Part 10 (2/2)
There was no reply He was not a man easily abashed, yet now he felt disconcerted
”You rowled, his natural truculence roused by the aardness of the situation ”By Crom, you show damned poor courtesy to ato ” his voice trailed into silence, and in silence he stood and stared awhile at those bizarre figures sitting so silently about the great ebon table
”They're not drunk,” he ame is this?” He stepped across the threshold and was instantly fighting for his life against the ers that clutched his throat
II
MEN FROM THE SEA
Belesa idly stirred a sea-shell with a daintily slippered toe, es to the first pink haze of dawn that rose over theup, and the light, pearl-grey clouds which drifted over the waters had not yet been dispelled
Belesa lifted her splendidly shaped head and stared out over a scene alien and repellent to her, yet drearily familiar in every detail From her dainty feet the tawny sands ran towaves which stretched ard to be lost in the blue haze of the horizon She was standing on the southern curve of the wide bay, and south of her the land sloped upward to the low ridge which fore, she knew, one could look southward across the bare waters into infinities of distance as absolute as the view to the ard and to the northward
Glancing listlessly landward, she absently scanned the fortress which had been her houe pearl and ceruleanof her house an ensign which awakened no enthusiash it had flowed triumphantly over many a bloody field in the far South She ardens and fields that huddled near the fort, seelooed the open belt on the east, stretching north and south as far as she could see She feared that forest, and that fear was shared by every one in that tiny settle depths, death swift and terrible, death slow and hideous, hidden, painted, tireless, unrelenting
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She sighed and e, with no set purpose indays were all of one color, and the world of cities and courts and gaiety seeain she sought in vain for the reason that had caused a Count of Zingara to flee with his retainers to this wild coast, a thousandthe castle of his ancestors for a hut of logs
Her eyes softened at the light patter of s over the low sandy ridge, quite naked, her slight body dripping, and her flaxen hair plastered wetly on her small head Her wistful eyes ith excitearan words with a soft Ophirean accent ”Oh, Lady Belesa!”
Breathless froestures with her hands
Belesa s that her silken dress came in contact with the damp, warm body In her lonely, isolated life Belesa bestowed the tenderness of a naturally affectionate nature on the pitiful waif she had taken away froe up fro to tell me, Tina? Get your breath, child”
”A shi+p!” cried the girl, pointing southward ”I i in a pool that the sea-tide left in the sand, on the other side of the ridge, and I saw it! A shi+p sailing up out of the south!”
She tugged timidly at Belesa's hand, her slender body all a-quiver And Belesa felt her own heart beat faster at the ht of an unknown visitor They had seen no sail since co to that barren shore
Tina flitted ahead of her over the yellow sands, skirting the tiny pools the out-going tide had left in shallow depressions They e, and Tina poised there, a slender white figure against the clearing sky, her wet flaxen hair blowing about her thin face, a frail quivering arm outstretched
”Look,white sail, filled with the freshening south wind, beating up along the coast, a fewcan looe in colorless and isolated lives; but Belesa felt a pree and violent events She felt that it was not by chance that this sail was beating up this lonely coast
There was no harbor town to the north, though one sailed to the ultimate shores of ice; and the nearest port to the south was a thousand er to lonely 102
Korvela Bay?
Tina pressed close to herher thin features
”Who can it be,color to her pale cheeks ”Is it the man the Count fears?”
Belesa looked down at her, her brow shadowed
”Why do you say that, child? How do you know my uncle fears any one?”
”He must,” returned Tina naively, ”or he would never have come to hide in this lonely spot
Look, o and infor boats have not yet gone out, and none of the men have seen that sail Get your clothes, Tina Hurry!”
The child scampered down the low slope to the pool where she had been bathing when she sighted the craft, and snatched up the slippers, tunic and girdle she had left lying on the sand
She skipped back up the ridge, hopping grotesquely as she donned her scanty gar the approaching sail, caught her hand, and they hurried toward the fort A fewpalisade which enclosed the building, the strident blare of a truardens, and theboats down their rollers to the water's edge
Every man outside the fort dropped his tool or abandoned whatever he was doing and ran for the stockade without pausing to look about for the cause of the alared on the opened gate, and every head isted over its shoulder to gaze fearfully at the dark line of woodland to the east Not one looked seaward
They thronged through the gate, shouting questions at the sentries who patrolled the firing- ledges built below the up-jutting points of the upright palisade logs
”What is it? Why are we called in? Are the Picts co?”
For answer one taciturn man-at-arms in worn leather and rusty steel pointed southward Froan to cli toward the sea
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On a small lookout tower on the roof of the s, Count Valenso watched the onsweeping sail as it rounded the point of the southern horn The Count was a lean, wiry e He was dark, somber of expression Trunk-hose and doublet were of black silk, the only color about his costume the jewels that twinkled on his sword hilt, and the wine-colored cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulder He twisted his thin black loomy eyes on his seneschal a leather-featured man in steel and satin
”What do you make of it, Galbro?”
”A carack,” answered the seneschal ”It is a carack tried like a craft of the Barachan pirates look there!”
A chorus of cries below them echoed his ejaculation; the shi+p had cleared the point and was slanting inward across the bay And all saw the flag that suddenly broke forth fro in the sun
The people within the stockade stared wildly at that dread emblem; then all eyes turned up toward the tohere theabout hirunted Galbro ”And unless I am mad, it's Strom's 'Red Hand'