Adalo, too, rose hastily. "Will you let him go in this threatening
mood? Shall I follow?"
But the Duke remained unmoved. "I fear no danger from this man." A
shudder ran through the youth's limbs and he started, as the old chief,
lightly raising the spear, added: "He is dedicated to Odin."
"You will--?"
"Not I. He will--must sacrifice himself. Do not wonder. Wait."
"And the news about the Goths, Duke? Were you in earnest? Or did you
merely wish to encourage the faint-hearted Ebarbold?"
"Aha, do you credit me with such craft in the good work?" asked the old
man, smiling?
"You are Odin's favorite."
"It is as I said. One of the men in our ranks has been serving in the
army of the other Emperor; he came home on leave of absence, and said
that such countless throngs of Goths had crossed the Danube and were
assailing that Emperor so closely that he certainly could not march
here to his young nephew's assistance. Nay, the nephew's whole army
will perhaps be compelled to hasten to the uncle's relief. Because I
knew this I permitted, nay, commanded our young leaders to cross the
frontier early this spring to renew the war. But do you keep silence
about it. And open your eyes wide in the Roman camp to-morrow: do not
think only of the child, much as I hope you may see her, perhaps ransom
her, or save her by stratagem. For, by Frigga's girdle, she is lovely!
and I would fain see the fairest ornament of our land at liberty
again."
Adalo clasped the Duke's right hand; but the latter withdrew it, adding
sternly:
"Note carefully the height of the wall, the depth of the ditch, the
position of the gates, the number of the tents, the direction of the
paths between them, so that you can report everything accurately to me.
Now go, and send Zercho the bondman. No, do not ask what I want with
him. Obey!"
Adalo left the tent. His heart was throbbing violently. "I shall see
her; ransom her! I will give all my property; nay, if necessary, my
estate, the land I have inherited--or sell it. But will she desire to
be ransomed? Will she not prefer to go with the clever-tongued Italian
to his sunny home? And what if he will not release her? Well, then
there will at least be one way to bring her forth, known only to the
Duke and my father's oldest son."
Fiercely agitated by such thoughts, he sent the bondman, who was
crouching beside the fire, to the tent. The slave stood timidly before
the mighty soldier.
"How long is it since Suomar bought you?"
"That's hard for Zercho to say. I can hardly count beyond the fingers
of both hands, and there are more years than fingers. The little elf
was very small then. My master got me cheap, for the Romans had dragged
many, many of us as prisoners from the beautiful pastures of the
Tibiscus. He exchanged a horse and a net full of fish for me with the
dealer over in Vindonissa."
"Suomar has praised you to me. He has never been obliged to flog you."
Zercho made a wry face and rubbed his ear. "Yes, my lord--once."
"And why was that?"
"When I first saw the little elf--she was then a child about seven
years old--I thought she was the wood maiden, red Vila, threw myself on
the ground and shut my eyes; for whoever sees her is blinded. Then he
shouted a word in your language which I have often heard since,--it
means an animal with horns,--and struck me. But never afterwards." The
slave had uttered all this very rapidly; he was afraid of the Duke, and
kept on talking to deaden his fear.
"You are faithful to the young girl?"
"I would be cut to pieces with the ploughshare for her."
"You plucked me by the cloak when you made your report in the presence
of the Adeling and the old woman. You wished to tell me something that
they ought not to know."
"That is true, great Father! How did you discover--?"
"That was not hard to guess. But I suspect more--the girl did not
become the captive of the kindhearted chatterer, Ausonius, but of
another Roman."
The slave looked up at him in fright. "Did your Odin, your terrible god
who knows all things, reveal this to you?"
"No, he only gave me the power of reading men's eyes. So she is
another's prisoner; I suspected it. And you did not wish to plunge into
still deeper grief both the old grandmother and the Adeling; for he
loves the child ardently."
"You know that too?"
"One doesn't need Odin's assistance for it," replied the Duke, smiling.
"I was young once too. You wished to spare the youth?"
"Yes, great Father. He would wear himself out with rage and grief. Yet
he can do nothing to save her."
