Young Thongor by Lin Carter Adrian Cole

ivory may pass to the Southlander tradesmen,” the girl said. “When times are hard, and there is no gold with which to pay, we pay in tribute of slaves. This year, the times were hard. I am the tribute,” she said simply.
    Thongor lifted his head and stared at her. His own people would have starved to the last babe rather than give a daughter of the tribe into slavery to such as the Baron of Jomsgard. Her limpid eyes fell before his stare, and her cheeks crimsoned. He said nothing, and after a moment he turned his scowling eyes from her.
    By the glow shed by the leaping flames he could see the full length of the hall. Great benches of rough wood lined the walls; a rack near the door contained spears; bows and quivers full of arrows hung on iron hooks between brackets which held guttering torches.
    There was only one dead body in the hall, and it lay at the foot of the low dais on which stood the chair of Barak Redwolf. It had been too dark in the antechamber beyond the half-open gate for Thongor to have made out the manner in which the gate captain had been murdered. Now, examining the figure which lay sprawled at the foot of the dais, he felt faintly sick.
    He had seen men die in a variety of ways, but never a corpse like this.
    The man had been crushed to death.
    He nudged the corpse with his foot.
    “Barak?”
    The girl glanced over, then shuddered. “No; he was a bigger man, with a narrow head, amber eyes like a beast, and red hair. I think that man was Bothon, one of the chieftains.”
    “Where are all the rest of them?”
    The girl shrugged.
    “Where were you when these men died?”
    The girl gestured to the back of the hall. “There is a room back there where they put me. I was brought here this day with dawn. Barak looked me over and liked what he saw. This…was to have been my…my bridal night…”
    “Well, you were spared that, at least,” the youth grunted. “But—you heard nothing, saw nothing?”
    “The walls are thick, the doors were shut, and I was sick with dread,” she whispered. “Sometime before sunfall I heard men yelling and the clump of their boots in the hall. I thought they were all drunk, or at some game or other. Then, when no one came for me, I ventured out. I found a man’s body back there, behind the hall, and then this one here. I—I thought the keep had been attacked, and you, one of the attackers!”
    The youth shook his head, long straight black hair brushing his square-jawed face.
    “Not I,” he said shortly. “Come—let us explore.”
    The girl cast a fearful glance into the deep shadows in the far corners of the hall. From such dark places, perhaps, nameless and unknown terror had struck through all this mighty keep, slaughtering men by dozens. And perhaps it lingered, even yet, in the gloom beyond the fire’s glow. She felt the cold breath of that terror against her nape.
    Then she looked up into the boy’s clear, steady gaze. There was grim purpose in that gaze, and curiosity, too. But there was no fear. And suddenly she felt less fearful herself.
    She rose to stand beside him. He took down one of the oil-soaked torches from a wall bracket.
    Then he took her hand in his.
    And they went forward into the darkness together.
    3
    Dead Man, Laughing
    They came at length to a chamber decorated more sumptuously than the rest. The walls were hung with woven cloth in such colours and patterns as the weaver-women of Eobar prefer, and there were small tables of black wood here and there about, carved and set with ivory. There was carpet that had come from the looms of Cadornis, perhaps.
    Ylala said that this was the room Barak Redwolf used for his—amusements.
    One of the things he used to amuse himself still hung from the ceiling in iron chains.
    It was, or had been, a man. An old man with a long thin beard and long thin arms and legs, and not much meat on the rest of him, either. He had been stripped naked and hung by his wrists while Barak did unpleasant things with