IX

“_Gift always looks to recompense_”

—Northern saying.

Through the dusk, the Skraelling fires across the river made no more

showing than a cluster of glowworms on a log; but—true to the saying

that “Famine-pinched stomachs are the greatest gluttons”—the Norse

fire-builders had heaped wood on blaze until their forest guest-house

revelled in a brightness as of noonday.

The peace party had been back for the space of three candle-burnings,

long enough for the first tumult of greeting to have subsided, and yet

not so long but that the aroma of the new interest still flavored the

air. In complacent beard-stroking groups, the old chiefs stood about the

bank, congratulating one another upon the advantages which the alliance

would secure to the fur-traffic and the trade in massur-wood. Trying on

shell necklaces and quill-embroidered shoes, Brynhild’s women were

turning the leaf-carpeted slope into a bower. In the hemlock nook which

had been the prison-chamber, two guardsmen were giving an imitation of

an Indian war-dance which sent the pages rolling on the earth in

convulsions of merriment; and near by, another gathering watched with

breathless interest while Gunnar the Merry experimented with the trophy

which he had brought back,—a strange smoke-producing implement made up

of a long reed, a big stone thimble, and a pinch of strangely smelling

leaves.

Of none of these groups, however, was the Jarl or his song-maker a part.

Still farther up the rising ground, on the very edge of the

shadow-breeding wood, a mighty pine had toppled over and lay head

downward, its huge clod of roots and soil upturned like a dead giant’s

feet. There, skulking wolf-like in the shade, Helvin leaned against the

writhen mass, bending and tearing the tough fibres with his restless

hands; while along the huge trunk below him, as a panther along a bough,

the deerskin-clad figure of Rolf’s son lay stretched out.

Now and again, from the fireside groups came up snatches of song or a

merry outburst of voices. But none of it moved the Jarl to speech, and

for once the Songsmith chose to remain under cover of custom and wait

until he was addressed.

Now and again, a largess of dead leaves caused a grateful dancing of the

flames that stretched the circle of ruddy light even to the timber’s

edge. Gazing upward, Randvar had a fleeting glimpse of the brooding

white face on which that strange, evil expression had deepened to a

stain. But always before he had a chance to study it, the light failed.

Convinced at last that he fronted the unknown, he waited tense as a

bowstring, alert as an arrow. Almost he shot from his place when low

laughter burst from Starkad’s son,—laughter so devil-like that a wave of

coldness started at his neck and rippled down to his heels.

“You think yourself a sly fox as you lie there watching me!” Helvin

said, “but you need not take so much trouble. I have got over the wish

to kill you.”

It seemed to Randvar as if the rippling wave must have frozen, so rigid

did he become.

“Is it even so, then, that you tried to betray me?” he asked slowly.

“I hope you did not look for anything better from me,” Helvin returned,

and laughed again.

So unbearable was the low sound that Randvar sat up sharply, and spoke

with anger: “I did though! I expected that even if your wrath rose like

a sea-wall against me, you would vent it in some honorable way.”

“You know better now,” Helvin answered grimly.

“That is certain,” Randvar assented with equal curtness; and for a space

there was silence between them, save for the sound of Helvin’s hands

tearing the root-fibres.

In the low choked voice of one holding under a fearful force, Helvin

broke out at last. “I never saw a greater blockhead! and I treated you

better than you deserved. It mattered not that you were quick to mark

the change in my manner,—still you could not guess that from the time

the trees closed around me, I saw nothing but the old troll’s twisted

face in every shadow, heard nothing but his cursed ghost gibbering

vengeance in my ear! Never did I so need that you should closely stand

by me with your fearless mind; and what did you do, instead, but bungle

it so that I had to leave you behind! I can tell you that death was

likelier than life as you stood then. I wonder I did not become the

fiend you saw at the Pool.”

“The fiend I saw at the Pool!” Randvar repeated, and the impulse to face

standing whatever might lie before him made him start to rise to his

feet. But at the first motion, Helvin’s hand fell upon his shoulder with

the weight of a lion’s paw and crushed him back upon his seat.

“Now are you hot-headed,” he snarled, “and there is rashness in your

actions, and that is foolish in a cool-witted man like you. It is not

enough that you have made the bargain to go through Torment with me; you

have got to go quietly. Quietly! do you understand that or not? _Ah!_

You are not going to be so great a fool as to struggle.—Bear in mind

what it means to thwart me!”

But it was not the gripping hand that Randvar was struggling against,

though the fingers had sunk into his flesh like iron hooks. It was

against that awful dizzy madness that had come again upon him at the

touch of Starkad’s son. In the same flash of time he knew two

things—that his “gift” was making him aware of a terrible presence, and

that he resented that gift with every fibre of his forest-bred body.

Doubly racked, he battled for the space of a heart-beat, then reached

instinctively for the sharp medicine of his blade.

Even as his flesh tasted it and his disorder passed, the fire leaped

redly, revealing the blazing eyes of rage above him, disclosing his

horror-twisted mouth to the Jarl. With a stifled cry, Starkad’s son

quitted his hold.

“Why do you look at me like that? Oh God, do the marks show on me? I

thought I should escape—escape—”

His voice lost the semblance of a voice, became an inarticulate wail;

and to it was added the sound of rending cloth as he started up in his

lair. In frantic haste he strove to disentangle his cloak and draw it up

over his breast and around him in a hood; but he only tangled it harder

and pulled the folds awry and lost the end from between his numb

fingers. Giving up the attempt, finally, he cast it over his head and

flung himself down upon the earth, moaning a single word over and over

like a wounded bird of one note.

More like was it to a sound of bird or beast than to human speech. Every

nerve strained in the endeavor to comprehend, every sense baffled, the

song-maker stood staring down at him. At last he bent, speaking

desperately:

“Either you are dumb or I am deaf! Make me a sign.”

Plunging and reeling, the black shape reared itself from the ground;

though even in the shadow it would not uncover its face. From the

cloak-folds came forth a shaking hand, which fell on the Songsmith’s arm

and groped its way to his shoulder. Brushing his cheek, it left the skin

wet, though its touch was the touch of fire. From his shoulder, it

passed over to the harp at his back and put all its force into smiting

the strings into one discordant cry, before it fell back into the

cloak-folds, and the cloaked form fell prone upon the earth.

Randvar understood then that he was to sing; and before he was erect,

the harp was off his back. Like the voice of a night-bird pouring out

its soul to the listening forest, his voice rang from the shadow.

Down on the firelit slope, the merry groups ceased their sports and gave

him joyous hearing; and the echoes in the hills across the splashing

river awoke and answered him sleepily; but of what he sang he had no

consciousness, nor ever afterwards could recall it. Like a dead thing

lay the mound at his feet; and as flies around the dead, his thoughts

buzzed around its secret.

Slowly understanding came.... The troll-temper of the father had

descended upon the son.... Denied the vent of battle-fury, it had taken

some uglier shape, some monstrous shape that galled the Jarl’s pride to

own!... It had possessed him that day at the Pool, and he believed that

the forester had seen its degrading marks.... Its marks! Shrinking,

Randvar’s memory groped among the myriad tales he had heard of men

accursed ... yelping teeth-gnashing Berserkers with frothing distorted

mouths ... souls doomed to raven in brutes’ bodies ... wits to sleep in

the bestial forms of swinish cinder-biters....

Like a strain falling from Valhalla to the World of the Dead, the voice

of Yrsa the Lovely fell presently on his ear, calling out a merry

good-night as she went away with the rustling train of women to the

booths that had been erected for them. A moment his gaze wandered to

follow out of sight the head of fiery gold that moved before them, but

still he sang on.

Above the trees, presently, Night raised her silver bow and shot bright

arrows through the leafless branches. Watching the shafts strike and

melt into pools of moonshine at his feet, his eyes lost their alertness;

his song grew dreamy, slackened and sank low as the note of a dreaming

bird. But still he kept on.

Breathing the melody rather than singing it, he saw unheeding how the

bright beams reached to the cloak-wrapped form and groped like hands

along it; he was slow in realizing that one of the pale spots in the

shadow was not moonlight, but a wan face upturned. His song ended in a

gasp, when the truth did come home to him. Sometime he stood motionless

before he dared speak and ask:

“Lord, how is it with you?”

The answer came out of the shadow, “It is well with me,” but no minor

chord ever made the song-maker’s heart swell in his breast as did the

voice in which the words were spoken. It became nothing to him what mask

the tortured face might be wearing. Kneeling beside the prostrate body,

he raised it up until the mass of blood-red hair rested even on his

shoulder.

As a drowned man rises out of the deeps, so the Jarl seemed to rise out

of the shadow into the moonlight. And as the face of one who has known

the agony of buffeting waves, so was his face blanched and drawn; but no

other mark was upon him. Only infinite weariness was on the finely cut

mouth; in the sea-gray eyes, only infinite sadness. The swelling of the

song-maker’s heart became a sharp pain in his throat.

But the Jarl said gently: “Once when I had fallen into such a strait as

this, I would not accept your help. See now how I lean on you! There

will ever be most help in you when there is most need of it. My true

friend, for this—this!—what shall requite you?” He put up his hand; and

because Randvar could not speak, he wrung it in silence.

Then gradually Helvin’s strength came back to him, so that he put out

his other hand and taking hold of a branch, drew himself to his feet,

and stood supported half by the tree, half by the shoulder of the

Songsmith.

“Soon are my powers renewed in me,” he said. “Even as David did for

Saul, you cast the devil out; and before he had gone his length—God! the

length he goes! Can you raise before your mind what my state was that

day, when I turned and espied a man watching me from the bushes? When my

arrow missed him, and I knew that my secret was loose in the world? Ah!

I do not want to remember that! Wine! Give me wine!”

Randvar’s hand unfastened the flask from his neck without the knowledge

of his wits, that were like thunder in his ears, roaring explanation of

all that had puzzled him. Out of the tumult, he spoke earnestly:

“Jarl, I am five weeks too slow in telling you that a great mistake has

been made. It is the truth that horror drove me mad that day, but not

horror of you,—never of _you_! Listen! Even as I stepped from the bushes

and saw the Pool and saw you—”

On the Songsmith’s lips, Helvin’s hand fell lightly. Wincing, he had

turned away.

“Let not that be put into words which in thought alone is more than I

can bear!” he said. “Besides, to what end is it? I know that it was not

from me that you shrank, but from the devil that uses my body; and for

any hatred you feel towards that, or harm you do it—if ever you come

together, which God avert!—you need have no remorse. Though all your

power were bent upon it, you could never hate it—abhor—”

A shuddering fit shook him, so that words became but bubbles of sound

bursting idly on his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was very low.

“Bitter is it to speak of! For love’s sake, spare me the need. I know

now that—even with that vision before your eyes—your song-maker’s spirit

was able to separate me from the Thing which Fate has linked me to. Had

not myself experienced it, I would not have believed any man brave

enough to make that separation. Times there are when _I_ cannot make it;

when I loathe myself as Satan never loathed himself, else would his

heart change and the world be sinless! I call your help no more than it

is when I tell you that I should die of self-horror if I could not look

at you and say, ‘I am not beyond the pale, for here is a man who gives

me friendship and honor even while knowing the worst of me!’” His voice,

which had sunk to an unsteady breath, was smothered out as he pressed

his face against the rough bark of the tree.

The Songsmith did not use the opportunity, however, to finish the

explanation he had begun. Instead, he stood staring down at the sleeping

camp and weighing the possibility of seeming to have this knowledge,

foreseeing the blind maze he should enter on, the sword he should hang

over his life, the horror to which he should bind himself.

It was Helvin who ended the pause, as he had made it. Turning, he laid

both hands on Randvar’s shoulders, and as he spoke, looked lovingly into

his face.

“Good is your singing and your service, but your friendship is worth

still more! Such it is, that no reward can match it,—the joy of giving

must be its own reward. Only can I tell you what it has meant to me that

never hoped to know the support of a friend. When my dreams were

brightest, I dreamed only of getting good-will by hiding the truth. What

makeshift would that have been! What peace is this! Greater loss to me

than to you would it have been if you had lost your life to-day. My

friend, I do not ask that this may be forgiven me, for that would be to

own that it was I who sought to work you harm, and that fiend was not I.

Yet this I will say, that I should think it the best gift I ever got if

you could tell me with a whole heart that this has not caused any breach

to rise in our friendship.”

After a little, the Songsmith raised his bowed head and met the gray

eyes steadily.

