Once Randvar would have struck up without further consideration; now he fingered the harp-strings hesitatingly before he answered.
“Jarl’s sister, we have not quarrelled for two weeks, and I confess that the friendliness has been worth much to me. I beg you not to urge me to do that which will set us against each other again.”
Her eyebrows went down with displeasure, then up in wonder.
“I do not know what you mean,” she said.
“The ending I have made would offend your pride, noble one; and then your scorn would tread on the heel of my temper. When plenty of paths open before us, why choose one that we know leads to bad walking?”
Why, indeed? Unless because she was a woman? Her gray Valkyria eyes lighted as at a challenge, for all that she remained leaning against her tree.
“You make a mistake, Songsmith,” she told him, “to think that I would be offended with you for doing a thing which I asked you to do. Give me a chance, I pray, to show that I am not so without sense.”
Randvar drew his harp up higher upon his breast, then lowered it until it rested upon the ground.
“My singing-mood has passed,” he said shortly, “but I will tell you the ending, since you will have your way. My story branches from your skald’s song where Fridtjof comes to ask Ingeborg of her brother Helge. Your song has it that when Helge refuses to make the match, because Fridtjof has no more than a freeman’s rank while Ingeborg is king-born, she takes it quietly and marries the old King Ring and sees no more of the man she loves, until Ring gets so old as to be tired of living and gives her to the young man, with his crown and the other things he is through with. Bah!” The Songsmith warmed in spite of himself, flung back his sun-burnished mane with the fierce grace of a stallion. “A man of spirit, your Fridtjof! Mine would have laughed in her face. My Fridtjof takes her in the teeth of Helge’s refusal; and she comes to him willingly, as befits a woman of brave kin; and he wrests Ring’s kingdom from him in battle. That is the way I end it.”
“That is the best way!” cried two little pages who had come up with cups of hot spiced wine, and their shrill enthusiasm changed the women’s breathless listening into laughter.