as one would snap the
    neck of a chicken. Throwing the carcass out the flap of skin that served as a
    door, he immediately dismissed her from his mind, as though she were nothing.
    Satisfying his hunger on a piece of raw horseflesh, he thought again of the
    fort below and grinned, his black stumps worrying over the tough flesh. They
    had butchered the last of their horses and pack animals two days before. Their
    food would be gone tomorrow. But no matter. They would have their fill before
    dawn.
    The rest of his hairy band slept as best they could, wrapped in their fur
    robes and skins, curling up in knots to get warmth from each other's bodies,
    in the process exchanging an unknown quantity of lice and fleas. They, too,
    dreamed of the women and food in the fort. The only clean things about them
    were their weapons. These showed no signs of mistreatment or rust. They were
    clean, sparkling, sharp, ready for use. Earlier they had cut down fifty tall
    pines and trimmed the branches off short, leaving just enough to use as hand
    and foot grips. These would be their scaling ladders. With fifty of them there
    would be no way the forty defenders of the small fort below could keep them
    from scaling the walls and getting inside.
    Between the midnight hour and the dawn, when men sleep the deepest and the
    sentries eyes are fogged from looking out into the dark, Malgak gathered his
    men, his human vermin, and they slipped silently close to the wails, first
    walking, then crawling, the snow and ice sliding inside their furs and leaving
    cold, clean spots unseen beneath the rags they wore.
    Inside the fort, Casca could not sleep. The image of Lida kept returning to
    haunt him. . . Lida as she was when she was young and beautiful. That was how
    he saw her, even to the end when she quietly wasted away and fell into the
    sleep of no return. To him she would always be young. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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