irgil/Vergil - "Vergil's Georgics in Latin"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 3 John"

Victor Appleton - "Tom Swift And His Air Glider"

Henry Frost - "The Wagner Story Book"

The Ward of King Canute

O >> Ottilie A Liljencrantz >> The Ward of King Canute




He made a quick step toward her, then paused as suddenly, his chin thrust out
in listening. A gesture of his hand imposed a sudden silence, through which
the sound became distinct to all ears,--a trampling and crashing in the brush
beyond the moonlit open. As they wheeled to face it, a shout came from that
direction.

"What ho! Does the Lord of Ivarsdale go there?"

He whom they had called the Etheling drew himself up alertly. "I make no
answer to hedge-creepers," he said. "Come out where you can be seen."

The voice took on a mocking edge. "There is no gainsaying that I feel safer
here. I am the messenger of Edric of Mercia."

Only a warning sign from the Lord of Ivarsdale restrained an angry chorus. He
said with slow contempt, "I grant that it is well fitting the Gainer's deeds
that his men should flinch from the light--"

"Misgreet me not," the mocking voice interrupted. "Before cockcrow we shall be
sworn brothers. I bear a message to King Edmund. And I want you to further me
on my way by telling which direction will fetch me to his camp."

Derisive laughter went up from the band of King's men. Their leader snapped
his fingers. "That for your slippery devices! Is the Gainer so ill-advised as
to imagine that he is dealing with a second Ethelred?"

"I tell you to keep in mind," the voice retorted, "that before the cock crows
we shall be sworn brothers."

The Etheling's anger leaped out like a flame; even in the starlight it could
be seen how his face crimsoned.

"No, as God lives!" he answered swiftly. "It is not to Edmund alone that the
Gainer is loathful. Should he pass the King's sword, a hundred blades wait for
him, mine among them. Seek what he may seek, he shall not have peace of us.
When I guide a wolf to my sheep-fold, I will show you the way to Edmund's
camp. Take yourself out of reach if you would not be sped with arrows."

A jeering laugh was the only answer, but the tramping of hoofs suggested that
his advice was being taken.

When the sound had faded quite away, the Lord of Ivarsdale breathed out the
rest of his resentment in a hearty imprecation, and, turning, came on to his
patient. His voice was as gentle as a woman's as he dropped on his knee beside
the slim figure.

"What is your need, little fire-eater?"

A memory of her haunting terror stirred in the girl. Shrinking from him, she
made a desperate effort to push away his outstretched hand, threatening him in
a broken whisper.

"If you touch me--I will--kill you."

They were brave men, those Englishmen. The Etheling only smiled, and one of
his warriors chuckled. With a touch as gentle as it was strong, he put aside
her resisting hands and began swiftly to cut away the blood-stiffened hose.
Darkness closed around Randalin again, darkness shot with zigzag lightnings of
pain, and throbbing with pitiful moans.

The idea took possession of her that she was once more on the battle-field,
that it was the cries of the men who were falling around her which pierced the
air, and their weapons that stabbed her as they fell. Then their hands
clutched her in a dying grip. Horse-men loomed up before her and came nearer,
and she could not get out of their path, though she struggled with all her
force. The hoofs were almost upon her... Uttering a wild scream, she put forth
all her strength in a last effort.

"It will be like holding a young tiger, lord," a harsh voice suddenly reached
her ear. She came to herself to find that soldiers were lifting her up to the
horseman, where he sat again in his saddle. She recognized the squareness of
his shoulders; and she knew the gentleness of his touch as he slipped his free
arm around her and drew her carefully into place, making of his stalwart body
a support for her weakness. No strength was in her to struggle against him;
only her wide bright eyes sought his, with the terror of a snared bird.

Meeting the look and understanding a small part of its question, he said a
reassuring word in his pleasant low-pitched voice: "Be of good cheer,
youngling; there is no thought of eating you. I will bring you to a cup of
wine before moonrise, if you hold fast."

It is doubtful if the girl so much as heard him. Her eyes were passing from
feature to feature of his face, as the stars revealed it above her,--from the
broad comely brow to the square young chin, from the clean-cut fine-tempered
mouth to the clear true eyes. One by one she noted them, and shade by shade
her strained look of fear relaxed. Slowly she forgot her dread; and
forgetting, her mind wandered to other things,--to memories of her father, and
of the happy evenings by the fire when she had nestled safe in his arms,--safe
and sheltered and beloved. With eyes still turned up toward his face, her lids
drooped and fell; and her head sank upon his breast and lay there, in the
peace of perfect faith.




