VIII
“Courage is better than sword-strength”—Northern saying.
“Courage is better than sword-strength”—Northern saying.
“Courage is better than sword-strength”—Northern saying.
“Courage is better than sword-strength”
—Northern saying.
Once, as time dragged by, the song-maker had a vague impression that Olaf was looking at him over a bush; but he was too absorbed to care whether it was so or not. He did not come out of his meditations until the dark hemlock tapestry before him was put aside by a white hand and between the gloomy branches there appeared the bright figure of the Jarl’s sister, the trailing riches of her gown up-gathered on her arm as she strolled forth to explore the recesses of the new guest-house.
At sight of him bound to a pine and staked in by three stark old chiefs looking like three shell-barked hickories in their sombre robes, she came to a stand-still, stood with shining head aloft as one who has caught the note of a distant battle-horn. At sight of her, the blood rose in a hot wave to the roots of his hair, and he muttered a prayer to the nearest of his keepers.
“Be kind enough to tell her that I have no man’s blame for anything,—that I put on these bonds of my own free will.”
It chanced that the man appealed to was Mord the Grim; the old counsellor justified the nickname by the look he bent on Rolf’s son.
“Are you forward in this direction, also?” he inquired. “Starkad’s daughter will not think that news so much worth having.”
Brynhild drew a step nearer and answered for herself: “I should think it a sad story if I didnotwant news about a brave man’s fate. To come from a circle of merrymakers into a group of such menace—Though it were no more than a thrall that was bound here, I should wish to know what this betided him! I beg you to tell me as quick as you can.”
Like a nurse who would scare away an inquisitive child, Mord made his voice ominous. “You guess well that we are not in play, young maiden. The fellow has given himself as a hostage for the Skraellings’ good faith. If he has made any false step in truthfulness or judgment—” A motion towards the sword at his side completed the meaning. “I warn you that you will get sorry sport here. Be pleased to return to your playmates.”
With peremptoriness thinly disguised as courtesy, he stepped forward and swung back the branchesthat she might pass out of the prison-chamber. From the other side of the hemlock wall came like an invitation the rippling laughter of the gossips, the shouts of the dice-throwers. For an instant it was as though she stood on the threshold between two worlds.
It did not take her more than an instant to choose between them. Even disdainfully, she put aside Mord and the merrymakers.
“Do you think me fit only to watch throws for light stakes? I prefer to watch your game with the Fates,” she said, and joined the sinister group under the pine.
In his bound wrists, Randvar’s pulses leaped; but the three advice-givers raised a chorus of protest, of entreaty, of command. What would have resulted is doubtful if there had not come suddenly from the river-bank sounds that struck them dumb,—an outburst of voices rising high above the hum of the slope, a clangor of weapons, a piercing cry:
“The Jarl is attacked!”
In the wink-long hush that followed the outbreak there was discernible a distant noise of savage whoops and yells.
Forgetting his helplessness, the Songsmith tried to leap forward, so that the thongs that held him strained and creaked; and at the same instant thethree old chiefs turned upon him such faces that Brynhild stepped in front of him as though their knotted hands on their hilts had already drawn their weapons.
“Make sure of it, first!” she demanded. “It may be no more than one of their hideous dances of entertainment. It is said that they sound as bad as battles.”
Disputing, their voices rose shrilly; but Randvar relaxed in his bonds, and bent his head to wipe off on his shoulder the cold drops that had sprung to his upper lip.
“You have a cool wit, Jarl’s sister!” he breathed. “That is the only thing it can be.” He spoke curtly to his keepers: “Why do you spend your force on me? There will be time enough for that hereafter. I advise you to see to it that your own people do not imperil Helvin by breaking the peace without cause.”
It seemed that that danger had already occurred to the old chieftains, as well it might with such uproar of voice and weapon coming from the river-bank. Before Randvar ceased speaking, Thorbiorn and Sigvat had plunged through the hemlocks into the seething caldron below. Now, cursing and brandishing his weapon, Mord flung himself after them, his voice distinguishable above the tumult until the din gradually sank and he occupied the air alone.
Far removed from the turmoil of the bank seemed the stillness of the hemlock nook where Rolf’s son stood worshipping Starkad’s daughter. Much as he had claimed to know of the spirit under her pride, he gathered wonder with gazing at her now. As Northern skies by Northern Lights, so were her gray eyes fired; and measured constraint had melted like ice from her motions. Swallow-swift, she had slipped through the branches and come back again, bearing in her white fingers a glowing brand from one of the deserted camp-fires.
