So they fronted each other until there was kindled in Brynhild’s face a kind of fury, the rage of a Valkyria upon encountering her match. Just in time, the words on her lips were checked. Like a pebble into a pool, a page’s voice fell upon the pause.
“Ingolf comes seeking you, Jarl’s daughter.”
The spell was shattered. In less time than it took the Songsmith to shift his weight, Brynhild had shifted her expression, recalled to her wonted world. Women and pages started up like a covey of impatient birds. With his blandest smile, Olaf stepped forward and claimed his own.
“In all likelihood, madam, the messenger brings word that your noble father is ready to take his meal, and seeks you at the spot where he left you. Will you allow me so much happiness?” Baring his head, he extended his hand.
She laid hers upon it immediately, motioning Eric to take up the grape-purple train. All at once she seemed to the forester to have withdrawn herself an immeasurable distance beyond his ken. Across the space her voice came to him coldly.
“I would have shown you friendliness, Freya’s son, but it may be that this way is better. The truth grows in me that you would hardly know how to behave in a court. It is likely you have chosen your life wisely. I wish you good luck in it, and bid you farewell.”
She bent her head; her women dropped him awe-struck courtesies. Under cover of a salute, Olaf’s hard blue eyes held him long enough to remind him that their quarrel was by no means at an end. Then, leaning on the courtman’s arm, the Jarl’s daughter turned and left, nor looked back, though Rolf’s son watched as long as he could catch any gleam of her bright hair.
When the band had crossed the glade and gained the trees, they met the helmeted figure; and following the instant of meeting, it seemed to the forester that the breeze brought him a sound of shrieks. But whatever their cause, it did not delay the departure. Soon the many-colored troop had become blended with the many-colored leaves, and forest solitude closed again around him.
III
“Nose is next of kin to eyes”