"No Latin or Greek?"
"They were not required for my specialty."
"Lapham?"
Dr. Krom"s a.s.sistant was a hornrimmed type straight from college who had infiltrated the lab"s personnel via its summer employment program. Twenty-five percent of his time aboard the Alice was spent struggling with his queasy stomach. The other seventy-five percent, he was actively seasick. "Pig Latin?" the unhappy young man offered.
A stern chase is always a long chase but to Joe it was not long enough. An hour halved the distance between them and the knarr and he still had not the slightest idea what he would do when the eventual meeting took place.
Mixed in with much other reading of ancient source materials, Joe had once struggled through the old Icelan- dic cycle and the Jomsviking Saga in parallel columns of Old Norse and Modern English. Though admirable for literary and teaching purposes, Joe suspected that his Old Norse would prove sadly lacking when it came to more mundane matters. He tried desperately to recall a few words. Would the men aboard the knarr parley or would they come out swinging like the longship Vi- kings? He hoped not. The bad actors must have been raiding England or Ireland and spoiling for a fight any- way.
He caught Gorson"s eye and they went below to- gether. "Aside from the rifle and my pistol, what"ve we got in the way of weapons?"
The bos"n thought a moment. "You mean like spears?
Say, if we"re really back a thousand years they won"t have guns, will they?"
Joe shook his head. "No gunpowder. There was Greek fire but I doubt if these people will have it. We"ll face axes, swords, spears, maybe bows and arrows."
"What"re we going to do when we catch them?"
Joe experimented with an omniscient smile; then he collapsed. "Nothing in the book covers this situation,"
he said flatly, "But I"d like to know for sure where we are. Say, are there any charts for the North Atlantic?"
"Pilot charts for all five oceans," Gorson said, "But nothing that"d be any help getting in and out of a harbor."
"Oh great!" Joe moaned.
"We"re getting close, sir," Villegas called down the scuttle.
It was late afternoon by now and from the way the low wheeling sun swung north Joe guessed they must be near midsummer. "Bring the flare pistol," he told Gorson. The stubby knarr was shorter than the Alice but her broad beam and blunt fore and aft sections gave her a much greater carrying capacity. "We"ll come up on her starboard side," Joe said. "Better hang out some fenders."
They came within a hundred years of the knarr and Joe faced a new problem: the Alice was moving twice as fast. If they grappled something would be torn out by the roots. The Alice ripped along, pa.s.sing within twenty feet of the other ship. They caught rapid glimpses of a balding, red-faced man at the helm. Bright bearded men and a pair of boys stared at them. Joe was surprised to see several women aboard. A dark haired girl knelt before the fire which blazed in a sand- box amidships.
Seaman Villegas gave a wolf howl. "Ay mamacita, que Undo eres!" he panted. The girl looked up sharply.
She was still looking when they pa.s.sed hailing distance.
A mile ahead the Alice turned into the wind and dropped her mains"l. Hove to under jib and jigger they
waited for the knarr to catch up. Rate half expected the vessel to sheer off and try to lose them again but the dumpy merchantman wallowed steadily forward.
Then he understood why: there were at least thirty men aboard the knarr and its master had seen only eleven aboard the Alice. He was ready to trade or fight.
Joe wished he knew which.
He gave the rifle to Cook. The gaunt Tennessean was the only crew member who had ever been known to hit anything with it. Irrelevantly, Joe wondered if his cook had ever target practiced on revenooers. He kept the pistol for himself.
The summer sun was still high but clouds were ob- scuring it again. The Alice carried a floodlight in her shrouds for handling the winch after dark. Joe thought of turning it on for whatever "magical" effect it might have on medieval minds. He decided not to-it might scare them away. Worse, under its glare they would be perfect targets if the Northmen did not scare.
The knarr brailed up its sail and drifted gently to- ward them. It b.u.mped and ground for a moment at the fenders suspended over the Alice"s side. Sailors on both ships tossed lines and fended off with oars and boat hooks. Joe took a deep breath. "Here goes," he said, and jumped aboard.
The skipper of the knarr stood stiffly at the steering oar. He showed no signs of moving, so Joe walked aft.
He wondered about the protocol of the situation. It might have been better to stand on his dignity and make the other man board the Alice. The red-bearded man wore skintight leistrabraekr which exaggerated his incipient pot. The loose, ill-fitting blouse gave him a topheavy look.
He scowled ferociously over flowing mustaches whose tips were several shades whiter from lime bleaching.
As Joe approached he held his awkward leaning posture on the steering oar. "Hvar ar vi?" Joe asked, hoping he
was p.r.o.nouncing the words right. Whiskers stared at him. He tried another tack. "Danamark?" Another stare.
"Erin?"
"Angleland?"
"Scotland?"
Silence.
"Shetland? Orkney? Iceland?" Joe asked desperately.
Whiskers was losing patience. He roared something and as the sword flashed Joe suddenly understood why the man had leaned and kept his hand behind him on the steering oar. Though he had half expected some such thing, the swiftness of Whiskers" a.s.sault surprised Joe. He saw with instant clarity that the Northman would bisect him before he could begin to draw the pistol.
Then a look of blank surprise filled the skipper"s broad face. He slumped back over the oar. The sword slipped from his hand and clattered to the deck. Good old Cookie, Joe thought. But he hadn"t heard the rifle go off. He glanced back at the Alice and felt sudden shame at his imbecility. No wonder Cook hadn"t fired.
He was standing directly in front of the Northman.
The red-bearded man arched backward over the oar and made distressing noises. As the sloppy blouse pulled tight Joe saw the knife handle protruding from Whiskers"
solar plexus.
A girl burst through the crowd of starers amidships and lunged at Joe. He nearly beaned her with the revolver before he realized she was not attacking. "Am- paro!" the girl screamed. "Rescue me from these pagans!"
Her language was archaic but time does little damage to Mediterranean tongues. The modern day Spaniard reads the exploits of El Cid without difficulty whereas 10th Century English sounds more like German.
"For two years I am slave to these pagans. When you hailed in my language I knew the time for venge- ance had come. I made ready the knife."
People amidships were beginning to recover. Joe saw the weapons they had been hiding. In a moment they would rush him. The girl still lay at his feet, her arms around his knees. Joe guessed he was already half a G.o.d. He raised his arms like an Old Testament prophet and began a sonorous chant:
"Gorson, thou wh.o.r.eson, Get the flare gun ready At the count of five, Fire it straight up.
One."
He bowed deeply and straightened, thrusting his arms heavenward again. "Two." He bowed again.
"Three, four." From the corner of his eye he saw frantic activity on the deck of the Alice. Neptune help us if he cant find it, Joe thought-and said, "Five!"
There was a pop and hissing roar. Under the dazzle of a parachute flare Joe saw the last of the fight go out of the Northmen.
"What cargo?" he asked the girl.
"In truth, my lord, I do not know," he said. "It was loaded before my mistress took me aboard."
"Do you speak their language? Oh for heaven"s sake, stand up!" He undid her clutch from his knees and pulled the girl upright. She was small and dark but there her resemblance to the capable Ariadne Battle- ment ended. The shapeless gray woolen dress would have been prim and decorous on a girl several years younger and smaller but now it bulged in all the proper places. In fact, it threatened to burst in a couple of them. Her long loose hair was of the blackest black but her face was not spoiled with the coa.r.s.eness so often found among Spanish Gypsy women. It was a demure little face with surprisingly large eyes which gazed up at Joe with the humble adoration of a c.o.c.ker spaniel.
Joe felt protective instincts starting to tingle all through him.
He remembered with something of a shock that this fragile creature had just skewered the steersman and only incidentally saved his life. "I understand something of the pagan tongue," she said.