Bard I Read Online Free Page A

together behind his back, and lashed. With kicks, cuffs and shoves he was taken to a rough square chamber opening from the main hall, its doorway curtained with hides. In the middle of this chamber, an octagonal rail of logs encircled a pit. A clamour of growls and snarls rose from it as they entered.
    Felimid knew then what the king planned for him. His belly shrank to a lumpy cold clot of fear. He fought his captors madly, to no purpose.
    ‘Give him a look,’ said Oisc. ‘No more; not just yet.’
    Torches blazed around the pit’s rim in the hands of grinning men. Below, six wolves tried frenziedly to reach them. Gaunt hairy bodies, drooling red tongues, glinting eager fangs. Eyes like fire-lit emeralds, glaring. Felimid shuddered with horror.
    ‘Fine beasts, are they not ?’ demanded Oisc. ‘I feed them barely enough to keep them from eating each other. But I won’t have them tear you now. No, by Wotan, I’ll save you for later! Bind his legs and hang him by the feet from that beam! He can watch the wolves for a few hours, and think of what’s to come!’
    This they did. One end of a long rope was tied securely about the bard’s ankles. They tossed the free end over a beam that ran directly above the wolf pit. A strong man on the pit’s far side caught it, and with two others to help him he drew in all the unwanted length. They knotted the free end to one of the log railings about the pit.
    Swinging back and forth, head downward, Felimid looked upon jeering upturned faces. One, dreadfully scarred, belonged to a man with his left arm in a sling and a wolfskin on his head. He wore a wide grin of satisfaction as well.
    Felimid was certain, then, that he knew why Kisumola had lied about him. Tosti had paid the wizard or forced him; it did not matter which. Felimid cursed them both with the most dreadful dooms he could lay tongue to. He didn’t forget Oisc in his maledictions, either.
    ‘I’ll see that your master learns what became of his spy,’ Oisc mocked. ‘Which British king is he, harper?
    Gereint? Cador? The Warlord himself? Pah, don’t answer, then! It doesn’t signify now! Come, companions, our meat will be growing cold.’
    For a while, dozens came in to goggle and laugh. However, they didn’t stay. A man hanging like a side of pork is not rewarding to stare at for long, and soon enough he was alone.
    The noise of celebration came muffled through the thick hide hangings. In a few hours the king would return to round off his night’s revels by watching Felimid tom limb from limb. Moments of agony worse than fire, and then no more songs forever. He had to escape!
    Nor would he concede that it couldn’t be done, though without his harp he was a man doubly unarmed. If he had, he’d have gone stark mad. The wolves stared longingly up at him. They knew what to expect. Cold sweat ran down Felimid’s face into his hair. He knew what to expect, too.
    So. With his hands behind him, he could do nothing. Could he somehow get them in front?
    He was supple enough, and he could try. A tough leather thong lashed his hands behind his back. The ship’s line binding his ankles together, from which he dangled, was a separate bit of rope entirely. Then–?
    With an effort that set his leg muscles shrieking. he drew himself into the curled position of the womb, touching his backside to his heels. As difficult as that was to do while he dangled upside down in the air, it was nothing to what he must still achieve.
    Grunting and arching his back like a bow. he strove to force his bound hands past his feet. He had long, almost prehensile feet, to which he partly owed his fame as one of the swiftest runners in Erin, but in that moment he passionately hated every inch of them. And bis heels. What a ridiculous, hampering shape heels were, bulging like mountains, making it impossible to slide his bound wrists over them when he needed to!
    He did the impossible.
    Then he slid his hands up the arches, bit by excruciating bit.