"Why not?" he asked; but he did not shake off her little hands.
"Because Father would not have men so treated, however ill they had done."
"Aye, brother; the girl is right," said Hubba. "Let him die; for you gave him to Wulfric, and that is his word."
"Well then," said Ingvar, setting back the axe at last, "I will not carve him into the eagle I meant to make of him. But slay him I must and will, if the life is yet in him."
"Let Odin have him," said Hubba; and I knew that he meant that the man should be hanged, for so, as Halfden's vikings told me, should he be Odin's thrall, unhonoured.
Then the maiden fled from the hall, glad to have gained even that for the man, instead of the terrible death that the Danes keep for traitors and cowards.
Now Ingvar put back the axes he had kept, saying that the girl ever stood in his way when he would punish as a man deserved. After that he stood for a while as if in thought, and broke out at length:
"We will see if this man can sing a death song as did Ragnar our forefather."
And with that he waited no more, but strode out into the courtyard, we following. And I feared what I should see; until I looked on Beorn, and though he was yet alive, I saw that he was past feeling aught.
They bore him out of the village to a place just inside the trenched enclosure, and there were old stone walls, such as were none elsewhere in the place, but as it might have been part of Burgh or Brancaster walls that the Romans made on our shores, so ancient that they were crumbling to decay. There they set him down, and raised a great flat stone, close to the greatest wall, which covered the mouth of a deep pit.