The Vikings probably thought me some effete Byzantine affecting Oriental manners. They had enough respect for my reputation, however, and showed me perfect courtesy. Renowned for their love of poetry and music and fine workmanship, Vikings enjoyed cultured living and hospitality. These two searobbers, though they served under one of the most evil captains known, were well informed and told me they had discussed deserting Gunnar for crusading or working as mercenaries in Byzantium. But they had no real choice. Their fate was to sail with Gunnar until the Valkyries came to carry them to Valhalla. They found a boy to run to Gunnar.

By the time we finished the skin, there came a stirring and a chorus of greetings. Earl Gunnar had arrived.

He hated to show his face. They said his wounds were so hideous he could not bear to look on his own features. I was surprised at the baroque workmanship of his mask, fashioned like a gryphon's head with an open, threatening mouth, but where the gullet would be was a face of silvered steel. Of Eastern origin, the helmet's crest had been cleverly crafted in silver and pewter: gryphon ascendant. But it was my own face I saw when I first looked at him. He was coming towards me, striding with dangerous inelegance.

Gunnar the Doomed was a bear. He was twice my width and slightly taller. I could imagine this terrifying figure on the bridge of his ship. He wore fine-woven plaids and linens and, like all his kind, his hands were girlishly tended. Hanging down over his shoulders his hair showed a little grey. With his welltrimmed, flowing locks, his rich clothing and knee-high doeskin boots, he could have been a Danish noble of the previous century. There was a generally archaic air about the man. It had been a hundred years since the last Vikings had gone on raiding expeditions.

The Norse sailors most reminded me of my old friend, the bluff, direct and solidly realistic Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns. As an individual Gunnar struck me as Smiorgan's opposite. There was something unwholesome about him. He affected the rough manners of a nobleman too long in the company of brutes. Yet he was a real diplomat. He knew enough not to threaten me. Instead he preferred to charm me. He ordered another skin of Bulgar wine and had it brought to the table where I still sat with his men. I could, of course, read nothing from the face, completely covered by the mirrored steel of the helmet. There were dark cavities in the mask. Through two of these he stared at me. Through another he fed himself tiny scraps of some kind of meat he carried in his hand. Otherwise he had the familiar manner of those who do not know me. He kept a little distance between us on the chance that I was actually a leper. Courteously I refused his wine. I had drunk my fill, I said. "I have some business with you, Earl Gunnar."

Gunnar shrugged. "I'm not a merchant, and my ship is not for hire."

"You are an adventurer, like myself, and your ship is your own. I'm not here to hire you, Earl Gunnar. A man like yourself does not strike me as one who would sing to another's tune no matter how sweet the melody."

"You've come overland, have you? Where from? Constantinople? Did you ride through the Devil's Garden?"

I told him that I had. He nodded. He sat back in his chair, that more-thanenigma tic mask regarding me with some interest. "So you saw all those massive heads. You'd think they were alive, eh? I saw something like them when I sailed with the Rose on her twin-hulled ship The Either/Or. We passed an island which marked the boundaries of that people's empire. Huge eyes staring from these stone faces. An island of giants. We did not go closer." Gunnar had a certain witch-sight. No ordinary mortal would have seen those stones for what they were. I held my own counsel and let Gunnar continue.

"So you know me by my reputation, as I know thee, Sir Sil-verskin. And it pleases you to flatter my pride. Yet you know I do indeed work for hire on occasions. So, while I appreciate your courtesy, I'd be as happy to get down to business, if we have any, as not. I sail on the morning tide, and my crew is already aboard, save for these two, whom I came to find." He paused. Taking a reed from within his jerkin he placed one end in his wine cup and the other in the aperture in his mask. He sipped delicately. "My destination's already determined."

"I understand that also." I dropped my voice. "North and west to the World's Rim?"

He was too canny a captain to respond immediately. "You know more than I do, Sir Silverskin. We are merely setting sail for Las Cascadas to find fresh crewmen. Winter approaches, and at this time we normally go down to Zanzibar, where we take an interest in the slave trade. It's a poor business, but there are few other ways for an independent captain to make a living in these oversettled times."

I opened my palm and showed him what was there. "Give me a berth on your ship, Earl Gunnar, and I'll tell you more about this."

It was not in his nature to hesitate.

"The berth is yours, " he said. "We sail on the first tide."

Darkling dragon, reiver's pride,

Rides nigh upon the turquoise tide.

His weird-drenched wave

Snail bear him to a rich retreat.

Darkling dragon, reiver's pride,

Lord of the Last, destined to die.

In Woden's waves he'll find no grave

His death's pre-written on his own black blade.

LONGFELLOW, 'Lord of the Lost"

Alittle before dawn I was down at the harbor looking over the long, slender ship lying against the dock. Solomon had been sold for a fair price to a Greek merchant who had some fancy to show himself off as a knight. I threw in the surcoat for good measure. At least he could pretend to fellow Christians to have been a crusader. Solomon would be making his way home to Lombardy shortly after we sailed. If he was lucky, the merchant would not be on the stallion's broad and cunning back.

Narrow, seemingly delicate, yet full of sinewy power even at anchor, The Swan pulled eagerly at her traces, haughty and confident as her namesake. I heard Gunnar had bought her from the impoverished Greenlanders who had made her but lacked the skills to sail her.

I admired the lines of the ship. Her fine, beaky figurehead might deliberately have been a cross between a swan and a wyvern. She had the swan's calm stateliness, but also an air of menace, which had something to do with the rake of her deck, the set of her mast.

In the old Viking manner there were shields strapped to the rail above the board which ran between the rowing benches and the shutbeds where men could store their goods and get sleep when utterly worn out. I knew that many Vikings preferred to sleep at their oars and had developed ways of hanging over the great, golden sweeps to find the total rest of the thoroughly exhausted. But half the shield spaces were empty. I suspected they were not filled by born Norsemen.

I waited patiently near the gangplank as the sea-raiders arrived. They represented most nations, from Iceland to Mongolia. "By Ishtar, " murmured a Persian, seeing me, "Gunnar's more desperate for men than we knew." Some of the races I did not recognize at all, but there were tall, thin East Africans, a couple of burly Moors, three Mongols and a mixture of Greeks, Albanians and Arabs. All of them had the grim look of men who knew violence more thoroughly than peace. Settling in to the ship, some of them took places by shields they had clearly acquired from the dead. The two Ashanti had brought their own long shields. Others had no shields at all. There was a miscellaneous mixture of weaponry. If ever a crew was born to sail a ship into the realms of Chaos, it was The Swan's.