Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
"Donnerwetter!" he said, setting down his horn. "To my mind it has just come that Leif a cook-boy is desirous of, now that Hord is drowned." The girl saw his purpose, and nodded quickly. "It is unlikely that you can make a better bargain anywhere." She turned to examine the slaves, and her eyes immediately encountered Alwin's.
The light fell upon furry gray feet; and Alwin's first thought was that a monstrous cat had dropped down. Then the flames leaped higher, and showed a furry cloak and a furry hood, and from its fuzzy depths protruding, a sharp yellow beak for a nose, and a hairy yellow peak for a chin. Of eyes, one saw nothing at all. Out of the fuzzy depths came a lisping voice.
Alwin's eyes fell upon a narrow ledge-like path that showed plainly between the bare branches, and he nodded toward it with a smile. "Missing bear-fights is certainly undesirable," he said. "But it was not long ago and on this same bank that I anticipated a worse fate than that."
"Does a month seem long to you? When Eric came here from Iceland, he was obliged to lie four months in the ice." Four months on shipboard, with nothing more cheerful to look at than barren cliffs and a gray sea paved with grinding ice-cakes! The consternation of Alwin's face was so great that Sigurd took pity on him even while he laughed. "It will not be so bad as that.
Two of their lean arms would not have made one of the Wrestler's magnificent white limbs, and the tallest among them could not have reached above Alwin's shoulders. Skins were their only coverings; and the coarseness of their bristling black locks could have been equalled only in the mane of a wild horse.
It may have been for any or all of these reasons. You, who have come nearer to me than any man alive, should have no difficulty in selecting the true one." Was it possible that reproach rang in those last words? It sounded so strangely like it, that Tyrker involuntarily curved his hand around his ear to amend some flaw in his hearing. Alwin's face underwent a great change.
Anxious to be done with it, Alwin fell upon the thrall with a fierceness that terrified the fellow. His blade played about him like lightning; one could scarce follow its motions. A flesh-wound in the hip; and the poor churl, who had little real skill and less natural spirit, began to blunder. A thrust in the arm that would have only redoubled Alwin's zeal, finished him completely.
If you do not answer now, it is unlikely that you will be alive to answer a third question." Perhaps young Alwin's bronzed cheeks lost a little of their color, but his lip curled scornfully. So they stood, minute after minute, the sharp point pricking through the cloth until the boy felt it against his skin. Gradually the trader's face relaxed into a grim smile.
Something, Leif's curtness, or the touch of Valbrand's hand upon his naked shoulder, roused Alwin's madness afresh. Shaking off the hand, fighting it off, he bearded the chief himself. "I will kill him if ever he utters his cur's yelp at me again. You are blind and simple to think to keep an earl-born man under the feet of a churl.
"Get you quickly forward and wipe up the beer Valbrand has spilled over his bench." For a moment, Alwin's eyes opened wide in amazement; then they drew together into two menacing slits, and his very clothing bristled with haughtiness. He deigned no answer whatsoever. A pause, and Kark followed his voice. "What now, you cub of a lazy mastiff! I told you, quickly; the beer will get on his clothes."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking