Read Online TLV - 02 - The Road of the Sea Horse by Poul Anderson - Free Book Online

the first time they had each other, she gasped with pleasure. In the next few nights, they got little sleep.
    As soon as the roads were clear, Harald sent out word that again there would be a full levy, half the men and ships in the realm. This time, he swore, he would have Denmark if he must hunt Svein Estridhsson up to the Jotuns's home. Nidharos became a caldron of armed men, and the bay filled with dragons.
    But one afternoon the king was in his stables, currying his best horse, when Halldor Snorrason sought him out. Looking up as the light from the door was blocked off, Harald saw him standing and went over. "Good day to you, Halldor. What do you seek?"
    "I'd have a word with you, my lord." The Icelander was grave.
    "Well, then, let's take a walk down to the dock." Harald nodded at his carles, who took over the work; several waiting guardsmen shouldered their axes and followed him as he strolled from the yard.
    "Why do you call me lord?" he asked. "I thought we were too old friends for such lickspittle talk."
    "You are the lord now," said Halldor. "You have what you've hankered for, the Norse throne, and this Danish business is foolishness."
    "Not so," answered Harald, unoffended. "You've seen as well as I, down in the South, what a united empire can mean."
    "You'll never have one," said Halldor. "The time's not ripe. It took many hundreds of years to build up the Roman domain. But that's no concern of mine. What I ask now is leave to go home to Iceland."
    Harald stopped. Of the street activity around him, swaggering warriors, tramping horses, haggling merchants, plodding oxcarts, Harald was hardly aware. Looking down at the scarred face, he saw wistfulness under its calm.
    "Are you not pleased with my service?" he asked.
    "Oh, yes. You're no niggard to your friends. But we're scarce getting younger, you and I, and it's time I got me a wife and a home."
    "I can arrange a good marriage for you."
    "I want to be among my own folk," said Halldor. "I have brothers, sisters, kin I haven't seen for . . . God in Heaven, eighteen years since I left them! Now there's a trader from the West-firths, bound back after spending the winter here, and I can get passage with him. My wealth will buy me a good farm."
    "And so you'll bite coals and squabble with your neighbors over cow pastures, the rest of your days," said Harald bitterly.
    Halldor resumed walking, down the slanted street toward the docks on the river. "I'll be an important man," he said. "My house shall be famous someday. But that's no matter. It's only that now and then I long so much to go home, and to be done with this warring and scheming, that it's a sickness in me."
    "Well," said Harald, "if go you must, I shall not stop you." He tried to smile. "It's but that I have so few friends. I'd thought . . . Well, no matter. Our souls are not alike."
    "They were once." Halldor tugged at his mustache. "Do you remember the days of our youth, when we drank Miklagardh dry and set the world on its beam-ends? Hoy, we had some merry times, and there was naught we could not do. Each coin was treasure, each wine a discovery, each woman an adventure. But for us those days are past."
    "We still have much to do," said Harald.
    "And do you laugh as you work at it? No, it's a task, something you do for the sake of wealth and glory, and because you know not how to stop. As for me, Harald, my bones ache after a day's ride, and in wet weather I'd liefer doze by the fire than be out making war. But more than that, these things have ceased to matter very much. One gold piece is just like another, and not worth the trouble of gaining. A new country is only a reach of ground I've not chanced to see before. Women fall into perhaps a dozen kinds—at most—and I know what each kind will do and say whatever happens."
    They came out on the wharf planking, and Harald's eyes went to the haughty curves of a longboat tied nearby. "A ship is a lovely thing," he said. "I don't think men have ever made