resolve. "Look through his cloths and see what tokens of luck and worship he carries with him," he ordered.
With Marmalock close at hand, Barbidal's men went through the vestments of the helmsman until they procured a leather pouch, containing the man's identifying keepsakes. Along with a few silver coins was a souvenir resembling a small metal plate. With the engraved impression of Torymorton's scepter, it dangled at the end of a string. The metal token twirled and faced in the direction of Marmalock who gazed at it with edifying interest. In unison, the wizard moved the prophetic shaft from left to right. He watched as the metal plate turned to the motion of Nicholas Torymorton's sovereign symbol of authority.
"The token attracts the scepter as the earth does a falling stone," observed Marmalock. "It was no sea sprite that lead them in our direction each time we turned to tack on a new course into the wind. Freyr has no power to dissuade the devious contrivances of the Lord of Dormanquest Castle."
With repulsion of the foes from Trome, Thorvald's men set to appropriating weapons and items of usefulness from the conquered craft. Utilitarian articles had become secured at discrepancy of men who did the fighting. Marmalock regarded the strange, flat, metallic device that aligned itself, always, with the bearing of Emperor Torymorton's scepter. Like a magically empowered navigational direction finder, it twisted with the motion of the prophetic stave and heated as he held it in proximity to the pentacle in the emperor's staff.
The steerer's small metal shield glowed suddenly in a cauterizing, cherry red incandescence. It anomalistically enkindled a charring amount of heat, burned from its long thin strap, then fell unprotected to the hull of the ill-fated mariners' craft. At Marmalock's feet, the psychic rectangle smoldered irregularly until it created a hole the size of a man's fist in the bottom of the boat. The clairvoyant moved from the deck to warn Thorvald of the danger. In the eye of Nicholas Torymorton's pentacle Marmalock could see Feydor Volki's laughing face. A darkened and snickering profile gloated back at him in malicious self-satisfaction. Volki acknowledged the shrouded compass' discovery by percipient men from Glassel.
Smoke rose from the bottom of the boat. As though struck by lightening the craft from Trome caught fire. Men of Glassel became hard pressed to remove their valuable keepsakes from the vessel. The blaze disseminated throughout the craft as though activated by an instantaneous form of synthesis. Fire spread in pitch and wood tar used to caulk together coniferous planks with timbers of the hull. Mast, keel and structural members of the ship burst into flames amid panicked cries from Thorvald's frightened men. In order to avoid the unanticipated conflagration, several crewmen jumped into icy cold waters of the fjord.
As it threatened to catch his own boat on fire, Barbidal forced himself to separate from the captured, burning, craft. From Thorvald's ship, Marmalock Arabolis eyed the scepter with pretense. Feydor Volki's shadowy figure, backed by his insatiable legions from Trome, enclosed in the vertices of the pentacle, mirrored acknowledgment of the doomed craft that followed the boat carrying Emperor Torymorton's prophetic cane. Liana Torymorton's profaner, Lord Volki, scowled in a scintillate and conceding avowal to comprehension of the helmsman and crew's unpleasant fate.
With triumph over their annoying harassers complete, Thorvald's stalwart men contentedly strained at their oars. Princess Torymorton watched the inland watercourse with staggering wonder. She marveled at the steep precipices and angular curves in the cold, hollow, fjord. Thorvald comfortably clung to the steering paddle that guided his boat through long channels between ascending cliffs.
Marmalock Arabolis attended to several wounded crewmen; he passed the rod of Torymorton's authority over their damaged bodies. Instantly, some of the men's wounds became healed. Opened lacerations and puncture wounds, broken bones and concussions----damage that would have taken weeks or months to heal, vanished in the matter of an instant. A crewman lost several fingers in the fight; the wizard used magic of Nicholas Torymorton's scepter to relieve the disfigured man's pain. Unbelievable power associated with the magic pole astounded Barbidal's crew. They watched its healing power with disbelief. Marmalock efficiently effected his supernatural control on the previously skeptical men in Thorvald's vessel. "My memory is faulty," he told the astonished sailor who now quit shaking from his shock and pain. "Had I the book on divination, I would replace those severed fingers."
"We are close now to Midgard," Thorvald told Liana. "The Valkyries protect us in these waters and keep us safe from despotic demons, Hel's fearful monsters."
"Who are the Valkyries and who is Hel," questioned the princess? Liana was a recent convert to Christianity before her father's kingdom became overthrown.
"Valkyries are those who choose which men will accompany Odin," replied Thorvald. "After death, the chosen reside in Valhalla where they feast and fight in the hall of slain warriors as Odin's guests. Hel is the keeper of the dead. Her domain is over those people timorous enough to die of sickness and old age."
Tousled and weary from sleepless nights on his long journey, Barbidal watched apprehensively for the appearance of civilization along the winding passageway. Midgard was home, perhaps the largest congregation of Norsemen in Glassel. In its rough dwellings were thousands of Thorvald's brothers who waited with anxious anticipation for his return. With tidings of bad news, the fall of Aboregale to Lord Volki, the raiding party consigned to the defense of Emperor Nicholas Torymorton found its daunted way back to their origin.
