Chapter 1

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_Title:_ The Woman Who Couldn’t Die
_Date of first publication:_ 1929
_Author:_ Arthur Stringer (1874-1950)
_Date first posted:_ July 27, 2016
_Date last updated:_ July 27, 2016
Faded Page eBook #20160720

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_By_ ARTHUR STRINGER

THE DOOR OF DREAD
THE MAN WHO COULDN’T SLEEP
THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE
TWIN TALES
THE PRAIRIE WIFE
THE PRAIRIE MOTHER
THE PRAIRIE CHILD
THE WIRE TAPPERS
PHANTOM WIRES
THE GUN RUNNER
THE DIAMOND THIEVES
LONELY O’MALLEY
EMPTY HANDS
POWER
IN BAD WITH SINBAD
WHITE HANDS
THE WOLF WOMAN
A WOMAN AT DUSK

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The Woman
Who Couldn’t Die

By
Arthur Stringer

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS INDIANAPOLIS

COPYRIGHT, 1929
BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

FIRST EDITION

Printed in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1928, 1929
BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY
under the title _The Blond Woman_

C O N T E N T S

CHAPTER PAGE
A PROLOGUE IN HORDOLAND 11
I THE FRONTIERS OF ADVENTURE 32
II THE ARROW OF GOLD 61
III THE OVERLAND ROUTE 80
IV WE ENCOUNTER A WOMAN 107
V THE FIRE-GOD ASSERTS HIMSELF 121
VI THE MASTER OF MAGIC 134
VII THE SLEEPING WOMAN 156
VIII A DEATH FOR A DEATH 175
IX THE EXILE FROM OUTSIDE 184
X THE PILGRIM SOUL 198
XI LINES OF COMMUNICATION 209
XII WOMEN AND THE LOVE OF WOMEN 219
XIII THE WAYWARD FLESH 228
XIV PACING THE CAGE 240
XV THE PATH ALONG THE SKY 248
XVI THE WOMAN DESIRED 266
XVII THE CASCADE OF FIRE 282
XVIII THE BATTLE IN THE CLOUDS 292
XIX THE END OF THE TRAIL 309

THE WOMAN WHO COULDN’T DIE

The Woman Who Couldn’t Die

_A PROLOGUE IN HORDOLAND_

_I_

_The fiord air was windless and humid. So heavy was it, in fact, that
the sweat stood out on the bronzed bodies of the rowers as, at a sign
from Sigurd Blödoxe, they sat with suspended oars. They sat motionless,
making a picture that drifted swan-like in the mirroring quiet of the
pearl-misted afternoon._

_“Yonder comes Gunhild,” announced the tawny-haired Sigurd._

_Graafeld, who stood beside him on the gilded skuta-poop, grunted aloud
as he detected the bobbing blond head of a swimmer slowly bearing down
on them. This swimmer, whose strokes grew more labored as he came
closer, was plainly exhausted by the tides which he had been opposing._

_“Give him a hand aboard there,” commanded the captain of the
high-prowed craft. And a dozen hairy arms reached over the low freeboard
to help the tired adventurer back to his ship._

_Gunhild, lying on the sun-bleached deck-boards, let the warmth of life
once more soak into his bones. Blödoxe, with a half-smile about his
untroubled blue eye, watched the heaving chest until its movements
became less spasmodic._

_“What found you in the gut?” he asked. His head-nod toward the inner
fiord-end was a curt one._

_“Women,” replied Gunhild, turning on the wet boards. “Nothing but
women.”_

_“Doing what?” demanded Blödoxe, his mailed shoulders stiffening into a
sterner line._

_“Bathing,” retorted the other. “Bathing along the sands of the inner
cove, a full dozen of them, like seal-pups along a Lofoden rock-ledge!”_

_“And Thera?”_

_Gunhild, sitting up, slowly buckled on the bronze-studded sword-belt of
ox-hide that had been silently tossed to his side, and then through the
belt thrust the leaf-shaped sword of tempered bronze._

_“Thera is there,” he explained as he continued to dress. “She is there
with a fathom or two of yellow hair down about her white body, sunning
herself on the cove-sand.”_

_A harder light came into the blue-green eye of the Viking chief from
the Baltic mouth. Hunger, like a shadow, passed over the bronzed square
face under the winged helmet crested with its raven of gold._

_“This, then,” he proclaimed as he glanced along the freeboard ringed
with its barrier shields of bronze and leather, “is the day that I take
her.”_

_A frown crept over the face of Graafeld, the oldest and the dourest of
the trio on the after-deck._

_“Thera is to be given as wife to Haakon, the son of Hlaford,” he
reminded his younger chief. “And there would be scant room on these seas
for the ravisher of a woman loved as Thera is loved.”_

_Blödoxe’s laugh was deep and indifferent._

_“Then, by the hammer of Thor, we shall seek us out other seas where we
may find peace with the lady!”_

_“That means you must travel far,” protested the heavy-jowled Graafeld._

_“And why must I travel far?”_

_“Because Olaf of Hordoland is both hot of blood and proud of heart. And
a jarl of that breed will not see a daughter thus dishonorably taken
without embarking after the taker. And Haakon, equally dishonored, would
harry and hunt you until the end of time.”_