Having piled his fuel, Hardrat drew the broad knife which swung at his belt, and with the back of the blade struck a shower of sparks from the flint spear-tip into the linen kerchief. Quickly the tinder caught the sparks, and a few puffs set the smouldering cloth aflame. Fanned by a light breeze from up the river, the blaze spread with a cheerful snapping through the heap of dead limbs and pieces of driftwood. Hardrat took note how the smoke, instead of rising, drifted away between the tree-trunks and over the ice, like morning mist.
"See how the smoke lies on the snow," he said. "One needs scant knowledge of woodcraft to tell that a storm is near."
"Then we should soon be hastening back," replied Fastrada, who, instead of looking at the ankle which he was chafing, was staring at the low-eddying smoke with fierce exultance. "Ai!" she sighed complainingly, "that was a luckless wrench! Stay your hand, though. It may chance there 'll be no need to chafe the hurt. Am I not my mother's daughter? Here is a charm stronger than the power of elf or nixie. If, in truth, my hurt is the work of some evil wood-minne, I shall soon heal it. In this scrip is a drug whose burning will force out the worst of fiends. Cast it into the midst of the flames while I speak the needed spell."
Hardrat drew away, his cheeks suddenly gone ashen.
"No! by all the saints, no!" he cried. "I 'll have no hand in your witchery. I 've seen enough of black spells in her hut."
"Hero!" jeered Fastrada; and with her own hand she lifted the pouch, to scatter half its contents around her in the snow. As she threw the rest into the flames, her red lips muttered soft hissing words of the Wendish tongue, and her beautiful face was distorted with a look that sent a shudder of superstitious fear through Hardrat's thick-set frame. The pungent odor sent out by the burning drug added yet more to his terror. He stood cowering beside the fire, unable to fly, his bloated cheeks grey and mottled, and his limbs trembling visibly, as he watched the look of awful expectancy that crept into the face of the witch's daughter.
Moment after moment, the girl sat staring out after the drifting smoke-wreaths, her lips softly muttering the sibilant Wend words. Though Karl himself had marked the Thuringian's boldness on the battlefield, the man was now like a frightened child in the dark. The strain was almost more than he could bear. His tow-white hair bristled beneath his cap; his very blood was curdling in his veins. He was on the point of crying aloud when the silence was broken by the lone howl of a wolf. Wild with terror, Hardrat sprang, about to fly. But Fastrada leaped up as he passed and caught him by the shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with fierce joy.
"Hei!" she cried. "The fiend-gods are with us! Down the wind with the smoke the evil sprite has passed, and my hurt is healed! my hurt is healed!"
"Saints shield me!" stammered Hardrat, and he crossed himself. That the girl should scramble with him down the bank and out across the rough ice-edge without a trace of her sprain, by no means tended to lessen his dread.
When they gained the smooth ice, Fastrada would have paused; but Hardrat struck out at once in the face of the freshening breeze, feverishly eager to put the long leagues between him and the fumes of the magic drug. As Fastrada darted to his side, and they swept away over the level ice, they heard once more, far back in the forest behind them, that long-drawn, dismal howl; and this time the cry was caught up and repeated from the farther depths of the forest.