heavy broadsword. Utanba Tu eyed Lardock's aberration of wet scales, webbed feet and sharp teeth, with spirited cleverness.
He looks like a man. Only he is spirited by the crafty crocodile," commented the versatile animal tracker. "Everywhere in Africa are stories of men who were eaten by the giant reptiles. Their spirit lives in the crocodile until it is killed by a tracker, like myself, then the man's spirit is free. I think the spirit of a crocodile was put about this man by another person; its vital principle lives in him."
As the sky lightened and the air became warmer, Lardock hissed in blind anger at his tormentors. "He is a demon leftover by the Army of Aboregale to defend that fortress," Landregal advised his master. "I suggest you release the creature and follow him to whatever it is that he was left to protect. He may be the guardian to some kind of treasure."
"You are right," Forkbeard agreed roughly. The Viking leader cautiously released Lardock. The wizard groped slowly about, visionless under the blinding mantle of sunlight, his epidermis painfully contracting in dry air of the earth's surface. With his very limited capability, the keeper of the Torymorton's magic held only one hope for survival.
In his artless form, Lardock had to return to his cool wet grotto during hours of daylight to escape dehydration. He instinctively felt his way back to the deep moat and limestone wall above the burrow. Lardock then descended the narrow passageway into his subterranean cavern. Utanba became dispatched to follow Lardock and discover the demon's hiding place. It was a simple task to track the belligerent reptilian as far as the wet entrenchment surrounding the castle wall. The ways of trackers, in Utanba's rigorous education as a hunter, honed a profound distinction in his ability to pursue the party's inimical antagonists. Remaining heedfully observant, Utanba made careful note of where Lardock disappeared into the ground and reported his observation to Forkbeard. Forkbeard thought out his plan for discovering the guardian's accumulation of loot, left behind in hasty retreat by the fortification's inhabitants.
Lardock huddled in fearful expectation of an intrusion by the hardened invaders. Cold beads of water dripped uncomfortably from the roof of the subterranean cavern; they splashed in resounding echoes amid the grotto's intemperate darkness. As he clutched the weighty vase Lardock assessed his predicament. If he waited, the usurpers would quickly discover him and his catch. Attendant to the missing items of magic, he thought it unwise to remain in hiding. Despite a disadvantage of daylight, Lardock took it upon himself to move the sealed urn to a safer place.
As he crept cautiously back to the earth's surface with the jar, Lardock became taken by surprise. At the mouth to his dwelling, beneath the limestone walls of the castle, Chin Le and Forkbeard waited in concealment of the forest. The disquieted wizard paused for his unreceptive eyes to make their slow adjustment to light before venturing out of his cavern beneath the floor to the blockhouse inside the castle. As he advanced from the tunnel Lardock felt along sides of mammoth monolith stones that comprised fortifications to the fortress. A narrow foot path, barely the width of Lardock's webbed feet, encircled the base of the stronghold inside the outer perimeter of water. Under cover of vegetation, at a short distance, the two men watched the handicapped practitioner of magic as he moved painfully toward the castle's entrance; the half raised drawbridge stood opened in a bidding invitation.
"Wait until he is far enough from his lair that he can not escape back into the ground," cautioned Forkbeard. "I want to see how this demon goes about entering that castle."
"What is that vessel he holds in his talons," asked Chin Le? "He must have a hoard of gold hidden in that burrow of his."
Concealed beneath the trees, Forkbeard took careful aim with his Longbow; it sent a lethal shaft screaming into rough wet scales of the sightless demon who was no more than seventy-five feet from where the two men stood. Lardock Trappler shrieked as the well-aimed arrow struck him directly between his shoulder blades. He dropped the container holding the Torymorton's book on magic, with its key to the world of the dead. As the unsophisticated jar rolled down the foot path in front of him, Lardock struggled pitifully to regain it.
Extreme pain agonizingly crept over him; Lardock felt the force of life diminish in him until it was all but completely enervated. In devitalized disorder, he crawled toward placid water in the canal surrounding the castle. What had become left of consciousness in him was but the dull derivation of a temperate flame. The weakened fire of Lardock Lagarias Trappler's life, already depleted by Marmalock Arabolis's superior sorcery, became smothered like a healthy blacksmith's roar covered with dirt.
Dark water, in a deep excavation surrounding the limestone walls, stood between the two despoilers and their quarry. The receptacle hit an irregular rock with a muffled thud. Saoel Forkbeard slipped another shaft into his bow and sent it, with murderous velocity, into the pathetic reptile who now lay next to the water. Lardock gave up his attempt to regain the plain container and rolled miserably into the moat; he sank beneath the water's consolidated depths, barley alive. The valuable items of magic remained on the surface, next to the limestone wall beneath the bridge.
"Curse my inaccuracy," Forkbeard reprimanded his deficient archery with morose disdain. "The first shot should have finished him! He escaped into the moat. The villain may still be alive. What do you think is in that jar that he dropped? Do you know how to swim?"
"No," Chin Le answered. "We will have to use a rope to get across that water."
"Go back to the encampment. Get the slave, the tracker and our horses!" Forkbeard instructed. "We'll find out what the ghoul has hidden in that burrow of his."
