Once or twice before the conversation had taken turns unexpected to Randvar, but nothing to compare with this.
“You make that a condition!” he repeated.
Helvin’s finely marked brows drew nearer together. “You should not take it ill, if you have as much mind to serve me as you said a while ago. You shall have the honorable post of my song-maker,—my father’s skald is years overdue in Valhalla.”
To imagine such an offer in his day-dreams had seemed to the Songsmith as natural as eating; but hearing it now in his waking ears, he wondered if he were not asleep. He said, “I give you thanks,” but so dazedly that like lightning playing over a distant peak, a flash of that devil-mockery flickered over Helvin’s face.
“What now! Does your brisk friendship get weak in the knees when it comes to trusting yourself in my power?”
Flushing, Rolf’s son swallowed a boast and answered only: “Why should I be afraid, Jarl? You have given me your word that this happening shall not weigh against me.”
Again it struck him as odd the way Helvin leaned forward and scrutinized him, long and incredulously.
“I did not mean because of this matter,” he said, at last. “I meant because you might feel some doubts about the turn of temper I have.” The strange mockery of the smile in which his lips drew away from his white teeth, as he said that, was made stranger still by the awful intentness of his eyes.
So much strangeness began to tell upon Randvar’s stock of patience. He said bluntly:
“Jarl, if the truth must be told, I have no doubts whatever about your temper, for I have seen plainly that you have a very bad one. But neither have I been used to lamblike men. Willingly will I strike a bargain on these terms, if I have the choice.”