Bewilderment tied Alwin's tongue. Sigurd was the first to speak.

"That seems to me a fair offer; and half the condition is already fulfilled. I clasped his hand last night."

Rolf answered with less promptness. "I say nothing against the Englishman's courage or his skill; yet--I will not conceal it--even in payment for a comrade's life, I do not like to give my friendship to one of thrall-birth."

That loosened Alwin's tongue. "In my own country," he said haughtily, "you would be done honor by a look from me. Editha will tell you that my father was Earl of Northumbria, and my mother a princess of the royal blood of Alfred."

Helga uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest; but he would not deign to look at her. For a while longer Rolf hesitated, looking long and strangely at Egil, and long and keenly at Sigurd. But at last he put forth his huge paw.

"Alwin of England," he said slowly, "though you little know how much it means, I offer you my hand and my friendship."

Alwin took it a little coldly. "I will not give you thanks for a forced gift; yet I pledge you my faith in return."

Though his face still worked with pa.s.sion, Egil's hand was next extended. "However much I hate you, I swear that I will always act as your friend."

In his secret heart Alwin murmured, "The Fiend take me if ever I turn my back on your knife!" But aloud he merely repeated his former compact.

When it was finished, Sigurd laid an affectionate hand upon his shoulder. "We cannot bind our friend-ship closer, but it is my advice that you do not leave Helga out of the bargain. Truer friend man never had."

The bar across Alwin's cheek grew fiery with his redder flush. He stood before her, rigid and speechless. Helga too blushed deeply; but there was nothing of a girl's shyness about her. Her beautiful eyes looked frankly back into his.

"I will not offer you my friendship," she said simply, "because I read in your face that you have not forgiven the foul wrong I put upon you,--not knowing that you were brave, high-born and accomplished. I can understand your anger. Were I a man, and a woman should do such a thing to me, it is likely that I should kill her on the spot. But it may be that, in time to come, the memory will fade out of your mind, even as the scar will fade from your face. Then, if you have seen that my friendship is worth having, do you come and ask me for it, and I will give it to you."

Before Alwin had time to think of an answer that would say neither more nor less than he meant, she had walked away with Sigurd. He looked after her with a scowl,--because he saw Egil watching him. But it surprised him that, search as he would, he could nowhere find that great soul-stirring rage which he had first felt against her.

CHAPTER VII

THE KING'S GUARDSMAN

Something great Is not always to be given.

Praise is often for a trifle bought.

Ha'vama'l

It was the day after this brawl, when the guardsman Leif returned to Nidaros. Alwin was brought to the notice of his new master in a most unexpected fashion.

For one reason or another, the camp had been deserted early. At day-break, Egil slung his bow across his back, provided himself with a store of arrows and a bag of food, and set out for the mountains,--to hunt, he told Tyrker, sullenly, as he pa.s.sed. Two hours later, Valbrand called for horses and hawks, and he and young Haraldsson, with Helga and her Saxon waiting-maid, rode south for a day's sport in the pine woods.

Helga was the best comrade in the camp, whether one wished to go hawking, or wanted a hand at fencing, or only asked for a quiet game of chess by the leaping firelight. Her ringing laugh, her frank glance, and her beautiful glowing face made all other maidens seem dull and lifeless. Alwin dimly felt that hating her was going to be no easy task, and he dared not raise his eyes as she rode past him. Instead he forced himself to stare at the reflection of his scarred face in the silver horn he was wiping; and he blew and blew upon the sparks of his anger.

Noticing it, Helga frowned regretfully. "I cannot blame him if he will not speak to me," she said to Sigurd Haraldsson. "The nature of a high-born man is such that a blow is like poison in his blood. It must rankle and fester and break out before he can be healed. I do not think he could have been more lordlike in his father's castle than he was yesterday. Hereafter I shall treat him as honorably as I treat you, or any other jarl-born man."

"In this you show yourself as high-minded as I have always thought you,"

answered Sigurd, turning toward her a face aglow with pleasure.

By the middle of the forenoon, everyone had gone, this way or that, to hunt, or fish, or swim, or loiter about the city. There were left only a man with a broken leg and a man with a sprained shoulder, throwing dice on a bench in the sun; Alwin, whistling absently as he swept out the sleeping-house; and Rolf the Wrestler sitting cross-legged under a tree, sharpening his sword and humming s.n.a.t.c.hes of his favorite song:

"Hew'd we with the Hanger!

Hard upon the time 't was When in Gothlandia going To give death to the serpent."

Rolf had declined to go hunting, on the plea of his horse's lameness.

Now, as he sat working and humming, he was presumably thinking up some other diversion,--and the frequent glances he sent toward the thrall seemed to indicate that the latter was to be concerned in it.

Finally Rolf called to Alwin: "Ho there, Englishman! Come hither and tell me what you think of this for a weapon."

It needed no urging to make Alwin exchange a broom for a sword. He came and lifted the great blade, and made pa.s.ses in the air, and examined the hilt of bra.s.s-studded wood.

"Saw I never a finer weapon," he admitted. "The hilt fits to one's hand better than those gold things on Sigurd Haraldsson's sword. What is it called?" For in those days a good blade bore a name as certainly as a horse or a ship.