“My love is great, lord, towards many men,” he said, “but towards none

so much as you. Till my death-day, I will hold to my faithfulness to

you.”

X

“_It must be worse before it gets better_”

—Northern saying.

His ruddy face thrice ruddy with cold, Bolverk, the guardsman, came

stamping into the great trading-booth, kicked the door shut upon the

ice-bound out-of-doors and let go a shivering breath of appreciation at

the sight of the fur-littered weapon-hung room, down whose middle fires

were leaping, and along whose wall-benches shaggy-maned hunters and

sleek-locked Skraellings sat consuming hot drink in the intervals of

bargaining.

“Hail, friends!” he greeted the company. “Now does the bread of life

seem to be buttered on both sides! Here are you on the inside, as snug

as fleas on a goat; and outside, I just met a young one merry because

his breath froze in such clouds that he had only to stick a knob-ended

root between his lips to have the appearance of smoking like a

Skraelling.”

The double row of faces that had turned towards him answered variously

by grins or jests or grunts, but the trader’s headman looked up from the

heap of beaver skins that thralls were sorting before him to wave a

cordial hand.

“Now this day seems to have been set for the return of long-absent

people! Welcome to you, Bolverk the Bold! Not so much as a hair have I

seen of you for three months and more.”

“That is easily true,” the guardsman assented, “for since Treaty Day I

have camped as far south as Freya’s Tower. And I have worn out my shoes

there, as you may see. How long would it be before you could look me up

another pair? From the appearance of your benches, I should not say that

the lack of my custom had caused suffering to you.”

“Nay, it is your company that we have suffered for,” the trader’s man

answered, as became a trader’s man. “But I need not keep you waiting if

you will give to Eldir, here, one of your old shoes for a sample.”

He beckoned a bondsman to attend on the guard, while with his head he

signed another thrall to bring forward the smoking ale; and Bolverk

succumbed contentedly into a seat.

“Mind this, that you get me a pair that is easy across the toes,” he

admonished the slave kneeling before him. Then he stretched out his hand

to take the offering of the one standing beside him, and questioned

lazily as he sipped: “Who are the rest of the long-absent people who

have arrived?”

“Some score of them you may see before you; and in that end room yonder,

among the gold things, is Olaf, Thorgrim’s son,—the most open-handed

man! Since Treaty Day, for some reason, he has turned his back on the

court and dwelt at the house of Mord the Grim, and only—”

Bolverk left off sipping to interrupt joyfully: “Now I wonder if it is

going to happen that there is a fight? As I turned in here, I looked

down a lane and saw Randvar the Songsmith headed in this direction.”

The row of hunters straightened, some of them rolling on their tongues

the word “fight”; some raising their horns with shouts of “The

Songsmith!” but the trader’s man shook his head above the furs to which

he had turned back.

“They cannot lock horns. The lawmen have bound them to peace, on pain of

outlawry to the one who breaks it. On the way home from the

treaty-making, it befell that the Songsmith flew at Olaf, and would have

given him a swift death if men had not come between them. They do not

dare to do aught else than be good. It is unlikely, moreover, that the

Songsmith has the slightest intention of coming hither. So long as he

has that deerskin husk and that battered sword, no use has he for a

trading-booth.”

Disapproval was in the headman’s gesture as he kicked aside the fur heap

he had finished examining. But Bolverk shook his helmed head in

disapproval of him.

“It is your traders’ thrift that talks now, comrade, not your Norse

spirit,” he said. “Some bad habits the Fates allot every man at his

birth; and he should be considered lucky who uses up his allowance of

them on clothes, and keeps his mind high and his courage without stain,

as Randvar, Rolf’s son, has done.”

“Yes, yes!” chorussed the fur-clad hunters, banging the benches with

their fists. And the youngest of them brought his drink-drenched body

upright with a jerk, and tried to look severely through sleepy eyes.

“Whosoever says aught slighting of Rolf’s son gives offence to me,” he

made announcement. “I l-ove him because he wears clothes like mine. I

l-l-ove him because he is poor. I l-l-l—”

“Poor!” The trader’s man laughed impatiently. “Good Bend-the-Bow, are

you too drunk to understand that I am talking about the Jarl’s favorite,

whose shabby belt-pouch is fuller of gold than your head of wits,—even

when you are sober and they are all at home? If he were still a ringless

forester, who would stir tongue about his habits? It is because he has

gold to spend but is too careless to do it, that he has my blame; and I

would lay my purse on it that this is a part of the cause why he has

lost credit with the Jarl’s sister, as gossips say he has. Yet you need

not think that I undervalue what is inside his shell. Far and wide, it

is known that he brought this treaty to pass which is going to send such

ship-loads to Norway in the spring as never left port before. For that,

all traders lift their horns to him; and I should dislike to have it

come to his ears that I—”

“Then hold your peace for here he comes!” the guardsman interrupted, and

stood up with a genial bellow to pitch at the opening door one of the

shoes which a thrall had just handed him.

It was a rash act since the new-comer might just as easily have been the

Jarl as the Jarl’s song-maker—the trading-house standing at the junction

of many paths—but it came to no bad end for the doorway actually did

frame the tall sinewy form of Randvar, Rolf’s son, his harp occupying a

cloak’s place at his back. At sight of him, even the Skraellings changed

from bronze images into men with cordial eyes; while the hunters swung

up their horns with a burst of cheers. Barely they gave him time to hand

over his broken harp to the trader’s man before they forced him into the

place they had made for him, plied him with drink, with toasts, with

questions and banter. Bolverk was obliged to limp over in one shoe to

get a seat beside him, and get his attention for the confidences with

which he was bursting.

They seemed to be of a nature more absorbing to the teller than to the

listener for even while he gave one ear to them, Randvar left the other

open to the hunter’s chaff, and broke out restlessly, now and again, to

gibe back or to answer in their own tongue some inquiries from his

Skraelling friends. But he did not fail to make the required promise to

go down to the wedding-feast in the spring, and aroused himself with

proper enthusiasm when the lover came at last to an exulting climax.

“There! If you can anywhere see a better lookout than that, I shall say

your eyesight is keener than Erna’s.”

“Nothing but the sun’s can equal it in brightness! I call upon every man

who hears my voice to drink to your luck at my expense,” the Songsmith

answered promptly, and drew a handful of silver rings from his shabby

pouch.

If cup-wishes count, never was bride more richly dowered than Snowfrid

of Freya’s Tower. When it was over, the beaming Bolverk slapped his

prospective foster-kinsman affectionately upon the back.

“Nowhere have I found a better comrade than you! To talk one’s affairs

over with you is a good help. Now let me show as much friendship and

hear how matters have fared with you, these three months. I can see one

thing that you have not done, and that is to get fat.”

An old trapper clad in bear’s fur uttered a bear-like grunt.

“Huh! See the gainfulness of having young eyes! As soon as the boy came

into the room, I saw that there were lines between his eyebrows like a

wagon’s ruts,—and not an empty wagon, either! Better take to the forest

again, Rolf’s son, if it weighs so heavily upon your spirit to be a

Jarl’s favorite.”

“Better come back to the forest than bear any harness!” the young hunter

who sat next to the Songsmith cried scornfully; and a chorus rose after

him:

“Never did I think you would stand it, who hate rules as a bear hates a

chain!”

“You are a fool to stay in it—”

“Sooner should the Troll take me than I should follow a man who behaved

overbearingly, as one of Starkad’s breed must needs—”

“It is not possible that you can be contented in his service—”

“Come back—”

“What is the jest?”

“What is the cause of your grinning?”

The song-maker’s smile ended in his short laugh.

“You,” he answered. “It crossed my mind to fancy myself listening to a

pack of wild wolves yelping at a tame one, who had found love for a man

and followed him home and broken himself to house-ways. But I will give

you a better answer than that to your foolishness.”

He leaned forward where all could see him, the fire showing his thin

face to be unmistakably earnest.

“For what you said about Helvin’s behavior towards me, I will tell you

the first half of a saying the courtmen have made, which is altogether

truthful, and which is this: ‘If the Jarl’s song-maker should want the

Jarl’s crown for a dog-collar, he would have to do no more than ask for

it.’ And now, for what you said about my liking his service, I will give

you the rest of the saying, which is even more true than what went

before: ‘And if it should happen to the Jarl to want the Songsmith’s

head for a hand-ball, he would have to do no more than ask for that.’ Is

it clear to you now or not?”