At Forkbeard's unequivocal order, Chin Le departed promptly. He returned, momentarily, with Utanba and Landregal. The captured Viking, Landregal Waterhunter, stared at the partially opened drawbridge as he listened attentively to a vacant stillness in the morning air. As the sun rose to their backs, the four men prepared a grappling hook with which to cross the moat into the castle. Relying on centrifugal force, Forkbeard hurled the heavy metal iron on the end of a rope. It clanked as it hit the side of the partially opened bridge then fell with a heavy splash into the water. On another attempt the metal end of the hemp line snagged tightly on a metal chain. Forkbeard pulled the line taut and bound it to the saddle of his hardy steed. He raced into nearby forest to secure the other end of his line a sturdy tree trunk.
"We'll use the elk hunter to check the bridge," Forkbeard stated to Chin Le. Landregal reluctantly clung on to the rope, upside-down, and slowly shimmied his way across the calm water barricade. At the top of the drawbridge he unfastened the metal hook then slid cautiously down the ramp and into the castle. Inside the fortification, with exception of the toppled wall to the blockhouse, everything was in perfect order.
There were no bodies; no munitions had become found to defend, either, himself or the castle. The inner dwelling seemed to have become picked clean by the retreating army. Reluctantly Landregal lowered the bridge to his captors. As Forkbeard, Chin Le and Utanba crossed the bridge they stopped just short of entering the fortification.
"Show me where the opening to the reptile's lair is located," Forkbeard directed Chin Le. The querulous Mongol descended a short drop from the bridge to the minuscule foot path, stepped lithely over the mystical urn, and went to a camouflaged opening to Lardock's tunnel. The aperture was too small for a full sized man to descend; he reported the fact to the party of two who waited for him on the drawbridge. In returning, Chin Le paid only minor attention to the vessel that lay tilted against a rock where Lardock had dropped it.
Forkbeard extended a callous hand to the ax handler. "Grab that jar," mandated the insensitive leader. Chin Le scooped up the deserted container as Forkbeard hoisted him onto the drawbridge. The three compatriots stood beneath the vaulted opening to the castle walls. They were much in wonder of the conditional affability of the structure they had entered.
Forsaken, with no intention of the occupants' return, bellicose parapets, over the unoccupied entrance, viewed the three men with unperceiving anonymity. Exhibiting cruel speculation, Forkbeard viewed the Runic inscriptions on the cover of the vase. He handed the unimportant looking vessel to Landregal. "Open it!" He instructed in a demanding voice.
With reluctance, the captured elk stalker lifted the urn at arm's length over his head and dropped it on a stone walkway inside the main entrance to the huge limestone and granite garrison. The jar broke with a responding crash. Hel's necklace and the book on magic lay at Forkbeard's feet amid fragments of the broken container. The intimidating leader of the cynical trio ignored the book on magic. He picked up the strange looking necklace. Forkbeard inspected the unusual intaglio that had an irregular engraved design, beneath a surface of dull silver.
"The inscriptions say it is a key to the keeper of the dead," he told the other members of the party. Lord Volki may become interested in it. I wonder what other treasures this defense contains. I feel certain that the army could not have escaped with all the castle's wealth."
Landregal picked up the book on magic. "I can not read," intoned the captured follower of Barbidal's robust crew of warriors. In fact, Landregal Waterhunter was literate. Although it was a rarity among his people, he lied to repudiate his own inquisitiveness. Forkbeard ignored both the book and Landregal. He paced forcefully to the toppled wall of the stone blockhouse inside the towering walls to the front gate. The trio of men made a meticulous inspection of the fortification. Nothing of great value remained available to the ready hands of greedy thieves. While Forkbeard and his party combed cautiously through the rooms and warehouses, Landregal inspected the book on magic. He tucked the leather bound volume, secretly, beneath his new robe and waited for the salvaging trio of men to return.
CHAPTER 3
Thorvald, with his fragmentary host of exhausted men, set ground amid a resplendent welcome by the residents of Midgard. Huge oval communes, constructed of expertly hewn lumber, skillfully crafted by the conscientious Norsemen, stood in an orderly fashion behind voluminous circular encampments of laboriously carted soil. Defensively arranged multiple mounds surrounded Midgard. With ten to fifteen foot ridges, there was a single passageway through their center. The narrow entrance lead to a community. It protected, collectively, thousands of people.
Inside aggregated dwellings were the Vikings' chambers, risen on heavy wooden pillars set solidly into the dense earth. They became covered by long arched ceilings. Lengthy rafters, supported by massive cross beams, covered projected scantlings of lesser materials. Knotted timber drew together thick sides of the fortified lodges. In the center of each shelter were areas for gathering. It was toward the great buildings, elegant in their purposeful particularity, that the weary seafarers now headed. The men were groggy----haggard from their fighting and from the journey. They had yet to lose their sea legs. Thorvald's party stumbled at an unsteady jubilant pace, thankful over having returned to their homes and heartened by the defeat of their pursuers. Lost in excitement of welcoming the returning company, Liana regarded the Vikings' haven with conspicuous astonishment.