The morning Thorvald and Liana reached Glassel discovered Landregal Waterhunter in a confused and ambiguous circumstance. Tangled black hair and alert brown eyes indignantly assessed his predicament. The ground was cold. In frigid morning air a shivery wind spoke of autumn, the season's unalterable metamorphosis, and coming of winter. Minute ice crystals warned of frost and intemperate conditions that men expected in forthcoming weather. His affiliation with the raiding party consigned to protection of the emperor was an incriminating fact. Landregal was sardonic over his admittance of knowledge concerning Thorvald, Liana, and their escape. It would lead to his doom should patriots to Lord Volki's army discover it was his intention to act as one of Nicholas Torymorton's bodyguards. Landregal resolved to be absolutely subservient, therefore, to his new Lord and learn what he could about the ruler of Dormanquest Castle, a leader who set Christian forces safeguarding Aboregale scattering like inattentive infants before his accomplished army.
Set well concealed below a brightening skyline, the Chinese horseman, Chin Le Tang, reconnoitered dawn and stirred a smoldering fire. The trenchant Viking, Forkbeard, who was Landregal's captor, slept until his discomposed restlessness became broken. He jumped alertly to his feet as the Mongolian compatriot approached to awaken him. Speech among the four men was fragmentary as they gathered up possessions, mounted their horses, and continued northward into dispersed mountains of Aboregale. In search of plunder, with Landregal and his dispirited old nags bringing up the rear, the adventuresome seafarer from Trome lead his barbarous comrades and their prisoner further into the conquered realm of Nicholas Torymorton
Hoodwinked by a lone screaming hawk that threatened defiantly with its piercing screams, the horses moiled along rocky crags and jagged escarpments. Landregal sat abashed on his broken steed, cheerless and dismal over being captured. He discerned which direction the marauders took into the fertile green valley and prevailed upon his unpretentious mounts to keep pace with the swift moving trio. Although consumed by cold, he could not help being apprehensive as to the conquering army loyalists' ambition in acquiring booty from the depleted and defenseless countryside in Aboregale. It had become promised, by the disposed emperor, that Thorvald's men be paid twenty pounds of silver each for an alliance with Aboregale. In actuality, their long boat barely escaped with two thirds its crew. No precious metal became taken as reward for their conflict.
Dispatched as a foraging party to Barbidal's energetic group, a susceptible band of half dozen men, to which Landregal had been part, became separated from the main party. To arbitrators from Glassel, it had become looked upon as both reprehensible and inglorious to be taken prisoner. Hel's province, for those who died of sickness, old age and accidents were a restless domain full of woes and constant torment from which there was no escape. For men of Glassel, to die in battle was the ultimate ascension to which man could ascribe. Unyielding warriors looked to entrance into Valhalla, Odin's hall of heroes, as reward for honorable death in conflict. They became devoted to war and knew it as their only way of life.
Seeded lowland lying before them was once a chasm of abundant farms. Pastures now burned and lacking animal life, the remnants of a war torn village, and a newly constructed church that had become recently decimated by Volki's illustrious army lay directly in a path of the four men and their five horses. Landregal hoped to find some form of winter clothing among refuse in what became left of the rueful city. His wool shirt was dirty, ragged and threadbare, so too were his breeches shaggy and frayed.
The four men stopped apprehensibly at the church. As the Norseman, Forkbeard, scavenged about in its rubble for keys to any treasure that may have become left in the ruins, a bright gleaming presence seemed to hover in front of the men. Its omen was a foreboding admonition to the four onlookers. Landregal had to shade his eyes from the proximity in which the fascinating orb of energy seemed to hover. Conspicuously pretentious, the appearance radiated an electrically respondent magnificence. It seemed so shearing and brilliant that the men were unable to look directly into its light.
Landregal assessed the premonition. Its constituency seemed to represent a collectiveness of total dynamism and intelligence. The pillaging trio and their horses startled and backed away from its bright light. "Speak to me Balder," Landregal intoned in an inquisitive voice. "Has Odin returned you from the clutches of Hel?"
Forkbeard, Chin Le, Utanba and Landregal all shaded their eyes. They retreated slowly from the burning, radiant, illumination that set over the ruins of the church in a protective glow. "Be careful that this instigation is not one of Loki's evil tricks." Landregal warned the other three men. "I think Hoth, in his blindness, has sent light that he may find his way about in our land between the gods and giants."
"Cease the nonsense, you speak like a madman," instigated, Forkbeard, the burly Caucasian archer. "The Norsemen's gods are not responsible for this effulgent qualm of energy. It is, no doubt, the erratic doing of one of Nicholas Torymorton's diabolical wizards and may be dangerous. We must maneuver quickly from its light." The men moved cautiously up the road, away from the source of the spirit's illumination that seemed chained to an area in a vicinity of the church's ruins. Landregal Waterhunter remained adequately curious about the luminosity. At the irritated provoking of his captors, he continued on.
Their concourse continued unbent and straightforward towards remnants of the demolished village. Directly through the once copiously fruitful basin of land lay a dilapidated bridge. Fallen into a state of deterioration and ruin, the forlorn span of decaying and eradicated timbers reached with despondent desecration across a meager seepage of water. The attenuate trickle of liquid, twisting in a soaked and pallid cascade, flowed with self-effacing beauty in front of the men and horses. They loped at a slow trot toward the passageway coupling on side of the even road with the other, hoping to find in the village some forms of useful equipment and clothing.