Ursus of Ultima Thule by Avram Davidson Page A

two for the first combat. Orfas drew one of the black pebbles and a younger man, often a singer of merry songs, drew the other. He sang no song now but muttered charms as they stepped to the center of the field, but Orfas did not open his mouth as they faced each other. Then all the rest shouted
Ho!
and in that instant Orfas spat in his opponent’s eye and as he blinked, dumbstruck, Orfas rushed him from the side of that eye and with his axe he split through his collarbone. The man fell backward with a great croaking cry. Orfas kicked up the fallen one’s kilt and again he spat, now upon his foe’s manhood, saying, “That is for the wench you stole of me a two months’ since!” and then he brought the axe down once again.
    And went and took his rest across the trench until every other man should have fought once — and then he would again be subject to the lots.
    Not every victor lived to draw a second lot.
    “Now,” said Arntat, “I had killed my man and had killed my second man. And as I sat resting and waiting I chanced to feel an eye strong upon me and I looked up and around and I saw that it was the eye of Orfas. It came to me that I had felt it heavy upon me before but had not fully thought about it. And now all at once I recollected what had been said that time we met after long apart, under the tree of meeting; I saying,
It seems that only we two remain
, and he saying,
This be one too many
. It came to me so late as then that he had long hated me, and I suppose that inside me that one particle must have returned his feeling or I would not have answered as I did.
    “Well! So be it! I knew then that we two would be the last to stand upon our feet and fight for life and for treasure, winner take all. It was our weird. I do not know at what point in our lives he had begun to hate me — or why. Perhaps he himself did not know it till he saw me there under the tree of meeting. Perhaps until then he had thought I would not come back, that I was dead; it may be that the deaths of others of our line had gradually or suddenly given him hope that he would be chief over all our line — and, as our line has always been a line high in Thule, he may have bethought him that he might some day be highest of all in Thule.
    “If I were not.”
    • • •
    The fire barely lived at all. Then someone blew briefly on the dull embers and someone placed an armful of bracken on it. “Eh, ah, Bear,” an older nain said. “Well I remember when the old asking began to be heard again.
By what three things is a king made?
and answered,
By strength, by magic, and by fortune
. He who paid the nain-fee then, I shall say plain, was not the worst as ever paid it. But even kings live not forever. And in all that struggle which came. Bear, some say thee helped the Orfas, he being near of kin. Some say thee befoed him and would have been king instead. I ask not and care I not. Thee has ever been the friend of nains, as nains have ever been the friends of thee. The Orfas winned the kingship and was made king as kings be made and he paid the nain-fee —
then
— full and fair. But the nains be feed to work in iron, not to set snares for bears — or men. We saw thee in the wildwood dwelling where never manfolk dwell at all, we told it to each other and we told it to the forge, but never did we tell it to the king.”
    “I know.”
    “Such rewards he offered, and such afflictions he threatened as never did we hear before.”
    “I know.”
    “That bitter winter when the birds fell frozen from the sky and the all-circling sea itself was turned to ice, far as ever eye could see, when no track nor trace could be concealed upon the snowy ground and no snow fell more from the fast frozen sky, then the Orfas came for thee, for Witch Mered did plot it out for him.”
    “I know.”
    “Corby Mered. Mered Crow.”
    “His witcheries espied thee out, we knew and said nought, he saw and said all. With many troops of men they came for thee, and