IX
“Gift always looks to recompense”
—Northern saying.
Through the dusk, the Skraelling fires across the river made no more showing than a cluster of glowworms on a log; but—true to the saying that “Famine-pinched stomachs are the greatest gluttons”—the Norse fire-builders had heaped wood on blaze until their forest guest-house revelled in a brightness as of noonday.
The peace party had been back for the space of three candle-burnings, long enough for the first tumult of greeting to have subsided, and yet not so long but that the aroma of the new interest still flavored the air. In complacent beard-stroking groups, the old chiefs stood about the bank, congratulating one another upon the advantages which the alliance would secure to the fur-traffic and the trade in massur-wood. Trying on shell necklaces and quill-embroidered shoes, Brynhild’s women were turning the leaf-carpeted slope into a bower. In the hemlock nook which had been the prison-chamber, two guardsmen were giving an imitation of an Indian war-dance which sent the pages rolling on the earth in convulsions of merriment; and near by, another gathering watched with breathless interest while Gunnar the Merry experimented with the trophy which he had brought back,—a strange smoke-producing implement made up of a long reed, a big stone thimble, and a pinch of strangely smelling leaves.
Of none of these groups, however, was the Jarl or his song-maker a part. Still farther up the rising ground, on the very edge of the shadow-breeding wood, a mighty pine had toppled over and lay head downward, its huge clod of roots and soil upturned like a dead giant’s feet. There, skulking wolf-like in the shade, Helvin leaned against the writhen mass, bending and tearing the tough fibres with his restless hands; while along the huge trunk below him, as a panther along a bough, the deerskin-clad figure of Rolf’s son lay stretched out.
Now and again, from the fireside groups came up snatches of song or a merry outburst of voices. But none of it moved the Jarl to speech, and for once the Songsmith chose to remain under cover of custom and wait until he was addressed.
Now and again, a largess of dead leaves caused a grateful dancing of the flames that stretched the circle of ruddy light even to the timber’s edge. Gazing upward, Randvar had a fleeting glimpse of the brooding white face on which that strange, evil expression had deepened to a stain. But always before he had a chance to study it, the light failed.
Convinced at last that he fronted the unknown, he waited tense as a bowstring, alert as an arrow. Almost he shot from his place when low laughter burst from Starkad’s son,—laughter so devil-like that a wave of coldness started at his neck and rippled down to his heels.