The hunters had no opportunity to answer. While they were still

adjusting their minds to the amazing conviction that their one time

comrade had meant what he said, the door was flung open with a flourish.

In all his bravery of embroidered cloak and silver-spurred riding-boots,

Eric the Page appeared and proclaimed in his young treble:

“Way for the Jarl’s sister!”

It was the first time the woodsmen had seen this woodland sprig in his

splendor. To assail him with familiar greetings and ironical comment

became instantly their sole object in life, carried on under their

breath even after the Jarl’s sister had entered, and they had scrambled

to their feet in rough homage. Randvar was able to step unobserved

behind a smoke-blackened pillar and gaze with what bitterness he would

upon the face that his pride had come to curse by day while his love

starved for it in his dreams.

“I would give all I own in the world had I not known how to smile!” his

heart cried out in sudden sharp wretchedness. Then he cursed himself for

a fool, cursed her vanity for a curse worse than Helvin’s, and wore the

rut deeper between his heavy brows with scowling at her as she passed.

Of rich purple, fur-edged, was the mantle that hung from her fine

shoulders; and purple was the velvet hood that lay like an evening cloud

upon the sunset glory of her hair; but it needed not the royal coloring

to betoken the loftiness of her temper. Even more than its wonted

haughtiness was in the carriage of her head as she moved up the long

room and passed into the inner chamber, which was the shrine of the

jewelled ornaments and gold things.

Bolverk shut one eye expressively, when the fox-skin curtain had fallen

behind her and her page.

“Every man to his taste!” he said. “Yet I for one feel no envy of Olaf,

Thorgrim’s son, that he is kissing her fingers at this moment. Give me

Snowfrid with the kissable mouth!” He was reaching for his horn to seal

the sentiment when Randvar’s hand closed on his arm.

“Is Olaf, Thorgrim’s son, in there?” the Songsmith asked in his ear.

The man-at-arms regarded him admonishingly.

“Why, I think they say he is. But they say also that the one of you two

who begins a fight will get outlawed.”

Randvar made no answer; his gaze had gone back to the door-curtain. If

the French One should remain there after she entered, it would be a sign

that his disfavor was at an end, that she had taken him back into her

friendship—He broke off to watch with suspended breath.

Dashing the fox-skins aside, Mord the Grim stamped through the door; and

after him Olaf backed into the room, bowing ceremoniously before the

presence he was leaving. If further proof were needed that the greeting

of the Jarl’s sister had not been cordial, that proof was furnished as

he turned on the threshold and espied his rival watching him. Seizing

his sword-hilt, regardless of Mord’s shrill expostulations, he strode

towards the Songsmith.

They seemed for once to have changed places for Randvar made no more

motion to attack than to evade, only stood smiling at him in unconcealed

malicious enjoyment. When Thorgrim’s son was within a pace of him, he

took off his fur cap and swept him a salute mockingly elaborate, then

folded his arms upon his breast in the formal sign of peace.

White on purple showed the veins of Olaf’s forehead, as he came to a

stand-still before the exasperating figure. Perhaps even at the price of

banishment he would have purchased revenge, if his friends had not saved

him from the rash bargain. To the utter disgust of the by-standers,

three of the traders’ men seized upon him now and with respectful words

but peremptory hands, dragged him past temptation and out of the door.

Raising a chorus of disappointment, the loungers closed again around the

laughing Songsmith, scolding him, some of them, for not preferring

banishment to a life of such restraint; others chaffing him for his

decline in spirit; while the Skraellings became almost urgent in their

desire to understand why two men should start to fight each other and

stop before either was killed.

Lingering to buckle his many mantles, old Mord watched the group. When

at last he was muffled for his ride, he halted on his way out to look at

the jesting song-maker from under an arch of bristling brows.

“Since I see what a man you are to get friends behind you,” he said, “my

wonder grows less at the boldness you showed at the treaty-making. Soon,

instead of the favorite of the Jarl, you will be calling yourself the

favorite of New Norway.”

Over the ring of tow manes surrounding him, Randvar gave back his look

carelessly, wondering what new fuel his fiery prejudice had chanced

upon. He found out when Mord had reached the door and, opening it, flung

this parting shot over his shoulder.

