“Why should you leave? It is the custom for Jarl’s men to be taken care of here.”
From his eyes that were like dark caves in the side of a snow-mountain came forth a flash as he glanced round at her. “That you have a poor opinion of me I know, but I did not know you thought me capable of making Helvin’s order an excuse for quartering myself upon you.”
Feeling with his hands where the sword leaned in a corner, he brought it forth, and stood gazing at the highly polished blade. Once more she had the sensation of being forgotten.
“It is cleaner than it was the last time I saw it,” he said, “but I liked it better then. What is Olaf’s fate?”
She answered mechanically: “It is told that he still keeps his bed at Mord’s house.”
“Is that true?” he asked wonderingly, and a smile that had no connection with her widened his nostrils. When he had laboriously buckled on the sword, he came unsteadily towards her. “All the thanks that are due to your women I pay,—or at least I pay all I have. If you will allow me to pass now, I will take the task off their hands.”
Some of her sense of strangeness was lost, then, in alarm. But even before she could tell him of his weakness, he was forced to catch at a chair’s high back to save himself from falling.
“And bid one of your servants give me his shoulder across the court-yard,” he murmured.
“I will bid two of them take you by force and put you back in bed where you belong,” she said indignantly, and turned to throw open the door.
Though he remained leaning heavily on the chair, he spoke slowly: “If you do—I swear to you—that I will struggle against them—until every wound on me starts open.”