Rolf answered, in his soft voice: "It is called 'The Biter.' And it has bitten not a few,--but it is fitting that others should speak of that.

Since the handle fits your grasp so well, will you not hold it a little longer, while I borrow Long Lodin's weapon here, and we try each other's skill?" He made a motion to rise, then checked himself and hesitated: "Or it may be," he added gently, "that you do not care to strive against one as strong as I?"

"Now, by St. Dunstan, you need not spare me thus!" Alwin cried hotly.

"Never have I turned my back on a challenge; and never will I, while the red blood runs in my veins. Get your weapon quickly." He shook the big blade in the air, and threw himself into a posture of defence.

But the Wrestler made no move to imitate him. He remained sitting and slowly shaking his head.

"Those are fine words, and I say nothing against your sincerity; but my appet.i.te has changed. I will tell you what we will do instead. When your work is done, we will betake ourselves across the river to Thorgrim Svensson's camp and see the horse-fight he is going to have. He has a black stallion of Keingala's breed, named Flesh-tearer, that it is not necessary to prod with a stick. When he stands on his hind legs and bites, you would swear he had as many feet as Odin's gray Sleipnir. Do you not think that would be good entertainment?"

For a moment Alwin did not know what to think. He did not believe that Rolf was afraid of him; and if the challenge was withdrawn, surely that ended the matter. A horse fight? He had enjoyed no such spectacle as that since the Michaelmas Day when his father had the great bear-baiting in the pit at his English castle. And a ramble through the sun and the wind, a taste of liberty--!

"It seems to me that it would be very enjoyable," he agreed. He started eagerly to finish his work, when a thought caught him like a lariat and whirled him back. "I am forgetting the yoke upon my neck, for the first time in a twelvemonth! Is it allowed a dog of a slave to seek entertainment?"

Mild displeasure stiffened Rolf's big frame. He said gravely: "It is plain your thoughts do not do me much honor, since you think I have so little authority. I tell you now that you will always be free to do whatever I ask of you. If there is anything wrong in the doing, it is I who must answer for it, not you. That is the law, while you are bound and I am free."

A fresh sense of the shame of his thraldom broke over Alwin like a burning wave. It benumbed him for a second; then he laughed with jeering bitterness.

"It is true that I have become a dog. I can follow any man's whistle, and it is the man who is responsible. I ask you to forget that for a moment I thought myself a man." In sudden frenzy, he whirled the great sword around his head and lunged at the pine tree behind Rolf, so that the blade was left quivering in the trunk.

It was weather to gladden a man's heart,--a sunlit sky overhead, and a fresh breeze blowing that set every drop of blood a-leaping with the desire to walk, walk, walk, to the very rim of the world. The thrall started out beside the Wrestler in sullen silence; but before they had gone a mile, his black mood had blown into the fiord. River bank and lanes were sweet with flowers, and every green hedge they pa.s.sed was a-flutter with nesting birds. The traders' booths were full of beautiful things; musicians, acrobats, and jugglers with little trick dogs, were everywhere,--one had only to stop and look. A dingy trading vessel lay in the river, loaded with great red apples, some Norman's winter store.

One of the crew who knew Rolf threw some after him, by way of greeting; and the two munched luxuriously as they walked along. They pa.s.sed many Viking camps, gay with streamers and striped linens, where groups of brawny fair-haired men wrestled and tried each other's skill, or sat at rough tables under the trees, drinking and singing. In one place they were practising with bow and arrow; and, being quite impartial in their choice of a target, one of the archers sent a shaft within an inch of Rolf's head, purely for the expected pleasure of seeing him start and dodge. Finding that neither he nor Alwin would go a step faster, they rained shafts about their ears as long as they were within bow-shot, and saw them out of range with a cheer.

The road branched into one of the main thoroughfares, and they met pretty maidens who smiled at them, melancholy minstrels who frowned at them, and grim-mouthed warriors whose eyes were too intent on future battles even to see them. Occasionally Rolf quietly saluted some young guardsman; and, to the thrall's surprise, the warrior answered not only with friendliness but even with respect. It seemed strange that one of Rolf's mild aspect should be held in any particular esteem by such young fire-eaters. Once they encountered a half-tipsy seaman, who made a s.n.a.t.c.h at Rolf's apple, and succeeded in knocking it from his hand into the dust. The Wrestler only fixed his blue eyes upon him in a long look, but the man went down on his knees as though he had been hit.

"I did not know it was you, Rolf Erlingsson," he hiccoughed over and over in maudlin terror. "I beg you not to be angry."

"It is seldom that I have seen such a coward as that," Alwin said in disgust as they walked on.

Rolf turned upon him his gentle smile. "It is your opinion, then, that a man must be a coward to fear me?"

Alwin did not answer immediately: of a sudden it occurred to him to doubt the Wrestler's mild manner.

While he was still hesitating, Rolf caught him lightly around the waist and swung him over a hedge into a field where a dozen red-and-yellow tented booths were cl.u.s.tered. "These are Thorgrim Svensson's tents," he explained, following as coolly as though that were the accepted mode of entrance. "Yonder he is,--that lean little man with the freckled face.

He is a great seafaring man. I promise you that you will see many precious things from all over the world."