"To the villa!" he commanded. "Tell the Danes their vala is in peril! Bid the counts join with them! I go to meet the skaters."
With the words, Karl wheeled past the cowering girl, and drove away down the river at headlong speed.
Instantly Fastrada sprang erect and glared after him.
"Hai!" she hissed. "Let him go; let him rush to share the fate of the others! The hungry fangs await him! Merry's the feast I 've set for Odin's dogs!--king's kin and king; ay, and my false hero! All's merry in the bleak wood! Hark to the moaning oaks! My mother's spell has roused the storm-fiends,--the sky darkens. Soon the gnawed bones will lie wrapped in a snowy shroud! And now I shall go to her. She shall unriddle that old foretelling,--'a king, grey of eye.' The Merwing Wolf rode the tree; Pepin's son rushes to meet his bane; who, then, may it be? Adelchis the Lombard, idling in the Kaiser's hall, or that drunken Hardrat? More likely he,--the white-bristled boar! I had thought to crush him when the time came; but now-- Ah, would that Pepin's son had lent a willing ear! He at least was a world-hero, with whom might be named no warrior other than my sea-king. And now they are death-doomed. Ai! my bright hero bleeds! Olvir! Oh, Olvir!"
Writhing in tearless anguish, the girl stumbled to the river's edge. With feverish haste she tore loose the skate-thongs from her buskins, and, leaping up the bank, fled wildly into the heart of the forest.
CHAPTER X
Thou shalt hear the wolves howling.
LAY OF GUDRUN.
When the little party, whose leader he had considered himself, glided away into the forest, Olvir had thought to limit the trip to three leagues at the utmost. But he failed to consider the queen's humor.
After her long confinement within the bower, Hildegarde's fair face glowed with almost feverish delight as she felt the ice glide away beneath her feet, and she swayed her body to the skate-stroke with the grace of a Greek dancer. Upborne by Liutrad's powerful grasp, she soon lost all thought of fatigue and distance, and floated on--on--through the white sunlight, her face serene with dreamy contentment. Her enjoyment was at its height when Olvir, hand in hand with Rothada, glided up beside her, a troubled look in his dark eyes.