"He would only destroy himself, and perhaps our best hope of victory,
by some desperate deed. I am pleased with you, slave. Keep silence as
before. But Ausonius was there too?"
"Yes, the foreigner who stayed so long in Arbor several years ago. But
he didn't seize the child; it was another, younger man."
"Did you not hear his name? Was it anything like Saturninus?"
"My lord, his name was not spoken, or I did not hear it. He was a
fine-looking man in glittering armor."
"But he took his prisoner to Ausonius?"
"Yes. Yet he did not lift her on Ausonius's white horse, as the latter
seemed to ask, but swung the struggling girl upon another--a black
one--perhaps, yes, probably his own."
The Duke remained silent and thoughtful. At last he said: "The Adeling
is not to reach the Roman camp until twilight is closing in tomorrow.
Before he rides forth he will receive some directions from me. Tell him
so. And"--here he lowered his voice to a whisper, much to the surprise
of the slave, since there was no one in the tent--"if a faithful and
cunning man should venture to introduce himself or some one else in
disguise into the hostile camp and tell me what he saw there,--for I
fear they will not give Adalo much chance to look about him,--and this
man should be a slave, I would buy his freedom."
"Great Father!" exclaimed the Sarmatian, throwing himself prostrate
before the Duke and trying to kiss his feet.
The old man angrily thrust him back with the handle of his spear: "Are
you a dog, that you want to lick my feet?"
"Zercho is a Jazyge," said the bondman, rising and rubbing his bruised
shins. "Thus my people honor one who is worthy of honor."
"But we sons of the Ases do not bend the knee even to the mighty King
of Asgard when we call upon him and desire to honor him. Now go.
Perhaps it will be well that Adalo should not know what is to happen."
"He must not hear of it until after it has succeeded, for he would not
let the others whom I must have go with me."
"I do not wish to know in advance how the work is to be done. Say
outside that no one is to enter till I strike the shield."
The slave had scarcely gone when the Duke drew back the linen curtain
whose folds fell to the ground behind him, shutting off the rear of the
tent, used as a sleeping-room.
A man with long gray hair, scarcely younger than Hariowald, came
forward glancing cautiously around him.
"We are alone, Ebarvin. Repeat your King's words exactly again. For
consider, you must repeat them to his face, on oath, before the
assembly of the people, if he deny them."
"He will not deny them," said the graybeard sorrowfully. "He is too
proud to submit to you, but he is also too proud to lie."
"It is a pity," replied the Duke, curtly. "He was a fearless man."
"You speak as if he were numbered with the dead!" cried the other,
shuddering.
"I do not see how he can survive. Or, do you believe he will change his
choice?"
Ebarvin silently shook his head.
"How long have you borne his shield?"
"Ever since he _had_ a shield. I carried his father's, too," sighed the
man.
"I know it, Ebarvin. And," he asked craftily, as if in reproach, while
his gray eye blazed with a searching light, "and yet you betrayed him?"
The man gripped his short sword angrily.
"Betray? I accuse him openly, after I have often warned him loyally,
after threatening that I would tell you all. He laughed at it; he would
not believe me."
"And why do you do it? You have loved him."
"Why? And you ask that--you, who taught it to me, to us all? True, it
was not you alone--first necessity! Why? Because only this league of
the Alemanni can save us from ruin, from the shame of bondage. Why? Oh,
Duke, the oaths with which you bound us years ago, before the ash of
Odin, are terrible. Ebarvin will not forswear himself; I will not, a
perjured man, drift through endless nights down the horrible river of
Hel among corpses, serpents, and swords. And I have learned through a
long life that we must stand together, or the Romans will destroy us
province by province. Oh, I would slay my own son if, disobedient to
the Duke and the Council of the people, he tried to burst our league
asunder."
Up sprang the old chieftain; his eye flashed with delight. Raising the
spear aloft with his left hand, he struck the right one on the
clansman's shoulder: "I thank you for those words, Ebarvin! And I thank
thee, thou Mighty One in the clouds! If such a spirit lives in the
Alemanni, the league will never be sundered."