“You madman!” he burst out. “Could you not guess that I was going to kill him for you? Olaf dare not slay me—a fine would be the uttermost. What fiend possessed you! Did you imagine Olaf loved you because you had always defied his laws? You madman! Did you not know that I would do it for you?”
“Would that have rubbed out my disgrace, if you had done it for me?” Sigurd asked quietly.
He laid his hands on the other’s shoulders, and they stood breast to breast and eye to eye.
“Come, come, kinsman, these are useless words; why waste breath on them? If you knew how Thorer Sel spoke to me that morning—spoke to me before my men!—and how the tale spread northward until churls that had never dared sneer behind my back before, taunted me to my face! No, no, it was the only way to do it, boldly and openly, with every one looking on. Now I shall leave a clean name behind me. What more could I do if I lived to be a hundred?”
Erling was silent; only, his hands that rested on his friend’s shoulders gripped and held them so that marks were left on the flesh, and the two men remained looking into each other’s eyes until a mist came between.
Then, without speaking, they freed each other; and Sigurd said quickly:
“One more thing lies on me to do. Will you help me?”
“I trust there is killing in it,” Erling said through his teeth.
“It is to get a message to Astrid, Gudbrand’s daughter,” Sigurd replied.
Erling cried out in amazement: “The wife of Hall the Wealthy!”