“Again I declare my belief that weird powers are an accursed hindrance. What avail is it to warn a man of coming evil if no way is shown him to ward it off?” He emphasized his words by a kick at the great log just before him.
The sudden flare of flames and flight of sparks and jarring of charred parts asunder seemed to afford him some relief; while regarding them, he bethought him of a loop-hole.
“After all, I do not know how we make it out that the visitor must be Helvin! A wolf is the animal-spirit that runs before many a valiant man. Nine chances to one, it will be no more than the French Olaf in search of him.”
The possibility made his alarm seem senseless. Snapping his fingers at the world beyond the bright ring, he gave the log a second kick, this time of friendly correction.
“Comes the Devil himself, he must have no fault to find with the hospitality of Freya’s Tower,” he said, and set to work to replenish the fire.
Tearing the great saplings free from the pile and breaking them resoundingly under his heel, he worked too vigorously for a while to leave any space for brooding, and he had no opportunity to take it up again when the task was finished. Even as he rose from laying on the last bough and turned again to the outer dusk, he saw the grape-vine thrust aside from the head of the path—saw a man appear in the opening and stand there—a peculiarly proportioned man whose breadth of shoulder and length of arm suggested that he had been formed for towering tallness, and that it was blasting mischance which had stopped him at medium height.
Randvar’s panic took the form of obstinate unbelief. Even when the apparition quitted its hold on the vine and came slowly towards him over the grass, he doggedly refused to believe that the Fates would be so contrary.
But on the spot where the moonlight ended and the firelight began, the visitor came to a stand-still; the red glow meeting him eagerly illumined him from head to foot. There was no mistaking the gray garments, blood-drenched and torn; there was no mistaking the mass of blood-red hair; and looking at the haggard face in the sinister frame, the Songsmith’s own figure came back to him, “fire cased in flesh.” In the ash-gray eyes, live embers were glowing. Suddenly something else came to Randvar,—a consciousness that murderous hatred was looking at him out of those eyes.
Scorn he had been prepared for, but this—this amazed him. It was instinct that acted to stiffen him alertly as he made salute, saying, “I give you welcome, Helvin Jarl.”
Whatever his temper, Starkad’s son had a Jarl’s dignity of bearing. He answered grimly: