He beckoned a bondsman to attend on the guard, while with his head he signed another thrall to bring forward the smoking ale; and Bolverk succumbed contentedly into a seat.
“Mind this, that you get me a pair that is easy across the toes,” he admonished the slave kneeling before him. Then he stretched out his hand to take the offering of the one standing beside him, and questioned lazily as he sipped: “Who are the rest of the long-absent people who have arrived?”
“Some score of them you may see before you; and in that end room yonder, among the gold things, is Olaf, Thorgrim’s son,—the most open-handed man! Since Treaty Day, for some reason, he has turned his back on the court and dwelt at the house of Mord the Grim, and only—”
Bolverk left off sipping to interrupt joyfully: “Now I wonder if it is going to happen that there is a fight? As I turned in here, I looked down a lane and saw Randvar the Songsmith headed in this direction.”
The row of hunters straightened, some of them rolling on their tongues the word “fight”; some raising their horns with shouts of “The Songsmith!” but the trader’s man shook his head above the furs to which he had turned back.
“They cannot lock horns. The lawmen have bound them to peace, on pain of outlawry to the one who breaks it. On the way home from the treaty-making, it befell that the Songsmith flew at Olaf, and would have given him a swift death if men had not come between them. They do not dare to do aught else than be good. It is unlikely, moreover, that the Songsmith has the slightest intention of coming hither. So long as he has that deerskin husk and that battered sword, no use has he for a trading-booth.”
Disapproval was in the headman’s gesture as he kicked aside the fur heap he had finished examining. But Bolverk shook his helmed head in disapproval of him.
“It is your traders’ thrift that talks now, comrade, not your Norse spirit,” he said. “Some bad habits the Fates allot every man at his birth; and he should be considered lucky who uses up his allowance of them on clothes, and keeps his mind high and his courage without stain, as Randvar, Rolf’s son, has done.”
“Yes, yes!” chorussed the fur-clad hunters, banging the benches with their fists. And the youngest of them brought his drink-drenched body upright with a jerk, and tried to look severely through sleepy eyes.
“Whosoever says aught slighting of Rolf’s son gives offence to me,” he made announcement. “I l-ove him because he wears clothes like mine. I l-l-ove him because he is poor. I l-l-l—”