But even as they grappled, the curse-ridden man sought to free himself, loosing a sudden cry that was half a pealing laugh and half the bark of a wolf. Hurling the song-maker from him upon the earth, he was gone on a bound to some dearer prey beyond.
Struggling to his elbow, Randvar stared after him. Among the trees beside the black water had come in sight a horseman wearing the gray cloak of a beggar but the livid face of Olaf the French,—livid, sweating, from the haste with which he was spurring Towerward by the only path he knew. Now creeping, now bounding, the madman had reached him. Springing upon him with outflung claw-barbed hands, he had dragged him fighting from his saddle and flung him upon the ground. Snarling, he dropped upon him and buried his teeth in the upturned throat. An instant of gurgling gasping noises, and he was up and gone into the forest, sounding his terrible cry; and Olaf lay dead even as Starkad Jarl had died, from the fangs of the demon wolf that was the Other Shape of Starkad’s son.
XXIV
“He is happy who gets himself fame while living”
—Northern saying.
It was two Norse weeks after the death of Olaf, and it was nearly two-score miles south of the Black Pool. Filtering through the dark forest, a long ray of sun lay on Freya’s Tower and revealed it as a sanctuary embattled. Here, from the lengthening shadows, the bright beam picked out a circle of shaggy deerskin-clad foresters hammering arrow-heads at a forge made of bowlders. There, in touching the earth, the slanting ray touched another brawny group squatted at knife-sharpening. Yonder, the light streaming golden down a tree-aisle broke over a deerskin-garbed sentinel pacing to and fro. Now the murmur of blended heavy voices and heavier laughter swelled like the noise of the breakers,—until some one’s exuberance betrayed him into a burst of over-facetious song, when he was silenced by nudges and missiles and thumbs pointing Towerward. Now the lull that followed was broken by scattered hails and chaff, as a Skraelling burdened with a double string of glistening fish came like a shadow up the path of sunshine.
Making his way gravely between the jovial groups, the red man gravely evaded the jesting hands stretched out towards his treasure, and stalked on to the Tower. At the foot of one of the gray columns, he lowered the silvery mass to the earth and stood awaiting a chance for speech with his white brother’s new wife.
In the dim ground-room there was the flutter of a blue robe—the glint of red-gold hair—and she had appeared in one of the rude archways. Against its gray gloom, the glowing beauty of her face was like a fire; while the stark pillars were a foil for her body’s soft and flowing curves. Without speaking, the savage stood gazing at her,—even as every woodsman within eyeshot had stopped short in speech or work to gaze. It was she who spoke, composedly, giving him thanks for his gift, then went and poured him a horn of wild-grape wine and brought it to him.
Even while his mouth busied itself with the drink, his eyes stared at her over the silver rim. But as he gave the horn back, he spoke in broken Norse: