the truth. How know we what has happened in that world of ours so long lost to us? And he is very handsome—and young!"
"At least," said Sharane and bitterly, "he is a slave."
"Sh-h!" warned Satalu. "Zachel comes."
They turned; walked toward Sharane's cabin out of Kenton's vision.
The wakening whistle shrilled. There was a stir among the slaves, and Kenton groaned, raised himself, rubbed eyes, and gripped the oar.
Exultation was in his heart. There could be no mistaking Sharane's words. He held her. By a slender thread, it might be; but still—he held her. And if he were not a slave—when slave he ceased to be—what then? By no slender thread then would he hold her. He laughed—but softly, lest Zachel hear. Sigurd looked at him curiously.
"The sleep horn must have brought you gay dream," he murmured.
"Gay, indeed, Sigurd," he answered. "The kind of dream that will thin our chains until we can snap them."
"Odin send more dreams like it," grunted the Norseman.
IX
THE BARGAINING OF SHARANE
When Zachel blew the horn again Kenton had no need of it to send him to sleep. The sharp eyes of the overseer had seen through Sigurd's self-sacrificing stratagem, and he had watched Kenton continually, lashing him when he faltered or let the whole burden of the oar fall upon the Norseman. His hands were blistered, every bone and muscle ached, and his mind lay dulled in his weary body. And thus it was between the next five sleeps.
Once he roused himself enough to ask Sigurd a question that had been going round and round in his brain. Half the rowers in the pit were behind the line that separated black deck from ivory—that line which neither Klaneth and his crew nor Sharane and her women could cross. Yet Zachel roamed at will from one end of that pit to the other; other priests, too, for he had seen them. And although he had not seen Klaneth or Gigi or the Persian there, he did not doubt that they could come and go if they so wished. Why, then, did not the black robes swarm up the farther side and overwhelm the rosy cabin? Why did not Sharane and her women drop into the pit and lay siege to the ebon cabin? Why did they not launch their javelins, their arrows, over the pit of the rowers into the wolfpack of the black priest?
It was a warlock ship, the Viking had repeated, and the spell upon it no simple one. The slave who had died had told him that he had been on the ship since the gods had launched her, and that the same unseen, mysterious barrier shut off the side of the rowers that rimmed Sharane's deck. Nor could javelin or arrow or other missile other than those hurled by god and goddess penetrate it.
Humanly, each opposing camp was helpless against the other. There were other laws, too, the slave had told Sigurd. Neither Sharane nor Klaneth could leave the ship when it hove to in harbor. Sharane's women could. The black priest's men, yes—but not for long. Soon they must return. The ship drew them back. What would happen to them if they did not return? The slave had not known, had said that such thing was impossible, the ship would draw them back.
Kenton pondered over all this as with aching back he pushed and pulled at the oar. Decidedly these were practical, efficient deities who had doomed the ship overlooking no detail, he thought, half amused.
Well, they had created the game, and certainly they had the right to make that game's rules. He wondered whether Sharane could roam at will from stem to stern when he had conquered the ship. Wondering still, he heard the drone of Zachel's horn begin, and pitched, content, into the bottomless oubliette of sleep it opened.
He awoke from that sixth sleep with mind crystal clear, an astonishing sense of well being, and a body once more free from pain and flexible and vigorous. He pulled at his oar strongly and easily.
"Strength flows up to you from the sea even as I foretold," grunted Sigurd.
Kenton nodded absently, his sharpened mind grappling with the problem of escape from his chains.
What went on in the pit and on the ship while the rowers were asleep? What chance would offer then to free himself and the Viking if he could stay awake?
If he could stay awake!
But how could he close his ears to that horn which poured sleep into them as the sirens of old poured with their songs fatal fascination into the ears of sailors strayed within their ken?
The sirens! The story of crafty Ulysses' adventure with those sea women flashed into his memory. How desire had come upon that wanderer to hear the siren song—yet no desire to let it draw him to them. How he had sailed into their domain; had filled his oarsmen's ears with melted wax; had made them bind him to the mast with open ears, and then, cursing, straining at his bonds, mad with desire to leap into their white arms, had heard their enchanted measures—and sailed safe away.
A wind arose—a steady wind that filled the sail and drove the ship through gently cresting waves. Came command to rest oars. Kenton slouched down upon the bench. Sigurd was in one of his silent moods, face brooding, gaze far away, filled with dreams of other days when his dragons cleft the Northern Ocean.
Kenton dropped his hands upon the silken rags upon his legs; his fingers began, seemingly idly, to unravel their threads, twist and knot them into little silken cylinders. He worked on, the Viking unheeding. Now two were finished. He palmed one, rubbed as idly the side of his face, and so rubbing slipped the little silken cylinder into an ear. He waited for a time; slipped in the other ear the second plug. The roaring of the wind sank to a loud whispering.
Carefully, unhurrying, he drew them out; twisted more threads around them. Again he set them in place. Now the wind's roar was only a murmuring, faint and far away. Satisfied, he slipped the silken cylinders under his torn girdle.
On sped the ship. And after a while the slaves came and dashed their buckets over him and the Viking; brought them food and drink.
On the very edge of the sleep-horn drone Kenton slumped down upon the bench, face on forearms, the silken cylinders hidden under thumbs. Swiftly he slipped them in his ears. Then he let every muscle go limp The droning diminished to a faint, hardly heard humming. Even so, a languor crept through him. He fought it. He beat the languor back. The humming ceased. He heard the overseer go by him; looked after him through half-raised lids; saw him ascend that pit's steps and pass over the deck to Klaneth's cabin.
The black deck was empty. As though shifting in slumber Kenton rolled over, threw an arm across the back of the bench, rested his head upon it, and through lowered lashes took stock of what lay behind him.
He heard laughter, golden, chiming. To the edge of her deck, black-haired Satalu beside her, walked Sharane. She seated herself there, unbound her hair, shook the flaming red gold cloud of it over face and shoulders; sat within it as though within a perfumed, silken red gold tent. Satalu raised a shining tress; began to comb it.
Through that web of loveliness he felt Sharane's eyes upon him. Involuntarily his own opened wide; clung to her hidden ones. She gasped, half rose, parted the curtains of her hair, stared at him in wonder. "He is awake!" she whispered. "Sharane!" he breathed.
He watched shame creep again into her eyes—her face grow cold. She raised her head, sniffed daintily.
"Satalu," she said, "is there not a stronger taint from the pit?" Again she silted her nose. "Yes—I am sure