Chapter IX

The Young Lord of Ivarsdale


Brand is kindled from brand
Till it is burnt out;
Fire is kindled from fire;
A man gets knowledge By talk with a man,
But becomes wilful by self-conceit.
Ha'vama'l.


Tap--tap, tap--tap, like dripping water dripping slowly. Drop by drop the
sound filtered through the thick wrappings of Randalin's slumber, till she
knew it for the beat of horses' hoofs, and stirred and opened her eyes.

The silver shimmer of starlight falling through purple deeps had given way to
the ruddy glare of a camp fire, and she was lying just beyond its heat,
cloak-wrapped, on a bed of leaves. Above her, interlacing beech boughs made an
arching roof, under which the shadows clustered as swallows under eaves.
Before her, green tree-lanes opened out like corridors. As far as the fireglow
could reach, they were flooded with golden light; where it stopped, they were
closed across by darkness as by gray-black doors. Within the sylvan alcove,
some four-score battle-stained warriors were taking their ease after a hard
day. Some of them were engaged in the ghastly business of bandaging wounds,
and some were already asleep; but the greater number lounged in the firelight,
drinking and feasting on strips of venison which serfs had cooked in the
flames.

Through the fog of her drowsiness Randalin recognized them slowly. Yonder was
the Englishman who had found her in the bushes. Beyond him, across the fire,
the soldiers who had lifted her up to the horse-man. Here, just in front of
her, was the leader himself. Her gaze settled upon him dreamily.

He had finished his meal, if meal it could be called, and was making some
attempt at a toilet. While one serf knelt beside him, scrubbing at his muddy
riding-boots with a wisp of wet grass, another held a gilt shield up for a
mirror, and before this the Etheling was carefully parting his shining hair.
His captive's eyes were not the only ones upon him, and the bright metal
showed that he was laughing a little at the comments his performance drew
forth from the three old cnihts lounging near him.

"Tending by five hairs to the sword-side, Lord Sebert," one of them was
offering quizzical criticism over his drinking-horn.

"The Etheling must needs have extraordinary respect for the endurance of
Harald Fairhair, for it is said that to accomplish a vow he went three years
without barbering himself," another said gravely. While a third became slyly
reminiscent, as he chewed his venison.

"These are soft days, comrades. The last time I followed the old chief, of
honored memory, we held our war-council standing knee-deep in a fen. We had
neither eaten nor drunk for two days, and three days' blood was on our hands."

The young chief took it all with careless good-humor.

"When you leave off eating, in memory of that brave time, I will leave off
washing," he returned. "Would you have me go into a royal council looking as
though birds had nested in my hair?" With a parting scrutiny of his smooth
locks, he motioned the shield-bearer aside and turned back to them his comely
face, rosy from his recent ablutions and alight with a momentary enthusiasm.

"I tell you, nothing but a warrior's life becomes ethel-born men," he said as
he straightened himself with a gallant gesture. "Nor sluggishness nor
junketings, but days under fire and nights among the Wise Men of the council;
that, in truth, becomes their station. By Saint Mary, I feel that I have never
lived before! One week at the heels of Edmund Ironside is worth a lifetime
under the banner of any other king."

A pause met his warmth somewhat coldly; and the warrior who broke the silence
lowered his voice to do it.

"Keep in mind, lord, that it is no more than a week that you have been at his
heels," he said.

"Likewise bear in mind whose son he is," the man with the drinking-horn added
grimly. He was a stout white-bearded old cniht with an obstinate old face that
looked something like a ruddy apple in a snow-bank. Flushing, the young noble
ceased examining his sword-edge to meet the eyes bent upon him.

"I hope you do not think I stand in need of a rebuke for lukewarmness,
Morcard," he said gravely. "I have no more forgot that King Edmund's father
gave the order for my father's murder than I have forgot that Edric was the
tool who did the deed. May Saint Peter exterminate him with his sword! Did I
not live even as a lordless man the while that Ethelred remained upon the
throne? But what sense to continue at that after Ethelred was dead, and the
valor of his son was to that degree exalted as if he had sprung from Alfred?
Yourself counselled me to join him at Gillingham, and take the post under his
banner that my fathers have always held beside his fathers."

