“To you, comrade! May your arrows and your swallows always go the right way. Skoal!” he toasted, then refilled the cup and handed it to the other, who answered in the same Northern tongue, though haltingly.
“To my brother! May he drink much of his enemies’ blood—as much as his friends have drunk of his wine. Skoal!”
It was not seen that the Northman made any grimace. While his mouth showed no bloodthirstiness, its hard line bespoke one used to grim ways. He said carelessly:
“My foster-mother has the gift of double sight, but even she has never seen that I have enemies. How came that notion into your head, brother?”
After the manner of his kind, the Skraelling was deliberate in answering, letting the purple juice trickle slowly down his throat; but he finished at last, and nodded in the direction of the departed courtmen.
“There went some of the young men who follow the head of my brother’s people. They are more bright than white fire-bugs with the gifts they get for their friendship. My brother is also young—a warrior—the son of a warrior—yet he lives apart in the forest, with a handful of women and old men—gets himself nothing. It must be that he has enemies among his people.”
The young forester shrugged his broad shoulders. “No gifts would I buy at the price Starkad Jarl asks, comrade. My little foster-brother Eric is page to his daughter; I know the lot of those who follow him. When he gives the sign they go to roost, whether they are sleepy or not. When his priest rings a bell they say their prayers, even though it break in at a time when cursing would come more easily to them. It is not allowed them to enjoy any sports that he sets his face against; and they drink no lower in the cup than he gives them leave. May illness eat me if I would ever tame myself to run with such a pack! That a man like my father should have been willing to lie quiet in a woman’s net is something I shall never be able to comprehend. I understand him better when I see how he built the Tower with the lower part left open so that the wind could blow on him all the year round and help him to forget that he was under a roof.”
Once more the Skraelling’s deliberate speech was delayed, this time by a baying of deep-voiced hounds rumbling up out of the distance like thunder. Following it, the pack streamed past—stragglers bursting from the brush behind them to skirt them with extended noses or jostle between them, leaving froth-flecks on their sides—and hard after the hounds rode the hunting party, led by a band of green-clad pages winding gilded horns. With the leisureliness of one whose pride forbids a display of curiosity, the Skraelling set his eagle face again over his shoulder; and his companion, who had started to remark upon the scene, gave up with a shrug the attempt to make himself heard against the blaring.
The din passed at last, and on its heels came a colorful train—stately old priests and chieftains gravely discussing the hunts of their youth, high-born maidens with shining uncovered locks, and matrons whose lace veils floated cloudily from their moonlike faces, stocky young thralls bent under hampers and wine-skins, and towering leather-clad guardsmen bearing bright spears on their shoulders. With the hoof-beat of the prancing horses deadened by the matted leaves, they went by as lightly as shapes in a vision, each for an instant illumined as he passed where a shaft of sunlight fell through a rift in the arching tree-tops.
As the first pair of the noble maidens reached it, sitting gracefully erect in their saddles like gilded chairs, the forester motioned towards them.