“Brynhild! Is it really as it seems, that because my loyalty runs away with my manners, you speak so to me?”
“I know not why you will talk of manners,” she retorted, “when what your passion ran away with was your honor, that ought to have taught even a thrall better than to fall upon a fettered man.”
“A thrall?” He spread out his hands in indignant protest. “Little shall a thrall know of a high-born man’s wrath over the slaying of his chief! Am I not, before all else, a free Norseman? Only this morning, maiden, did you upbraid me because my French rearing had underlaid my Norse temper! Now, behold, when my Northern blood breaks out in its native wildness you stab me with eyes, words!—oh, use the sword! The steel would be more kind.”
Gracefully he sank on his knee before her, making as though he would bare his breast for the stroke. Perhaps a maid of France would have shrunk or swooned. Perhaps it took him by surprise that she stood with unshaken hand, studying him as one studies an unfamiliar object.
“I do not know that I have the wish to be kind to you,” she said slowly. “I do not know how I feel towards you, for you are not the man I thought I knew. Perhaps you should not have blame, since you believed Helvin slain, yet—”
Her voice quickened as a chorus sounding through the trees heralded the old counsellors’ return. She shifted the sword with an imperious gesture.
“Rise up! It will happen to you to be seen in that foolish position! I cannot tell whether I shall ever have liking towards you again or not. Rise up, and go away from me until I find out.”
He had risen while she was speaking, but whether he would obey her last command was for an instant uncertain. Turning from her, his eyes rested again on the Songsmith; his empty hands began to open and shut at his sides. Only the grim voice of Mord, falling on the pause, seemed to catch and hold him. Even as he gave way step by step, his vulture eyes clung to the song-maker until the bushes rose like walls between them.
While the branches that closed behind Olaf were still aquiver, the hemlock boughs opened upon Mord and his associates. Filing in stiffly, they sat them down heavily upon bowlder and hummock.
“A man of my years,” Mord panted, “does not take it lightly to have his heart turned over in him because some red apes choose to hop around in mock warfare. Get what enjoyment you can out of it, Rolf’s son, that so far your savages have not belied you. When their foolishness was over, the Jarl let so much news out as to send a messenger over to tell us that he was safe and getting all the favors he asked for,—after we had spent that much time in doubt and endangered as many lives as there are bodies among us! May Hel take fools and leave knaves, if she have not room for both! Jarl’s sister, even you seem to have lost your wits, to go about flourishing a sword, with cheeks as red to look at as your kirtle. I thought you made it your boast to take things coldly.”