Two of the three warriors made no other answer than to gurgle their drink
noisily in their throats; but the one whom he had called Morcard answered
dryly, "It is not against testing the new king that we would advise you, Lord
Sebert; it is against trusting him. But we will not be troublesome." He lifted
his hand suddenly to his ear. "Horses' feet! And stopping by the King's
fire--"

What else he said, Randalin did not hear. Her wits had crawled heavily after
the sound of the hoofs. Now the beat changed to a champing and stamping among
dry leaves not many rods to her right. She wondered indifferently if there was
any likelihood of their running over her; then forgot the query before she had
answered it.

The Etheling was speaking again, with all the earnestness of hero-worship.
"--the battles he has fought, the abundance of warriors he has gathered
together, the land he has won back since his father's death! Only take
to-day--"

"Ay, take to-day!" the old man snapped him up with unexpected vehemence. "And
the Devil take me if I ever heard of such witless folly! What! To go plunging
off into the thick of the enemy, endangering in his person the hope of the
whole English nation--"

The young noble relaxed from his earnestness to laugh. "Now has habit outrid
your manners, Morcard. So long have you been wont to use your tongue on my
heedlessness, that it begins mechanically to perform the same office for
Edmund. In a king, such courage inspires--"

"Courage!" Morcard's fingers snapped loudly. "Did not the henchman who
followed you have courage? Yet do we think of crowning him? I tell you that a
king needs to have something besides courage. He needs to have judgment. Then
will he know better than to leave his men like sheep without a leader. The old
proverb has it right, 'When the chief fails, the host quails.' It was when
they had become frightened about him that they began to give way, and after
that it was easy for any oaf to jump out of the bushes and put them to
flight."

This time the Etheling's smile was rather unwilling. "Oh! If you think fit to
set at naught a brave deed because nothing arose from it! After his father's
cowardice, such energy and dauntlessness alone--"

"Dauntlessness!" the old cniht snorted again. "It is the dauntlessness of the
man in Father Ingulph's story, who was so much wiser than his advisers that he
must try to drive the sun a new way, till it came so nigh as it nighest may to
setting the world afire." So hot was his scorn that he was obliged to cool it
in his ale, coming to the surface slightly mollified. "However, Lord Sebert,
you have cast your colt's-teeth, and I have no desire to tread upon the toes
of your dignity. If I have been over-free, excuse it in your father's old
servant and comrade who has guarded and guided you since--since you have had
teeth to cast."

The young man laughed good-humoredly as he straightened himself for action.
"Too often has my dignity bent under your rod, Morcard, to hold itself very
stiff against you now. Never fear; I will be an owl of discretion. Give you
favorable dreams over your horns!" He picked up his cloak and was turning to
depart, when one of the warriors flung up a hand.

"Soft, my lord. Yonder comes Wikel making strange signs to you." All heads but
Randalin's turned in the direction he was looking. She was still too lethargic
for curiosity; and she found a kind of dreamy content in lying with her eyes
upon the Etheling's handsome face. Though its prevailing characteristic was
the easy amiability of one who has known little of opposition or dislike,
there was no lack of steel in the blue eyes or of iron in the square chin; now
and then a spark betrayed them, thrilling pleasantly through her drowsiness.

Presently, however, between her and the comely apparition there intervened the
brawny figure of a yeoman-soldier. He said breathlessly, "Chief--before you go
to the King--be it known to you that those horse-feet you heard--belong to the
mounts of Edric of Mercia and his men--and he is with King Edmund now!"

The three stolid old warriors got to their feet with curses. The Etheling bent
forward to gaze incredulously into the man's face.

"Edric of Mercia? With the King? Why do you think so?"

"I was a little way beyond the King's fire, watching a fellow who was showing
how he could jump over the flames, when I saw the Gainer ride past; and I
followed him, as near as the guards would permit--near enough to see that the
King received him--let him settle it with Saint Cuthbert!"

There was a pause of utter stupefaction; then, from all within hearing, a
clamorous outburst: "It is the Gainer's luck again!"--"The messenger knew what
he was saying!"--"No sharpness of wit can comprehend it!"--"It is the magic of
his flattering tongue."--"A hundred tongues had done no harm if Edmund--" The
voices sank into a snarling undertone: "Ay, there it is!"--" Ethelred's
blood!"--"It is no more to be counted on than is water--" "What could have
moved him to it?"

Morcard's throat emitted a sound that might have been a chuckle or might have
been a growl. "I will tell you plainly for why; it is his dauntlessness. He is
going to pit his green wit against Edric's, that has made two kings as wax
between his fingers! And he has begun by letting the wolf into the fold."

