“Norman of Baddeby”—her father’s slayer! Memory entered like poison to spread burning through every vein. Her father—Fridtjof—the Jotun—the battle—Her ears were dinned with terrible noises; her eyes were seared by terrible pictures. She crushed her hands against her head, but the sound came from within and would not be stilled. She buried her face in the leaves, but the visions pressed faster before her. The son of Leofwine and the drunken feast—the girl outside the tent—the Jotun within it—her terrible young guardian—the battle-madness—whichever way she looked, a new spectre confronted her. Helpless in their grip, she tossed to and fro in agony—to and fro.
Though it was so tortured that she could not tell it from her waking thoughts, sleep must have come to her; for when at last she reached the point where she could endure it no longer and struggled up, panting, to her elbow, to try to recall herself by a sight of those about her, she found that the hum of excited voices was stilled, and the silence throbbed with the deep breathing of sleepers. From under the canopy of darkness the fiery spears had dropped away, leaving the thick folds sagging lower and lower. Swarming under its shelter, the shadow-shapes were closing in upon her.
For a while she watched them absently; then a whim of her tortured brain poisoned them also. They became terrible nameless Things, mouthing at her, darting upon her. She drew her eyes resolutely away and set herself to listening to the breathing that throbbed in a dozen keys through the silence.
Almost at her feet, the Etheling was stretched out in his cloak, motionless as the fallen tree. Her face was slowly relaxing when, a second time, memory betrayed her. Just so, she recollected, Leofwine’s son was lying, not a hundred yards away. Through the trees, the glow of the King’s fire came distinctly; gazing toward it, she could almost convince herself that she could see the murderer, peaceful, secure. She ground her teeth in a sudden spasm of rage. Would that some of those weak-witted thanes would prove the mettle of the knives he was daring!
The next instant, she had thrown herself down with terror-widened eyes, and was trying to bury her face in the leaves, while the tongueless mouth of every shadowy shape seemed to shriek above her,—
“Odin sends you revenge!”—“It is the will of Odin that has drawn you together!”—“Strange and wonderful is the way in which you are hesitating!”—“Would you become like the girl with the necklace?”—“Are you a coward, that you do not prefer to die in good repute rather than live in the shame of neglecting your duty?”
She flung up her haggard face in appeal. “No, no, I am not a coward,” her spirit cried within her. “I was brave in the battle. It is not death I fear; but I cannot kill! Odin, have mercy on me! I cannot kill. I have tried to be brave, but I am really a woman; it is not possible for me to have a man’s heart.”
The grinning shadows mouthed at her. “You have not dared to be a woman,” they mocked. “You have not dared to be a woman, so you must dare to be a man.”
A night wind shuddered through the trees, and the hovering shades seemed to hiss in her ear. “Coward! Traitor! Nithing! Do you not get afraid that you will experience the wrath of the dead? Listen! Is that the wind rustling the leaves? Or is it—”
A gasp burst from the white lips, and the die was cast. While the cold drops started on her pain-racked body, she dragged herself to her knees and fumbled with trembling hands about her belt. For an instant, something like a moonbeam glimmered amid the shadow; then her lips closed convulsively upon the steel. Tipping forward upon her hands, she tested cautiously the strength of her wounded leg, smothering groans of pain that seemed to tear her throat in the swallowing. But the whispering of the night-wind was like a spur in her side; inch by inch, she crawled steadily toward the flickering light.