"Ha, Floki--Floki the Crane!" gasped Hroar; and he glared like a trapped wolf at the strange viking who sprang down over the bulwark after young Liutrad. Though little broader than his fellow-Northmen, the man towered up a good span above seven feet in height, and the long-shafted halberd which he bore on his shoulder did not tend to lessen the effect of his giant stature.
At sight of the Dane chief a ferocious smile distorted the wry face of the giant, and he bent to him mockingly.
"Heya, old shipmate!" he croaked. "Many winters have sped since we parted on the Rhine bank."
Hroar licked his dry lips and answered thickly: "Those were good old days when we followed Thorbiorn and Otkar over sea and land. I call to mind the loot of Kars, when Thorbiorn bore off the emir's daughter for bride. You were not so mean in those days as to sail under a boy whose outland swartness--"
"--Proves the blood of the emir's daughter."
"How!--this elf the son of Thorbiorn Viking?"
"Ay," murmured Olvir; "the son of the lord you betrayed. Ho, Danes! now shall the murderer pay his blood-debt. Many times I have harried your dune coasts in search of this foul traitor, who, one and twenty winters gone, sold his sword-fellows and his earl into the ambush of the boy Karl."
"That is a lie!" shouted Hroar. "Only to save my own life--"
"Be still!" commanded Olvir. "The Crane shall bear witness for me. State the charge, Floki."
The lofty Northman stepped upon a cask, and his grey eyes swept their gaze over the Danish ships and back to the Danish sea-king, cold and hard as steel.