It appeared that the Etheling had recovered from his surprise, for now he said
steadily, "I will not believe it. Until their oaths have been spoken and their
hands have clasped and my own eyes have witnessed it, I will not believe it of
him."

Motioning them from his path, he was starting forward a second time, when the
old cniht laid a hand lightly upon his shoulder.

"Hear me, Lord Sebert! If then,--to weigh all perils like a soldier,--if then,
you do witness it with your own eyes?"

The blue gave out a flash of smitten steel.

Morcard answered as to words: "You will be one against many, lord."

"You cannot mean that the Witan will comply with him!" the Etheling cried.

"How is it possible that they should do otherwise? The odal-born men could not
prevent it when Ethelred took Alfric back. And to-night, few but thanes have
resorted thither--men whom the Redeless took from ploughing his fields to gild
with nobility. Is it likely that they will oppose the hand that can strip off
their gilding?"

It appeared that the young man could find no answer to that, for he made none.
"At least once, my lord, Ethelred's wilfulness has shown in his son, when he
set aside the King's command to take possession of Sigeferth's widow and her
estates. And I think it was Ethelred's temper that moved him to spend an
energy, much better directed against the Pagans, in laying waste two of his
own shires. Remember what happened when your father raised himself against
Ethelred."

Restive under the restraining hand, the young noble faced him desperately.
"Morcard, in God's name, what would you have me do? I will not bend to it, nor
would you wish me to. Or sooner or later --"

"Let it be later, lord. After you have had time to marshal your wits, and when
it is daylight, and you have your men at your back."

After a while, the Etheling yielded and turned aside. "Let it be as you have
said--though I cannot believe yet that it will happen." Coming back where a
fallen tree made a mossy seat, he dropped down upon it and sat staring at the
ground in frowning abstraction.

The motion dropped him out of the range of Randalin's vision, and her eyes
wandered away discontentedly. If there was nothing more to look at, she might
as well go to sleep. The fire was dying down so that the overhanging shadow
was drooping lower, like a canopy that would fall and smother them when the
spears of light that upheld it should sink at last in the ashes. The doors of
darkness had moved far up the tree-corridors, and strange flickering shapes
peered through. Her eyes followed them heavily. The forest was very still now;
even the grating sound of the frogs was hushed, and the low hum of the voices
around the fire was soothing as the sound of swarming bees.

She was just losing consciousness when the figure of a second yeoman-soldier
moved across her vision, looming black against the fireglow. His whisper came
sharply to her ears. "It is done, chief. May they have the wrath of the
Almighty! Their hands have met, Edric's and the King's, and his thanes' and
Norman of Baddeby's, who is with Edric. Now are they lying down in their
man-ties, as it were to seal their pledge by sleeping within reach of each
other's knives."

"Norman of Baddeby!" the name leaped out of the rest to bite at her like a
dog, worrying deeper and deeper through the wrappings of her stupor. Her eyes
widened in troubled questioning. She heard the angry voices rise, and she saw
the Etheling leap to his feet and shake his clenched hand above his head. Then
she lost sight of everything, for the fang had pierced her torpor and touched
her.

"Norman of Baddeby"--her father's slayer! Memory entered like poison to spread
burning through every vein. Her father--Fridtjof--the Jotun--the battle-- Her
ears were dinned with terrible noises; her eyes were seared by terrible
pictures. She crushed her hands against her head, but the sound came from
within and would not be stilled. She buried her face in the leaves, but the
visions pressed faster before her. The son of Leofwine and the drunken
feast--the girl outside the tent--the Jotun within it--her terrible young
guardian--the battle-madness--whichever way she looked, a new spectre
confronted her. Helpless in their grip, she tossed to and fro in agony--to and
fro.

Though it was so tortured that she could not tell it from her waking thoughts,
sleep must have come to her; for when at last she reached the point where she
could endure it no longer and struggled up, panting, to her elbow, to try to
recall herself by a sight of those about her, she found that the hum of
excited voices was stilled, and the silence throbbed with the deep breathing
of sleepers. From under the canopy of darkness the fiery spears had dropped
away, leaving the thick folds sagging lower and lower. Swarming under its
shelter, the shadow-shapes were closing in upon her.

For a while she watched them absently; then a whim of her tortured brain
poisoned them also. They became terrible nameless Things, mouthing at her,
darting upon her. She drew her eyes resolutely away and set herself to
listening to the breathing that throbbed in a dozen keys through the silence.

