“Lie still. No one is looking to see whether we go through with the foolish rules which some simpleton has laid down. I have sent the guards below.” He took the blade away as he felt the song-maker yield to its pressure, sheathing it as he went on: “Their state was laughable, between not knowing whether they should get my wrath because they had not at once carried you out of here, or because they had not at once slain you. See how they have tried to trim both sides of their sail to the wind, by making you comfortable and at the same time holding you prisoner.”
He nodded floorward, and Randvar noticed for the first time that a charger of food and drink stood within reach of his hand, that a cushion had been put under his head and a cloak spread over him. At another time he might have smiled. Now his gaze came back with unrelieved gravity to the Jarl’s face that in some way was strange to him.
“Which kind of behavior is most to your mind, lord?” he asked.
Clasping his hands behind his head, Helvin leaned back against the wall and returned his look sombrely.
“I am only just getting to know surely, comrade. When they brought me word this morning that you had set free the brat who stepped between Olaf and death, there was a spell when my fingers itched for your throat. You can see that I came to you straight out of the hands of my shoe-boy.” He lifted one of his legs to show that the silk bands which should have been wound around it were still hanging. “If the sight of your peaceful sleep had not fallen coolingly upon my hot humor, there is a likelihood that ... that....” Though his eyes remained upon the song-maker, they set in a vacant stare. “You would be lying there like an empty wine-skin ... and I should be raving beside you, trying to put back the wine I had spilled ... seeing it creep away towards the cracks ... feeling it slip slimy through my fingers.... Ah!”
The hand that had gone out groping before him he dashed against his eyes as though to break the spell that bound them, springing to his feet with a wild cry.
“Why do I torture myself with what is not true? I have not slain you. You are alive, for all that you have the color of a dead man. Speak to me! Drive away this madness!”
White as the dead the song-maker was, as much from increasing alarm as from the weakness of his blood-drained body; yet he managed to lift himself to his knees and then to his feet, to stand steadying himself against the wall. Only his voice failed to obey his summons, so that he was glad to have the pause filled by the thundering tread of a man hurrying up the steps. In the doorway appeared a guard, his spear gripped in his hand.
“Jarl, was it for help you cried out?” he demanded.
A moment Starkad’s son held his breath, as though the nethermost deeps of his mind must be dredged for adequate words,—then all words seemed to prove inadequate. Snatching a wine-flagon from the tray, he hurled it at the intruder’s head. The force with which it crashed against the doorframe suggested what it would have done to the mark that it missed.