"A simple one, lord king. I 've had my fill of Christian ways. I would be faring over the whale-road, to a land where even the mad berserk slaughters only in the heat of battle."
"Heu! heu! down with the traitor!" shouted Rudulf and Hardrat in a breath, and the red-faced count tore his sword from its sheath. But Karl, with a sweeping side-stroke, like the blow of a lion's paw, met Hardrat's forward spring, and flung him sprawling upon the rushes.
For a little, while the others stood staring, some flushed and indignant, others pale with anxiety for their outland friend, Karl gazed down upon the Northman, his broad chest slowly heaving beneath his folded arms. Presently the look of half-angry wonderment which had seamed his face with deep lines gave place to a calm like that of his daring reproacher. He extended his hand, and replied to Olvir, not as the over-lord of half Europe to his retainer, but as man to man.
"Friend," he said with simple dignity, "you charge me with cold slaughter. God judge if I was cold! Had I not looked upon a harried land,--upon desecrated churches, upon priests and monks of God, helpless women and babes tortured with fiendish cruelty? Cold! My reproach is that I doomed the murderous traitors while wrath inflamed my soul. However stern the judgment, the judge should not speak in anger. That alone I regret."
"Whether the sword fell in anger or in coldness, what Christian can justify such a slaying?" rejoined Olvir.
"Upon my head be it!" answered Karl, firmly. "If I have done wrong, mine is the retribution. But by the King of Heaven, I swear, I stand here with a clear conscience. Listen, Olvir. Your wits are keen as your sword; you have eyes. You shall look into my heart and see what I have set before me as the aim of my lifework. If when you have looked, you would still be faring, I shall not urge you to stay."
"Beware, lord king," growled Rudulf. "Would you tell the riddles of your kingcraft into the ears of this heathen Dane?"
"Silence, old wolf!" commanded Karl. "Who has better proved his trustiness than the Count of Vascon Land? But your warning comes in good season. I speak with Count Olvir alone."
Hushed by the rebuke, all silently withdrew with the Grey Wolf to where Hardrat stood brooding over his humiliation. When they were beyond ear-shot, Karl turned to the Northman, his face aglow with inward light.
"Again, Olvir, I call you friend," he began. "It is a precious word in the heart of a king; for it is seldom he can so name any man. I bear in mind how even at the first, at Casseneuil, you uttered words that were bitter, yet wholesome. I were a witling if I failed to value at the full one who has proved himself a just ruler,--one who dares speak his heart's thought in the face of a king, recking nothing of the king's disfavor. In all my realm I can name only two such men,--yonder deacon, whom men call Alcuin the Scholar, and yourself."