But Rudulf had other cause than his admiration for the Northman to give warmth to his greetings. When alone with Olvir, he complained that, for the first time in a score of years, the young men of his folk showed a lack of willingness to respond to the king's bode. This was all the more marked, he said, because of the spirit of unrest which moved through the forests. Men sat uneasily at the hearthside, their thoughts clouded with forebodings of evil. It was not that the Sorbs were astir and threatened a harrying of the mark. That should have brought the wild forest warriors with a rush to join the banner of their old-time leader. Yet his war-ring was all but empty. Those who should have crowded the hedges loitered about their farmstedes.
The coming of Olvir and his sea-wolves was, therefore, a very welcome event to the grim old Count of the mark. Though time and war had lessened the number of the vikings to a scant four hundred, they were picked warriors, mailed like chiefs, and trained as no band had been trained since the days of the Romans. With such men at his call, the Grey Wolf lay at ease in his lair, confident that should the Sorbs dare raid his mark, they would ride back across the Saale far faster than they came. It would seem that the crafty heathen were themselves aware of this; for the arrival of the vikings was followed by signs that the menacing Slavs had thought better of their purpose. All along the border the account of how the giant Danes of Karl the Frank had turned the Saxon Wittikind's victories into bloody disaster was now a well-known tale.
So the Slav folk kept across the Saale, biding a fairer season for their raid; while the warriors, whose presence had put the curb on their lust for blood and loot, lay about the Thuringian camp, grumbling at the lack of merry sword-play. It was in vain that on the accustomed day for the spring sacrifice they honored Odin with many choice victims. Neither Floki, nor such others of their number as were skilled in signs and omens, could foretell anything from the casting of the blood-chips. At the least, no war was to be read in the boding, and the Sorbs did not give the lie to the omens.
May came and went, and then June, and Olvir was beginning to doubt the king's faith, when word was brought to the forest fastness,--another scroll in Karl's rough handwriting,--saying that he had gone north to invade the land beyond the Elbe, but had not forgotten his Dane hawk. With this assurance of the king's troth, Olvir rested fairly content. Yet it was no easy task to wait through the long summer-time.
Autumn was already at hand when the vikings began to talk of a weird apparition, in appearance like a dead woman swathed in her shroud, which wandered through their camp in the darkness. The manner in which the Thuringians scoffed at the "grey walker" of their heathen fellows soon convinced Olvir that the fancied wraith was none other than old Rudulf's Wend wife. To test the matter, he expressed to the count his wonder that the dame should see fit to act so mysteriously.
The next night, as he sat by the Grey Wolf's hearth listening to a grim tale of life in the mark, the Wend woman glided into the hut, and sat down opposite the two men. Rudulf nodded carelessly to his wife, and would have gone on with his tale. But Olvir turned to greet her.
"Welcome, dame," he said. "I did not think to see you again in this life, when at our last meeting you fared out into the storm and night."
"And what if I am not now in the flesh-life, son of Thorbiorn?" asked the witch, in a hollow voice.
"The heartier should be my welcome, dame," rejoined Olvir. "I 've ever longed to meet a farer from Hel's Land. But though I have seen many go that journey, I have never seen one come again."
"Not so the daughter of the Snake, bold mocker. In the midnight, when the wolves feasted upon the bodies of the slain, I have walked on the battlefield, gathering the death-dew for my spells, and my eyes have seen the blood-reddened souls rising from the mangled flesh."