“Yet somewhere there is the Holy Grail! Seek it, find it, seize it! Be redeemed thereby and by It! In the Grail you have the greatest fountain of Power! But it renders all other Powers powerless!”
Ivar’s counselors had been babbling while Faustroll spoke, but they fell silent when their leader lifted his hand. From a distance, not far enough away to damp the writhing of Davis’s nerves, came the yells of Thorfinn’s men as they ran toward the fugitives.
“For God’s sake!” Davis murmured. “Let’s get into the boats and get away!”
Ivar shouted, “You are a strange man, Doctor Faustroll! One touched by whatever gods may be! You may have been sent by them! Or by Chance, of which I have heard
56
Philip Jose Fanner
CROSSING THE DARK RIVER
57
so much from men of the latter days since I came to this world. Either way, you may have been sent to me. So, instead of slaying you, which would do little good except to get rid of your presence, and I might run into you again, I will go with you! Perhaps…”
He was silent for a moment while the others about him looked more man uneasy. Then he roared, “Into the boats!”
No one protested, though a few of the more aggressive warriors sighed. They scrambled, though not in a panicky manner, into the vessels. Ivar roared orders, assigning each to a particular craft. Davis was commanded, along with Faustroll and Ann Pullen, to get into the largest craft, a single-masted merchant boat with oarlocks for fourteen rowers. Ivar took the helm while the rowers began pulling and the big sail was unfurled.
He laughed uproariously and said, “The Norns have smiled on me again! These must be the boats Arpad’s men used to bring them to this bank for the flanking attack!”
Davis, Pullen, and Faustroll were sitting on a bench just below the helm deck. The Frenchman called up, “Perhaps it’s a sign from them that you should leave this area forever!”
“What! And allow the troll-hearted Thorfinn to crow that he defeated Ivar Ragnarsson?”
He shouted in Norse at the warriors who had not yet gotten into a boat. “You there! Helgi, Ketil, Bjorn, Thrand! Push the empty boats into the stream! We will jeer at our enemies while they dance frustrated and furious on the bank and utter threats that will harm us no more than farts against the wind!”
Helgi the Sharp yelled back,
“Boatless will they be. Boneless makes them bootyless.
Boneheaded Thorfinn, Bare is your bottom!”
Those within hearing broke into laughter. And Ivar laughed until he choked, which relieved Davis, who had become even more anxious on hearing the stanza. The Dane became very angry when someone slipped up and used the surname he did not care to hear.
“I love the words,” Ivar called out. “But, Helgi, your meter is blunted. Wretched. However, considering our haste and that your meter always scans as if it were a newborn foal trying to walk…”
He laughed again for several seconds. Then, recovering, he bellowed, “Row as if Loki’s daughter, the hag Hel, clutches your ankles with corpse-cold hands to drag you down into Niflheim! Bend your backs as if you are the bow of Ull and your arms are the god’s hundred-league arrows! Row, row, row!”
There might have been rowers as mighty as the Norse, though none was better. However, these men had been in face-to-face battle, and nothing funneled the energy out more swiftly. Nevertheless, they dug in as if they had had a long night’s sleep. Their enemies on shore were left far behind. But the starlight glimmered on a large mass along the eastern bank moving up-River. It was about a half-mile behind them. Thorfinn’s fleet, part of it, anyway, was hot on their trail. Not so hot, perhaps, since his men would also be battle-weary.
“We make for the kingdom of my brother, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye!” Ivar said loudly. “It’s a long long way off, but our pursuers will tire before we do. We’ll be safe then, and we can loll around, drink all the thickly sugared lichen beer and the grail-given liquor we want. We will also have our fill of the beautiful women there. Or vice versa.”