“Dost think he can master the barons?” the boy asked, and Karl looked troubled.
“These be ill times for thought, boy,” he said, “and worse for speech; but the emperor is ruler in the land, and if he bring not order into our midst, then in truth are the scoffers wise, and God hath forgotten us up in heaven.”
“Would I were of his train!” Wulf said quickly, and silence fell between them, during which the boy sat gazing, with troubled eyes, adown between the black trunks of the great trees. Karl, watching him, gathered rightly that he was worried as to his duty.
“An he be in truth the emperor by will of the people, and not alone of him at Rome,” Wulf added at last, “then are all true men who love Germany bound to come to his banner.”
“Ay.” Karl thrust the iron he was welding deep into the glowing coals of the forge.
“But I am of the Swartzburg’s men; and how may I be an honest one and fail at this moment when every blade is needed?”
“’Tis hard,” Karl said, “and that only thine own heart can teach thee.” He brought his hammer down upon the glowing iron till it sent out a shower of sparks. “No man may show another what honest action may be; but perhaps thou’rt nearer being the emperor’s man than the baron’s, were the truth known. An I guess rightly, ’twere ill faring if one of thy line raised blade against Rudolf of Hapsburg.”
The armorer muttered this half in his beard, nor looked at Wulf as he spoke.
“Nay, Karl,” the boy cried sharply; “make me no more riddles, but speak out plainly, man to man. What is this that thou hast ever held from me? What meanst thou by any line of mine?”
“Alas!” said the armorer, sadly. “Naught know I, in truth, and there’s the heartbreak. ’Tis a chain of which some links are missing, and ill work is it to make that blade fitten again. Would to God I did know, that I might speak of a surety that which my heart is settled upon. But this that I do know shalt thou hear to-day.” And coming over by the doorway, Karl took seat upon the great chest near by, and fell to telling Wulf of that which we already know—of his trip to the Swartzburg a dozen years before, and how he had taken him from the osiers.