He looked at her somewhat blankly, then, asking in wonder: “Are you going to light my funeral pyre?”
“I am going to set you free,” she answered, “so that you may have more chances for life than Mord’s mercy will grant you if it should prove that the Skraellings are not dancing.”
Her silken robes sweeping the leaves, she knelt down before him. Almost she had the fire laid to the ankle-thongs before he could speak.
“No, no! What is coming to me, I must abide here, as I have sworn.”
In her upturned face, Valkyria’s honor fought with woman’s pity. Yet though she took the brand away, she did not rise; the woman in her pleaded as before a lawman.
“Death is too hard an atonement for a mistake.Forfeit your post, your hopes of fame, but not your life. I admit that you must pay some fine,—but not your life!” Again she stretched forth the burning wood, desperately, this time, as one who dreads interference.
Strong as a hand, his voice overtook her. “No. I should get the greatest shame.”
The purpose failed in her face before her arm yielded; but at last she rose and cast the brand from her, and stood with hands pressed hard upon her breast.
He had seen in his visions that she would be true to a friend, but he saw now for the first time that she could suffer for one. His love fed on her distress, even while he hastened to reassure her.
“Let it not worry you a jot, sunbright maiden. No likelihood at all is there that I shall come to harm. As I know the temper of my sword, I know the trustworthiness of the men I am leaning on.”
She took her hands from her bosom to wring them. “How can you be certain of that? Your mind is shapen altogether like a dream-spinner’s, that believes good of every one—of savages whom others hold no better than beasts—of Helvin, whom every one else thinks—Ah!” A sudden thought seemed to arrest her. “Now is that likely? That Helvin would be so foolish as to let them dance when he knows what lies upon it for you?As easily believe that he wishes your death! I must find out what is happening now.” Heedless of her trailing skirts, she was gone over stubble and stone, her step more light and free than the tread of Odin’s shield-maidens in the high halls of his chosen, as she climbed farther up the hill to a ledge of rock which had pushed through the soil and risen in a watch-tower.
When he could no longer catch any gleam of her glowing robes, the song-maker stood with his head leaning back against the tree as if his hope would mount to the sky. He wandered among singing stars until his attention was gradually drawn earthward by a stealthy crackling of the brush on his left.
Between the interlacing twigs, he made out presently a patch of such blue fabric as Thorgrim’s son’s cloak was fashioned of; but it did not seem reasonable to him that the French One should have strayed so far from the scene of excitement. He could not understand it until Olaf glided into the open and moved towards him, an unsheathed knife glittering against his blue sleeve.
No impulse to call for help came to Randvar—that instinct his life of solitude had blunted—but he put forth all his strength against his bonds, swelling out his chest, hardening the sinews of his limbs, until the thongs that withstood him wereas iron sawing the flesh. When he found that they would not yield, he became as motionless as the tree behind him; his mouth twisted sardonically as he wondered in what way Erna’s proving of his heart against steel was going to serve him now.
As their eyes held each other it is unlikely that either man realized that any but his foe was in the world. Upon their tense nerves it vibrated like a blow when the voice of the Jarl’s sister rang out behind them:
“Stand!”
The surprise of it seemed to paralyze Olaf so that for an instant he did stand, remaining poised in the air. Then the curve of his parted lips lost all resemblance to a smile.
“Bright Brynhild, this hand shall show you Helvin avenged!” he said, and cleared the remaining space at a stride, his arm uplifted.
In the draught of a breath she was before him, her slim hands locked about his wrist in the effort to pull it down.
“I bid you stop! Helvin is safe! Do you hear me?”
Perhaps his mind really did not hear her. With each word, his eyes froze faster to the Songsmith. Without so much as glancing at her, he put up his sinewy left hand and pried loose her grasp. Thebound man cried out to her to give way and leave them,—so little even he knew her Valkyria spirit.
Thunder-strong it gathered in her, lightning-swift it struck. Swooping on the sword which Olaf’s move left exposed at his side, she tore it free. With its upward sweep, she struck the knife from his hold. With its downward stroke she levelled at his breast. He leaped back just in time to save his life, if the rigidness of her arm told the truth.
“Do you think I am as poor-spirited as you are dastardly?” she said.
At a bound his mind was brought back to her, then; and once back, it would have been a dull mind not to see that his suit was in even greater danger than his body. In a trice he had doffed passion, donned reproach.
