Then he said to me:
"Speak out, Ranald, and tell these thanes your news."
I spoke plainly, and they listened with whitening faces and muttered oaths. And when I ceased, one cried, hardly knowing what he said, as I think:
"This outlander rode with Osmund the Dane to bring them on us even now."
"Silence!" Alfred said; and then in a cold voice he asked me:
"Where is this Osmund? I suppose he has fled to his people."
"That he has not, though he could have done so," I answered. "Moreover, the Dane I spoke with said in so many words that this is no host of Guthrum's."
At that Alfred frowned fiercely.
"Whose then? What good is a king if he cannot make his people keep their oaths?"
There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of all turned that way. And when the thanes saw that the hostages were being led in, with Osmund at their head, a great sullen growl of wrath broke from them, and I thought all hope was gone for the lives of those captives.