“Tell this to Ivar,” Davis said. He laughed, then said, “I’d like to see his face when you tell him that.”
“Ah, but what about the brain behind that face? If he has a brain?”
“Oh, he has brains! But his motives, man, his motives!”
They descended the hill and then climbed to the top of the next hill, much steeper and higher than the previous ones. The tower drawbridge was down, but many soldiers were by its outer end. Most of them were playing board games or casting dice carved from fish bones. Some were watching wrestling matches and mock duels. Their conical bronze helmets were fitted with nose- and cheek-pieces. A few wore chain-mail armor made of bronze or interlocking wooden rings. All were armed with daggers and swords and many had spears. Their leather bronze-ringed shields were stacked close by them. The wooden racks by these held yew bows and quivers full of bronze-tipped arrows. Some spoke in Esperanto; others, in barbaric tongues.
The sentinels at each end of the drawbridge made no effort to stop the two. Davis said, “I’m the royal osteopath to King Ivar. Since you’re with me, they assume you’re not to be challenged.” –
“I like to be challenged,” Faustroll said. “By the way, what is an osteopath?”
“You’ve never heard of osteopathy?” Davis said, raising his reddish eyebrows. “When did you die?”
“All Saints’ Day, though I’m no saint in the Catholic sense, in 1907. In Paris, which you may know is in France, who knows how many light-years away?”
Davis said only, “Ah!” That explained the man’s madness and decadence. He was French and probably had been a bohemian artist, one of those godless immoral wretches roistering in the dives of Montmartre or the Left Bank or wherever that kind of low life flourished. One of those Dadaists or Cubists or Surrealists, whatever they were called, whose crazed paintings, sculptures, and writings revealed that their makers were rotten with sin and syphilis.
There wasn’t any syphilis on this world, but there was plenty of sin.
“My question?” Faustroll said.
“Oh, yes! One, osteopathy is any form of bone disease. Two, it’s a system of treatment of ailments and is based on the valid belief that most ailments result from the pressure of displaced bones on nerves and so forth. Osteopaths relieve the traumatic pressure by applying corrective pressure. Of course, there’s much more to it than that. Actually, I seldom have to treat the king for anything serious, he’s in superb physical health. It could be said that he retains me—enslaves me would be a better term—as the royal masseur.”
Faustroll lifted his eyebrows and said, “Bitterness? Discontent? Your soul, it vomits bile?”
Davis did not reply. They had gone through the large foyer and up the stone steps of a narrow winding stair-
14
Philip Jos6 Fanner
CROSSING THE DARK RIVER
15
case to the second floor. After passing through a small room, they had stepped into a very large room, two stories high and very cool. Numerous wall slits gave enough light, but pine torches and fish-oil lamps made the room brighter. In the center, on a raised platform, was a long oaken table. Placed along it were high-backed oaken chairs carved with Norse symbols, gods, goddesses, serpents, trolls, monsters, and humans. Other smaller tables were set around the large one, and a huge fireplace was at the western wall. The walls were decorated with shields and weapons and many skulls. i
A score or so of men and women were in a line leading to a large man seated in a chair. The oaken shaft of a huge bronze-headed ax leaned against the side of the chair.
“Petitioners and plaintiffs,” Davis said in a low voice to Faustroll. “And criminals.”
“Ah!” Faustroll murmured. “The Man With the Ax!” He added, “The title of one of our poems.”
He pointed at a beautiful bare-breasted blonde sitting in a high-backed chair a few feet from the king’s throne. “She?”
“Queen Ann, the number-one mare in Ivar’s stable,” Davis said softly. “Don’t cross her. She has a hellish temper, the slut.”
Ivar the Boneless, son of the semilegendary Ragnar Hairybreeches, who was the premier superhero of the Viking Age, stood up from the chair then. He was at least six feet six inches tall. Since his only garment was a sea-blue towel, his massive arms, chest, legs, and flat corded belly were evident. Despite his bulk, his quick and graceful movements made him seem more pantherish than lionlike. His only adornment was a wide bronze band around »