Randvar nodded absently; since first the black horse came into view, his eyes had been fixed upon its rider.
“He bears himself as stark as the dead man,” he muttered, then finding that he was speaking aloud, shook himself back to attention.
Wading waist-deep into the water, the eight bearers of the litter had placed their burden upon the black-draped boat waiting on the darkening waves. Now the contents of the treasure-bags were handed to them, piece by piece, and they built with it a glittering bulwark around the moundlike form. Then the oldest of the advice-givers, an old man gnarled and bald as an ancient oak, came stiffly down the bank with a lighted torch in his hand, and laid the flame against the rope of plaited straw that held the boat to the shore.
Leaping out hungrily, the yellow tongues licked up the morsel and reached out for the food that lay beyond, while the loosened boat swung gently from the land. With the rush of wind, the fire rose crackling and hissing, and gradually the sunset light was lost in the new glare that filled the river valley. Rising as it rose, and quivering like it, rose the voice of the dead Jarl’s skald, chanting his death-song.
In the red glare the boat slipped seaward. As it drifted past them, the man and the boy on the knoll could see every firelit jewel sparkling and flashing in a ring of splendor around the form under the black pall. Then it drifted farther, and once more the sunset glory became visible around it. By-and-by it was no more than a star in the gathering dusk; and the old skald’s voice—strained thin and high in the effort to send his song after the departing voyager—cracked and broke, and there was silence on both sides of the river.
On the side opposite the Town it was Eric who broke the pause, rousing-himself with a yawn and a stretch.
“I declare this to be the best entertainment Starkad ever gave me,” he remarked. “But one cannot be always enjoying himself. I suppose you will pass the night at the hostelry before going back?” He brushed a leaf from his tunic with Olaf’s own elegance of gesture, then made use of Olaf’s own oath as he glimpsed his companion’s face. “By Saint Michael! you look as solemn as though you were going to be buried yourself.”
Straightening from the cramped attitude of the watcher, the Songsmith shook off the mood that had held him and became quietly purposeful. He said briefly:
“I go neither back to the Tower nor forward to the hostelry, but to join the Jarl’s following. Does it lie within your knowledge whether it is the custom to go directly to him? Or should I speak first to one of those around him?”
Whether or not the knowledge lay in Eric, his mouth was blocked by amazement; only horror could leak through.