Almost at her feet, the Etheling was stretched out in his cloak, motionless as
the fallen tree. Her face was slowly relaxing when, a second time, memory
betrayed her. Just so, she recollected, Leofwine's son was lying, not a
hundred yards away. Through the trees, the glow of the King's fire came
distinctly; gazing toward it, she could almost convince herself that she could
see the murderer, peaceful, secure. She ground her teeth in a sudden spasm of
rage. Would that some of those weak-witted thanes would prove the mettle of
the knives he was daring!

The next instant, she had thrown herself down with terror-widened eyes, and
was trying to bury her face in the leaves, while the tongueless mouth of every
shadowy shape seemed to shriek above her,--

"Odin sends you revenge!"--"It is the will of Odin that has drawn you
together!"--" Strange and wonderful is the way in which you are hesitating!" -
-"Would you become like the girl with the necklace?"--"Are you a coward, that
you do not prefer to die in good repute rather than live in the shame of
neglecting your duty?"

She flung up her haggard face in appeal. "No, no, I am not a coward," her
spirit cried within her. "I was brave in the battle. It is not death I fear;
but I cannot kill! Odin, have mercy on me! I cannot kill. I have tried to be
brave, but I am really a woman; it is not possible for me to have a man's
heart."

The grinning shadows mouthed at her. "You have not dared to be a woman," they
mocked. "You have not dared to be a woman, so you must dare to be a man."

A night wind shuddered through the trees, and the hovering shades seemed to
hiss in her ear. "Coward! Traitor! Nithing! Do you not get afraid that you
will experience the wrath of the dead? Listen! Is that the wind rustling the
leaves? Or is it --"

A gasp burst from the white lips, and the die was cast. While the cold drops
started on her pain-racked body, she dragged herself to her knees and fumbled
with trembling hands about her belt. For an instant, something like a moonbeam
glimmered amid the shadow; then her lips closed convulsively upon the steel.
Tipping forward upon her hands, she tested cautiously the strength of her
wounded leg, smothering groans of pain that seemed to tear her throat in the
swallowing. But the whispering of the night-wind was like a spur in her side;
inch by inch, she crawled steadily toward the flickering light.




Chapter X

As The Norns Decree



This I thee counsel tenthly;
That thou never trust
A foe's kinsman's promises,
Whose brother thou hast slain,
Or sire laid low;
There is a wolf
In a young son,
Though he with gold be gladdened.
Sigrdri'fuma'l.

It was a long way to the King's fire, but at last it lay before her; before
and below her, for it had been built in a depression of the little open. The
last charred log had fallen apart, spreading a swarm of golden glow-worms over
the black earth, there was still enough light to reveal a ring of muffled
forms sprawling around the sloping sides of the hollow, with their feet toward
the fire and their heads lost in darkness. Pausing in the tree-shadow, the
girl thrilled with sudden hope. Since their faces were all hidden, how was she
to distinguish her victim? Even the dead must see that it would be impossible.
If the burden could only be lifted from her!

Fate was inexorable. At that moment, the warrior directly in front of her
stirred in his sleep and flung a jewelled hand over his face. Those broad gold
rings with the green stones that sparkled like serpents' eyes as they caught
the light! They were fixed indelibly in her memory, for she had seen them on
the rapacious hand that had seized upon her while it was still red with her
father's blood. Only from them, she could reconstruct every hard line of the
hidden face. Suddenly, in the rage that rose in her at the recollection, she
found determination for the deed.

The sentinel nearest her was snoring at his post; the further one would not be
able to reach her in time, even should he see her. Somewhere, far away, a cock
was crowing; and it came to her suddenly that the breathlessness about her was
the hush that precedes the dawn. There was no time to lose, she told herself
feverishly, and moved forward with snake-like stillness. Between the
sheltering arm and the neck of the steel shirt there was a space of naked
throat. Setting her teeth, she raised her knife and struck down at it with a
strong hand.

The point never reached its mark. For an instant she could not tell what had
happened. Fingers closed like iron bands around her wrist, pulling her
backwards so that the pain of her twisted wound wrung a cry from her lips.
They were not Norman's fingers, yet he also was stirring; while darting
flashes from the dusk about them told that the other sleepers were drawing
their weapons. Then some one threw a branch-ful of dead leaves upon the fire.

The flame that flared up showed her arm to be in the grasp of the Lord of
Ivarsdale.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.