“A most beloved man you appear to be,—I bid you only beware how you

carry it too far. The sagas do not lack instances of king-born men whose

bane came out of their boldness. It would be unlucky if some one should

whisper to the Jarl that you are ambitious to get more popularity than

he has.”

The Songsmith doffed his merry mood at that, his eyes narrowing

dangerously. Then they widened in dismay as darting past Mord to the

threshold, they encountered the gray-clad form of the Jarl himself,

silhouetted against the white glare of the sunlit snow.

In the pause that followed, Starkad’s son appeared to be the only one at

ease. Inclining his head in acknowledgment of the advice-giver’s salute

and the hunters’ uncertain murmur, he came slowly forward, drawing off

his furred gloves.

“That is rightly said,” he assented, “that if such a whisper should come

to my ears it would be very unlucky. The prophecy is wrong only in

hinting that it is for the song-maker that the bad luck would come in.”

He answered with a reproachful look Randvar’s look of relief.

What Mord answered could not be heard for the cheers that the hunters

let forth for Helvin Jarl. Only the slamming of the door behind the

advice-giver made a faint jar.

The Jarl thanked them graciously when the racket was over, then

addressed himself to his friend:

“So long was your harp-string in mending that it pleased me to come on

here and look for an arrow-ornament to take the place of the one I lost.

Let us betake ourselves now to the search. It is likely to be in the

inner chamber among the gold things.” Laying a hand upon Randvar’s

shoulder, he moved him forward, speaking carelessly of this or that

weapon on the wall.

But only so long as they were within ear-shot of the groups on the

benches did the Songsmith yield to the pressure. Fire-color had flamed

in his face. By main force he came at last to a stand-still, and spoke

without looking at his companion:

“I think, lord, that I will not go in with you. I am not used to so much

heat—and the smell of the furs—I will await you under the oak. I find

that—I am not well. By your leave!”

But the tightening of his lord’s hand upon his shoulder showed that he

did not have his leave.

“Not well? What nonsense is here! It was on my tongue to say that not

since Treaty Day have I seen you wear such a merry face. For more than

two months have you moped like a captive hawk, with sullen temper and

feathers adroop, but now—Why, it was the first thing I marked when I

looked through the door and saw you bantering with your hunter friends!

Comrade, swear to me that your mind-sickness is not homesickness. If I

should think that the fetters of my service were eating into your brave

heart—”

“I swear I have no homesickness.”

“God is to be thanked for that! Take oath also that I would have no

power to straighten the threads if you should tell me what the snarl

is.”

The song-maker flung back his hair restlessly from his face of fierce

unhappiness. “Jarl, it stings my pride that I have not been able to hide

from you the soreness of my mind. Let it pass for the spring sap working

in me. I take oath that no man alive can give me aught I want. Be

pleased, lord, since it is your will!” As with one hand he put the

matter aside, with the other he put aside the fox-skin curtain. After a

moment, Helvin yielded and entered.

It was plainly indifferent to the Jarl that Brynhild the Proud should

chance to be coming from the iron-bound chests, preceded by a walking

heap of rainbow silks. He returned her reverence with a courtly

greeting, then turned and made a kindly motion towards the figure drawn

up rigid as a spear-shaft in the shadow of the doorway.

“We have seen little of you, my kinswoman, since you made the winter

weather an excuse for staying away from our feasts,” he added, “yet do

not lose us your remembrance. Will you not give a greeting to my

song-maker here? It is not unlikely that he has felt the lack of your

presence as much as you have missed his songs.”

Perforce, the Songsmith plucked the cap from his head and advanced.

Perforce, her gaze was turned upon him.

“Oh, is it your song-maker?” she said indifferently. “I thought one of

the woodsmen had followed you in to get some hunting-gear.” Deliberately

she looked him up and down, her gray eyes more forbidding than a gray

ice-waste under Northern skies. With a shrug she turned from him at

last.

“If you please, brother, I think I would rather not greet him,” she

said. “Better that we should look on it as though he were a woodsman

after all, who might mistake my condescension and become forward.”

Courtesying as low as her manner was high, she swept past the Jarl and

through the door, beyond which the silk-laden page was awaiting her.