“That is a good hint, young one,” laughed Gunnar the Merry. “Pick up your heels.” Then he laughed again at the glare that Eric turned on him.
“Will you keep your nose out of this?” the small Viking demanded. “If you think I am afraid to bear a flogging—!”
The end of the sentence was that his gay tunic lay on the ground and he stood forth in his shirt of fine linen, his arms locked upon his sturdy chest. From that attitude he did not flinch when the lashes fell, though they were neither light nor few. When it was over, the young men gave him good-humored applause.
Gratification pulled at his mouth-corners as he looked at them out of the corner of his eye; but enough vanity had been taken out of him so that when his gaze passed on to his stern foster-kinsman, he showed only as a shamefaced little boy, now humbly desirous of being restored to favor.
“If you think it will give my kinswomen a great deal of pleasure, I will go to the feast with you,” he offered, when he was clothed again and lingered shaping mud-balls with the toe of his boot.
“If I have my way, you will not be allowed to go back until it will give you so much pleasure that you cannot stay away,” the Songsmith returned severely, rejecting utterly the blandishments of the rosy coaxing face. The culprit gave up the attempt, after a while. Climbing into his saddle he rode back up the highway—his sleeve in suspicious proximity to his eyes—and vanished into a brush-walled lane.
Watching the dejected withdrawal seemed to suggest to Olaf the French a welcome thought. He moved his horse a step forward, and broke in upon the scattered chatter.
“Surely,” he said, “if you, Rolf’s son, choose to attack a young friend of mine, and I choose to avenge the boy on you, that should be sufficient to excuse me in challenging you?”
Over his shoulder, Randvar looked at him with his short laugh,—he had stepped aside to whistle back his horse from the meadow in which it had strayed to browse.
“Surely! If you, Thorgrim’s son, believe that you could get that excuse accepted,—in case you were alive to offer it!” he consented.