Pausing with one foot up and one foot down, Hallad looked at them strangely. "Do you not all know?" he asked at last.
They cried in one triumphant breath: "It was the Huntsman!"
"The Huntsman?" Hallad repeated, and amazement was too plain in his voice to be mistaken. After a minute, he grasped a down-hanging root and pulled himself up to the next step, and would have departed without another word if Alrek had not reached up and clasped him around the ankle.
"What do you mean by that?" the Sword-Bearer asked him. "If it was not Thorhall, who was it? I shall not let you go until you tell me." He gripped the raw ankle harder than he knew; Hallad gave a great gasp of mingled pain and anger.
"I have not as yet said too much, but I think I need not spare you since you challenge me! It was you yourself; my own eyes saw you. It happened that I was hiding behind a wood-pile in the hope that I could slip into one of the booths and get a weapon for myself. I saw you fall, and I saw the Skraelling lean over you and make a grab at your sword; whereupon you leaped up and buried the hatchet in his head, and he toppled over into the hollow—Now there is no need of your looking at me in that manner! I would not have spoken if you had not dared me. I will say nothing about it anywhere else. I——"
But it is not likely that Alrek heard; he stood as though turned to stone, gazing at the speaker out of horror-widened eyes. "You saw ... me ... do it?" he breathed.
Looking down upon him, Hallad's face was red and regretful. Although it was plain that no great boldness was in his spirit, it was also clear that his mind was not ill-intentioned. "A great mishap was this that you should ask me," he stammered. "I suppose it was the knock on your head that caused you to forget. But I thought that—Of what use was it to dig it up again! I had the intention to say nothing to any one. It seems most likely to me that the Huntsman put a spell upon you; his eyes are more than equal to it. You need not be so sensitive as to blame. So long as Karlsefne has pardoned you and given you your honors back, your fate does not depend on this——"
Through his speech, the voices of Gard and Brand and Erlend broke shrilly: "You flung back his pardon!" "You bought your honors—" "You pledged your life on your guiltlessness!"
Out of stiff lips, Alrek confirmed it: "I pledged my life."