“Brynhild! Is it really as it seems, that because my loyalty runs away with my manners, you speak so to me?”
“I know not why you will talk of manners,” she retorted, “when what your passion ran away with was your honor, that ought to have taught even a thrall better than to fall upon a fettered man.”
“A thrall?” He spread out his hands in indignant protest. “Little shall a thrall know of a high-born man’s wrath over the slaying of his chief! Am I not, before all else, a free Norseman? Only this morning, maiden, did you upbraid mebecause my French rearing had underlaid my Norse temper! Now, behold, when my Northern blood breaks out in its native wildness you stab me with eyes, words!—oh, use the sword! The steel would be more kind.”
Gracefully he sank on his knee before her, making as though he would bare his breast for the stroke. Perhaps a maid of France would have shrunk or swooned. Perhaps it took him by surprise that she stood with unshaken hand, studying him as one studies an unfamiliar object.
“I do not know that I have the wish to be kind to you,” she said slowly. “I do not know how I feel towards you, for you are not the man I thought I knew. Perhaps you should not have blame, since you believed Helvin slain, yet—”
Her voice quickened as a chorus sounding through the trees heralded the old counsellors’ return. She shifted the sword with an imperious gesture.
“Rise up! It will happen to you to be seen in that foolish position! I cannot tell whether I shall ever have liking towards you again or not. Rise up, and go away from me until I find out.”
He had risen while she was speaking, but whether he would obey her last command was for an instant uncertain. Turning from her, his eyes rested again on the Songsmith; his empty hands began to openand shut at his sides. Only the grim voice of Mord, falling on the pause, seemed to catch and hold him. Even as he gave way step by step, his vulture eyes clung to the song-maker until the bushes rose like walls between them.
While the branches that closed behind Olaf were still aquiver, the hemlock boughs opened upon Mord and his associates. Filing in stiffly, they sat them down heavily upon bowlder and hummock.
“A man of my years,” Mord panted, “does not take it lightly to have his heart turned over in him because some red apes choose to hop around in mock warfare. Get what enjoyment you can out of it, Rolf’s son, that so far your savages have not belied you. When their foolishness was over, the Jarl let so much news out as to send a messenger over to tell us that he was safe and getting all the favors he asked for,—after we had spent that much time in doubt and endangered as many lives as there are bodies among us! May Hel take fools and leave knaves, if she have not room for both! Jarl’s sister, even you seem to have lost your wits, to go about flourishing a sword, with cheeks as red to look at as your kirtle. I thought you made it your boast to take things coldly.”
Coldly!For the first time Randvar recalled their dispute of the morning, looked at the firebreathing Valkyria, and smiled in spite of himself.
At the same breath, she darted him a glance that was half startled and half menacing. The flaming of her color was not more marked than the stiffening of her spine as she caught his expression.
He sobered in haste. “Jarl’s sister, no faintest intention had I of making mockery!”
She deigned him no answer whatever. With awful precision she planted the sword in the earth beside her, with awful deliberation gathered up her silken skirts, without a backward glance swept from the prison-chamber. Twice he called after her without avail,—so disastrous may a victory be!
Like a fog, sullen rage settled upon him then. When the old chiefs asked him what Starkad’s daughter was doing with the sword, he clipped his answer as close as might be:
“Olaf, Thorgrim’s son, lent it to her to cut his luck-thread with.”
When they questioned him about her displeasure, he conceded no more than an ungracious movement of his shoulders. Old Mord was impelled at last to scowl at him over the cloak-end with which he was mopping his face.
“Olaf the French,” he observed, “was fostered in a land where they have the good custom of teaching manners as well as courage. Sure am I that such a training would have bettered you, Rolf’s son, more than you think. I have, however,a good hope that even as autumn thunder ripens the grain, this tempest may have ripened your green judgment; so that hereafter you will be less quick to sneer at the caution of old men, and more slow to stake your all on any belief. Though the Skraellings keep faith with you, remember this—that you came near losing your life through your lord’s folly, who accepted such entertainment without any regard to the effect it might have upon your state. If you had offended him so that he had the wish to murder you, he could not have gone about it better.”
Mopping his face, he continued to speak at intervals in praise of discretion; but Rolf’s son lost what followed by reason of the ringing of that one sentence in his ears—“If you had offended him so that he had the wish to murder you, he could not have gone about it better.” ... It seemed that Helvin had thought himself offended ... that murder had looked out of his eyes....
His head falling forward upon his breast, Randvar stood as one listening to an evil voice within him.