"I forgot, friend Jomar, that you were so nigh me. You owed me something, indeed, but try not to pay it like that again, for your own sake."
The man took the dagger sullenly and answered,—
"I hope never more to see either of you. Go down to the town now, if you can reach it without losing your way again, and my curse go with you."
Without waiting for reply or reward, he left them abruptly, and disappeared in the wood. "That is a man I am glad to see the last of," said Helgi, as they started for the town. "It can only be by black magic that Atli made him serve us."
"It is strange indeed," replied Estein, thoughtfully. "I have noted before that a powerful mind has a strong influence on men of less wisdom, yet like enough there is something more besides."
When they had come near enough to be recognized, a loud and joyful shout went up from their men; one after another of the victors ran out to meet them, and it was with quite a company at their back that they entered the burning town. In the open market-place, round which most of the houses stood, they found Ketill, his armour dinted and smeared with blood, and his eyes gleaming with stern excitement. At last he had got his burning, and he was enjoying it to the full. A batch of captives had just been pitilessly decapitated, their gory heads and trunks were strewn on the crimson snow, and beside them lay five or six more, their legs bound by ropes, awaiting their turn.
Inured though he was to spectacles of blood and carnage, Estein's mind recoiled from such a scene of butchery as this, and he replied to Ketill's shout of astonishment and welcome,—
"Right glad I am to see this victory, Ketill, and gallantly you must have fought, but when has it become our custom to slay our prisoners?"
"Ay," answered Helgi, "we could well have missed this part."
"Know you not that the Jemtlanders slew the twenty who followed you to King Bue?" answered the black-bearded captain. "They slew them like cattle, Estein; and shall we spare the murderers now? I knew not also whether you and Helgi had fallen into their hands, and in case ill had happened to you, it seemed best to take vengeance on the chance."