But when he had come where the youngest of the riders was holding his horse in waiting, either the young man’s ill-concealed uneasiness, or some reminder growing out of it, caused his mood to change. With his foot in the stirrup he lingered, sobering until his face betrayed even the pinching hand of dread. Vaulting into his saddle, he spoke to his attendant without looking at him.
“I see they have turned my hound Sam into the pack, though the wound on his foot is still unhealed. Will you, Gunnar, do one thing for me? Separate him from the rest and bring him to me in a strong leash.”
“In this as in everything you have only to speak to have your will,” Gunnar gave the prescribed answer absently. It was not until he felt the foot of a friend behind him that he awoke to the mockery of the phrase, and glanced up appalled.
But the exasperation lightning at him did not strike. Amid silence, breathless, storm-charged, the Jarl’s son took the reins from him, wheeled his horse and rode back up the leafy path and out of sight.
In a moment Olaf was spurring after Starkad’s son, but the remainder of the escort appeared to be in no great haste to follow. First they waited while Gunnar examined the buckle of his girth; then they turned to scrutinize two figures just emerging into the open from a brush-hidden trail a few paces on their right.
Two young stags browsing the scarlet berries under the pines would scarcely have looked more natural to the scene, for one was a savage of that new-world race which the early Norse explorers called Skraellings, with hair as black as freshly turned leaf-mould, and a shining naked body of the hue of an oak-leaf in November; and the other, in the deerskin garb of a forester, with uncovered locks reflecting the sun, was a descendant of the Vikings themselves and showed untamed blood in his handsome face as he raised it to look ahead at the horsemen.
The red man the courtiers passed over indifferently, but on the white one they were beginning favorable comment when the call of a distant horn cut them short. Wheeling hastily, they gave their horses spur and rein, and passed up the shaded alley like a whirl of frost-tinted maple-leaves.
Upon them, the young forester made but one remark. He and his companion had halted as at a parting of the ways, and his hands were busy detaching a deer’s-horn cup from his belt.
“I would travel a day’s journey to see a horse run like that,” he said. “Often I dream of feeling one between my knees, and waken because my enjoyment is too real for a vision.”
The young savage’s throat gave out a sound of comprehending, and his friend did not wait for a longer response. He had filled the horn from a flask of porcupine-skin that hung around his neck; now he raised it aloft.