That he might overtake any of the company did not occur to him. His attention was centred in his song, gradually becoming articulate and rising melodiously from under his breath. It broke a word in two when he caught the hoarse snarl of a hound in the thicket ahead.
As well as though he could see through the intervening leaves he knew the hideous landmark that lay before him,—a pond which the Skraellings called by a word meaning “the black pool,” because some sinister combination of soil and shadow gave its water the appearance of being dully thickly black. Tradition added that rather than enter it, a fleeing stag would let his pursuer kill him on the brink. If any hunted thing had been brought to bay there now, the finish might be worth seeing. Quickening his step, the young Northman leaped the stony channel of a dead brook and swept aside the screening boughs.
Set amid frost-blasted bushes and leafless barkless tree-skeletons, the Black Pool met his gaze; but it was no four-footed creature that fought for life at the black water’s edge. Above the brush rose the gray-clad shoulders of the young courtman with the blood-colored hair. Rearing as tall as he, one of the great hunting-dogs had sprung upon him; while one hand strove to draw his dagger, the other was struggling to hold foaming jaws from his throat.
To see his peril was to will to aid him; and with the forester, to will was to act. But even as the impulse thrilled him, a strange sensation blotted it out. With his first forward motion, he was seized by a sudden whirling madness as though he had stepped within the ring of a whirlpool and was being sucked into a black abyss of horror.
It lasted but an instant. Battling against it, his fingers clutched instinctively at his knife-hilt, missed it and closed instead upon the blade, and the smart of cut flesh brought him to himself. But in the time that he hesitated, the courtman’s hand had freed his weapon and plunged it into the straining throat; there was a death howl, the hiss of spurting blood, and the danger was over. The great body relaxed, stiffened, sank heavily out of sight between the bushes, and the young man stood wiping his blood-bathed face upon his sleeve.
Bewilderment and shame claimed the forester. He with a lion’s strength in the girth of his chest and in his long sinewy limbs—he whose coolness had cheated Death a hundred times—he to falter when a man was in jeopardy of life before him! It was beyond belief.
He saw without caring that the courtman seemed all at once to become aware of another presence, and turned and espied him. He heard without heeding a peremptory order to approach. All that he was conscious of was a desire to get away and fight it out with himself. Raising his hand in apology, he stepped backward, pushed between two tall bushes, and let the wiry brush spring to like doors behind him.
As he drew clear of the branches a silvered arrow sped above them, so well aimed that it severed a lock of his hair. He caught his breath with a short laugh.
“I forgot that high-born men do not take it well to be disregarded,” he muttered as he plunged into the undergrowth.
What would he have said if the shaft could have whispered as it whistled past that—back under the frost-blasted bushes—Starkad Jarl lay murdered, and that he of the guilty blood-colored hair believed the forester had witnessed his deed!