Adventure Magazine Cover — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Sr Spe A elem 8 Ne Ry PC eS GS a ee as DP Se ee PROT ; : Prisoners of War ‘Anything but that!” she answered scorn- . fully. ‘‘They all ran from the men of Hel- sing! They ran! And their women and children became captives! Yonder in those woods they ran again, instead of dying where they stood!” Suddenly her eyes laughed, as if she saw the ultimate of irony and took delight in it. “1 belong to you,” she went on. “Are you also a coward?”’ Tros stroked his black beard, squaring back his shoulders. Not so soon, if ever, would he link fate with a woman. His father had instilled into him at least that one conviction: Yielding to that lure, and freedom of earth and sea, were incompatible. “T have yet to meet the-woman who can conquer me!’’ he answered. She glared as if she would like to stab him; but he saw something else in her eyes that he could not read, and he was aware of a prodigious impulse to befriend her. If she only had used the usual feminine ways of ensnaring a man, he would have felt more at ease; but she did none of that. She turned away from him and knelt beside her brother, speaking to him earnestly in Norse, which Tros could not understand. Sigurdsen stood up presently and looked straight at Tros. He was already in a fever from his wounds and his eyes burned des- perately, although his face was sad and was made to look sadder by the long mustache that drooped below his chin. He spoke about a dozen words, Helma interpreting, kneeling, speaking very loud because her back was toward Tros. “Put us all into the longship! Therein burn us! We will not seek to escape!” Tros laughed at that. “Not I!’ he answered. “I need the long- ship and I need a crew. - You and I might burn a fleet or two, Sigurdsen! Britons say Northmen are bold liars; Greeks have the name of being crafty ones, and Greek is my mother tongue, so how can you and I pledge faith?” Helma interpreted, glancing once at Tros over her shoulder. “T am Olaf Sigurdsen,” the Northman answered, and closed his lips. But Helma added to that, standing at last and holding her chin high: “Tf you were good Norse stock, instead of a barbarian with amber eyes, you would know what that means!” “Tell him he must keep faith better than he fights, if he hopes to please me!” Tros’ answered; for he liked the look of Olaf Sigurdsen; he wanted to prod him and find what lay beneath the sorry mask. The girl flared until her cheeks were crimson under the flaxen hair. Her breast heaved with passion; her hands grew white with pressure as she clenched her fingers; but she contrived to force a frozen note into her voice, speaking straight at Tros as if each word were a knife aimed at his throat: “He was a spent man when he fought you, or you would be his slave this minute! He has-slain his two-score Britons in the forest. You—you do not know courage! You do not know faith! How shall I tell you the worth of his promise? You, who never kept faith! Olaf Sigurdsen’s fathers were kings when ice first closed in on the North and darkness fell at midday! Lama king’s daughter! Shall he and I waste words on you?” , Tros liked her. He forbore to answer her in kind. And he had seen too often the re- sults of promises exacted under force. Yet he needed friends; he needed them: that minute. “Is he homeless, and has been a king? I, too, am homeless and the son of a prince. It seems to me we have a common ground to meet on,”’ he said, speaking very slowly that she might lose none of the significance. “When a man plights faith to me I hold him-to it, but I repay him in kind. “Say, to Sigurdsen, I give him choice, He may fight me again when he has rested, tomorrow, or the next day, or a month from now; and in that case I will kill him. Or he may ask my friendship and make promise to obey me as his captain; and in that case he shall find in honorable service no indig- nity. Or, if he wishes, I will give you all to Caswallon, who is a king, whereas 1 am not one. Let Sigurdsen speak his mind.” 8) her lip, grew pale and red again, - regarding Tros from another as- pect altogether. She seemed to have grown nervous. ‘“‘A prince’s son?” she said, and turned to her brother, speaking to him hurriedly in breathless sentences, clutching his sleeve, repeating short phrases again and again. Her brother watched Tros’ eyes, no sign until she had finished. Then, THE girl’s reaction to that speech was vivid. She changed color, bit Eomichbooks.com