That he could hold the citadel against all comers Olvir had no doubt; but his warriors were far too few for him to man the burg walls. He had to content himself with a watch at each gate of half a hundred warriors, who, he planned, could hold their posts secure against any chance band of the enemy, or, in the event of an attack in force, could check the first assault, and so save the citadel from the possibility of a surprise.
In his vigilant watch over the safety of the citadel, the young Northman found little time to spend in the society of Rothada's miniature court. Yet it was not seldom that he saw the little princess; for she often sought him out with the complaint that Fastrada was closeted with the wizened old Magian leech whom the king her father had left to care for her, and that she was weary of playing with the pages and the tiring-women.
On the morning of the day which opened the ninth week of waiting, Olvir came riding up to the great door of the citadel, after his round of the burg gates, and as he dismounted in the shadow of the archway, smilingly unlashed a roll of cloth from his saddle. Then he beckoned to one of the door wardens and said briefly: "The mare frets with so much stall-standing. Take her for a run across the Arga."
Overjoyed at the chance, the man sprang into the saddle, and Zora started down the steep path, picking her steps daintily but with a quickness that showed her impatience at the restraints on coursing within the burg.
A little later Olvir climbed out upon the roof of the citadel's main tower, the roll of cloth still in his hand. For a while he swept with his glance the neighboring heights and the broad harvest fields on the plain below the burg. All lay calm and peaceful in the hot sunshine, and his gaze turned with his thoughts to the cloth in his hand. Half smiling, he peered within its folds, and began to pace slowly to and fro across the narrow space of the roof.
"By the hair of Sif!" he chuckled, "I 'll wager it's a gift to delight any maid!"
But his pleasant musing was cut short by the sound of a sibilant voice in the upper room of an adjoining tower.
"Loki!" he muttered. "Can I never get beyond earshot of that woman?"
Frowning, he moved over to the farther battlement, and turned his face away toward the barren fells which lay between him and the mysterious South. But though he sought to fix his thoughts on the host which had vanished behind those desolate hills and crags, he could not shut out the sound of that sibilant voice or the shrill, cackling answers of Kosru, the old Magian leech.
"Of a surety, man,"--Fastrada was speaking,--"you are a warlock of note. Strange you have already wandered over Rhine! You must come again, and farther,--to my Thuringian home. My mother will give you fair welcome. Though a woman of the roving Wends, she is skilled in herbs and magic spells. At her bidding the storm-wind rises. She rules the forest sprites,--kobolds and nixies,--even the fiend-gods of the Saxons."