“Now you argue like the goddess Frigg when, because it was young, she allowed the mistletoe-bush to become the shaft which killed Balder the Beautiful. If you had got your death from the boy, Helvin would have had him slain,—and it would have been rightly done!”
The song-maker’s broad shoulders shrugged as once more he leaned forward upon his knees.
“Though it may sound less well to your ears, Jarl’s sister,” he said dryly, “the true reason why Helvin is set against the boy is because the young one was the hinderance in the way of my killing Olaf. Is it also out of love towards me that Eric’s friends have failed to help him? Or is it another reason that no one dares to go against the Jarl’s pleasure?”
“It might be that and yet be no shame to their manhood,” she answered suddenly, and put back the clustering masses of her hair to look at him with earnestness. “An unheard-of thing is his temper becoming, Randvar! The evening after the duel, he rode out to Mord’s house and went in where Olaf lay and stood for the space of two candle-burnings staring down at him, without speaking, only tearing his mantle between his teeth. And yesterday when he was here, he put to me the most unexpected question. He asked me if ever I saw our father in my sleep, or in dark corners. And when I said, ‘By no means,’ he laughed—cold trickled over me at the sound!—and muttered that Starkad showed favoritism in giving all the visits to him. Heard you ever anything to equal that in strangeness?”
“Never,” the song-maker assented. But he said no more, nor moved so much as his bent shoulders. After a glance up at him, she began studying his face from the ambush of her hair, and sank so deep in musing that she started when he spoke.
“Where have they caged the cub?”
“In that storehouse loft, which has been thought bad enough to be a prison since a guard killed another one there by pushing him through the floor-hole so that he drowned in the beer-vat below.” She came further out of her study to slip her hand into his, where it hung between his knees. “Laugh if you will, my friend, still I shall hold it for true that no one has freed the little snake because no man will lift a finger for one who has injured you. Only bolts keep the door—no guard stands watch there—any could have helped him if they had a mind.”
He did laugh, shortly and suddenly; then pressing her hand, he released it and stood up.
“By this time, the Jarl will have returned from Flokki’s; and I will go to him.” As she rose swiftly, he lifted one of her silken braids and laid it lightly across her lips. “Noble maiden, I am a wild hawk that has been caged over-long. Let me stretch my wings, and I shall come back all the more gladly,—if so be your kind mood lasts until to-morrow.”
Above the shining bar of her hair, her color flamed so brightly that she was fain to extinguish it upon his breast. Her words came to him faintly: