Over the brown fists, the fierce bright eyes bent themselves upon him in his turn. The biting young voice said, “It is likely that Thorkel the Tall speaks from experience. It stands in my memory how well craft served him when he had deserted my father for Ethelred and then became tired of the Englishman. To procure himself peace, he was forced to creep back to my feet like a dog that has been kicked. Was there gold enough in his bribe to regild his fame?”
The gnarled old face of Thorkel the Tall grew livid; growling in his grizzled beard, his hand moved instinctively toward his sword. But Rothgar caught his arm with a boisterous laugh.
“Slowly, old wolf!” he admonished. “Never snarl at the snapping of the cub you have raised.”
The King had not moved at the threatening gesture, and he did not move now, but he echoed the laugh bitterly. “In that, you say more truth than you know, foster-brother. He is a wolf, and I am a wolf’s cub, and you are no better. We are all a pack of ravening beasts, we Northmen, that have no higher ambition than to claw and use our teeth. Talk of high-mindedness to such—bah!” He flung his arms apart in loathing; then, in a motion as boyishly weary as it was boyishly petulant, crossed them on the table before him and pillowed his head upon them.
His companions did not seem to be unused to such outbursts. Rothgar appeared to find it more amusing than anything else, for his mouth expanded slowly in a grin. A snort of impatience distended the nostrils of Thorkel the Tall. “At such times as these,” he said, “are brought to my mind the words of Ulf Jarl, that a man does not really stand well upon his legs until he has lived twenty-five winters.”
Up came the young King’s yellow head. There was no question now about his temper. A spot of fiery red marked each cheek-bone, and his colorless eyes were points of blazing light.
“Better is it to stand unsteadily upon two legs than to go naturally upon four,” he retorted. “If I also am a beast, at least there is a man’s mind in me that tells me to loathe myself for being so. Even as I loathe you—both of you—and all your howling pack! Make me no answer or, by the head of Odin, you shall feel my fangs! You say that my will is like the wind’s will. Can you not see why, dull brutes that you are? Because it is not my will, but yours,—now Rothgar’s beast-fierceness, now your low-minded craft. Because I am not content with myself, I listen to you. And you—you—Oh, leave me, leave me, before I lose my human nature and go mad like a dog! Leave—You laugh!” As he caught sight of Rothgar, he interrupted himself with a roar. His hand shot to his belt and plucking forth the jewelled knife that hung there, hurled it, a glittering streak, at the grinning face. If it had reached home, one of Rothgar’s eyes would have gone out in darkness.
But the son of Lodbrok had known his royal foster-brother too long to be taken by surprise. Throwing up a wooden platter like a shield, he caught the quivering blade in its bottom, whence he drew it forth with good-humored composure.
“If you wish to give a friend a present, King, you should not throw it at him so angrily,” he suggested. “Had you given me the sheath too, your gift would have been doubly dear.”
The fiery spots in Canute’s cheeks deepened and spread. He turned away without answering, and stood a long time beating his fingers on the table in a sharp tattoo.